The Cleveland Clinic, a huge medical center, is laying off people and cutting back services for people, due mainly to Obama-Care (or if you prefer the Orwellian term, The Affordable Care Act).
Obama-Care
`Law of the Land` ~ I Guess That Settles It
`Scrap Obamacare and Start Over` ~ Warren Buffett (2010)
Via Money Morning:
When asked, “Are you in favor of scrapping [Obamacare] and going back to start over?”, famed investor Warren Buffett said on CNBC March 1, 2010, “I would be — if I were President Obama.”
Buffett insisted that without changes to America’s health system average citizens will suffer.
“We have a health system that, in terms of costs, is really out of control,” he added. “And if you take this line and you project what has been happening into the future, we will get less and less competitive. So we need something else.”
Three debate-ridden years later, millions of Americans still agree.
But now Obamacare is only weeks away from kicking off.
The government program, slated to begin in earnest October 1 when the exchanges go live, is one of the most hated bills in history.
Ask millions of Americans what they think about the new law, and chances are they’re ready to pop a jugular.
Critics heavily oppose the mandate requiring them to purchase health insurance. They’re also furious at all the new taxes, fees, and higher premiums they’ll be stuck paying, thanks to Obamacare.
Yet, while millions of Americans loathe every facet of The Affordable Care Act, as it’s officially titled, another group of Americans see it as a once-in-a lifetime opportunity to get rich: Investors.
According to most Wall Street experts, Obamacare will create unheard of fortunes for investors who tap into the right companies.
That’s because the U.S. will spend billions, even trillions of dollars implementing, regulating, and enforcing Obamacare.
Select companies and their investors are set to make a fortune in the next several months – and years – as the full Obamacare plan gets underway.
This comes via Weekly Standard and it:
You know things are bad for President Obama when even Warren Buffett has soured on Obamacare and says that “we need something else.” Money Morning writes:
[….]
“Buffett insists that without changes to Obamacare average citizens will suffer.
“‘What we have now is untenable over time,’ said Buffett, an early supporter of President Obama. ‘That kind of a cost compared to the rest of the world is really like a tapeworm eating, you know, at our economic body.’
“Buffett does not believe that providing insurance for everyone is the first step to take in correcting our nation’s healthcare system.
“‘Attack the costs first, and then worry about expanding coverage,’ he said. ‘I would much rather see another plan that really attacks costs. And I think that’s what the American public wants to see. I mean, the American public is not behind this bill.'”
And in another story, “Obamacare Hurts Michigan Businesses,”
Kalamazoo-based, medical-products maker Stryker Corp. says Obamacare’s 2.3 percent medical device tax will cost the company $100 million this year, reducing its research and development budget by over 20 percent — meaning a loss of 1,000 workers. The Fortune 500 company is just one of many Michigan employers being negatively impacted, making the state a witness to the national economic harm that Obamacare has wrought, even before state health exchanges mandated under the health care law open Oct. 1.
[….]
Stryker is concerned with the “medical device excise tax and its negative impact on jobs and innovation,” says CEO Kevin Lobo. At his 10 Subway sandwich shops, Michigan businessman Ken Adams has switched to hiring part-time workers to avoid Obamacare’s expensive, employer health mandate. He added 25 part-time workers this summer while reducing other employees’ hours. “We won’t start hiring full-time people,” Adams told The Wall Street Journal, even with the delay of Obamacare’s employer mandate until 2015. Cities like Dearborn have alarmed unions by also planning reduced employee hours. Meanwhile, the General Accountability Office has warned of the “potential for implementation challenges going forward” for Obamacare exchanges. Translation: They won’t be ready come October.
No wonder some of the Obama administration’s biggest allies are rebelling.
