Just how deep does the rabbit hole go?
Posts tagged Obamacare
The Early Stages of ObamaCare
0Source: http://karendecoster.com
Here is a great talk given at The 21 Convention in 2012, by Doug McGuff, MD, a prominent member of the ancestral health (paleo-primal) community: “Fitness, Health, and Liberty.” Doug, an emergency room physician, is well known for his ‘Body By Science‘ program, a high-intensity interval training program.
This is an important presentation because Doug presents the historical picture on how the physician-patient relationship went from a fiduciary relationship between provider and consumer to a 3rd party morass of collectivized medicine that sacrificed individual services to the needs of the masses in general in order to conform to the rules outlined by the medical establishment-insurance industry alliance.
While it is easy to blame the Democrats or blame Obama for the nationalization of medical care, this system began to form many years ago under the auspices of self-serving medical practitioners who built alliances with the government-medical establishment in the pursuit of rent-seeking arrangements. Dr. McGuff notes that doctors, who had short-term gains in mind, ultimately sacrificed their profession to these pursuits and thus “set into motion the long-term unintended consequences that resulted in their ultimate enslavement.”
His discussion of the formation of the “Blues” plans to guarantee payment for services while receiving tax-exempt status in exchange for community ratings is spot on. Community ratings, that did not allow for discrimination based on individual health status, were the beginnings of socialized medicine and thus opened the door to moral hazard and the current system of pre-paid medical care that defies all the principles of personal accountability and the free market.
This presentation is 72 minutes, but it is worth every minute of your time. I work in this industry and can tell you that Dr. McGuff has presented the best short timeline I have seen on the topic of how 3rd-party insurance and government-business alliances came to destroy the U.S. health care system. Dr. McGuff is also a libertarian, as if you can’t tell by the presentation.
Obama’s New Interior Secretary Nominee Received Obamacare Waiver for Her Company
03 months ago
in Politics, regulation
Source: http://spreadlibertynews.com
President Barack Obama’s newly-named nominee to run the Department of the Interior, REI CEO Sally Jewell, sought and received a waiver from ObamaCare requirements for her outdoor clothing and equipment company in 2011.
The Washington Examiner’s Charlie Spiering dug up the revelation Thursday, noting that Obama welcomed Jewell to the White House in 2009 to jointly argue for the passage of Obamacare.
Obama held REI up as a model company.
“And then REI, which has to be fit since they’re a fitness company,” Obama joked during the White House meeting on May 12, 2009, “has been doing work that allows them to provide Health Care coverage, health insurance, not only to their full-time employees but also their part-time employees. Every single employee is covered, but part of the reason they’re able to do it is because they put a big emphasis on prevention and wellness.”
Two years later, Jewell secured an exemption from the law for REI.
REI received an Obamacare waiver around the same time that nearly 20 percent of the businesses in House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s Northern California district received waivers.
Image Reference
http://science.time.com/2013/02/07/can-an-outdoorsy-ceo-manage-the-interior-departments-split-personality/
‘Obamacare’ to hit smokers with huge penalties
0Source: http://rt.com
AFP Photo / Justin Sullivan
Smokers, beware: tobacco penalties under President Obama’s Affordable Care Act could subject millions of smokers to fees costing thousands of dollars, making healthcare more expensive for them than Americans with other unhealthy habits.
The Affordable Care Act, which critics have also called “Obamacare”, could subject smokers to premiums that are 50 percent higher than usual, starting next Jan 1. Health insurers will be allowed to charge smokers penalties that overweight Americans or those with other health conditions would not be subjected to.
A 60-year-old smoker could pay penalties as high as $5,100, in addition to the premiums, the Associated Press reports. A 55-year-old smoker’s penalty could reach $4,250. The older a smoker is, the higher the penalty will be.
Nearly one in every five U.S. adults smokes, with a higher number of low-income people addicted to the unhealthy habit. Even though smokers are more likely to develop heart disease, cancer and lung problems and would therefore require more health care, the penalties might devastate those who need help the most – including retirees, older Americans, and low-income individuals.
“We don’t want to create barriers for people to get health care coverage,” California state Assemblyman Richard Pan told AP. “We want people who are smoking to get smoking cessation treatment.”
Nearly 450,000 US residents die of smoking-related diseases each year, making the unhealthy habit a serious concern for lawmakers. One legislator is trying to criminalize smoking in his state, while others have raised taxes on cigarettes and the Obama administration has tried to inflict hefty fines upon smokers’ premiums.
Karen Pollitz, a former consumer protection regular, told AP that no insurers want to provide coverage for Americans who have been smoking for decades, and that the penalties might prompt people to abandon the habit.
“You would have the flexibility to discourage them,” she told AP.
