http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/healthcare/287906-panic-prompted-obamacare-lawlessness

Panic prompted ObamaCare lawlessness

Senior Obama administration officials took a series of decisions beginning in late 2013 that ranged from the reckless to the illegal in an effort to keep insurers participating in health insurance exchanges.

A report issued last week jointly by the House Ways and Means and Energy and Commerce committees explores how the administration came to unlawfully funnel $7 billion in unappropriated money to insurers through a single ObamaCare program.

The program — known as cost-sharing reduction (CSR) — requires insurers to reduce deductibles and other out-of-pocket spending for certain low-income people who signed up for coverage through health insurance exchanges. In turn, the statute authorized the administration to seek an appropriation from Congress to reimburse insurers for the cost of providing these coverage enhancements.

The congressional report chronicles how the administration determined as early as 2010 that it needed an appropriation to make CSR payments to insurers. In April 2013, the president submitted a budget to Congress formally requesting the appropriation.

But in July, the Senate Appropriations Committee, then controlled by Democrats, expressly denied the president's request. Sometime after Congress refused to fund the program, the administration contrived the theory that it could spend money without an appropriation.

Senior officials at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) drafted a legal memorandum during late 2013 declaring that the government could make billions in CSR payments to the insurance industry without congressional approval. The administration began making the unlawful payments in January 2014.

Although the administration continues to stonewall the congressional investigation into how it arrived at this decision, the committees have learned that several Treasury Department officials raised concerns about the OMB memo. Those officials were permitted to read the document, but were forbidden to make copies or take notes.

The administration has denied Congress even that courtesy, defying congressional subpoenas for copies of the OMB memorandum and other material relevant to the investigation. It has supplied them with a memorandum that Treasury Secretary Jack Lew signed in January 2014 directing his subordinates to begin making CSR payments. But that memorandum has been redacted to omit the department's legal justification.

The administration also has slapped a gag order on current and former employees, instructing them not to answer the committees' questions about the legality of the unappropriated spending.

The administration has good reason to stonewall. Its ostensive reason — that the legitimacy of the CSR payments is under review by the courts — is a smokescreen. The Supreme Court settled that matter in a 1929 case arising from the Teapot Dome Scandal, holding that congressional inquiries cannot be thwarted by ongoing litigation.

The administration's defiance has a much simpler explanation: Its actions have no legal basis. Even The New York Times has acknowledged that if the administration were permitted to continue spending unappropriated money, "it could have major — some might say huge — consequences for our constitutional democracy."

At least one federal judge agrees. In a lawsuit filed by the House of Representatives, Federal District Court Judge Rosemary Collyer in May ruled that the CSR payments were unlawful. The Justice Department has appealed Collyer's ruling.

My July 8 testimony before the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations showed how the government's unlawful spending on the CSR program fits into a broader pattern of malfeasance in ObamaCare implementation. That malfeasance includes decisions made during the first half of 2014 to unlawfully divert $3.5 billion to $4.5 billion from the Treasury to insurance companies through the "reinsurance" program. It also involves the attempt by the government to turn the law's "risk corridor" program into a new version of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), forcing taxpayers to cover losses resulting from bad business decisions made by insurance executives.

Those abrupt and unlawful policy reversals were occasioned by a serious miscalculation of demand for health insurance among relatively healthy people.

It turns out that millions don't want it, unless premiums are steeply discounted. ObamaCare does the opposite for people in relatively good health, requiring insurers to overcharge them for a product they may not want or need, while discounting premiums for those in poorer health.

The result is a dysfunctional "market" that attracts high-risk enrollees and repels low-risk ones, leaving insurers with a losing proposition: a pool of customers who are disproportionately older, less well and paying premiums that are too low to cover their medical bills.

When the consequences of this dysfunctionality dawned on the administration, panic set in, prompting a series of regulatory improvisations providing for the payment of billions in corporate subsidies to the insurance industry.

Although the administration is not especially fond of insurers (as the president demonstrated this week with his renewed embrace of the "public option"), the exchanges would collapse without them. To avoid the political embarrassment of insurers withdrawing en masse from the exchanges, it has chosen to supply them with unlawful payments and stonewall congressional inquiries into this misconduct.

The administration's actions raise concerns that transcend the fractious politics of ObamaCare: They are institutional and constitutional in nature. Institutional because Congress's core lawmaking and oversight functions are being effaced. Constitutional because its power of the purse is under legal assault.