The Government Mechanism Is Harming, Not Helping the Poor and Middle-Class
Remember I just posted on Trader Joe’s Woes. A few stories from Gateway Pundit about the Democrats helping the poorer and middle-class people… just joking:
Cleveland Clinic to Reduce Budget by $330 Million Due to ObamaCare, Layoffs Inevitable
The Cleveland Clinic is cutting their 2014 budget by $330 million and these budget cuts include job losses. The clinic has roughly 42,000 workers The layoffs are expected to be across the board, some workers including doctors will be losing their jobs or forced into early retirement. The company said they have not made any “overall layoffs” in the past 11 years and the majority of the 2014 budget cuts are due to the upcoming implementation of ObamaCare.
The Clinic issued the following statement:
“To prepare for healthcare reform, Cleveland Clinic is transforming the way care is delivered to patients. Over the past several years, we have had an ongoing focus on driving efficiencies, lowering costs, reducing duplication in services and enhancing quality to make healthcare affordable to patients.
Although we have made progress, we need to further reduce costs to the organization by $330 million in 2014. We are carefully evaluating all aspects of our system to accomplish this. Some of the initiatives include offering early retirement to 3,000 eligible employees, reducing operational costs, stricter review of filling vacant positions, and lastly workforce reductions.
And another story via GP:
Walgreens Dumps 160,000 Workers Into ObamaCare “Train Wreck”
The Weekly Standard reports,
The plan, as CBS explains, is to protect the company from rising health care costs. Now who will cover the costs? The employees.
In short, the move is to protect Walgreens from Obamaacre. “Rising health-care costs and a climate of change brought about by the new federal health law are prompting American corporations to revisit the pact they’ve long had with employees over medical benefits. … Aside from rising health-care costs, the company cited compliance-related expenses associated with the new law as a reason for the switch,” as the Wall Street Journal reports.
Interestingly, a couple months ago Walgreens announced that it would help “promote” Obamacare. “The nation’s largest drugstore chain is partnering with Blue Cross Blue Shield to promote ObamaCare before the new insurance exchanges open on Oct. 1. Walgreens and the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association (BCBSA) launched a website Wednesday and promised to distribute brochures about ObamaCare at Walgreens stores around the country,” the Hill reported in July.
Just a few months ago, Senator Rockefeller (D-WV), one of the key masterminds behind ObamaCare, warned it was a “train wreck coming”. And the Liberal Democrats put Americans on that train. But, have no fear, as the train (representing 1/6th of our economy) implodes, the Salesman in the White House will reassure us from his teleprompter that we’re imagining the pain.
Trader Joes, Unions, and Half of the Workforce Going Part-Time ~ Thanks to Obama-Care
Many companies are moving a large majority of their work force to part-time in order to stay in business:
This has the biggest proponents of the Affordable Care Act (ACA, or, Obama-Care), the three biggest unions, up in arms. This from a previous post of mine:
…Labor unions are among the key institutions responsible for the passage of Obamacare. They spent tons of money electing Democrats to Congress in 2006 and 2008, and fought hard to push the health law through the legislature in 2009 and 2010. But now, unions are waking up to the fact that Obamacare is heavily disruptive to the health benefits of their members.
Last Thursday, representatives of three of the nation’s largest unions fired off a letter to Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, warning that Obamacare would “shatter not only our hard-earned health benefits, but destroy the foundation of the 40 hour work week that is the backbone of the American middle class.”…
Unions have expressed two major concerns:
1) the workforce they represent will lose hours by being moved to 29-hours;
2) they will not be able to keep their health-care, as Obama promised.
And recently, at a very public meeting, the unions doubled-downed on the deleterious affects of the ACA.
You see, full time under Obama-Care is 30-hours, so many businesses are moving their full time employees to part-time in order to stay competitive and solvent. One example is Forever 21.
