Tag Archives: Barack Obama

Was Obama lying to you about keeping your health care plan?

Consider this article in the Wall Street Journal.

Excerpt:

Among President Obama’s core health-care promises was that Americans can keep their current coverage if they like it. Among the reasons that a new ObamaCare squall blows in every other day is that this claim simply is not true, as people are discovering.

The latest fracas was incited by Janet Adamy’s scoop in the Journal this week that McDonald’s Corp. may be forced to cancel its current coverage for 29,500 employees as a result of ObamaCare. McDonald’s told Health and Human Services regulators that new mandates will make its plans “economically prohibitive” and cause “a huge disruption” unless it gets a waiver.

[…]At issue in the McDonald’s dust-up is a type of low-cost, low-benefit insurance known as “mini-med.” These plans cover most medical services but generally have an annual deductible or benefit cap between $1,000 and $10,000. Unlike more comprehensive plans, there’s no catastrophic coverage. Essentially, the very low premiums—under $100 a month—amount to prepaying for routine expenses like office checkups and E.R. visits.

Around 2.5 million consumers are covered by “mini-med” policies, most of them concentrated in low-wage industries like fast food, hospitality and retail that have large numbers of part-time or temporary workers. In the case of the restaurants, 75% of the workforce turns over every year and nearly half are under age 25. Mini-med plans are a temporary stopgap for businesses that have low margins and face high labor and health costs.

But Democrats hate mini-med and other skinny-benefit plans, calling them “underinsurance.” ObamaCare is meant to run them out of the market by mandating benefits, eliminating coverage caps and certain technical rules about how premiums must be spent. This despite the fact that Arkansas, Connecticut and Tennessee sponsor their own mini-med plans for state residents as better than having no insurance at all.

In other words, the choice is between relatively affordable coverage that isn’t as generous as Democrats think it should be and dumping coverage entirely. McDonald’s may eventually offer the high-cost plans that Ms. Sebelius favors, or get its waiver, but many of its less profitable or smaller competitors won’t. While subsidized ObamaCare options will be available in 2014, those costs will merely be transferred to taxpayers.

Radical pro-abortion extremist Kathleen Sebelius is in the news lately, intimidating private businesses for refusing to make bricks without straw.

Michelle Malkin wrote about it.

Excerpt:

In February, the White House coordinated a demonization campaign against Anthem Blue Cross in California for raising rates. Obama singled out the company in a “60 Minutes” interview, and Sebelius sent a nasty-gram demanding that Anthem “justify” its rate hikes to the federal government. A private company trying to survive in the marketplace was forced to “explain” itself to federal bureaucrats and career politicians who have never run a business (successful or otherwise) in their lives. Sebelius went even further. She called on Anthem to provide public disclosure on how the rate increases would be spent —  a mandate that no other private companies must follow.

We already have a federal pay czar requiring companies to justify their pay raises and claiming authority to claw back bonuses already paid. Will the White House next demand that other businesses —  not just health insurers —  justify price increases deemed unreasonable, excessive or “extraordinary”?

On Capitol Hill, Democratic chief inquisitor Henry Waxman trained his sights on executives from Deere, Caterpillar, Verizon and AT&T in a brass-knuckled effort to silence companies speaking out about the cost implications and financial burdens of Obamacare. He scheduled an April 21 show trial of corporate heads who dutifully reported writedowns related to the Obamacare mandates. Obama Commerce Secretary Gary Locke joined in on the witch-hunt, pummeling the companies on the White House blog and TV airwaves for their “premature” and “irresponsible” disclosures.

After the Democrats’ own congressional staff pointed out that the companies “acted properly and in accordance with accounting standards” in submitting filings that were required by law, Waxman called off the hounds. But it was a temporary reprieve. Sebelius’ threat last week against individual market health insurers who raise rates to cope with new federal coverage mandates will be far from this desperate administration’s last.

As health costs skyrocket, doctors abandon the profession, hospitals lay off workers and private insurers shut down, the only way to quell the Obamacare backlash will be through an even more thuggish campaign to demonize, marginalize and silence nationwide dissent.

Here are some amusing responses to her Soviet-style bullying from Wall Street Journal readers.

Now you know why companies are terrified of government – and why they aren’t hiring here. Maybe they are hiring abroad, but not here.

Democrats don’t understand the effects of their policies – the purpose of the policies they enact is not to make our lives better. The purpose of their policies is to make them feel good about themselves. Their good intentions matter more than actual results. They think they are morally superior, and they balk when we don’t worship them for failing to understand economic realities. “But we are good people with good intentions”, they say, “you’re too stupid to run your own lives – you need our advanced training in socialism to make your lives better”. It’s not good enough.

FBI raids homes of anti-war leader and SEIU union leader

Here’s the news from Forbes. (H/T Michelle Malkin)

Excerpt:

The FBI and the U.S. Labor Department are investigating prominent labor leader Andy Stern in their probe of corruption at the Service Employees International Union, according to two people who have been interviewed by federal agents.

