Tag Archives: Obamacare

News

Supreme Court will rule on Obama administration persecution of Hobby Lobby

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Life News reports.

Excerpt:

Hobby Lobby’s battle against the HHS mandate is headed to the Supreme Court, as the high court today agreed to hear its lawsuit against the controversial provision in Obamacare. The Obama administration is attempting to make it comply with the HHS mandate that compels religious companies to pay for birth control and abortion-causing drugs for their employees.

However, the U.S. Supreme Court today agreed to take up Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., a landmark case addressing the Constitutionally guaranteed rights of business owners to operate their family companies without violating their deeply held religious convictions. This is good news to the Green family, who own the store.

“This is a major step for the Greens and their family businesses in an important fight for Americans’ religious liberty,” said Kyle Duncan, general counsel of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty and lead lawyer for Hobby Lobby. “We are hopeful that the Supreme Court will clarify once and for all that religious freedom in our country should be protected for family business owners like the Greens.”

The Obama administration says it is confident it will prevail, saying, “We believe this requirement is lawful…and are confident the Supreme Court will agree.”

“My family and I are encouraged that the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to decide our case,” said Mr. Green, Hobby Lobby’s founder and CEO.  “This legal challenge has always remained about one thing and one thing only: the right of our family businesses to live out our sincere and deeply held religious convictions as guaranteed by the law and the Constitution. Business owners should not have to choose between violating their faith and violating the law.”

The Supreme Court is also taking the case of the Mennonite cabinet makers forced to pay for birth control and abortion-causing drugs.

I think many people throw around the word “fascism” without really understanding what the word means. But this HHS mandate is a textbook case of fascism.

Here is the Merriam-Webster definition:

: a way of organizing a society in which a government ruled by a dictator controls the lives of the people and in which people are not allowed to disagree with the government

: very harsh control or authority

Now, right away, it should be obvious that there is no such thing as right-wing fascism. If right-wing stands for anything, it stands for free-market capitalism, free trade, private property and individual rights (e.g. – free speech, right to life, etc.). Right-wing politics means the freedom to spend what you earn on what you choose to spend it on. Because it’s your money – you earned it. Fascism requires the government to control your basic liberties, including what you earn, and how you spend what you earn. That’s why fascism is solely a phenomenon of the political left. Only the political left wants to tell you how much of your earnings you can keep, and how much of your earnings must be spent on things you don’t need. They have all kinds of reasons why they are justified in taking your money, but all their reasons amount to the same things: their values are higher than your values. Even if you worked for the money, they know better than you do what to spend it on. And if it violates your conscience to spend it on abortion drugs, then you can either pay or go to jail. Fascism.

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News

Obamacare health plan cancellations and premium increases delayed to just after 2014 election

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Fox News reports.

Excerpt:

Republican lawmakers are pushing back hard against the Obama administration’s decision to delay next year’s open enrollment season for health coverage under ObamaCare until after the 2014 midterm elections.

The Department of Health and Human Services announced Friday it would allow consumers to start signing up for coverage under ObamaCare on Nov. 15, 2014, a month later than originally scheduled. The change does not affect those trying to enroll this year.

Congressional Republicans accused the administration of shifting the dates for political reasons, to hide a spike in 2015 premiums, though information may already be available about 2015 premiums before the elections on Nov. 4.

“That means that if premiums go through the roof in the first year of ObamaCare, no one will know about it until after the election,” Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said in a statement. “This is clearly a cynical political move by the Obama administration to use extra-regulatory, by any means necessary tools to keep this program afloat and hide key information from voters.”

Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., accused the White House of moving next year’s open enrollment date to shield Democrats up for reelection next year who supported the law.

“The only American consumers this change will help are Democratic politicians who voted for Obamacare, because it delays disclosure of some of the law’s most insidious effects until after the election,” Alexander said in a statement.

He said he plans to introduce legislation that would require insurers to provide Americans with “proper notice” of premium increases before open enrollment period on the exchanges starts.

I don’t think that the Democrats are doing this to sway conservative voters, because we know what to expect from round two of Obamacare – loss of health care plans and higher premiums for those with employer-based health insurance. The delay is being done to influence low-information voters, i.e. Democrats. People who don’t follow politics because they are too busy watching Dancing With The Stars and Oprah Winfrey. They are the ones who cannot think beyond the moment, and sway their votes because of deliberately staged events, e.g. – Al Gore kissing his wife (whom he’s now divorced) just before an election. Two weeks is far beyond the time horizons of most Democrat voters.

What the Republicans should do is pass a law requiring all cancellations and premium increases be communicated before the elections and have the Democrats in the House and Senate go on record voting against it. Then they can use that in the 2014 campaigns. Uncertainty will be even more effective when dealing with independent voters who are paying attention to policy issues instead of staged photo-ops.

News

Obamacare success story revised to become Obamacare failure story

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Investors Business Daily explains.

Excerpt:

The woman who got a shoutout from President Obama last month for her fan letter for ObamaCare finds out her exchange quote was a computer mistake and she doesn’t qualify for a tax credit after all.

In one of his famous photo-ops in the Rose Garden last Oct. 21, with an array of touted beneficiaries of the Affordable Care Act behind him, President Obama read a letter from Jessica Sanford of Federal Way, Wash., to explain why the Affordable Care Act, with all its rollout flaws, was still needed.

The letter told a sad tale of a grateful single mom with a son that had ADHD.

But now, like so many of ObamaCare’s false promises and outright lies, the safe and secure future which Sanford thought she had found and which the president boasted of has crumbled into dust — just like that health care Potemkin village called the Affordable Care Act.

As the Washington State Wire reports, the Washington state exchange and enrollment website, like its national cousin, had problems. It had told Sanford originally she and her child would get a whopping tax credit that would reduce her total premium to $169 a month for an ObamaCare “gold” plan.

Then she got letters from the state telling her — just like so many others who have had their plans canceled after being told they could keep them — what she had been promised was not true.

Four days after President Obama made his address, the state health exchange publicly revealed a grievous error — its tax-credit calculations were all wrong.

Washington state had been submitting monthly income information to the federal data hub when it was expecting yearly data. Oops!

So everyone who bought a subsidized health insurance policy through the Washington state exchange prior to Oct. 23 was being quoted too low a rate.

[…]Brokers had been informing the state for three weeks that the calculations were screwy but the state, like the proverbial Department of Motor Vehicles, was slow to respond. When it informed Sanford of the mistake, knocking her tax credit down to $110 a month, she went back to her broker and signed up for a “silver” plan with higher deductibles and co-pays.

Then she got another letter from the state saying it had goofed a second time and she didn’t qualify for a tax credit at all. Her income was, in fact, too high.

The website had told her that her income was low enough that she could enroll her son in the state Medicaid program for children of low-income families. That was no longer true, either.

Her 14-year-old son Ryan requires a special prescription medication. Without a tax credit, she had to consider the cheapest “bronze” level plans, but the deductibles are so high that she couldn’t afford to pay for her child’s prescription medication.

So now Sanford faces the prospect of having no insurance at all. Not only does she not get a tax credit, but she may have to pay an IRS-imposed penalty.

That’s a bad situation, but at least no one is dying because of Obamacare. Oh wait, this 7-year old child is dying because of Obamacare. Well, I guess this is no big deal to our elite leaders. After all, what are a few lives lost in pursuit of equality? I suppose that once we switch entirely to a single payer system that little boys dying of cancer can have free contraceptives and free abortions and free in vitro fertilizations and free breast enlargements and free maternity care and free sex changes and free hormone treatments to delay puberty until they decide if they want to be girls. Isn’t that better for everyone?