This from Breitbart:
Because ObamaCare is nothing more than a wealth redistribution policy that forces the productive to pay for the non-productives’ Cadillac health plans (which include birth control), costs are about to explode. As a result, employers are desperate to cut the burden of their health care costs, which is why our economy is hardly creating any full-time jobs, and the part-time employees at Trader Joe’s just lost their health insurance benefits:
After extending health care coverage to many of its part-time employees for years, Trader Joe’s has told workers who log fewer than 30 hours a week that they will need to find insurance on the Obamacare exchanges next year, according to a confidential memo from the grocer’s chief executive.
In the memo to staff dated Aug. 30, Trader Joe’s CEO Dan Bane said the company will cut part-timers a check for $500 in January and help guide them toward finding a new plan under the Affordable Care Act. The company will continue to offer health coverage to workers who carry 30 hours or more on average. …
A current Trader Joe’s worker described the coverage she’ll likely lose as “one of the best parts about the job.” (The employee requested anonymity since she isn’t authorized to speak to the media.) She said she pays only $35 per paycheck, or $70 per month, for a plan that generally covers 80 percent of her medical costs, carries a reasonable $500 deductible and includes prescription drug coverage.
“There are several folks I work with who are there for the insurance as much as anything, mostly folks with young families,” she said. “I can say that when I opened and read the letter yesterday my reaction was pure panic, followed quickly by anger.”
Meanwhile, the American media treats those in the GOP attempting to defund the ruination of ObamaCare as extremist freaks.
Gateway Pundits story links out to a Forbes Magazine article talking about how the ACA hurts patients with diseases like Cancer (see WSJ article on this). The WaPo article Gateway quotes from says this:
…companies typically offer them to stay competitive. A robust health plan can go a long way in wooing potential employees – especially when most of the market doesn’t offer part-time workers the opportunity to buy coverage.
This is important, because Trader Joe’s has gotten workers that WANT these benefits and work well to keep them. Trader Joe’s stays competitive this way. Now… not soo much, and their quality of worker will decrease slowly as more-and-more get the same benefits.
Another employer jumping into the 29-hours-or-less fray is SeaWorld, via the Orlando Sentinel:
SeaWorld Entertainment Inc. is reducing hours for thousands of part-time workers, a move that would allow the Orlando-based theme-park owner to avoid offering those employees medical insurance under the federal government’s health-care overhaul.
SeaWorld confirmed the move Monday in a brief written statement to the Orlando Sentinel. The company operates 11 theme parks across the United States and has about 22,000 employees — nearly 18,000 of whom are part-time or seasonal workers. It has more than 4,000 part-time and seasonal workers in Central Florida.
Under a new corporate policy, SeaWorld will schedule part-time workers for no more than 28 hours a week, down from a previous limit of 32 hours a week. The new cap is expected to go into effect by November.
All this doesn’t matter to some, because the new norm is “fairness.” For instance, when a health-care company (one of many*) lays off 100-workers due to the rising costs in the ACA, some Obama-Lemmings say it is fair:
Georgia Healthcare Company to Lay Off Over 100 Because of Obamacare
“We have confirmed more than 100 Emory health care employees are going to lose their jobs in part because of the Affordable (health) Care Act,” said a local anchor.
“I think it’s bad it’s affordable health care and people are losing their jobs,” said a man interviewed by the reporter.
“It’s sad. It really is,” said another man. “A lot of people are going to lose their homes and cars and everything they worked all their life for.”
(Editors commentary: The video at the link shows the above woman saying she thinks its fair — Its an Obama world — I wonder if she would have said the same thing if Bush was in office? And how would this opposition to Bush, then — according to the consensus of the legacy media — not be racist if speaking your mind about Obama is?)
http://tinyurl.com/lyjczd4
================
http://tinyurl.com/n4dy726
Besides leading Democrats supporting Sarah Palin’s many year old [now] contention that there are DEATH PANELS in the ACA, Many more jobs will be lost and it is already tracking this direction. In one discussion on a friends FaceBook, I responded to a friend of his who didn’t appreciate the “meme” he posted:
His friend said this:
- J.C. said: Oh stats… 258 sounds like a lot doesn’t it… but if you look at this chart… it doesn’t seem like the real numbers back up your scare image… http://i.huffpost.com/…/thumbs/o-OBAMACARE-570.jpg…
To which I responded:
The number is actually much higher than both the Meme portray, and the slanted HuffPo Puff piece. For instance:
GALLOP POLL/TECHNICAL
————————————–
….”If the small businesses’ fears are reasonable, then it could mean that the small business sector grows slower than what economic conditions otherwise would indicate. And small businesses have been a growth engine in the economy,” Friedman told CNBC.