But quitting is not easy, and charging older smokers up to three times as much as younger ones could make it difficult for them to seek care in the first place. A 60-year-old smoker charged with the penalty could be paying about $8,411 per year for health insurance, which is about 24 percent of a $35,000 income and is considered “unaffordable” under federal law.
“The effect of the smoking (penalty) allowed under the law would be that lower-income smokers could not afford health insurance,” said Richard Curtis, president of the Institute for Health Policy Solutions.
Ultimately, the law that is meant to make health care more affordable could have the opposite effect on older smokers at a time when smoking-related illnesses usually arise.
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Same scenario by the same a$$hats from the same city. Take something known to be ugly, slap a pretty coat of paint on it, throw in some pork, and the Hill people eat it up. Somewhere there is a common denominator between the Affordable Care Act, the Patriot Act and the septic tank haulers called, or used to be called, honey wagons. If the “DCites” label it something sounding good for our country and we the people be assured it is the opposite.
The more stories that come out concerning the Affordable Care Act the more unaffordable it is, to both people and businesses. And based on the quote from Karen Pollitz, her disillusioned perception of reality sounds like it is coming from someone smoking something other than tobacco, but to each their own. There is a lot to be said for a government that steals the money from it’s citizens for taxes and healthcare before they even see their check. Enough years of indoctrination the people even think theft, by any name, is a good thing.
EXCLUSIVE: Michael Badnarick Responds to Gun Grab Hysteria
13 months ago
Former Presidential Candidate, Libertarian Author, and Constitutional Scholar, Michael Badnarick sits down with Gary Franchi to respond to the recent Gun Grab Hysteria.
More about WHDT: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WHDT
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Loophole in Obamacare can leave you without insurance
14 months ago
in Health, regulation
Source: http://www.examiner.com
A loophole in the Affordable Health Care Act -Obamacare- found by the IRS could leave millions of Americans without insurance. Credits: Photo by IRS.gov
The Obama administration issued long expected guidelines about the implementation of the health care law on Monday containing a huge loophole that could leave millions of Americans still uninsured.
As the IRS interprets the law, employers with more than 50 workers are required to offer health care insurance to the dependents (though not the spouses) of their full time employees, but there is no requirement to make that coverage affordable.
Therefore you can offer a ‘family plan’ for a worker making $10 an hour (about $20,000 a year) that costs $15,000 and if the worker ‘elects’ not to buy the coverage, you as an employer have done your job and are off the hook.
The new law, however, requires companies to offer ‘affordable’ health care plans to employees, with ‘affordable’ defined under the proposed regulations at 9.5 percent of total wages. The New York Times notes this creates a strong incentive for employers to put their health care dollars towards subsidizing individual plans while encouraging them to cut any subsidies they now offer for family plans.
It is unclear whether the spouse and children of an employee will be able to obtain federal subsidies to help them buy coverage –separate from the employee- through insurance exchanges being established in every state. The administration explicitly reserved judgment on that question, which could affect millions of people in families with low and moderate incomes.
The Obama administration said Monday that employers must offer health insurance to employees and their children, but will not be subject to any penalties if family coverage is unaffordable to workers.
Senate defies constitution again. House goes along with it.
04 months ago
Source: http://www.examiner.com
By Lori Stacey
House members rushing to pass Senate’s fiscal cliff bill Credits: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Every single member of Congress knows or should know the very basic rule stated in the US Constitution regarding which chamber can originate revenue raising bills (tax bills). But that seems to have not stopped any of the 535 members of the US Senate and US House of Representatives from once again proving that they have absolutely no intention of obeying even the most basic procedures for a tax bill becoming a legitimate law.
As many of us wrote about months ago, after the Supreme Court issued its ruling regarding Obamacare being declared a tax, millions of Americans should have been celebrating how Chief Justice Roberts had just in essence invalidated the entire bill. See my previous article, “Is Chief Justice Roberts actually sly as a fox?” That’s right. There should be absolutely NO reason for any state government or any business in America to be forced to move forward with any provisions contained in the Affordable Care Act.
Again, the constitution is very clear in this matter and every member of congress knows what type of bills each is allowed to originate. It is one of the most basic clauses in the US Constitution governing the actions of members of Congress.
Article I, Section 7, Clause 1 of the US Constitution clearly states:
All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with amendments as on other Bills.
After watching the deafening silence within the mainstream national news organizations and by all Democrats and Republicans in congress, I published a follow-up article as to possibly the political reasons none of them were going to even whisper the truth about Obamacare being dead in the water and can be found titled, “Demand Congress start telling the truth about Obamacare”.