In such circumstances, Congress cannot be passive. It must act to require the administration to follow the law.

Badger, a former White House and U.S. Senate policy adviser, is a senior fellow with the Galen Institute. This piece was adapted from his July 8 testimony before the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations.

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OBAMACARE SINGLE PAYER SYSTEM CON

Obamacare’s Planned Failure

Copied from the following article:

http://lastresistance.com/5073/obamacares-planned-failure/

By Frank Camp on Mar 18, 2014 |

   

Tsk tsk, American youth, you’re not following the Zeus of our time. Here it is. We’ve finally reached a point where the purpose of the Obamacare opt-out fee is explained. For the longest time, I thought the fee was simply a punishment for those who stood against Obamacare. But now, I understand that it is much more pragmatic.

For Obamacare to work—well, for a while, prior to its inevitable failure—it must have money. That’s obvious enough. But where does that money come from? Those who are too poor, or have extensive health problems are the ones who will require the most of the system. They will siphon all the money out of Obamacare until there is nothing left. The obvious solution is in those who require little care: the youth.

For Obamacare to work at all, young people must all buy in. Obama is relying on stupid young people–most of whom voted for him–to fund his bloated healthcare law. But something is happening. The youth are actually waking up. Unfortunately, it took actual dollar signs to make them see that Obama is a hack, and that his socialist medical law is dangerous. Now that people in their 20′s have become reluctant to join the utopian plan, Obama’s little fee is coming into play. Obama is desperately hoping that the fee will force young people to buy into Obamacare. If it doesn’t, he’s screwed. So, in an effort to make the fee seem much more terrible than it actually is, Obama has taken to shaming. Appearing on Ryan Seacrest’s radio show, Obama said:

“If you can afford it–you just decide you don’t want to get it because your attitude is ‘nothing’s ever going to happen to me’–then you’ll be charged a penalty.”

Ouch. Obama’s basically scolding the youth of America into doing what he wants them to do. The fee is, in fact, a control mechanism. Obama knew that at some point, his scheme would be revealed, so he needed a failsafe.

There, that seemed like a good explanation, right? Nope. I think this goes much deeper. The fail safe isn’t good enough. It’s not enough money to keep his law going.

Why would Obama create a failsafe that wasn’t effective enough to get the job done? Additionally, why is he resorting to such a lame tactic, essentially tsk tsking young people? Because Obamacare is meant to fail. He wants to show the American people that, to truly succeed, one needs a single payer system. That’s the only reason he would behave in this way. He is smart enough to know what he is doing. He is creating an environment that will lead to a collapse of his signature law, so that a new, more socialist creation can emerge. It’s an aggregation, and consolidation of power.

The awakening of America is just another part of a long con.

Obamacare 100% Failure, By Design

Could the GLITCH, known as the Obamacare rollout be no glitch at all but a carefully crafted plan to bring America to its knees BEGGING for Single Payer Healthcare (Socialized Medicine)?

Quoting Stacy Rush:

http://www.newsninja2012.com/obamacare-100-failure-by-design/

With the disastrous roll out of Obamacare, the administration finds itself in unfamiliar territory – receiving negative press coverage from an otherwise fawning mainstream media.

CBS News, one of the only to allow investigative reporting on Benghazi, leads the charge again with negative Obamacare coverage and headlines like:

Launch of Obamacare Website – A Complete Disaster
Arrival of Obamacare Forcing Insurers to Drop Customers

While many cheer the mainstream media’s coverage of the realities of Obamacare, I wonder where they have been over the past three years.  Any one of the networks could have read and reported the facts about Obamacare to the American people, sadly they chose not to do so.

I am no investigative reporter, but somehow was able to identify the Obamacare endgame – a single payer system.

In the article Elections Have Consequences, we review the Affordable Care Act’s impact on the employer and the decision they will face in 2015 – do they continue to offer group health insurance coverage to their employees at an expense of two to six times the $2,000 fine for not doing so.

Had President Obama not unilaterally delayed the employer mandate to avoid a Democrat shellacking in 2014, one can only imagine the backlash he would be facing today as his signature piece of legislation rolls out.

As if the website debut were not tragic enough, simultaneously record numbers of people with individual health insurance plans began receiving cancellation notices from their carriers.

