Category Archives: Healthcare bill

Obamacare impacts medicare advantage plans, Physicians forced out, Patients losing doctors, Medicare Advantage covers 13 million, Billions of dollars in cuts to fund Obamacare

Posted on January 30, 2014 | 33 comments

Obamacare impacts medicare advantage plans, Physicians forced out, Patients losing doctors, Medicare Advantage covers 13 million, Billions of dollars in cuts  to fund Obamacare

“If you like your plan, you can keep it.”…Barack Obama

“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.”…NBC News October 29, 2013

“Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.”…George Orwell, “1984″

 

 

From the Washington Post January 25, 2014.

“Doctors cut from Medicare Advantage networks struggle with what to tell patients”

“Thousands of primary-care doctors and specialists across the country have been terminated from privately run Medicare Advantage plans, sparking a battle between doctors who say patient care is being threatened and insurers that insist they have to reduce costs and streamline their operations.”

“Insurers say they must shrink their physician networks because they face billions of dollars in government-payment cuts over the next decade — reductions that are being used partly to fund insurance coverage for millions of people under the federal Affordable Care Act. They also say the smaller networks will allow them to curb premium increases and to remain nimble as they prepare for an influx of patients under the law.

Medicare Advantage, an alternative to traditional Medicare, covers 13 million beneficiaries, or 27 percent of the people in the federal health-care program for the elderly. Besides providing the standard benefits, the thousands of Medicare Advantage plans often offer extra perks such as free eyeglasses and adhesive bandages. They can do that because, for years, the government has paid the plans more, per patient, than it spends on regular Medicare.”

““It is an outrage. I have patients in their 80s and 90s who have been with me 20 years, and I’m having to tell them that their insurer won’t pay for them to see me anymore. The worst thing is I can’t even tell them why,” Vogelman said.

One of his patients, Jorge Otoya, 68, who is retired from Morgan Stanley’s trading desk, said he had tried, without success, to find a plan that includes both Vogelman and his primary-care doctor at New York University.

“I am a cancer survivor and have been going to this doctor for 15 years,” Otoya said. “He knows my system, left and right. I trust him. I called United Healthcare to protest, but they didn’t care.”

Medical associations say a number of insurers are trimming their networks this year, but the most dramatic reductions may be occurring in United Healthcare’s Medicare Advantage plan. With 3 million members, the AARP-endorsed plan is the largest of its kind in the nation.

United Healthcare said that it aims to reduce its national network of physicians by 10 to 15 percent by the end of 2014. The company declined to provide specific numbers, but medical associations say that in some states, thousands of doctors have been cut.”

Read more:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/doctors-cut-from-medicare-advantage-networks-struggle-with-what-to-tell-patients/2014/01/25/541bfbd8-77b4-11e3-af7f-13bf0e9965f6_story.html

 

33 Comments

Posted in Barack Obama, Citizen News, Citizens for the truth about Obama, CitizenWells, Health Insurance, Healthcare bill, Medicare, Obama, Obama administration, Obama lies, Obama Nation, Obama records, ObamaCare, The Case Against Barack Obama

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Obama jobs economy speech lies, Job creation, Health care costs, Deficit, Truth is record labor force participation food stamps deficit part time job creation, Increasing health care costs

Posted on January 22, 2014 | 68 comments

Obama jobs economy speech lies, Job creation, Health care costs, Deficit, Truth is record labor force participation food stamps deficit part time job creation, Increasing health care costs

“11.4%: What the U.S. unemployment rate would be if labor force participation were back to January 2008 levels.” …James Pethokoukis, American Enterprise Institute, June 2013

“Over the last six months, of the net job creation, 97 percent of that is part-time work,”…Keith Hall, former BLS chief

“Nearly half of U.S. companies are reluctant to hire full-time employees because of the ACA. One in five firms indicates they are likely to hire fewer employees, and another one in 10 may lay off current employees in response to the law.

Other firms will shift toward part-time workers. More than 40 percent of CFOs say their companies will consider switching some jobs to less than 30 hours per week or targeting part-time workers for future employment.”…Duke University Fuqua School of Business December 11, 2013

How do you know when Obama is lying?

When his lips are moving.

From a speech Obama gave on January 7, 2014.

“You know, a few weeks ago I said that 2014 could be a breakthrough year for America. Think about it. Five years ago this month, our economy was shedding 800,000 jobs, just in one month. But as Americans buckled down and worked hard and sacrificed, we began to come back. And our businesses have created more than 8 million new jobs since we hit the bottom. Our auto industry’s gone from bust to boom. Manufacturing’s rebounding. The housing market’s rebounding. Stock markets are restoring retirement accounts. The promise of energy independence is actually in sight. Health care costs eat up less of our economy. Over the past four years, costs have grown at the slowest rate on record. And since I’ve took office, we’ve cut our deficits by more than half.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/transcript-president-obamas-jan-7-remarks-on-unemployment/2014/01/07/79c65704-77bc-11e3-b1c5-739e63e9c9a7_story.html

Now for the truth.

28,223,000 Americans were on food stamps when Obama took office.

At the end of 2013 there were 47,636,000 Americans on food stamps.

When Obama took office in January 2009 vs December 2013.

