Tag Archives: regulation

Obamacare’s Grandfather Clause is Easily Fixable

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From Texan99, over at Grim’s Hall, comes this interesting little datum [emphasis hers]:

 [T]he only, yes only, reason that people are losing their current policies is because President Obama’s administration (which he presumably leads) wrote regulations that overrode the grandfathering clause in all those policies.

This is important.  They didn’t have to do that!  It’s still reversible!

Texan99 expanded on this point:

I’m making this point—that HHS could reverse the harmful regulations tomorrow without violating the ACA—in every forum I can reach.  It won’t prop the ACA up [listening, knuckleheads?]; the income from we few “Wild Westers” isn’t enough even if every one of us knuckles under to paying double the premiums from now on.  But it will get some of us out of an acute, immediate bind, and it will show either that the President screwed the pooch big time, or that he could help this “unimportant 5%” but simply can’t be bothered to do it.

She’s right.  She’s right, also, that the Republicans (and Conservatives, say I) need to be shouting this from every rooftop and town square podium in the nation.  But given the mendacity of this President and his…staff…I’m not holding my breath on his choosing the right answer.

Obamacare Impact on Jobs

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Investor’s Business Daily‘s online site compiled, as recently as mid-October, a list of companies that are…adjusting…hours and employment policies in response to Obamacare.  Where IBD was able to discern the number of jobs affected for an individual company, they included that datum in their list.  IBD also updates the list at regular intervals.

The short version of their work is that, as of mid-October, 352 companies had been pushed into Obamacare-caused jobs-related action, and those actions impacted over 19,000 jobs.

President Barack Obama said repeatedly that if we liked our insurance, or our doctor, we could keep both.  Period.  We’ve seen already the veracity of that claim.  What Obama carefully did not promise is that our jobs would be unaffected.

 

h/t GayPatriot

Who Gets to Decide?

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White House Senior Adviser Dan Pfeiffer claimed Sunday on ABC’s This Week that millions of Americans lost insurance their insurance policies because ObamaCare had deemed them inadequate.

[I]f the president were to allow people to have those plans…or insurance companies to keep selling barebones plans…he’d be violating even more important promise to the American people, that everyone would have a guarantee to access of quality…health insurance[.]

Ex-Obama advisor Dr Ezekiel Emanuel (and University of Pennsylvania Vice Provost) said much the same thing on Sunday’s Fox News Sunday.

WALLACE: Dr. Emanuel, simple question—why does Betsy Tadder need you or President Obama telling her what insurance she needs?

EMANUEL: For two reasons: first of all, if she goes in and that insurance doesn’t cover enough…

WALLACE: But she likes her plan.

EMANUEL: But we’re cost shifting.

Plainly our Know Better Progressive Government is the only one qualified to decide.  Not us, not about our insurance, not about our money.

Rule By Law

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This time using the excuse of AGW to drive the fiat governance.

President Barack Obama has issued another of his diktats Executive Orders, this time placing the Executive Branch squarely in charge of “responses” to “climate change” and wholly cutting the people’s representatives, our Congress, out of the discussion.  Never mind that human impact on climate change has yet to be demonstrated—or even hinted at very strongly.  His EO forms a task force to advise the Federal government of how to respond to climate change impacts.

Of course, it’s also an Obama-esque bipartisan group:

The task force includes governors of seven states—all Democrats—and the Republican governor of Guam, a US territory.  Fourteen mayors and two other local leaders also will serve on the task force.

All but three of those appointed are Democrats.

Obama claimed, in his accompanying White House statement,

…that even as the United States acts to curb carbon pollution, officials also need to improve how states and communities respond to extreme weather events like last year’s Superstorm Sandy.  Building codes must be updated to address climate impacts and infrastructure needs to be made more resilient.

This is just more costs inflicted by Feds on states and consumers—ostensibly to guard against climate “change,” but more to increase Federal power and intrusion into our business and private lives.

There’s more:

A possible mandate to bring sweeping new changes to land use and resource policies.

Just like the EPA’s attempts to regulate rain water runoff as a pollutant and to regulate water puddles in people’s backyards.

And

More control and refocus of climate change data….

Which will include a drive to control the release of those data and how they’re being used by the Federal government—just like this administration is doing with Fast and Furious, Benghazi, IRS targeting, Obamacare software, etc.

So I ask: who will guard us from government’s rule by law at the expense of rule of law?  And a follow up: who will protect us from the mendacity of false climate panic-mongering?

Losing Insurance vs Gaining Insurance

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CBS News has been busily gathering hard numbers on this—at least on the losing side, since President Barack Obama and his HHS Secretary are too terrified to release any gaining numbers.

CBS’ Jan Crawford said that CBS News has checked with actual insurance companies; she’s found that in four states alone, the numbers are huge—in just the first few weeks of the ObamaMart rollout:

California: 279,000 had their insurance policies cancelled out from under them

Michigan: 140,000

Florida: 300,000

New Jersey: 800,000

Adding in the cats and dogs, and 2 million Americans have had their insurance policies cancelled, and the number is rising[Period]

This compares, again with data gleaned from insurance companies, and unrefuted by the Obama administration, with 6 folks who signed up on the first day and some 250—total—who’d signed up through the third day after ObamaMart’s rollout.

CBS also takes care to note that this is driven by the Obamacare law, not by Evil Insurance:

Obamacare forces them to drop many of their plans that don’t meet the law’s 10 minimum standards, including maternity care, emergency visits, mental health treatment, and even pediatric dental care.

Because a man needs maternity care, and an empty-nest couple needs that pediatric dental care.

Also,

That means consumers have to sign on to new plans even if they don’t want or need the more generous coverage.  Industry experts say about half the people getting the letters will pay more—and half will pay less, thanks to taxpayer subsidies.

The subsidies also mean that those who are paying more are paying even more more in order to pay those subsidies.  Those subsidies, after all, are funded both by Obamacare taxes and by artificially inflated premiums against which those subsidies are balanced.  Yes, even those who get the subsidies “need” them because of those artificially inflated premiums.

Hmm….