Forty-one percent of the businesses surveyed have frozen hiring because of the health-care law known as Obamacare. And almost one-fifth—19 percent— answered “yes” when asked if they had “reduced the number of employees you have in your business as a specific result of the Affordable Care Act.”
The poll was taken by 603 owners whose businesses have under $20 million in annual sales.
Another 38 percent of the small business owners said they “have pulled back on their plans to grow their business” because of Obamacare.
Those are “some pretty startling answers,” Friedman said.
“To think that [nearly] 20 percent of small businesses have already reduced the numbers they have in their business because they’re concerned about the medical coverage is significant, and a bit troubling,” Friedman said.
• http://www.cnbc.com/id/100825782
• http://www.cnbc.com/id/100783056
——————————————-
ANECDOTAL
I worked for Hughes Market for many years, then Ralph’s, and finally Whole Foods until my illness. I know some “old-school” market guys… and a manager I have known for over 2-decades said Ralph’s is going to be cutting hours as much as possible to 29 for their employees.
HORSES MOUTH
I blogged on this a while ago, the three biggest unions which pushed Obama-Care (ACA). Here is a bit of commentarry and what Jimmi Hoffa wrote:
——————————————
Labor unions are among the key institutions responsible for the passage of Obamacare. They spent tons of money electing Democrats to Congress in 2006 and 2008, and fought hard to push the health law through the legislature in 2009 and 2010. But now, unions are waking up to the fact that Obamacare is heavily disruptive to the health benefits of their members.
Last Thursday, representatives of three of the nation’s largest unions fired off a letter to Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, warning that Obamacare would “shatter not only our hard-earned health benefits, but destroy the foundation of the 40 hour work week that is the backbone of the American middle class.”
The letter was penned by James P. Hoffa, general president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters; Joseph Hansen, international president of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union; and Donald “D.” Taylor, president of UNITE-HERE, a union representing hotel, airport, food service, gaming, and textile workers.
“When you and the President sought our support for the Affordable Care Act,” they begin, “you pledged that if we liked the health plans we have now, we could keep them. Sadly, that promise is under threat…We have been strong supporters of the notion that all Americans should have access to quality, affordable health care. We have also been strong supporters of you. In campaign after campaign we have put boots on the ground, gone door-to-door to get out the vote, run phone banks and raised money to secure this vision. Now this vision has come back to haunt us.”
[….]
What surprises me about this is that union leaders are pretty strategic when it comes to employee benefits. It was obvious in 2009 that Obamacare’s employer mandate would incentivize this shift. Why didn’t labor unions fight it back then?
Read more: http://tinyurl.com/mdeamqd
———————————————
In that same posting I list some startling facts from the Chamber of Commerce, who from their poll said that 74% of small businesses will fire workers, or cut hours under Obamacare. In other words, the left is hurting those it claims to care about — the working poor — more than it is helping them. A good book on this and other economic issues is Arthur Brook’s, “The Road to Freedom: How to Win the Fight for Free Enterprise.”
So Tom, your Meme didn’t go far enough. And J.C., the Huff Puff piece was weak.
I added an afterthought to the discussion:
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 rejects a single airline, a single grocery-store (sorry weekend BBQ’ers, no more carne-asada from Vallerta), etc. — where competition drives prices down and offers in the best way (the markets supply and demand) what customers 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 the “evils” large companies do to the consumer, but then want single-payer. Odd indeed.