Labor Force Participation Rate then 65.7   now  62.8

Employment-Population Ratio then  60.6   now  58.6

Not in Labor Force then  80,529,000 now  91,808,000
Not in Labor Force want a job now then  5,708,000 now 6,111,000
Could only find part time work then 1,671,000 now 2,586,000
From the Independent Journal Review.
“The Poverty President: How Obama’s Economic Policies are a Disaster”
“Since the moment he came into office, President Obama has pursued the same failed liberal policies that extended the Great Depression, instituted the socially corrosive Great Society programs, and has grown government beyond America’s ability to afford it. Estimates of the U.S. long-term unfunded liabilities range from $87 trillion to an astounding $211 trillion.
One of the first measures Obama undertook was passing an ultimately $812 billion “stimulus” program. After glibly admitting that ‘shovel-ready (jobs) was not as shovel-ready as we expected,’ the U.S. is still far off the jobs trajectory projected by his advisers; while it was presumed the U.S. would be near 5% unemployment, we are at 7.3% — and that’s with millions dropping out of the workforce.
Instead of focusing on generating jobs and growing the productive economy, President Obama decided to work with the Democrat Congress to force through a trillion-dollar boondoggle known as ObamaCare against the objections of the majority of Americans.
President Obama said in an ABC News interview in 2009 that if Congress did not pass health care legislation that brought down costs, the federal government “will go bankrupt.” The ten-year cost estimate since then has tripled from $900 billion to nearly $2.7 trillion, and the GAO estimates the program will add $6.2 trillion in debt liability.
The “unintended consequences” of the ObamaCare provision that employers with 50 or more full-time employees at 30 hours a week or more must offer certain health insurance plans has predictably led to small businesses with more part-time employees. While the president has illegally suspended his enforcement of duly passed law, the “employer mandate” provision, full-time hiring is not expected to pick up due to long-term uncertainty.
Nearly 2.5 million of the ‘jobs created’ under President Obama are part-time; as a separate figure, 2.7 million of those ‘jobs created’ are temporary hires — a 50% increase over Obama’s time in office.
The president claims he has created 7.2 million jobs. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were 154,526,000 in the Civilian Labor Force in February 2009 and in June 2013 there were 155,835,000. That would be a net gain of 1.309 million more people working civilian jobs as of the latest figures. The labor force participation rate of 63.5% is hovering at the lowest levels since late 1978.
Even if we took this at face value, like a good Democrat loyalist would, this is still less than half the people added to the food stamp rolls — 15 million folks. The escalating gas, electricity, and food prices, as well as the ObamaCare “sticker shock” on health insurance premiums for an estimated 75% of Americans will not ease their budgets. And the AP now estimates that 4 in 5 Americans are in poverty, low-income, or have no jobs.”

Read more:

http://www.ijreview.com/2013/07/69124-the-poverty-president-how-obamas-economic-policies-are-a-disaster/

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Posted in Barack Obama, Citizen News, Citizens for the truth about Obama, CitizenWells, Economy, Employment, Health Insurance, Healthcare bill, Jobs, Obama, Obama administration, Obama lies, Obama Nation, Obama records, ObamaCare, The Case Against Barack Obama, Unemployment

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Obama crony capitalism fails again, White House replaces CGI, Obamacare website contractor, Toni McCall Townes-Whitley Senior VP CGI and Michelle Obama Princeton alumnus

Posted on January 11, 2014 | 42 comments

Obama crony capitalism fails again, White House replaces CGI, Obamacare website contractor, Toni McCall Townes-Whitley Senior VP CGI and Michelle Obama Princeton alumnus

“Public records indicate that during this time, every quarter from 2010 through 2012, CGI Group itself was lobbying on “HUD housing management contracts.”
Finally, there’s also a whistleblower lawsuit from a former CGI employee — who’d been recruited from HUD after overseeing the very Section 8 contracts CGI won — alleging that he was fired after refusing to go along with fraudulent plans to work around the bidding process. CGI denies the accusations, but has so far failed to get the case thrown out.”…Washington Post October 23, 2013

“Why was Obama promoting Capri Capital and other investment firms at the same time that Rezko, Levine and Cellini were shaking them down?”…Citizen Wells

“Now, I don’t get upset when foreign and national journalists fail to mention Tony Rezko, or the Daley boys, or how the Chicago machine plans to staff the Department of Justice, and the new Department of Homeland Casinos.”…John Kass, Chicago Tribune July 30, 2008

 

 

More Obama crony capitalism failures at taxpayer expense.

From the Washington Times January 10, 2014.

“Finally! White House to replace lead HealthCare.gov contractor”

“The Obama administration plans to replace the lead contractor on HealthCare.gov, the glitchy federal website that hindered the fall rollout of the new health care law, with another company.

Officials plans to drop CGI Federal, after the company took a share of blame for its role in preparing a website that serves 36 states and needed extensive repairs after its Oct. 1 launch, the Washington Post first reported. A major consulting company, Accenture, will take its place.

CGI’s contract runs out at the end of February, and Accenture had built the relatively well-functioning health exchange that California is using to enroll people in private plans or Medicaid under Obamacare, the Post reported.”

Read more:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/jan/10/white-house-switch-obamacare-contractors-healthcar/

From Citizen Wells October 25, 2013.

Is this another case of Barack and Michelle Obama involved in crony capitalism or just poor judgement?

Toni McCall Townes-Whitley, who was in Michelle Obama’s class at princeton, is a Senior VP at CGI.

From the Association of Black Princeton Alumni.

Toni McCall Townes-Whitley ’85
Senior Vice President, Federal Civilian Agency Programs, CGI

First Lady Michelle Obama ’85

http://www.princeton-abpa.org/dynamic.asp?id=news_1980s

 

From the CGI website.

Toni Townes-Whitley
Senior Vice-President,
Civilian Agency Programs
CGI was the lone bidder.
From The Washington Examiner October 13, 2013.

“Feds reviewed only one bid for Obamacare website design”

“Federal officials considered only one firm to design the Obamacare health insurance exchange website that has performed abysmally since its Oct. 1 debut.

Rather than open the contracting process to a competitive public solicitation with multiple bidders, officials in the Department of Health and Human Services’ Centers for Medicare and Medicaid accepted a sole bidder, CGI Federal, the U.S. subsidiary of a Canadian company with an uneven record of IT pricing and contract performance.

CMS officials are tight-lipped about why CGI was chosen or how it happened. They also refuse to say if other firms competed with CGI, or if there was ever a public solicitation for building Healthcare.gov, the backbone of Obamacare’s problem-plagued web portal.