As usual, there was no massive effort by We The People to demand that congress or anyone else elected to office start telling the truth about anything or even begin to adhere to our constitution for which they take an oath to obey, uphold and defend. So as a result, here we go again, all over again.
UPDATED PARAGRAPH: Unlike the Obamacare bill which was in every way a Senate bill and was not expected to ever be ruled a tax, the Senate worked out a “deal” with the Obama administration on their own version of the fiscal cliff bill which ILLEGALLY (referred to as “unconstitutionally” so as to not make it sound so bad) submitted a complete substitute tax bill knowingly in deceptive defiance to the supreme law of our land. In a late-night vote reported by the Washington Post, the House apparently went along and hurriedly passed the Senate’s version of the bill without time for any amendments by the House. This should have been the full content of the House bill with the Senate adding amendments and then going back again for another vote by the House and then back to the Senate for a final vote. In all intent and purposes this was a “Senate bill” regardless of what bill they had to gut out and substitute it with. The House would not have been voting last on a bill they were just seeing the language of for the first time if they REALLY originated its content.
In the case of Obamacare however, there is no arguing over details. It was a Senate bill that was later ruled a tax by the US Supreme Court so there was no need at the time of its passage to play switch-aroo or rope-a-dope with which bill the language would be slipped into. When it was ruled a tax, it was no longer a valid law which may explain one reason why there was so much insistence by the Obama administration that it should not be ruled a tax.
Anyone with an ounce of common sense should realize by now that the fiscal cliff bill will not solve any of our financial woes. It should not even be spoken of as a band-aid as it is nothing but a theatrical performance. Our economy is still going over the ultimate cliff and time will tell just when that occurs. For now, a more serious issue should be to raise cane about congress boldly thumbing its nose at our constitution and placing themselves above the law. Do we really want them thinking we are all so ignorant that we just don’t know any better?
Writing as a child screaming in the wilderness: If we do not finally unite in insisting that our elected leaders obey our laws, then we deserve exactly the corrupt and tyrannical government that we surely will have coming our way. The constitution cannot police itself. It needs the masses to be united in demanding that it is obeyed or suffer the rightful and lawful consequences. Just tar and feathers at this point is not going to cut it.
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Lori Stacey, DC Conservative Examiner
Lori Stacey has been passionate about politics all her life. She started working on political campaigns going back to Ronald Reagan’s 2nd bid for the White House while growing up in Sacramento. In November 2010, she ran for Secretary of State of South Dakota for the Constitution Party. Lori…
Obamacare fee of $63 per person to be implemented in the new year
05 months ago
Source: http://www.naturalnews.com
By J. D. Heyes
(NaturalNews) Do you remember, at the height of the debate over the Affordable Care Act – the monstrosity that became known not so affectionately as “Obamacare” – when then-House Speaker Pelosi, D-Calif., took to the dais at the 2010 Legislative Conference for the National Association of Counties with this outrageous statement: “…[W]e have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of controversy.”
She was talking about a piece of legislation that numbered some 2,700 pages – a massive bill that most members of Congress admitted they had not read and would never read (though trust us when we tell you these same lawmakers already knew exactly what was in it).
Well, Pelosi must be feeling very relieved these days because now, at long last, Americans are finally getting to find out exactly what’s in the bill that she and others refused to discuss in detail prior to its passage.
‘So many new taxes and fees during a time of economic uncertainty’
What Americans will learn first and foremost is that Obamacare will be infinitely more expensive than they were told – costs all of us will be forced to bear, even if we vehemently opposed this blatant expansion of government power over an industry that amounts to about one-seventh of the U.S. economy.
Whether they are called “taxes” or “fees” or “regulatory costs,” Americans will be hit up six ways from Sunday for costs related to the law that President Obama, Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and everyone else who voted for it said would never pass to us.
One such fee-tax-regulatory cost is a $63-per-person stipend almost no one knew about that will help cover people who have preexisting conditions – a cost that, most likely, will be passed onto each insured person.
Again, you can thank President Obama’s healthcare “overhaul.”
The charge was, of course, buried in the recent regulation. It will work out to tens of millions of dollars for the largest companies, employers say.
In an interview with the Washington Times, employee benefits attorney Chantel Sheaks called it a “sleeper issue” that will have significant consequences, especially for the nation’s largest employers – all at a time when unemployment remains at historic highs.
“Especially at a time when we are facing economic uncertainty, [companies will] be hit with a multimillion-dollar assessment without getting anything back for it,” Sheaks, a principal at Buck Consultants, a Xerox subsidiary, told the paper.
Based on figures contained within the regulation, some 190 million Americans on health plans for employers and individuals could wind up owing the per-person fee.
Obama administration officials say the previously undisclosed fee is only temporary, levied for three years beginning in 2014 and designed to raise $25 billion. The fee begins at $63 then falls.
