Month: October 2013
`Dont Go to Your Happy Place, Answer the Question!` ~ Oh Snap! Megyn Kelly
“Mark! He said ‘period,’ he said if you like your plan you can keep it. Period!”
Also from the Blaze… an Obama staffer that fought a three year battle FOR Obamacare has a change of heart… why? For background she has run in the past for Democratic party candidate for Kane County Board Chairman, also, here is some bio info on Sue:
- Alderman, St Charles City Council, 1989 to 1997 Mayor, City of St. Charles, 1997 to 2005 Vice-President, Metropolitan Mayors Caucus President, DuKane Valley Mayors & Administrators Council Vice-President, Illinois Municipal League Member, Governor’s Illinois Main Street Council Deputy Director of the City of Chicago’s Washington D.C. Office of Intergovernmental Affairs, 2006 to 2008 District Director, Congressman Bill Foster, 2008 to 2010
Here is the piece from the Blaze:
Sue Klinkhamer spent two years defending and fighting for Obamacare while working for Congressman Bill Foster (D-Ill.). But now that she’s seen the effect of President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul on her health insurance rates, Klinkhamer is boldly admitting that she was “very wrong.”
In a recent email sent to her former boss, Rep. Foster, and other Democratic colleagues, she reportedly wrote [emphasis added]:
“I spent two years defending Obamacare. I had constituents scream at me, spit at me and call me names that I can’t put in print. The congressman was not re-elected in 2010 mainly because of the anti-Obamacare anger. When the congressman was not re-elected, I also (along with the rest of our staff) lost my job. I was upset that because of the health care issue, I didn’t have a job anymore but still defended Obamacare because it would make health care available to everyone at, what I assumed, would be an affordable price. I have now learned that I was wrong. Very wrong.”
So why the sudden change of heart?
She learned that President Obama’s promise, “if you like your health plan, you can keep it,” was not true for everyone.
When Foster lost his reelection bid, Klinkhamer was out of a job and in need of individual insurance. Three years ago, she reportedly paid $225 a month with a $2,500 deductible. Her rates steadily increased and she was paying $291 a month with a $3,500 deductible as of Sept. 1, the Chicago Sun-Times reports.
Then she got “the letter” that people across the country are currently receiving in the mail.
“Blue Cross stated my current coverage would expire on Dec. 31, and here are my options: I can have a plan with similar benefits for $647.12 [or] I can have a plan with similar [but higher] pricing for $322.32 but with a $6,500 deductible,” Klinkhamer wrote.
“Blue Cross also tells me that if I don’t pick one of the options, they will just assume I want the one for $647. … Someone please tell me why my premium in January will be $356 more than in December?” she added.
Compare The Two Links Below ~ Administration Lied (Is Still Lying)
Obama admin. knew millions could not keep their health insurance
President Obama repeatedly assured Americans that after the Affordable Care Act became law, people who liked their health insurance would be able to keep it. But millions of Americans are getting or are about to get cancellation letters for their health insurance under Obamacare, say experts, and the Obama administration has known that for at least three years.
Four sources deeply involved in the Affordable Care Act tell NBC NEWS that 50 to 75 percent of the 14 million consumers who buy their insurance individually can expect to receive a “cancellation” letter or the equivalent over the next year because their existing policies don’t meet the standards mandated by the new health care law. One expert predicts that number could reach as high as 80 percent. And all say that many of those forced to buy pricier new policies will experience “sticker shock.”
None of this should come as a shock to the Obama administration. The law states that policies in effect as of March 23, 2010 will be “grandfathered,” meaning consumers can keep those policies even though they don’t meet requirements of the new health care law. But the Department of Health and Human Services then wrote regulations that narrowed that provision, by saying that if any part of a policy was significantly changed since that date — the deductible, co-pay, or benefits, for example — the policy would not be grandfathered.
Buried in Obamacare regulations from July 2010 is an estimate that because of normal turnover in the individual insurance market, “40 to 67 percent” of customers will not be able to keep their policy. And because many policies will have been changed since the key date, “the percentage of individual market policies losing grandfather status in a given year exceeds the 40 to 67 percent range.”
That means the administration knew that more than 40 to 67 percent of those in the individual market would not be able to keep their plans, even if they liked them.
White House Website Still Promising You Can Keep Your Health Insurance If You Like It…
Designed to Fail In Order to Push Single-Payer System
HotAir on this medicaid expansion:
CBS News has confirmed that in Washington, of the more than 35,000 people newly enrolled, 87 percent signed up for Medicaid. In Kentucky, out of 26,000 new enrollments, 82 percent are in Medicaid. And in New York, of 37,000 enrollments, Medicaid accounts for 64 percent. And there are similar stories across the country in nearly half of the states that run their own exchanges. …
But Gail Wilensky, a former Medicaid director, said the numbers are causing concern in the insurance industry, which needs healthy adults to buy private insurance in large numbers for the system to work.