Instead, it appears they used what amounts to a federal procurement system loophole to award the work to the Canadian firm.”

“The multiple awards were in the form of “task orders” for projects of widely varying size. Over the life of the CGI contract — which expires in 2017 — the IT firm can receive awards worth anywhere from the “$1,000 to $4 billion,” according to a contracting document provided by CGI to the Washington Examiner.

This is apparently the route chosen by CMS officials in awarding the Obamacare Healthcare.gov website design contract to CGI.

Between 2009 and 2013, CMS officials awarded 185 separate task orders to CGI totaling $678 million for work of all kinds, according to USAspending.gov, a federal spending database.The Obamacare website design contract was for $93 million.”

“The first indication of questions of CGI performance and pricing came in February 2010 when the firm protested a $230 million CMS contract award to Computer Sciences Corp. Inc.

In a sharp rebuff to CGI in November 2010, General Accountability Office acting counsel Linda H. Gibson denied the CGI protest.

In doing so, she noted that CSC’s bid was $148 million versus CGI’s bid of $258 million. When CMS modified the terms of its proposal, CSC was still substantially lower, coming in at $223 million versus CGI’s price tag of $395 million.”

“As the Examiner previously reported, CGI in Canada also suffered embarrassment in 2011 when it failed to deliver on time for Ontario province’s flagship project a new online medical registry for diabetes patients and treatment providers.

Ontario government officials cancelled the $46.2 million contract after 14 months of delay in September 2012. Ontario officials currently refuse to pay any fees to CGI for the failed IT project.”

Read more:

http://washingtonexaminer.com/feds-reviewed-only-one-bid-for-obamacare-website-design/article/2537194

Obama’s history of crony capitalism is extensive and includes another Princeton grad, John Rogers.

From Citizen Wells October 23, 2011.

“Mr. Obama also recently pointed to his work on the Illinois pension issue as a model for what he would do as president to promote minority-owned companies.”

“The goal was always “to open up doors,” said John W. Rogers Jr., the chief executive of Ariel Capital Management, one of the investment firms that received state business. “It was, as the Rev. Jesse Jackson has eloquently put it, to force other industries to have their ‘Jackie Robinson’ moment.””

“During this period, campaign finance records show, executives from Ariel, Loop and two other leading Chicago investment firms, Holland Capital Management and Capri Capital, sharply increased their donations to Mr. Obama’s State Senate campaign fund. And once he began his campaign for the United States Senate, they quickly became a fund-raising core that has carried over into the presidential race.

Mr. Rogers, who is one of three people at his company who have each bundled at least $50,000 in donations for Mr. Obama’s presidential campaign, said that his financial support for the senator had “no connection” to his company’s efforts to win state contracts, but that it reflected the broader excitement over what Mr. Obama’s success meant for blacks in America.”

“Still, things have not worked out as well for some of the investment managers. Both Ariel and Holland were given several hundred million dollars to invest.

But one of the funds dropped Ariel and two dropped Holland last year after their investment returns lagged behind those of other firms.”

“In 2002, the year after Obama made the pitch, the Illinois Teacher Retirement System reported an 18% increase in assets managed by minority-owned firms. Ariel’s share grew to $442 million by 2005.

In 2006, after the federal investigation became public, the teacher pension board severed its relationship with Ariel, concluding that Ariel’s investment returns were insufficient.”

https://citizenwells.wordpress.com/2013/10/25/cgi-obamacare-website-contract-obamas-barack-michelle-crony-capitalism-or-poor-judgement-toni-mccall-townes-whitley-senior-vp-cgi-and-michelle-obama-princeton-alumnus/

 

 

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Posted in Barack Obama, Citizen News, Citizens for the truth about Obama, CitizenWells, Crony Capitalism, Health Insurance, Healthcare bill, Obama, Obama administration, Obama lies, Obama Nation, Obama records, ObamaCare, Pay to play politics, The Case Against Barack Obama

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Obamacare political power buying votes and redistribution of wealth, Tax and control, Monterey County CA example, Enabling subsizdizing and expanding the Left’s political power base

Posted on January 2, 2014 | 93 comments

Obamacare political power buying votes and redistribution of wealth, Tax and control, Monterey County CA example, Enabling subsizdizing and expanding the Left’s political power base

“The study says 27-year-old men in Nebraska will see a whopping 279 percent increase in premiums and 27-year-old women in Nebraska will get an also-shocking 227 percent increase in rates.”…Watchdog.org

“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.”…NBC News October 29, 2013

“Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.”…George Orwell, “1984″

 

 

I began referring to Obamacare as a tax and control bill early in 2010.

It is much more than that, aside from it’s wide spread impact on our healthcare system and economy.

It is, of course, a way for the left to expand their voter and control base.

The following was sent to me in an email.