The two organized labor officials met with federal agents this summer to answer questions about a six-figure book contract that Stern landed in 2006 and his role in approving money to pay the salary of an SEIU leader in California who allegedly performed no work.

Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the investigation. The FBI and the Labor Department’s office of inspector general declined to comment for the record.

The disclosure about the federal inquiry of Stern – who abruptly resigned as president of the 2.2-million member SEIU in April – comes just weeks ahead of contentious congressional elections in which the union is spending an estimated $44 million to support its favored Democratic candidates.

The SEIU has been plagued with several financial scandals since 2008, when the Los Angeles Times reported that Tyrone Freeman, head of the union’s largest California local, misappropriated hundreds of thousands of dollars from the union. The union ousted Freeman and demanded that he return the money. No federal charges have been filed against him, but SEIU spokeswoman Michelle Ringuette said the union has been cooperating with the FBI.

The SEIU union is connected to Obama.

Oh, and Gateway Pundit reports on another SEIU union boss being investigated.

Excerpt:

Over the weekend the FBI announced that it was investigating Joseph Iosbaker for possible connections to overseas terror groups. Iosbaker and his wife Stephanie Weiner, both anti-war activists, are suspected of activities “concerning the material support of terrorism.”

[…]According to the SEIU Local 73 website, Iosbaker is listed as the Local 73 Chief Steward. Iosbaker was also quite active earlier in the year protesting the closing of the Republic Windows & Doors factory that made the national news. Iosbaker was then listed as an executive board member of the SEIU.

Oh, and the executive director of the Arab American Action Network is being investigated.

Colombia’s war on terrorism and Chile’s war on poverty

Map of South America
Map of South America

A magnificent column about Colombia’s war on FARC.

Excerpt:

When Juan Manuel Santos came into office as Colombia’s president and emphasized economic issues over the fight against terrorist guerrillas, he was suspected of going soft on those he had combated as minister of defense under the previous administration. Little did his critics know that he was planning the “coup de grace” against the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

The devastating Sept. 22 attack on FARC headquarters in Colombia’s central Meta province all but signifies the end of the five-decade-old conflict. It will take a little while for the official end to be declared, but this war is pretty much over.

[…]For decades, politicians, academics, human rights activists and journalists on both sides of the Atlantic failed to see that there was nothing romantic, “bien-pensant” or Robin Hoodesque about an organization that killed, maimed, kidnapped and extorted for a totalitarian objective.

Colombia’s solitude was such that even the U.S. began to lose faith in its ally a couple of years ago, refusing to approve a free-trade agreement that Bogota had negotiated at a major political cost.

Colombians did not give up and continued to reclaim territory for civilian rule. Much like the defeat of Venezuela’s Cuba-inspired terrorist guerrillas in the 1960s, Colombia’s victory against FARC is the result of civilians awakening to the evil of totalitarian terror.

We get to hear about spectacular military feats, but how many outside Colombia realize that peasants, factory workers, teachers, students and others joined the struggle to defeat FARC, beautifully symbolized by the hundreds of thousands who took to the streets inside Colombia and around the world in 2008 to clamor for the end of terror?

There are still many challenges ahead. The lesson in courage and perseverance that Colombians have given us suggests they are ready to meet them.

I wish that we could sign a free trade deal with them like Canada’s conservative government. Canada is led by a conservative business-friendly economist, and they are very supportive of capitalist democracies like Colombia. Stephen Harper is Canada’s prime minister. He has economics degrees from the University of Calgary. Like Santos, he is very, very tough on terrorism – favoring increased defense spending to protect Canadian interests abroad. And guess what? Canada also has a free trade agreement with another South American country – Chile.

And Chile is also doing very well, even after the massive earthquake.

Excerpt:

Chile’s peso rose to a 27-month high after a report showed the country’s industrial growth accelerated to the fastest since 2006.

The peso appreciated 0.2 percent to 485.23 per U.S. dollar at 11:43 a.m. New York time, from 486.17 yesterday. The currency touched 483.61, the strongest since June 11, 2008. The peso has risen 13 percent during the quarter and 3.6 percent this month.

Chile’s economy is accelerating after the fifth-largest earthquake in a century struck in February, delaying its recovery from a 2009 recession.

“Retail sales grew and industrial production was better than expected,” said Roberto Melzi, a strategist at Barclays Capital in New York.

Retail sales expanded 13 percent in August from a year earlier, and industrial output grew 6.9 percent, the National Statistics Institute said in Santiago. That’s the most since January 2006. Industrial production shrank 17 percent after the 8.8-magnitude Feb. 27 earthquake and its accompanying tsunami, which caused damage worth more than a sixth of Chile’s gross domestic product.

Chile and Colombia are my two favorite South American countries. Both are led by conservative business-friendly economists. Chile’s president Sebastián Piñerahas a Masters and a Ph.D in economics from Harvard, and is successful in the private sector. The Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos specializes in business and economics, with graduate degrees from Harvard and the London School of Economics.