“Either the private insurance enrollments come up somewhere around the expected amount or there’s going to be a problem. … You need a volume and you need a mix of people that are healthy as well as high users in private insurance, in order to have it be sustainable,” she said.
The Obama administration says they expected these high enrollment numbers in Medicaid because the law expands the number of low-income people who can get Medicaid, CBS News’ Jan Crawford reported on “CBS This Morning.” Supporters say this shows demand. But industry sources say that if we do not see some real turnaround soon, there could be big problems for the entire system.
The above graphic is from a WaPo article, continuing with HotAir’s commentary on the above quoting from CBS:
This prompts a question: why didn’t Democrats just expand Medicaid? Of the 30-48 million of the uninsured in America (depending on estimates), those uninsured and making less than $50,000 in household income only came to somewhere between 8 and 14 million, according to the Census Bureau in 2009. Eighty-five percent of Americans had insurance, and 87% of those were satisfied with it. Expanding Medicaid would have been costly and wouldn’t have been an easy sale — as we see with Republican governors now — but it would have been far less costly and intrusive as the Rube Goldberg contraption built by Barack Obama and his fellow Democrats, and it would have narrowly targeted the problem.
I have pointed this out before… single-payer is the goal:
An after thought. Since the DNC leadership has said — recently — the goal is single-payer… the question becomes this then: “what other area of life would a person want single payer in?” The airlines? Fast-food? Grocery stores? Car dealers? Education? Gyms?
In other words, why would someone reject a single airline, a single grocery-store (sorry weekend BBQ’ers, no more carne-asada from Vallerta), one gym, etc. — competition drives prices down and offers the best way (supply and demand) to get to the consumer what they want… but reject all that for a system that is failing in Canada, Britain, and the like?
It seems counter-intuitive that the left likes to break up large companies/corporations that get too big, and speak about/to the “evils” large companies inflict on the consumer, but then want single-payer. Odd indeed.
SNL Lampoons Sebelius
Megyn Kelly Grilled Ezekiel Emanuel, One of the Architects of the Affordable Care Act
Video Description:
Megyn Kelly took on Ezekiel Emanuel, one of the architects of the Affordable Care Act, on Friday night, grilling him on the colossal trainwreck of the health care law’s rollout and asking whether President Obama’s failed promises were “intentionally misleading or grossly mistaken.” Kelly told her all the issues with insurance companies restructuring plans and employers altering policies were “foreseeable,” and argued a minimum floor of coverage might not sit well with some people. Emanuel shot back that the main thrust of the Obamacare law is to cover millions more people, saying the GOP “never had a coherent plan or alternative.” Emanuel argued employers cut back on coverage en masse under Bush, but Kelly said there are still plenty of issues with Obamacare, like young people not signing up and the “huge swelling of the Medicaid rolls.” Emanuel dismissed the numbers already coming out as “totally irrelevant,” shouting “You have no idea whether you’re on track or not!” Kelly shot back, “Kathleen Sebelius won’t tell me!”
The Counter Culture vs. God ~ A Skateboarding Magazine Tells Its Readers to Steal
The above comes from the April 2013 (vol 31) Transworld Skateboarding magazine. They are effectively telling its readers to steal from someone they love, thus breaking a commandment they picture in the magazine. Many in this generation do not know the full impact of these commandments and the entirety of a life lived… a life lived well that is. As an ex-three-time felon, I know how hard it is to live a life well in God’s eyes… and I couldn’t do it at all without His daily help.
Let us just peruse some commentary on Commandment number eight from a few different sources:
There is only one solution to the world’s problems, only one prescription for producing a near-heaven on earth. It is 3,000 years old. And it is known as the Ten Commandments.
Properly understood and applied, the Ten Commandments are really all humanity needs to make a beautiful world. While modern men and women, in their hubris, believe that they can and must come up with new ideas in order to make a good world, the truth is there is almost nothing new to say.
If people and countries lived by the Ten Commandments, all the great moral problems would disappear.
Or, to put it another way, all the great evils involve the violation of one or more of the Ten Commandments.
8. Do not steal.
This commandment prohibits the stealing of people, the stealing of property, and the stealing of anything that belongs to another. The first prohibition alone, if obeyed, would have rendered the slave trade impossible.
Protecting the sanctity of private property makes moral civilization possible. That is why the recent riots in London should frighten every citizen of the U.K. and the West generally. Just as the burning of books leads to the burning of people, so, too, the smashing of windows and the looting of property leads eventually to the smashing of heads.
The rampant violation of this commandment by the governments of Africa is the primary reason for African poverty. Corruption, not Western imperialism, is the root of Africa’s backwardness.