What ObamaCare is Really About!
I’m a 54 year old consulting engineer and make between $60,000 and $125,000 per year, depending on how hard I work and whether or not there are work projects out there for me.
My girlfriend is 61 and makes about $18,000 per year, working as a part-time mail clerk.
For me, making $60,000 a year, under ObamaCare, the cheapest, lowest grade policy I can buy, which also happens to impose a $5,000 deductible, costs $482 per month.
For my girlfriend, the same exact policy, same deductible, costs $1 per month. That’s right, $1 per month. I’m not making this up.
Don’t believe me? Just go to www.coveredca.gov , the ObamaCare website for California and enter the parameters I’ve mentioned above and see for yourself. By the way, my zip code is 93940. You’ll need to enter that.
So OK, clearly ObamaCare is a scheme that involves putting the cost burden of healthcare onto the middle and upper-income wage earners. But there’s a lot more to it. Stick with me.
And before I make my next points, I’d like you to think about something:
I live in Monterey County, in Central California. We have a large land mass but just 426,000 residents – about the population of Colorado Springs or the city of Omaha.
But we do have a large Hispanic population, including a large number of illegal aliens, and to serve this group we have Natividad Medical Center, a massive, Federally subsidized county medical complex that takes up an area about one-third the size of the Chrysler Corporation automobile assembly plant in Belvedere, Illinois (see Google Earth View). Natividad has state-of-the-art operating rooms, Computed Tomography and Magnetic Resonance Imaging, fully equipped, 24 hour emergency room, and much more. If you have no insurance, if you’ve been in a drive-by shooting or have overdosed on crack cocaine, this is where you go. And it’s essentially free, because almost everyone who ends up in the ER is uninsured.
Last year, 2,735 babies were born at Natividad. 32% of these were born to out-of-wedlock teenage mothers, 93% of which were Hispanic. Less than 20% could demonstrate proof of citizenship, and 71% listed their native language as Spanish. Of these 876 births, only 40 were covered under [any kind of] private health insurance. The taxpayers paid for the other 836. And in case you were wondering about the entire population – all 2,735 births – less than 24% involved insured coverage or even partial payment on behalf of the patient to the hospital in exchange for services. Keep this in mind as we move forward.
Now consider this:
If I want to upgrade my policy to a low-deductible premium policy, such as what I had with my last employer, my cost is $886 per month. But my girlfriend can upgrade her policy to the very same level, for just $4 per month. That’s right, $4 per month. $48 per year for a zero-deductible, premium healthcare policy – the kind of thing you get when you work at IBM (except of course, IBM employees pay an average of $170 per month out of pocket for their coverage).
I mean, it’s bad enough that I will be forced to subsidize the ObamaCare scheme in the first place. But even if I agreed with the basic scheme, which of course I do not, I would never agree to subsidize premium policies. If I have to pay $482 a month for a budget policy, I sure as hell do not want the guy I’m subsidizing to get a better policy, for less that 1% of what I have to fork out each month for a low-end policy.
Why must I pay $482 per month for something the other guy gets for a dollar? And why should the other guy get to buy an $886 policy for $4 a month? Think about this: I have to pay $10,632 a year for the same thing that the other guy can get for $48. $10,000 of net income is 60 days of full time work as an engineer. $48 is something I could could pay for collecting aluminum cans and plastic bottles, one day a month.
Are you with me on this? Are you starting to get an idea what ObamaCare is really about?
ObamaCare is not about dealing with inequities in the healthcare system. That’s just the cover story. The real story is that it is a massive, political power grab. Do you think anyone who can insure himself with a premium policy for $4 a month will vote for anyone but the political party that provides him such a deal? ObamaCare is about enabling, subsidizing, and expanding the Left’s political power base, at taxpayer expense. Why would I vote for anyone but a Democrat if I can have babies for $4 a month? For that matter, why would I go to college or strive for a better job or income if it means I have to pay real money for healthcare coverage? Heck, why study engineering when I can be a schlub for $20K per year and buy a new F-150 with all the money I’m saving?
And think about those $4-a-month babies – think in terms of propagation models. Think of just how many babies will be born to irresponsible, under-educated mothers. Will we get a new crop of brain surgeons and particle physicists from the dollar baby club, or will we need more cops, criminal courts and prisons? One thing you can be certain of: At $4 a month, they’ll multiply, and multiply, and multiply. And not one of them will vote Republican.
ObamaCare: It’s all about political power, buying votes, and the redistribution of wealth (Marxism).
The earliest reference that I found on an internet search was here:
Regardless of the source, the information rings true.

93 Comments

Posted in Barack Obama, Citizen News, Citizens for the truth about Obama, CitizenWells, Democrats, Economy, Health Insurance, Healthcare bill, Leftist, Obama, Obama administration, Obama lies, Obama Nation, Obama records, Obama taxes, ObamaCare, The Case Against Barack Obama

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New Obamacare fees in 2014, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Alabama reveals taxes, Affordable Care Act Fees and Taxes, Higher premiums deductibles and fees

Posted on December 26, 2013 | 14 comments

New Obamacare fees in 2014, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Alabama reveals taxes, Affordable Care Act Fees and Taxes, Higher premiums deductibles and fees

“The study says 27-year-old men in Nebraska will see a whopping 279 percent increase in premiums and 27-year-old women in Nebraska will get an also-shocking 227 percent increase in rates.”…Watchdog.org

“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.”…NBC News October 29, 2013

“Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.”…George Orwell, “1984″

 

 

From the NY Post December 25, 2013.

“New ObamaCare fees coming in 2014”

“Here comes the ObamaCare tax bill.

The cost of President Obama’s massive health-care law will hit Americans in 2014 as new taxes pile up on their insurance premiums and on their income-tax bills.

Most insurers aren’t advertising the ObamaCare taxes that are added on to premiums, opting instead to discretely pass them on to customers while quietly lobbying lawmakers for a break.

But one insurance company, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Alabama, laid bare the taxes on its bills with a separate line item for “Affordable Care Act Fees and Taxes.”

The new taxes on one customer’s bill added up to $23.14 a month, or $277.68 annually, according to Kaiser Health News. It boosted the monthly premium from $322.26 to $345.40 for that individual.

The new taxes and fees include a 2 percent levy on every health plan, which is expected to net about $8 billion for the government in 2014 and increase to $14.3 billion in 2018.

There’s also a $2 fee per policy that goes into a new medical-research trust fund called the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute.

Insurers pay a 3.5 percent user fee to sell medical plans on the HealthCare.gov Web site.

ObamaCare supporters argue that federal subsidies for many low-income Americans will not only cover the taxes, but pay a big chunk of the premiums.

But ObamaCare taxes don’t stop with health-plan premiums.

Americans also will pay hidden taxes, such as the 2.3 percent medical-device tax that will inflate the cost of items such as pacemakers, stents and prosthetic limbs.