Most of that money is expected to go into a fund that will be administered by the Department of Health and Human Services. Officials say it will be used to cushion health insurance companies from the initial hard-to-predict costs of covering previously uninsured people who have preexisting medical problems. Beginning Jan. 1, 2014, insurers will be forbidden from turning away already-sick patients under Obamacare statutes.
Just the beginning
The initiative “is intended to help millions of Americans purchase affordable health insurance, reduce reimbursed usage of hospital and other medical facilities by the uninsured and thereby lower medical expenses and premiums for all,” the administration says in the regulation (Note: Insurance companies that are actually in the business of insuring people say rates are going to go up, not down – and could, in fact, double in the short term).
But here’s the kicker. The initial $25 billion hike is just the beginning, “part of a bigger package of taxes and fees to finance Mr. Obama’s expansion of coverage to the uninsured,” the Times said. Over the course of the next decade, the total tab is closer to $700 billion, though no one in the administration is talking about what this additional burden will do to a still-struggling economy.
What else is included? Higher Medicare taxes, beginning Jan. 1, on people who make more than $200,000 a year or couples making less than $250,000 (Obama, always the class warrior, once pledged not to raise any taxes on folks earning less than $250,000).
The thing that Americans need to know is that these initial Obamacare taxes and “fees” are just the beginning. Needless to say, we’ll be covering this issue closely.
Sources:
Is Santa Haslam Bringing Tennesseans an Obamacare Exchange for Christmas?
0Source: http://tennessee.tenthamendmentcenter.com
By Lesley Swann
Governor Bill Haslam recently announced he plans to put off the decision on whether to form the health care exchanges outlined in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, after HHS Secretary Kathleen Sibelius extended the deadlinefor states to notify the federal government until Dec. 14.
No doubt, the governor is getting significant pressure from both sides of the exchange fight, with insurance company lobbyists emphasizing that they’d prefer to work with the state government instead of the federal government, while individual citizens and employers are mounting a lobbying effort of their own against the exchanges.
One has to wonder if perhaps Haslam isn’t waiting in the hope that Tennesseans will be too occupied with candy canes, turkey, and holiday festivities to notice what their state government is doing.
Judge Napolitano on the 2012 Election, Obamacare, and The Future of Liberty
09 months ago
“Those of us who really yearn for a return to first principles, the natural law, the Constitution, a government that only has powers that we have consented it may have… are frustrated by the choice between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney,” says Judge Andrew Napolitano, author of the upcoming book “Theodore and Woodrow: How Two American Presidents Destroyed Your Constitutional Freedoms,” Fox Business contributor, and former host of “Freedom Watch.”
Reason Magazine’s Matt Welch sat down with Napolitano at FreedomFest 2012 and discussed the ramifications of the Supreme Court’s ruling on the individual mandate and whether or not there’s a substantive difference between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney from a libertarian perspective.
Held each July in Las Vegas, FreedomFest is attended by around 2,000 limited-government enthusiasts and libertarians a year. ReasonTV spoke with over two dozen speakers and attendees and will be releasing interviews over the coming weeks. For an ever-growing playlist, go here now:
No Consent: Your Child Can Now Be Sterilized In Oregon For Free
09 months ago
in Health
Source: http://libertycrier.com
There is a shocking development in the new Obamacare Contraception Mandate that went into effect in Oregon on August 1. Your 15-year-old (as young as 12 in some cases) child can be sterilized for free, without your consent. Sterilized, not reversible but a permanent end to your child’s ability to reproduce. Do you feel a 15-year-old is mature enough to make that decision? They can’t legally drive to a clinic to have it done, or even legally engage in sex but they can make a decision affecting their lifelong ability to procreate.
Oregon Revised Statutes (ORS) 436.205 to 436.335 states: ‘Informed consent’ means consent given by an individual 15 years of age or older for sterilization that is: (a) Based upon a full understanding of the nature and consequences of sterilization pursuant to information requirements set forth in ORS 436.225(1); (b) Given by an individual competent to make such a decision; and (c) Wholly voluntary and free from coercion, express or implied.” Oregon defines “sterilization” as “any medical procedure, treatment or operation for the purpose of rendering an individual permanently incapable of procreating.”
This is a work in progess, a self learning tool and fun little project. Please excuse the slow development as it seems the needed proper time is always lacking. It is my hope that the combination of content and links to other sources of information in this simple blog may help awaken a few of the sleeping masses and encourage and inspire others to initiate their own research, ultimately for each person to be a light to help awaken others. Opinions expressed belong to me, myself and I. Also, a big thank you to all that take the time to visit, it is appreciated :)