• Florida: Florida Blue canceled 300,000 (80%) of individual policies
• California:  Kaiser Permanente canceled 160,000 of individual plans and Blue Shield canceled 119,000
• New Jersey:  800,000 residents’ health-care plans will not longer exist in 2014
• Pennsylvania:  Highmark in Pittsburgh will cancel 20% of individual plans while Independence Blue Cross in Philadelphia plan to cancel 45 percent

For those blindsided by the cancellations and/or increased premiums, let this be a warning to you. We no longer have media interested in the truth. The facts were available, what is occurring today was predictable, but rather than informing the public, the mainstream media allowed the president to repeat these lies continually:

• If you like your doctor, you can keep them. Period.
• If you like you plan you can keep it. Period.
• The ACA will reduce your healthcare premium by $2,500 per family

As bad as the roll out of Obamacare has been, it is but the tip of the iceberg. In 2015, the employer mandate kicks in at which time we are likely to see more people losing jobs, working fewer hours or losing employer sponsored healthcare plans.

When this occurs, the president and his accomplices in the mainstream media will tell you to blame everyone other than Obama, but in fact, it is President Obama, his signature piece of legislation  - The ‘Affordable’ Care Act – and the Democrat party who bear the blame.  To be clear:

Insurance carriers are NOT cancelling policies, because they do not want to cover you any longer, they are doing so to comply with the OBAMACARE law, a law that deems as these plans unacceptable.

Premium increases are a result of carriers complying with the OBAMACARE law. A law that not only mandates minimum levels of coverage, but that insurance carriers offer said plans at an Obama approved ‘affordable’ price, a price that does not include the $2,500 savings repeatedly promised by the president.

Employers are not uncaring and greedy for dropping employer sponsored healthcare plans, they do not have the luxury of printing money to meet expenses.  Add to this the OBAMACARE law incents businesses to drop plans by charging a $2,000 for not doing so.  This fine is more than half of the cost a business incurs for providing an employee with an individual healthcare plan and a sixth of the cost incurred when providing an employee with a family healthcare plan.

As more insurance carriers leave the market place unable to make a profit because OBAMACARE mandates they provide coverage for everyone and for everything at an OBAMACARE approved price point, and more employers drop insurance plans for employees, the result is more Americans will wind up on government sponsored programs.

The administration, with the support of the media, will try and convince you to blame insurance carriers and employers for the results of implementing Obamacare; but the results are by design in order to obtain the ultimate goal, a single payer system under the control of the government.

But hey, if you don’t believe me, maybe you will believe President Obama.

Stacy Rush (14 Posts)

Along with co-hosting The Wayne Dupree Show on Tuesdays & Wednesdays, Stacy Rush is the creator and editor of TheRightRush.com and a guest contributor on Tea Party News Network and The Brenner Brief. She is a common sense conservative who decided she could no longer stand on the sidelines and watch the country fall apart. Understanding most people do not have the time, passion nor inclination to follow politics regularly, her goal is to translate the complex and important issues of the day into an easy to follow, sometimes funny, and often times sarcastic way!

Analysis' of Obamacare and Romney's Health-Reform Plan

Jonathan Gruber's New 'Analysis' of Obamacare and Romney's Health-Reform Plan

http://www.forbes.com/sites/aroy/2012/09/25/jonathan-grubers-new-analysis-of-obamacare-and-romneys-health-reform-plan/

In 2011, Obama adviser Jonathan Gruber published a comic book about Obamacare, entitled "Health Care Reform: What It Is, Why It's Necessary, How It Works."

Jonathan Gruber, the MIT economist and Obama health-reform adviser, has been featured on these pages for, among other things, boldly predicting in 2009 that Obamacare would “for sure” reduce insurance premiums, while subsequently telling state governments that Obamacare would increase premiums by as much as 30 percent. Apparently, however, that analytical foul-up has left Prof. Gruber unbowed. This week, Families USA—a pro-Obamacare activist group—is releasing a new report, based on Gruber’s work, “describing the vast differences in the impact on people in every state between ObamaCare” and Mitt Romney’s plan for national health reform. Given that Gruber’s predictions keep changing from year to year, how reliable will his analysis be?

(NOTE: The report is now out. I discuss it in a new post. DISCLOSURE: I am an outside adviser to the Romney campaign on health care issues. The opinions contained herein are mine alone, and do not necessarily correspond to those of the campaign.)