Those with high out-of-pocket medical expenses also will get smaller income-tax deductions.”

Read more:

http://nypost.com/2013/12/25/new-obamacare-fees-coming-in-2014/

 

 

14 Comments

Posted in Barack Obama, Citizen News, Citizens for the truth about Obama, CitizenWells, Health Insurance, Healthcare bill, Obama, Obama administration, Obama lies, Obama Nation, Obama records, Obama taxes, ObamaCare, The Case Against Barack Obama

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Obama fails Obamacare ID test, Obamacare fails credibility test, High premiums and deductibles shock new enrollees, Doctor hospital choices and high bills will shock in future

Posted on December 24, 2013 | 33 comments

Obama fails Obamacare ID test, Obamacare fails credibility test, High premiums and deductibles shock new enrollees, Doctor hospital choices and high bills will shock in future

“The study says 27-year-old men in Nebraska will see a whopping 279 percent increase in premiums and 27-year-old women in Nebraska will get an also-shocking 227 percent increase in rates.”…Watchdog.org

“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.”…NBC News October 29, 2013

“Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.”…George Orwell, “1984″

This may be the best performing feature of a website associated with Obamacare.

Obama failed the ID test.

From Fox News December 23, 2013.

“President Obama enrolled over the weekend for insurance under the Affordable Care Act, the White House said Monday.

The president, who is vacationing in Hawaii with his family, was enrolled in ObamaCare by his staff.

White House officials said staffers enrolled the president through the District of Columbia exchange and needed to make the transaction in person — not through the website — because his personal information is not readily available in the government databases used to verify identities.”

Read more:

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/12/23/president-make-symbolic-enrollment-in-obamacare-picks-least-expensive-plan/

Obama was trying to prove how easy it is to sign up for Obamacare.

What he is not revealing is the sticker shock people are getting when they do.

Many of these people are his young supporters.

From the Greensboro News Record December 22, 2013.

“As a key enrollment deadline hits Monday, many people without health insurance have been sizing up policies on the new government health care marketplace and making what seems like a logical choice: They’re picking the cheapest one.

Increasingly, experts in health insurance are becoming concerned that many of these first-time buyers will be in for a shock when they get medical care next year and discover they’re on the hook for most of the initial cost.

The prospect of sticker shock after Jan. 1, when those who sign up for policies now can begin getting coverage, is seen as a looming problem for a new national system that has been plagued by trouble since the new marketplaces went online in the states in October.

For those without insurance – about 15 percent of the population- “the lesson is it’s important to understand the total cost of ownership of a plan,” said Matt Eyles, a vice president of Avalere Health, a market analysis firm. “You just don’t want to look only at the premium.”

Counselors who have been helping people choose policies say many are focused only on the upfront cost, not what the insurance companies agree to pay.

“I am so deeply clueless about all of this,” acknowledged one new buyer, Adrienne Matzen, 29, an actor in Chicago who’s mostly been without insurance since she turned 21. Though she needs regular care for asthma and a thyroid condition, she says she’s looking for a low monthly premium because she makes less than $20,000 a year.

Hospitals are worried that those who rack up uncovered medical bills next year won’t be able to pay them, perpetuating one of the problems the new health care system is supposed to solve.

The new federal and state health insurance exchanges offer policies ranked as bronze, silver, gold and platinum. The bronze options have the lowest monthly premiums but high deductibles – the amount the policyholder must pay before the insurer picks up any of the cost of medical care.

On average, a bronze plan’s deductible is more than $4,300, according to an analysis of marketplace plans in 19 states by Avalere Health. A consumer who upgrades to a silver plan could reduce the deductible to about $2,500. A top-of-the-line platinum plan has the lowest average deductible: $167.”
“”The real big surprise was how much out-of-pocket would be required for our family,” said David Winebrenner, 46, a financial adviser in Lebanon, Ky., whose deductible topped $12,000 for a family of six for a silver plan he was considering. The monthly premium: $1,400.”

Read more:

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_HEALTH_OVERHAUL_HIGH_DEDUCTIBLES?SITE=NCGRE&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

 

“If you’ve got health insurance we’re going to work with you to lower your premiums by $2,500 per family per year. We will not wait 20 years from now to do it, or 10 years from now to do it. We will do it by the end of my first term as president.”…Barack Obama

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Posted in Barack Obama, Citizen News, Citizens for the truth about Obama, CitizenWells, Health Insurance, Healthcare bill, Obama, Obama administration, Obama lies, Obama Nation, Obama records, ObamaCare, The Case Against Barack Obama

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Obama Obamacare White House Press Corp press conference December 20, 2013, 12 questions that could have been asked, Orwellian thought control ruled, Big brother lies of Obama

Posted on December 21, 2013 | 29 comments

Obama Obamacare White House Press Corp press conference December 20, 2013, 12 questions that could have been asked, Orwellian thought control ruled, Big brother lies of Obama

“If you like your plan, you can keep it.”…Barack Obama

“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.”…NBC News October 29, 2013

“Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.”…George Orwell, “1984″

 

 

I read through the transcript of the Obama Obamacare White House Press Corp press conference yesterday to the extent that my weakened stomach would allow. It was the usual claptrap of weak questions and Orwellian responses from Obama.

If you can stand it, here is the transcript.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/running-transcript-president-obamas-december-20-news-conference/2013/12/20/1e4b82e2-69a6-11e3-8b5b-a77187b716a3_story.html

Thanks to Hot Air for providing some real questions that could have been and should have been asked.

“It is rare that the White House press corps asks exactly what I want it to ask, but today’s display, with a few notable exceptions, was truly irresponsible. Not only would critics of Obamacare like to know how Obama proposes to fix it, but I’m sure the law’s liberal champions would appreciate some more information and assurances as well. Real people are losing their real coverage in real life, and the press corps is wasting the bulk of its questions on this pitifully rare opportunity on how the president feels about this rolling calamity. Well, if the president’s mind-numbing self-reflection can cure your kids when they get sick, you’re in luck, America. Otherwise, you’ll have to wait for the next meeting of the White House Encounter Group for a shot at more answers from the man in charge.”