NBC is FINALLY tracking with some of the above… why not the electorate?
* (RPT) …Like medical giant, Stryker, one of Obama’s biggest financial backers, laying off almost 1,200 workers to prep for Obama-Care, and the falling revenue (33%) of the Californian government showing in the the micro what higher taxes and more regulation does to the engine of the economy. Here are more stories of failure, and how these higher taxes will hit the retired folks that worked hard their whole lives, just to see it disappear. Google and Microsoft are two of Obama’s largest financial backers (Bloomberg):
The company avoided about $2 billion in worldwide income taxes in 2011 by shifting $9.8 billion in revenue into a Bermuda shell company, almost double the total from three years before, filings show.
Governments in France, the U.K., Italy and Australia are probing Google’s tax avoidance as they seek to boost revenue. Schmidt said the company’s efforts around taxes are legal.
We pay lots of taxes; we pay them in the legally prescribed ways,” he said. “I am very proud of the structure that we set up. We did it based on the incentives that the governments offered us to operate.”
The company isn’t about to turn down big savings in taxes, he said.
“It’s called capitalism,” he said. “We are proudly capitalistic. I’m not confused about this.”
[….]
Google’s overall effective tax rate dropped to 21 percent last year from about 28 percent in 2008. That compares with the average combined U.S. and state statutory rate of about 39 percent.
Costco also was a huge supported of Obama and is borrowing money to avoid paying higher taxes on it now (WSJ):
When President Obama needed a business executive to come to his campaign defense, Jim Sinegal was there. The Costco COST +1.92% co-founder, director and former CEO even made a prime-time speech at the Democratic Party convention in Charlotte. So what a surprise this week to see that Mr. Sinegal and the rest of the Costco board voted to give themselves a special dividend to avoid Mr. Obama’s looming tax increase. Is this what the President means by “tax fairness”?
Specifically, the giant retailer announced Wednesday that the company will pay a special dividend of $7 a share this month. That’s a $3 billion Christmas gift for shareholders that will let them be taxed at the current dividend rate of 15%, rather than next year’s rate of up to 43.4%—an increase to 39.6% as the Bush-era rates expire plus another 3.8% from the new ObamaCare surcharge.
More striking is that Costco also announced that it will borrow $3.5 billion to finance the special payout. Dividends are typically paid out of earnings, either current or accumulated. But so eager are the Costco executives to get out ahead of the tax man that they’re taking on debt to do so.
[….]
To sum up: Here we have people at the very top of the top 1% who preach about tax fairness voting to write themselves a huge dividend check to avoid the Obama tax increase they claim it is a public service to impose on middle-class Americans who work for 30 years and finally make $250,000 for a brief window in time.
If they had any shame, they’d send their entire windfall to the Treasury.
[….]1) On a dark street, a man draws a knife and demands my money for drugs;
2) Instead of demanding my money for drugs, he demands it for the Church;
3) Instead of being alone, he is with a bishop of the Church who acts as the bagman;
4) Instead of drawing a knife, he produces a policeman who says I must do as he says;
5) Instead of meeting me on the street, he mails me his demand as an official agent of the government.
If the first is theft, it is difficult to see why the other four are not also theft.
It must be nice that these large corporations that pushed for Obama-Care (laughably the “Affordable Care Act”) have the ability to get loans to help buffer against the costs of it. Their smaller mom-and-pop competition that bites into their profits? Not so much. One way to corner more of the market:
You can add “health-care” to the graphic below:
Coming Out In September ~ The Game Has Not Been Delayed Till 2015
Obamacare (Crossroads)
The Clothing Store, Forever 21, Slashes Hours ~ Obama-Care (UPDATED w/Dennis Prager)
Apparently PolicyMic is out of the loop, this is one of many companies that are cutting hours due the Affordable Care Act. I wonder if this is what Mary Landrieu meant by saying Obama-Care causes “no more free rides“?
