COLLECTIVE MADNESS


“Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people."

Thursday, February 17, 2011

Obama Health Care Fraud - More Deception and Ruination from Obama



AOL news

Health Reform Waivers By the Numbers

When the House passed health reform in March, Joe Hansen, president of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, responded with fulsome praise.

"This is an achievement that will rank among the highest in our national experience," he said. Among other things, he said, the law would put "an end to the worst of insurance company abuses," including "lifetime limits on the dollar value of benefits."

Less than six months later, UFCW sent a note to its members complaining that "the gradual elimination of annual limits on benefits under the Act has a significant impact on many of our benefit plans." And it promised help to local unions get waivers from that provision. Since then, more than two dozen UFCW locals applied for and received waivers from the federal government, exempting more than 100,000 of its members from this part of the new law.

The United Federation of Teachers also praised the reform for blocking insurance companies "from establishing lifetime limits on coverage." By October, it had secured a waiver for 351,000 members on its health plan.

In total, more than 700 companies, unions and a handful of states -- accounting for a total of more than 2 million workers -- have received waivers from this part of the health reform law, according to the Department of Health and Human Services.

What's going on here?


Turns out that a lot of companies offer inexpensive health plans to their workers -- often called mini-meds -- that provide limited benefits, high deductibles and annual dollar caps, with some caps as low as thousands of dollars. It's not much in the way of coverage, but it's better than nothing.

The problem is that the reform law required health plans to raise these annual dollar caps to at least $750,000 this year, apparently not realizing that this would have the effect of forcing hundreds of companies to drop benefits for millions of workers.

The White House admits that this reform could "cause mini-med premiums to rise by more than 200 percent, forcing employers to drop coverage."

But it tried to downplay the issue, saying there's been lots of "confusion" about it. The waivers, it says in a blog post, are just for one year, and only exempt these companies from this one specific part of the new law. And in any case, the whole issue will be moot, the administration says, once the insurance exchanges start up in 2014.

Of course, the cap gets raised again to $1.25 million this September, and then $2 million in September 2012, before it's removed altogether in 2014. So if anything, more companies are likely to push for waivers over the next two years.

A House Energy and Commerce subcommittee plans to hold hearings on this today -- trying to figure out just how many waiver applications were submitted, how many were denied and what criteria the administration used to grant them.
The White House should provide those answers.

But the whole issue raises a more troubling question about the health care reform law that needs to be addressed.

This lifetime limit reform was supposed to be one of the easy fixes to health care. That's why it went in force almost immediately. But without the waivers, this change would have pushed more than 2 million people off insurance rolls this year.

So the question is, if health reformers bungled this simple fix so badly, what other unpleasant surprises await as the far more complicated elements of health reform start to kick in?

48 comments:

  1. Obama continues to ignore the order of a federal court that the healtcare law as passed by Congress is unconstitutional.

    Obamacare will not be fully implemented for another three years, but the Internal Revenue Service is already requesting money for the legion of bureaucrats required to oversee its implementation. The IRS has requested funds for an additional 1,054 employees in 2012 alone, hirings that would cost taxpayers $359 million.

    According to the budget proposal recently submitted by the IRS, Obamacare represents the largest bureaucratic hurdle the agency has faced for some time. The law "presents a major challenge to the IRS," according to the proposal, and "represents the largest set of tax law changes in more than 20 years, with more than 40 provisions that amend the tax laws."


    Read more here

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  2. Maybe Rufus is correct, no, he is correct. It is time to go Egyptian on Obama and the Democrats. What part of "unConstitutional" do they not understand?

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  3. Which thread is that Rufus proposal in?

    Does he no longer favor socialised medicine?

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  4. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  5. Fucking Gangster in the Whitehouse, stealing from the citizenry to pay off his corrupt union thugs.

    In this longer video, Betsy describes what my Cardiologist talked about:

    The Feds mandating what procedures doctors can and cannot do, when, and how.
    Not to mention how much.
    He, like thousands of other Docs will walk.

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  6. Obama doesn't give a damn about stealing the excellent health insurance that my wife paid into for 20 years just when she needs to use it for the first time.

    ...or the millions of other hard working law abiding citizens that will be similarly robbed.

    No sob stories for the producers, just the takers.
    ...when the real spoils go to unions and crony capitalists.

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  7. Ruinous is too weak a word. In 2012 the interest paid on accumulated debt increases rapidly. As soon as the deficit spending is perceived by the market to be unsustainable, interests rates will also increase rapidly, further steepening the cost curve. The Interest payments on the national debt are projected to quadruple over the next decade, surpassing spending on Medicaid, Medicare and all domestic programs. This will effectively transfer the life savings of Americans to the federal government for redistribution to those with none. Obama must be removed from office.