(Prager)
There are also economic systems in mind all-thru-out the Bible, and they do not — even the eighth commandment — support socialism as an economic system.
Ian Hutchinson, Professor Of Nuclear Science And Engineering At MIT, Explains Science/Scientism
Jonah Goldberg On Fox ~ Tearin` it Up!
Oooops, Your Health Records are Public via O-Care
Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas), a member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, on Thursday grilled Cheryl Campbell, senior vice president of CGI Federal Inc., the company that built the Obamacare health care exchange website, on language hidden in source code that says applicants have “no reasonable expectation of privacy.”
Kathleen Sebelius Keeps Her Job But ObamaCare Operator Gets Fired for Talking to Sean Hannity
Will Obama Be Held Accountable by the Reasonable Left?
Who Believes This?
“Not because I believe in bigger government — I don’t” ~ Obama
Held Accountable? Remember this?
According to Justice Roberts and four other Supremes (not the musical group), it is a tax:
The individual mandate requiring Americans to carry insurance or pay a fine was clearly a constitutional nightmare. But, in an act of utter desperation, Chief Justice John Roberts joined the Supreme Court’s 4 Liberal justices in ruling that the mandate was legal under Congress’ constitutional authority “to collect Taxes” to provide for “the general Welfare of the United States.”
In an interview, in 2009, President Obama insisted that the mandate was not a tax, and that he wasn’t breaking his pledge not to increase taxes on the middle class by implementing the mandate.
How bout this one?
Well… more people have had their insurance dropped because of O-Care in just three states than all people who have — so far — signed up for O-Care nation wide. Sick! Here are just some specified examples:
CareFirst says 76,000 customers will lose current coverage due to Obamacare
CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield is being forced to cancel plans that currently cover 76,000 individuals in Virginia, Maryland, and Washington, D.C., due to changes made by President Obama’s health care law, the company told the Washington Examiner today.
That represents more than 40 percent of the 177,000 individuals covered by CareFirst in those states.
Though Obama famously promised that those who liked their health care coverage could keep it under his program, in reality, the health care law imposes a raft of new regulations on insurance policies starting Jan. 1 that are forcing insurers across the country to terminate existing plans.
In theory, rules were supposed to allow pre-existing plans to be “grandfathered in,” but they were written so narrowly that they leave out many plans.
“Of the 177,000 individuals under age 65 who are covered by CareFirst, about 76,000 of them are in a non-grandfathered plan — a plan that will not comply with the guidelines imposed by the Affordable Care Act at their time of renewal this year or next,” CareFirst said in an email in response to an inquiry by the Examiner….
CBS Video: Obamcare Takes Away Woman’s Health Care Choices
(CBS)
….”I was completely happy with the insurance I had before,” Willes said.
So she was surprised when she tried to renew her policy. What did she find out?
“That my insurance was going to be completely different, and they were going to be replaced with 10 new plans that were going to fall under the regulations of the Affordable Care Act,” she said.
Her insurer, Kaiser Permanente, is terminating policies for 160,000 people in California and presenting them with new plans that comply with the healthcare law.
“Before I had a plan that I had a $1,500 deductible,” she said. “I paid $199 dollars a month. The most similar plan that I would have available to me would be $278 a month. My deductible would be $6,500 dollars, and all of my care after that point would only be covered 70 percent.”
Millions of Americans Are Losing Their Health Plans Because of Obamacare
…roughly 16 million Americans will lose their current plans because of Obamacare:
The U.S. individual health insurance market currently totals about 19 million people. Because the Obama administration’s regulations on grandfathering existing plans were so stringent about 85% of those, 16 million, are not grandfathered and must comply with Obamacare at their next renewal. The rules are very complex. For example, if you had an individual plan in March of 2010 when the law was passed and you only increased the deductible from $1,000 to $1,500 in the years since, your plan has lost its grandfather status and it will no longer be available to you when it would have renewed in 2014.
These 16 million people are now receiving letters from their carriers saying they are losing their current coverage and must re-enroll in order to avoid a break in coverage and comply with the new health law’s benefit mandates––the vast majority by January 1. Most of these will be seeing some pretty big rate increases.
You Can Keep Your Health Insurance Under Obamacare? Not So Much
Florida Blue, for example, is terminating about 300,000 policies, about 80 percent of its individual policies in the state. Kaiser Permanente in California has sent notices to 160,000 people – about half of its individual business in the state. Insurer Highmark in Pittsburgh is dropping about 20 percent of its individual market customers, while Independence Blue Cross, the major insurer in Philadelphia, is dropping about 45 percent.
Will the reasonable Left in this country stand up? Already, every Democrat (yes, EVERY) running for reelection in 2014 is FOR suspending O-care temporarily. An admission — of sorts — of its failure and the sense that the American public rejects O-Care… even in Blue districts.