“1. Hey, from where do you derive the legal authority to change large parts of this law passed by Congress? And, if you believe you have the legal justification for it, what’s to stop a future president from simply deciding he won’t enforce large parts of it?

2. How exactly does the hardship exemption work? Do you have a ballpark number for how many Americans might be eligible? Is there an enforcement mechanism? For instance, will the IRS or someone demand to see a cancellation letter and proof a family couldn’t afford a new plan? If they don’t have the proper evidence would they later face any consequences?

3. Does the administration have the authority to exempt people from certain taxes on an ad hoc basis? From where does it derive this power? Are there other taxes from which people could be exempted by the president’s decree?

4. The demographic make-up of the group enrolled in the exchanges is extremely important to making the law work and avoiding a death spiral, or adverse selection. HHS has been extremely stingy with numbers and specifics about those demographics. Do you have them? Are you getting reports or any sense of what the pool looks like? Colorado, for instance, is enrolling large numbers of 45+ citizens. Does that suggest to you that the health of the pools is in danger? And, could we get some assurances from you that the administration will be transparent about these numbers as we move forward?

5. A report today reveals that Teresa Fryer, chief information security officer for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), thought HealthCare.gov was so full of security holes it should be denied its “Authority to Operate” certification but was overridden. Your HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has said she had no knowledge of security concerns yet Fryer has reportedly told Congress members she briefed Sebelius and others. Were you aware of any security concerns before the launch? Are you at all confident Americans who are submitting sensitive information to the site are safe? Will the federal government be transparent about breaches when and if they happen?

Follow up: There have already been two “high-risk” security findings found as the site has been operating over the past months, along with several medium and low-risk findings. Are you kept abreast of these findings? How did the site launch with these security issues unresolved? Should it have been delayed until they were fixed?

6. Today, just hours before we came to this press conference, the HealthCare.gov website was down. It had a note on it referring to the crash as “scheduled maintenance.” Was it scheduled maintenance today or just another crash? And, if it was scheduled maintenance, why was maintenance scheduled just days before the extended deadline for enrollment?

7. Given the high number of cancellation notices that have gone out—estimates are rough, but some think it may be in the millions if you add up data available to us state by state—combined with the persistent problems with the website, isn’t it possible that the net number of insured will actually go up in the new year? As the formerly insured add to the uninsured pool because they cannot afford a new plan, or they can’t get through the process on HealthCare.gov, or take this latest exemption as a reason to put off purchasing altogether, wouldn’t that destroy this law’s raison d’etre? What does it mean if ACA, which was meant to get the uninsured insured, is a net negative in terms of insured Americans in 2014?”

I urge you to read more:

http://hotair.com/archives/2013/12/20/12-questions-the-white-house-press-corps-could-have-asked-obama-about-obamacare/

“What happened in the unseen labyrinth to which the pneumatic tubes led, he did not know in detail, but he did know in general terms. As soon as all the corrections which happened to be necessary in any particular number of The Times had been assembled and collated, that number would be reprinted, the original copy destroyed, and the corrected copy placed on the files in its stead. This process of continuous alteration was applied not only to newspapers, but to books, periodicals, pamphlets, posters, leaflets, films, sound-tracks, cartoons, photographs — to every kind of literature or documentation which might conceivably hold any political or ideological significance. Day by day and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date. In this way every prediction made by the Party could be shown by documentary evidence to have been correct, nor was any item of news, or any expression of opinion, which conflicted with the needs of the moment, ever allowed to remain on record. All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary. In no case would it have been possible, once the deed was done, to prove that any falsification had taken place. The largest section of the Records Department, far larger than the one on which Winston worked, consisted simply of persons whose duty it was to track down and collect all copies of books, newspapers, and other documents which had been superseded and were due for destruction. A number of The Times which might, because of changes in political alignment, or mistaken prophecies uttered by Big Brother, have been rewritten a dozen times still stood on the files bearing its original date, and no other copy existed to contradict it. Books, also, were recalled and rewritten again and again, and were invariably reissued without any admission that any alteration had been made. Even the written instructions which Winston received, and which he invariably got rid of as soon as he had dealt with them, never stated or implied that an act of forgery was to be committed: always the reference was to slips, errors, misprints, or misquotations which it was necessary to put right in the interests of accuracy.

But actually, he thought as he re-adjusted the Ministry of Plenty’s figures, it was not even forgery. It was merely the substitution of one piece of nonsense for another. Most of the material that you were dealing with had no connexion with anything in the real world, not even the kind of connexion that is contained in a direct lie. Statistics were just as much a fantasy in their original version as in their rectified version. A great deal of the time you were expected to make them up out of your head. For example, the Ministry of Plenty’s forecast had estimated the output of boots for the quarter at one-hundred-and-forty-five million pairs. The actual output was given as sixty-two millions. Winston, however, in rewriting the forecast, marked the figure down to fifty-seven millions, so as to allow for the usual claim that the quota had been overfulfilled. In any case, sixty-two millions was no nearer the truth than fifty-seven millions, or than one-hundred-and-forty-five millions. Very likely no boots had been produced at all. Likelier still, nobody knew how many had been produced, much less cared. All one knew was that every quarter astronomical numbers of boots were produced on paper, while perhaps half the population of Oceania went barefoot. And so it was with every class of recorded fact, great or small. Everything faded away into a shadow-world in which, finally, even the date of the year had become uncertain.”…George Orwell, “1984”

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Posted in 1984, Barack Obama, Big Brother, Citizen News, Citizens for the truth about Obama, CitizenWells, Health Insurance, Healthcare bill, Obama, Obama administration, Obama lies, Obama Nation, Obama records, ObamaCare, Orwell, Orwellian, The Case Against Barack Obama

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Obama blamed for rising health costs, AP poll, 69 percent say premiums rising, 59 percent deductibles or copayments increasing, Spouse coverage restricted or eliminated, Millions received cancellation notices

Posted on December 16, 2013 | 145 comments

Obama blamed for rising health costs, AP poll, 69 percent say premiums rising, 59 percent deductibles or copayments increasing, Spouse coverage restricted or eliminated, Millions received cancellation notices

“If you like your plan, you can keep it.”…Barack Obama

“If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor. Period.”…Barack Obama

“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.”…NBC News October 29, 2013

 

 

From Page A7 of the Greensboro News Record.