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  8. Sign up for your Obamacare Waiver:

    Already the Obama administration has granted 915 waivers to businesses and unions, exempting them from the law that the rest of us are forced to obey.

    A government that grants waivers can take them away and destroy any business.

    In America no one should have to slither to the White House like a supplicant for a waiver. In our country, the rule of law is king.

    All America wants a waiver. If you don't have a lobbyist in Washington, DC or an inside track with the President, sign up below.
    Betsy McCaughey will present your name, along with many others, to the President and request a waiver for you.

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  9. This is from Obama's website:

    Charlotte, North Carolina, will host the 46th Democratic National Convention in 2012.

    But what’s really special about next year’s convention is that it’s all about you. We’re bringing it to your backyard and your communities. We intend to make this the People’s Convention—one that embodies your ideas and visions for the future.

    It will be your thoughts and beliefs that make up the very fabric of this convention.

    So right now, we need to hear from you. We want to hear what you’d like to see at next year’s convention

    ------------------

    You, in case you missed it are not "the people". The people know who they are, sort of like "folk". You are not folk either. If you have savings, a decent job, private health care insurance and pay federal income taxes, you are not the people. If you come from families that actually have to pay for college education, you are not the people. People are poor folk. Poor folk are poor because the federal government needs them to be poor so they can support the redistributors of wealth. Obama is a man of the people. He is getting the folk fired up so they can take you down.

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  10. The counter-culture coup is almost complete and the panty waisted Republicans are fearful of shutting down the federal beast. If they are worried about a shut down delaying social security checks, fuck them up, send out three of them in advance. Shut it down. Make them bleed. Let Obama party on. Give them a taste of what is coming if they do not break the back of this spending.

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  11. David, Drier, lifetime political hack, is head of the rules committee.

    Rules are made to be changed, or in Pelosi's case ignored.

    But Davey Boy says we must play by (their) the rules.

    Must not want to offend his gay friends on the left.

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  12. Obama assumes paying 3.4% interest!

    1 percent more equals 1.3 Trillion more in additional interest costs in ten years.

    More likely, interest rates will soar far higher.

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  13. They can print that cash, in less time than it would take to discuss it, doug.

    The modern economy can create money, out of thin air.

    They've been doing it for years now. Since 1913, when the Federal Reserve Act was passed, on 23Dec1913.

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  14. A 100 year history of success, while all the Federals are doing now, more of what's already been done.

    Continuing trends that have been set, since 1948.

    Endorsed and accelerated by Ronald W Reagan.

    Take it to the streets, funny.

    That is exactly what the opposition did, and does.

    FFour Dead in Ohio

    Back in the day, when US troops fired upon civilian protesters. Some of the four, just collateral damage.

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  15. Took over forty years, to go from the Streets to the Levers of Power.

    Time's a wastin'

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  16. Deuce at 5:06 a.m.

    Right dead solid perfect right on the money bull's eye.

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  17. deuce wrote:

    "As soon as the deficit spending is perceived by the market to be unsustainable, interests rates will also increase rapidly, further steepening the cost curve."


    ah, rats, The Rat beat me to it. Just print the cash and buy the treasuries like they are doing now.



    What is wrong with that logic?

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  18. Protests Spread to More Iraqi Cities


    BAGHDAD —Unrest continued to spread in Iraq on Thursday, with new protests erupting in several cities and reports from law enforcement officials that private security guards in a city in Kurdistan fired on a group of protesters who tried to storm the political offices of the region’s leader. Early reports from law enforcement officials said that five people had been killed and dozens injured in the city, Sulaimaniya. But the head of the health department there later said that only one person had died.

    It was the second time in two days that rock-throwing protesters were killed, though the shooting Wednesday in Kut was by government forces. In most of the demonstrations, people are calling for better government services, including more electricity, but in the eastern city of Kut and in Basra in the south they are demanding the resignation of provincial governors.

    The demonstrations, although over long-festering grievances that neither the American military nor successive Iraqi governments solved, appear to have been inspired by the unrest elsewhere in the Middle East. "

    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/18/world/middleeast/18iraq.html?hp

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  19. The folks that bought our stock exchange are seeing the world a little differently than we are.

    Germany Added almost 10 Times the Solar in 2010 than did the U.S.

    Hell, Czechoslavakia added almost Twice as much.

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  20. Interesting tidbit: Germany has Universal Healthcare.

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  21. ummm, every developed country except the US has a form of National Health care don't they?