Politico Pro reported yesterday that Gruber is hosting a news conference, slated for Thursday, to discuss his new paper. “The report provides new national data comparing the small differences between ObamaCare and RomneyCare [in Massachusetts], and provides new national and state-by-state data describing the vast differences in the impact on people in every state between ObamaCare and RomneyCandidateCare [Romney’s plan for national reform].” Gruber will be joined at the news conference by Stuart Altman, a health economist at Brandeis.

I’m not sure what Gruber is going to say, or what his analysis will show. But I’m a bit confused as to how Gruber thinks such an analysis can be performed in the first place.

The Romney health-reform plan is agnostic on ESI tax reform

The core of Mitt Romney’s plan to replace Obamacare is to equalize the way the tax code treats people who buy health insurance for themselves and those who get it through their employers. Right now, if your employer buys health insurance on your behalf, you pay no income or payroll taxes on the value of that plan. Individuals who buy insurance for themselves have to do so with after-tax money.

As I described in my summary of the Romney plan in June, there are a number of ways to equalize the tax treatment of employer-sponsored and individually-purchased insurance:

There are a number of ways to equalize the tax treatment of health insurance. One would be to do what George W. Bush proposed, and create a standard deduction that any taxpayer can take advantage of. Another would be the approach championed by Paul Ryan and John McCain, among others, in which every American would get a fixed tax credit, or subsidy, with which to buy insurance for himself. A third approach would be a hybrid system, in which taxpayers could choose between either the deduction or the credit, or in which those falling below an income threshold would get the credit.

Romney hasn’t specified which of these approaches he favors. Indeed, if I had to guess, if Congress sent him a bill that contained any of these approaches, he’d sign it. But there are important fiscal considerations in such a significant reform, and important tax-writing Congressional committees—such as House Ways and Means and Senate Finance—would necessarily have their say.

But given that these approaches have meaningful differences—a universal tax credit would effectively provide universal catastrophic coverage, whereas a standard deduction would more modestly expand the uptake of expensive, comprehensive insurance—I don’t understand how Gruber and Altman claim to have produced an “analysis” of “RomneyCandidateCare.”

If the work of other liberal think-tankers is any guide, Gruber will simply invent a Romney-like plan, one with scary but inaccurate numbers, that he can then compare unfavorably to his own (historically unreliable) analysis of Obamacare. Then the Obama campaign will trumpet Gruber’s “independent analysis” in order to attack Romney.

Gruber’s predictions of Obamacare’s impact have been historically unreliable

As I discussed in March, in October 2009, while consulting for the White House, Gruber published an analysis of the Obamacare bill that was then making its way through the Senate Finance Committee. “What we know for sure,” he told Ezra Klein, “is that [the bill] will lower the cost of buying non-group health insurance.” Gruber’s report received a lot of attention, coming as it did at a time when the merits of Obamacare were being hotly debated on Capitol Hill.

More recently, Gruber has made the opposite case regarding Obamacare’s impact on insurance premiums. From August 2011 to January 2012, he issued three reports to state governments stating that non-group insurance premiums would increase, relative to prior law. By 2016, he wrote, premiums would increase in Colorado by 19 percent; Minnesota by 29 percent; and Wisconsin by 30 percent.

Most importantly, Gruber has admitted that his model has a catastrophic flaw: it can’t model the impact of Obamacare’s requirement that insurers take all comers regardless of pre-existing conditions. Here’s what he said to the State of Colorado (emphasis added):

It is important to recognize some limitations in our modeling of prices. In particular, given publicly available data we cannot incorporate the effects of the ban on pre-existing conditions exclusions. This ban will cause a rise in premiums as insurers are forced to cover conditions that they had previously excluded. In addition, there are new premium taxes on insurers that will raise premium rates…Overall, we cannot predict the net impacts of these factors on premiums without more analysis.

It’s precisely this aspect of the law that non-partisan analysts have pointed to as a reason why Obamacare will drive up premiums. It remains to be seen whether or not Gruber’s model now assesses the impact of this provision on insurance premiums. Without it, it’s hard to see how his numbers will be that useful.

Massachusetts, pre-Romney, had a dysfunctional insurance market

A main reason for the state-by-state variation in Gruber’s work is that states’ regulatory regimes vary. Some states, like Massachusetts before Romneycare, had dysfunctional individual insurance markets, because they forced insurers to take all comers and charge young people more to subsidize the cost of older individuals. Such mandates—“guaranteed issue” and “community rating” in wonk-speak—make it economically impossible for insurers to survive, without an individual mandate.