“Obama blamed for rising health costs”

From the Washington Times December 16, 2013.

“POLL: Obamacare to drive up health care cost for everyone”

“Just when the government’s insurance websiteis starting to run more smoothly, an Associated Press-GfK poll finds a potentially bigger problem for President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul.

Americans who already have coverage and aren’t looking for any more government help are blaming the law for their rising premiums and deductibles.

Those are the 85 percent of Americans that the White House says don’t have to be worried about the president’s historic push to expand coverage for the uninsured. Overall 3 in 4 say the rollout of coverage for the uninsured has gone poorly as health care remains a politically charged issue going into next year’s midterm congressional elections.

In the survey, nearly half of those with job-based or other private coverage say their policies will be changing next year — mostly for the worse. Nearly 4 in 5 (77 percent) blame the changes on the Affordable Care Act, even though the trend toward leaner coverage predates the law’s passage.

Sixty-nine percent say their premiums will be going up, while 59 percent say annual deductibles or copayments are increasing.

Only 21 percent of those with private coverage said their plan is expanding to cover more types of medical care, though coverage of preventive care at no charge to the patient has been required by the law for the past couple of years.

Fourteen percent said coverage for spouses is being restricted or eliminated, and 11 percent said their plan is being discontinued.

“Rightly or wrongly, people with private insurance looking at next year are really worried about what is going to happen,” said Robert Blendon, a professor at the Harvard School of Public Health, who tracks public opinion on health care issues. “The website is not the whole story.”

Employers trying to control their health insurance bills have been shifting costs to workers for years, but now those changes are blamed increasingly on “Obamacare” instead of the economy or insurance companies.

Political leanings seemed to affect perceptions of eroding coverage, with larger majorities of Republicans and independents saying their coverage will be affected.

The White House had hoped that the Oct. 1 launch of open enrollment season for the uninsured would become a teaching moment, a showcase of the president’s philosophy that government can help smooth out the rough edges of life in the modern economy for working people.

Instead, the dysfunctional website became a parable for Republicans and others skeptical of government.

At the same time, a cresting wave of cancellation notices hit millions who buy their policy directly from an insurer. That undercut one of Obama’s central promises — that you can keep the coverage you have if you like it. The White House never clearly communicated the many caveats to that promise.

Disapproval of Obama’s handling of health care topped 60 percent in the poll.”

Read more:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/dec/16/another-worry-about-new-health-law-ap-gfk-poll/?page=all#pagebreak

 

 

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Posted in Barack Obama, Citizen News, Citizens for the truth about Obama, CitizenWells, Doctors, Health Insurance, Healthcare bill, Hospitals, Obama, Obama administration, Obama lies, Obama Nation, Obama records, ObamaCare, The Case Against Barack Obama

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Obamacare hurts doctors and patients, NYC Dr. Patricia McLaughlin testifies before House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Obama keep your insurance and doctors lies

Posted on December 11, 2013 | 42 comments

Obamacare hurts doctors and patients, NYC Dr. Patricia McLaughlin testifies before House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Obama keep your insurance and doctors lies
“If you like your plan, you can keep it.”…Barack Obama

“If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor. Period.”…Barack Obama

“And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed
–if all records told the same tale–then the lie passed into
history and became truth. “Who controls the past,” ran the
Party slogan, “controls the future: who controls the present
controls the past.”…George Orwell, “1984″

 

 

From the NY Post December 11, 2013.

“NYC doctor will testify on ObamaCare woes”

“An Upper East Side ophthalmologist whose ObamaCare woes were spotlighted in The Post has been called to testify before a congressional committee Thursday.

“It shows Washington is listening,” Dr. Patricia McLaughlin said as she prepared for her trek to the halls of power on Capitol Hill.

“All of this thanks to your New York Post article.”

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which is probing the ill effects of the health-care law, invited McLaughlin to testify about how she got hit by an ObamaCare “double whammy.”

First, the eye doctor was notified that she was losing the group health plan that covered her four-person office.

Then, she was dropped from the Empire BlueCross Blue­Shield network, so patients using that insurance plan would have to go elsewhere or pay out of pocket.

McLaughlin said she expects to lose 20 to 25 percent of her patients.

The letter from Empire didn’t specify why McLaughlin was being shut out even while she is listed as a preferred provider under other plans.

The insurance company wouldn’t comment.

Industry insiders say insurers are under pressure to offer cheaper rates for ObamaCare plans and are narrowing their networks of doctors to cut costs.

“I have a double-whammy: I lost my insurance; now my medical practice is going to be losing patients,” McLaughlin told The Post in a story published last month.”

Read more:

http://nypost.com/2013/12/11/nyc-doctor-will-testify-on-obamacare-woes/

Radiologist Milton R. Wolf on Obamacare lies.

From U-T San Diego December 11, 2013.

“There’s just no way around this: President Obama looked America in the eye and lied. The president was so hellbent on “fundamentally transforming” the country with his health care takeover that he intentionally deceived you — he lied — not once or twice, but over and over again.

