Tag Archives: markets

More Obamacare Dishonesty

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It’s gotten so blatant that now they’re not even trying to disguise it.

What the Obama administration said publicly:

Per John Goodman:

Week after week, month after month, the Obama administration kept telling us everything’s working fine, there’s no problem and then they turn on a dime and fire their contractor.

President Barack Obama himself, through his Press Secretary, Jay Carney:

I didn’t see the article [containing statements to CGI’s replacement contractor on the ObamaMart re-do] I’m not aware of those statements[.]

What HHS said in its no-bid (!) contract request to Accenture, who’s replacing CGI on the ObamaMart Web development/fix:

the problems with the website puts “the entire health insurance industry at risk”…potentially leading to their default and disrupting continued services and coverage to consumers.

And

without the fixes “the entire health care reform program is jeopardized.”

And

if the problems were not fixed by mid-March, “they will result in financial harm to the government.”

Actually, not so much the government, beyond the precious egos of the current Senate and White House occupants, rather the financial harm is to those funding the government—us taxpayers—in the form of wasted taxes, higher health coverage costs, less access to the medical facilities of our choice, etc.

Among those fatal flaws is that ObamaMart’s back end—the part that’s supposed to transmit enrollment data, subsidy eligibility and amount, and so on to the insurer—hasn’t been built.  Not after almost four years since Obamacare was enacted, not nearly four months after the ObamaMart Web site was forced live and the failures of the site and of the law made manifest.

But the Obama administration continues to insist, publicly, that everything’s jake.

A Lawless Law

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President Barack Obama is at it again.  Now he’s unilaterally, without legal authority, delaying another aspect of Obamacare.  He’s having his IRS—his Un-American Activities Committee (at least the members of HUAC were elected by us)—not enforce through tax collections a provision that prohibits employers from providing better health benefits to top executives than to other employees.  His excuse is that, four years after Obamacare was enacted, the IRS hasn’t bothered to write the rules that would effect the collections.

This isn’t the only section of Obamacare that Obama has chosen to…waive.  He has chosen to waive for an entire year the Employer Mandate.  He has chosen to waive for three months enforcement of the Individual Mandate.  He has chosen to waive, for a time, the Small Business mandate.  He has chosen to waive, for a time, provisions that forced cancelation of existing policies that individuals already had and preferred—and begun browbeating insurers into allowing those plans to be renewed if a customer wishes.  He has chosen to provide hardship exemptions, for a year, for those who find buying an Obamacare policy a hardship.  He has chosen….

The Obamacare law is quite specific on these provisions: each one must occur; there are no caveats or except-fors that say “no need to enforce if it’s inconvenient to do so, no need if it’s politically expedient to do otherwise.”  Similarly, the Constitution is quite specific: Art II, Section 3 requires the President to take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.  No weasel words here, either, about picking and choosing those laws or those parts of laws that can be ignored whenever the President feels like it.  If Obama, or any President, doesn’t like a law or a part of a law, he must go to Congress and persuade them to pass appropriate legislation making the desired modification.

Whatever we might think of the “benefits” of any aspect of Obamacare or of the “fairness” of any section of it, it is, as the Democrats are wont to say, the law of the land.  It takes a lawless, arrogant President to choose, on his own recognizance, which parts of a law will not be enforced.

Obama has transformed his own signature law, his very legacy, into a monument to Executive lawlessness.

Obamacare Runaround, State Level

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A Maryland woman is getting the Obamacare runaround treatment in Maryland’s state “exchange” (exchange of what, exactly?).  The woman, after months of trying, finally got signed up—she thought—through one of Obamacare’s Navigators and was given a confirmation number and a printout of her selected plan.

Her Democrat Representative, Barbara Mikulski, has declined to help (help with what?  The woman is signed up, isn’t she?  See below); Mikulski would only commit to empty words of…commiseration:

I am just as frustrated as you are about the launch of health reform.  I am particularly disappointed that the exchange websites did not operate smoothly for Marylanders.

Yeah, that’s helpful.  And Mikulski plainly still thinks the problem is just with the software of a Web site, and not in the law itself.  Hmm….

Again, signed up for what?

the selected insurance company has no record of her

the state navigation system has no record of her

Never mind the printout and confirmation number.  Especially never mind the confirmation number.

both the Maryland Health Connection and the troubleshooting site assured the woman “that somebody would get back to me within two to three days;” nobody has.

The governor’s office—not the Governor or his head of the Maryland Office of Health Care Reform apparently, just a staffer—called the woman and assured her that they would send a manual application “next week.”

However.  The Catch-22 gotcha:

she would have to pay two months of premiums this week

the provider doesn’t have any record of her (see above)

and so the provider is  unable to tell her the premium

It just doesn’t get any better than this with government-directed (I hesitate to say “-managed”) health coverage and health care programming.

Security of Personal Information is an Administrative Burden on Government

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That’s what the Obama administration claims, and they’re actually serious.

The House of Representatives last Friday passed and sent to the Senate the Health Exchange Security and Transparency Act, HR 3811, by 291-122, with 67 (!) Democrats voting in the affirmative, also.

The one-sentence bill says that no later than two business days after any security breach on an ObamaCare site is discovered, “the Secretary of Health and Human Services shall provide notice of such breach to each individual.”

In response to that one sentence bill (who says we need 2,000 pages to write a bill?), the Obama administration, through its OMB, issued a one-page statement decrying the bill, saying, in part,

The Administration opposes House passage of HR3811 because it would create unrealistic and costly paperwork requirements that do not improve the safety or security of personally-identifiable information in the Health Insurance Marketplaces.

After all, the administration said, the Web site is fine, and Americans’ information is secure.  We said so.  So why should we have to tell anyone their information has been stolen or leaked?  They don’t need to know, and telling them would work a hardship on us.

Never mind that this “hardship” is answered by private enterprise as a matter of unfortunate routine.  Is the administration terrified that Obamacare security breaches might surpass the recent Target breach?  Or are they just worried about the political hardship news of such a breach might work on them in the ballot box?

Oh, and half the OMB statement was wholly irrelevant to the issue at hand, being devoted to Obama’s campaign speech of how wonderful Obamacare is.

The statement can be seen here.

Filibusters and the Senate

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Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D, NV) blew up the Senate filibuster with his manufactured claim of Republican obstructionism and with his Senate rules-breaking move to eliminate it (for now only regarding Presidential nominees) with a (Democrat only) majority vote.

Yet Republican-led (note that: not the Republican satrapy, as Reid views his Senate to be for Democrats) House passed 200 jobs- and economy-related bills in 2013 and some dozen that were passed with 250 or more votes—i.e., with considerable Democrat (that would be bipartisan, for those Progressives following along at home) voting support.

The Democrat-ruled Senate?  An immigration bill and a farm bill.  A budget, but only under the embarrassment of having Senators’ pay withheld if they didn’t pass one.  Under real pressure, a sequester bill (that originated with President Barack Obama) and a natural disaster relief bill.

Indeed, of the 70-ish bills Obama signed last year, 56 originated in the House, and all of 16 came from Reid’s fiefdom.

The rest of those 200 House-passed bills?  Reid wouldn’t even let them come to a vote.  There are, for instance, 40 explicitly jobs-related bills that Reid refuses to allow the Senate even to discuss.  Of the Senate-originated bills, Reid wouldn’t let the minority party even offer amendments.  Under Senate rules, there are only so many amendments allowed to be proposed for a bill.  Reid routinely, and universally, “filled the tree” with his own or those of his trusted lieutenants, Senator Chuck Schumer (D, NY) and Senator Dick Durbin (D, IL).

There is the filibuster.