The predictions and fears of the Affordable Care Act’s adversaries have begun to materialize, specifically fears that the law will encourage employers to demote their employees to part-time positions in order to evade federal health care requirements. Popular clothing company Forever 21 is the first of what might be many companies to limit its non-management workers’ hours to 29.5 a week, just below the 30-hour minimum that the ACA deems full-time work.
Explaining that the company “recently audited its staffing levels, staffing needs, and payroll in conjunction with reviewing its overall operating budget,” Associate Director of Human Resources Carla Macias informed employees that effective 8/31/13, they will no longer be full-time employees of Forever 21.
It is a move that will likely harm the reputation of the company, will absolutely harm the economic circumstances of its employees, and will function as a tangible example of the Affordable Care Act’s consequences and shortcomings.
[…..]
It is probable that in a perfect world, Forever 21’s management would love to continue employing full-time workers, provide them with substantial health care benefits, and maintain low prices for its customers. But in a nation with uniquely high health care costs, an issue that the Affordable Care Act fails to address, this is a regrettably unrealistic business model.
George Will: `Obama Ignores Law, Like Nixon`
George Will: Obama Ignores Law, Like Nixon, via NewsMAX!
Barack Obama’s increasingly grandiose claims for presidential power are inversely proportional to his shriveling presidency.
Desperation fuels arrogance as, barely 200 days into the 1,462 days of his second term, his pantry of excuses for failure is bare, his domestic agenda is nonexistent and his foreign policy of empty rhetorical deadlines and redlines is floundering. And at last week’s news conference he offered inconvenience as a justification for illegality.
Explaining his decision to unilaterally rewrite the Affordable Care Act, he said: “I didn’t simply choose to” ignore the statutory requirement for beginning in 2014 the employer mandate to provide employees with healthcare. No, “this was in consultation with businesses.”
He continued: “In a normal political environment, it would have been easier for me to simply call up the speaker and say, you know what, this is a tweak that doesn’t go to the essence of the law . . . it looks like there may be some better ways to do this, let’s make a technical change to the law. That would be the normal thing that I would prefer to do. But we’re not in a normal atmosphere around here when it comes to Obamacare. We did have the executive authority to do so, and we did so.”
Serving as props in the scripted charade of White House news conferences, journalists did not ask the pertinent question: “Where does the Constitution confer upon presidents the ‘executive authority’ to ignore the separation of powers by revising laws?” The question could have elicited an Obama rarity: Brevity. Because there is no such authority.
Obama’s explanation began with an irrelevancy: He consulted with businesses before disregarding his constitutional duty to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” That duty does not lapse when a president decides Washington’s “political environment” is not “normal.”
When was it “normal”? The 1850s? The 1950s? Washington has been the nation’s capital for 213 years; Obama has been here less than nine years. Even if he understood “normal” political environments here, the Constitution is not suspended when a president decides the “environment” is abnormal.
Neither does the Constitution confer on presidents the power to rewrite laws if they decide the change is a “tweak” not involving the law’s “essence.” Anyway, the employer mandate is essential to the ACA.
[….]
[….]
In a 1977 interview with Richard Nixon, David Frost asked: “So, what in a sense you’re saying is that there are certain situations . . . where the president can decide that it’s in the best interests of the nation . . . and do something illegal?”
Nixon: “Well, when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.”
Frost: “By definition.”
Nixon: “Exactly, exactly.”
Nixon’s claim, although constitutionally grotesque, was less so than the claim implicit in Obama’s actions regarding the ACA. Nixon’s claim was confined to matters of national security or (he said to Frost) “a threat to internal peace and order of significant magnitude.” Obama’s audacity is more spacious; it encompasses a right to disregard any portion of any law pertaining to any subject at any time when the political “environment” is difficult.