In 2010, the year Obamacare was signed into law, I wrote “Obamacare’s Unkeepable Promises” in The Washington Times. These false promises were easily predictable and are finally now being exposed. It’s starts with nine words that are unmaking an American presidency.

“If you like your plan, you can keep it.” — Barack Obama, June 2010

Already, 5 million Americans have lost their health insurance plans directly because of the president’s law. By next year, as Obamacare starts tearing through employer-based insurance plans, that number will rise to between 50 million and 100 million Americans.

However, this was just one of Obama’s egregious Obamacare lies. The list goes on.

“If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor. Period.” — Barack Obama, June 2010

How can you keep your doctor, though, if your doctor cannot keep his practice? As health insurance companies buckle under the weight of Obamacare, they are narrowing their provider networks in hopes of controlling costs. This, of course, means that your doctor may no longer be allowed to participate in your plan. Other doctors are dropping or limiting Medicare and Medicaid, and some are even dropping out of all private insurance as well. Still others are leaving the practice of medicine altogether. You won’t be able to keep them.”

Read more:

http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2013/dec/11/tp-milton-r-wolf-the-presidents-other-obamacare/

 

 

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Posted in Barack Obama, Citizen News, Citizens for the truth about Obama, CitizenWells, Doctors, Health Insurance, Healthcare bill, Medicine, Obama, Obama administration, Obama lies, Obama Nation, Obama records, ObamaCare, The Case Against Barack Obama

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Obamacare Progress and Performance Report, Administration claims Obamacare achieved private sector effectiveness, Obama: team operating with private sector velocity and effectiveness

Posted on December 5, 2013 | 78 comments

Obamacare Progress and Performance Report, Administration claims Obamacare achieved private sector effectiveness, Obama: team operating with private sector velocity and effectiveness

“If you like your health care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health care plan.”…Barack Obama

“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.”…NBC News October 29, 2013

“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command. His heart sank as he thought of the enormous power arrayed against him, the ease with which any Party intellectual would overthrow him in debate, the subtle arguments which he would not be able to understand, much less answer. And yet he was in the right! They were wrong and he was right. The obvious, the silly, and the true had got to be defended. Truisms are true, hold on to that! The solid world exists, its laws do not change. Stones are hard, water is wet, objects unsupported fall towards the earth’s centre. With the feeling that he was speaking to O’Brien, and also that he was setting forth an important axiom, he wrote:

Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.”…George Orwell, “1984”

 

 

From Zero Hedge December 4, 2013.
“In 4 Short Weeks, The Administration Claims Obamacare Has Achieved ‘Private Sector Effectiveness'”

“As we noted last month, President Obama sat down for an interview with Chuck Todd on November 7 and said:

You know, one of the lessons — learned from this whole process on the website — is that probably the biggest gap between the private sector and the federal government is when it comes to I.T. … Well, the reason is is that when it comes to my campaign, I’m not constrained by a bunch of federal procurement rules, right? …When we buy I.T. services generally, it is so bureaucratic and so cumbersome that a whole bunch of it doesn’t work or it ends up being way over cost.
Well, this week we learned that the gap’s been closed. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) told us so. In its official, December 1 “Progress and Performance Report” on the Obamacare website, HHS not only announced that it had “met the goal of having a system that will work smoothly for the vast majority of users,” but wrote that “the team is operating with private sector velocity and effectiveness.” That sure was quick.

Sarcasm aside, we found it hard to read HHS’s eight page document without cringing. Needless to say, it’s not a genuine “progress and performance” report. It’s not even close.

Consider that shortly after accepting his position as website czar in October, Jeffrey Zientz let us know that he’s working from a list of problems on a “punch list,” which included over 100 issues according to an anonymous spokesperson. Zientz added that the system’s failure to deliver accurate reports to insurance companies was at the top of the list. This seems a reasonable prioritization, right? If the exchange can’t deliver the necessary information to insurance companies, the whole process collapses. But HHS’s report doesn’t even mention this critical problem.

And how about measures to protect website users’ personal information, which are widely reported to be full of holes? Again, not a word.

You won’t find expense figures, either, which is unfortunate in light of Bloomberg’s analysis showing that the largest 10 contractors were already paid an astounding $1 billion. Considering the administration’s private sector aspirations, the absence of any information on the website’s soaring costs seems a conspicuous omission.

Instead of checking off accomplishments against what still needs fixing, while revealing the taxpayers’ bill, HHS’s report combines vacuous “achievements” such as “2X a day standup war room meetings” with unverifiable statistics for response times, capacity, error rates, uptime and software fixes. The report reads like a baseball team’s declaration of success on its spring training goals of learning each others’ names, knowing which base is which and memorizing the infield fly rule. We don’t doubt there’s been some improvement in the metrics, but it’s unlikely that the last two months’ progress gets the website to much better than inadequate, from its earlier status of epically inadequate.

Worse still, HHS seems to think we take their propaganda seriously. Displaying #AskJPM-like ignorance of how the administration is perceived, they act as if we believe what we’re told. On the contrary, there seems only a shrinking minority of loyalists who still trust the official narratives, as shown by Obama’s plummeting approval ratings. Those who weren’t predisposed to disbelieve empty rhetoric probably tuned out at “you can keep your plan if you like it.””

“Reviewing these facts, I suppose HHS could support their claim to “private sector velocity and effectiveness” with some semantic tricks. If you interpret that phrase as referring to the principle contractors’ adeptness at winning huge, no-bid contracts through personal connections, donations, fund raising and lobbying, then it all adds up.”

Read more:

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-12-04/4-short-weeks-administration-claims-obamacare-has-achieved-private-sector-effectiven

 

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Posted in 1984, Barack Obama, Citizen News, Citizens for the truth about Obama, CitizenWells, Government, Health Insurance, Healthcare bill, Obama, Obama administration, Obama lies, Obama Nation, Obama records, ObamaCare, The Case Against Barack Obama

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