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  22. Yeah, but in fairness, the oil they burn is delivered via Hundreds of Billions of Dollars of Protection, provided at "no fee" by Uncle Sucker.

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  23. And, it WASN'T the hundreds of billions (there's that number, again) of dollars spent by Germany, France, Canada, and Italy that caused the Soviet Military to fold like a cheap suit.

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  24. That having been said, there is a monumental "sea change" taking place in Energy, and society in general, and the Republicans are fighting it.

    NO ONE can fight history, but you CAN bring down a Great Empire by ignoring it.

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  25. Oil Supply "peaked" in 2005, and have been on a Plateau ever since. The World will start to slide off this plateau sometime around the end of 2012 (if not sooner) - slowly at first, and then, precipitously.

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  26. CNBC always trots out the biggest bs artist of all, John Kilduft (sp?)

    He just got through blathering about Yemen "sitting on the Strait of Hormuz. Yemen is nowhere near the Strait of Hormuz.

    What a bunch of assholes.

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  27. China will outbid us for what they need (a number that's expanding by about 2 Million BBL of Oil/Day,) and we will be left to duke it out with Japan, Europe, India, and the other emerging nations for what's left.


    We're in seriously deep shit, and all the Republicans want to do is rail against the only mitigation (Ethanol) we have.

    We got big probs, buckos.

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  28. A peak plateau? So what do you call these familiar upsie-downsies?

    "Fluctuations."

    Fluck you white people too!

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  29. We White People be "plucked, and Flucked." :)

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  30. this coming from the guy who thought the mortgage crisis was but a drop in the pond - either we are really and truly in deep doo doo or it is sunny clear skies ahead...

    :)

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  31. Yep, missed that one.

    Just buy yo'self a big ol' V-8 (I'm prolly wrong about this one, as well.)

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  32. This is a Huge deal. 30% More Yield - less enzymes needed

    Genetically Modified Switchgrass, Corn, etc.

    The Republicans can "fight the future" all day long, every day (and, that's what they're doing,) but "History is Relentless."

    Now, if we can just keep Exxon from buying the patents.

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  33. They're trying to get to $1.00/gallon.

    A couple of years ago, it was $5.00/gallon. Then everyone said it was bs when Novozymes said they had it down to $2.30/gal.

    Meanwhile, the Dept of Energy is backing, to the tune of Billions, big "Gasification" Projects that can't break $3.00/gal (but, are highly desirable to the Exxons, and BPs of the world.)

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  34. I saw this and it made me think of Deuce's desire for an America of white picket fences.

    Go figure, she's Canadian

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  35. Last month the project won its final federal permit from the Environmental Protection Agency. Cape Wind was first proposed in 2001 and was approved last year by U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar.

    The company plans to start building the project by the end of the year, with the goal of producing power by early 2013.

    It continues to be the focus of ongoing lawsuits designed to block its construction. Opponents say the project threatens marine life, and the windmills could mar the ocean view.


    Cape Wind Project

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  36. Sam, while you are here, Thank you very much for the Wonderful Earth pics from Space. They were Magnificent.

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  37. No prob, yeah, they were good.

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  38. In 20 yrs, when those Turbines are paid for, and Coal is selling for $300.00/ton, or somesuch, that "cost" picture will look a lot different.

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  39. How's your fuel project coming?

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  40. DR...Habu here...just wanted to thank you for all you do fo rthe horses out west. That was always one area we agreed on.

    I have written a few letters and made a few calls for what it's worth but I know the horseworld listens to you. I wanted simply to thank you.
    Habu
    I ddi the anon ..it was just easier than to go through Google dign on etc.

    Best regards,
    Habu

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  41. The borealis shots were interesting I thought. Different view. Looking down on them instead of up.

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  42. Haven't worked up the courage to inject that corn juice into my engine yet, Rufus. :)

    Maybe after a few beers one day.

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  43. I'm thinking the nat gas conversion is probably the way to go at the moment. A lot cheaper than ethanol.

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  44. It does sound cheaper, at least at present, Sam.

    Just one thing; be prepared for a considerable "loss of power" when you convert to nat gas.

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  45. "Saddam did not (allow) freedom in our land," the Iraqi said. "There are no other political parties.

    You have to believe what Saddam says, and do what Saddam wants. And I don't accept that.

    I have to do something for my country. So I did this and I am satisfied, because there is no dictator in Iraq any more."


    War In Iraq

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  46. The latest toy has hit the shops--a talking Muslim doll.


    Nobody knows what the hell it says,

    because no one has the guts to pull the cord.

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  47. The video which is hared over here is very interesting. As you have determined all the things in the manner of the cartoon character. That makes the things beautiful. And makes easy understanding.

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