Obama should be embarrassed that, by ignoring the legal requirement concerning the employer mandate, he has validated critics who say the ACA cannot be implemented as written. What does not embarrass him is his complicity in effectively rewriting the ACA for the financial advantage of self-dealing members of Congress and their staffs.
The ACA says members of Congress (annual salaries: $174,000) and their staffs (thousands making more than $100,000) must participate in the law’s insurance exchanges. It does not say that when this change goes into effect, the current federal subsidy for this affluent cohort — up to 75 percent of the premium’s cost, perhaps $10,000 for families — should be unchanged.
When Congress awakened to what it enacted, it panicked: This could cause a flight of talent, making Congress less wonderful. So Obama directed the Office of Personnel Management, which has no power to do this, to authorize for the political class special subsidies unavailable for less privileged and less affluent citizens.
If the president does it, it’s legal? “Exactly, exactly.”
NBC Finally Catching On ~ Obama-Care Killing Jobs
Via Michelle Malkin:
WH in Denial ~ Still
(Via GayPatriot) The White House still dismisses the evidence as “anecdotal”, as NBC points out – and despite the growing data on the matter.
NBC delicately uses “unintended consequences” to describe the Obamacare job/hour losses, despite the fact that such losses were foreseen by many.
Via Zero Hedge.
Last month, Jay Carney said that the suggestion that Obamacare is reducing full-time hiring is “belied by the facts,” not unlike Jay Carney usually is.
There have been numerous reports of slashed worker hours due to looming Obama-care regs, and it must be pretty bad because even the networks are starting to catch on. NBC News contacted numerous businesses and others and found that hours are being cut because of Obamacare (video via Weasel Zippers).
That story should come as a surprise only to those who get all their information from network newscasts.
The White House has to stick to their story because they have no other choice:
But the White House, NBC News reports, says that there is no systematic evidence that this is because of Obamacare and dismisses the report as anecdotal.
Maybe President Obama can straighten out the CEO of NBC’s parent company, because they’re playing golf today.
Harry Reid Admits To Single-Payer Goals ~ Which Means Charitable Hospitals Could Not Exist Any Longer
Obama-care would necessarily chase charity hospitals out of business in order to place EVERYONE on a single payer program. Insane Dems! Hurting the very one’s they say they want to help, the poor. (Posted by: https://religiopoliticaltalk.com/). In this upload Prager hints at E-Cigarettes being banned in California and New York. I separate the fuller section of this in another video: http://youtu.be/u-pHn7ROgTk
For more clear thinking like this from Dennis Prager… I invite you to visit: http://www.dennisprager.com/
Affordable Care Act: `Do As We Say, Not As We Do Act` (AETNA Pulls Out of Maryland Exchanges)
Via HotAir:
Much like California, the state of Maryland has been almost ostentatiously gung-ho about the implementation of the Patient “Protection” and “Affordable” Care Act. Also like California, Maryland is encountering some most unfortunate problems the likes of which only they and their fellow esteemed Democrats seem not to have seen coming.
For instance: Maryland would really very much appreciate it if the insurance companies operating in their state could offer rates that the state arbitrarily deems to be affordable and attractive offers, the better to lure potential participants into the state’s ObamaCare exchanges. Insurance companies, meanwhile, would really like it if they could avoid operating at a loss. It’s selfish, really.
Aetna Inc pulled out of Maryland’s health insurance exchange being created under President Barack Obama’s healthcare reform law after the state pressed it to lower its proposed rates by up to 29 percent. …
[….]
….“Unfortunately, we believe the modifications to the rates filed by Aetna and Coventry would not allow us to collect enough premiums to cover the cost of the plans, including the medical network and service expectations of our customers,” Aetna said in the letter to insurance commissioner Therese Goldsmith.
According to online documents, Aetna had requested an average monthly premium of $394 a month for one of its plans and the agency had approved an average rate of $281 per month.
And it was just the other day that ObamaCare’s supporters were touting Maryland’s lower rates as proof of the health care overhaul’s success….