Other states have relatively light regulatory regimes, and such states will face dramatic premium increases as insurers are forced to comply with Obamacare’s federal regulations.

I wrote about the history of Romney’s Massachusetts reforms back in April. What’s clear from the history is three things: (1) Romney’s plan was designed to solve the specific problems that had arisen in Massachusetts’ health-care system, such as individual-market dysfunction; (2) Romney favored allowing individuals to buy low-cost catastrophic insurance, whereas the succeeding Deval Patrick administration forced individuals to buy costly, comprehensive coverage; (3) Obamacare is modeled after Patrick’s implementation of Romney’s reform, more than it is modeled after what Romney actually sought to achieve.

Romney’s plan did succeed in driving down the cost of individual-market insurance in Massachusetts, by moving that state’s health care system from a left-wing morass toward the center. But that doesn’t make Massachusetts a model for more market-oriented states which never suffered from Massachusetts’ problems.

Many questions for Gruber and Altman

So, these are the things I’ll be looking for answers to when Gruber and Altman host their press conference. Did Gruber fairly and plausibly analyze a wide range of possibilities for employer-sponsored insurance reform, or did he invent his own conception of Romney’s plan in order to cherry-pick the most favorable numbers? Does his model have the same methodological flaws that led it to make contradictory predictions in 2009, 2011, and 2012? Does Gruber take into account the fact that reform at the federal level is necessarily different from that at the state level?

And one final point: Does Gruber’s analysis take into account that the law increases taxes by $1.2 trillion and cuts Medicare by $716 billion in order to fund its massive new subsidies for health insurance? We’ll find out soon.

Follow Avik on Twitter at @aviksaroy.

UPDATE 1: In the comments below, Josh Archambault of the Boston-based Pioneer Institute makes some good points:

Avik,

Few other things to add that might be of interest for the call Thursday.
Given the “small differences” between the two laws I would be interested to hear him speak on:

1. In Mass, if you are offered ESI, you cannot access the exchange. The only loophole is if your employer drops your coverage and employees remain uninsured for 6 months. The federal standard is different and makes it much easier for employers to dump. (affordability threshold of 9.5% of household income or a plan being offered with an actuarial value below 60) However, Gruber and friends have pointed to Mass employer behavior as predictive of future national behavior. [A silly argument in my mind given the policy difference.]

2. Gruber sits on the Connector Board in Massachusetts, and has sat through a few different PPTs detailing the many steps needed, and changes ahead, to put the Connector on the path of federal conformity. For example, the most recent meeting highlighted 124 steps just for the Connector so far.

3. Mass has now received or requested $99 million from the Feds to help move the Connector into compliance with the federal law, and they have yet to put in a Level 2 grant (often the largest for states that have received them so far). I wrote about it on the Pioneer Blog.

I guess “small differences” come with a big price tag.

UPDATE 2: Families USA has released the study. It is marred by a number of serious factual and analytical errors. I discuss all this in a new post.

SENATE DEMOCRATS SEEING THE LIGHT ON FAILED ACA IMPLEMENTATION

 REPORT: SENATE DEMS UP FOR RE-ELECTION IN 2014 TO BACK DELAY OF OBAMACARE ENROLLMENT DEADLINE

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV)

Sen. Mark Pryor (D-AR)

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH)

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/10/23/Report-All-Senate-Democrats-up-for-re-election-in-2014-will-back-delaying-Obamacare-s-enrollment-deadline

On Wednesday, CNN’s Dana Bash tweeted that all Senate Democrats up for re-election in 2014 will reportedly support a delay of Obamacare’s enrollment deadline.

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), who is up for re-election in 2014, wrote to Obama on Tuesday and asked him to delay the enrollment deadline for the individual mandate. “Given the existing problems with the website, I urge you to consider extending open enrollment beyond the current end date of March 31, 2014,” Shaheen wrote to the president. "Allowing extra time for consumers is critically important so they have the opportunity to become familiar with the website, survey their options and enroll.”

On Wednesday, Sen. Mark Pryor (D-AR), who is facing a tough challenge in his 2014 re-election against Rep. Tom Cotton (R-AR), came out in support of Shaheen’s call for a delay of the individual mandate’s enrollment deadline. Pryor had previously been on record as supportive of the mandate as is.

Now, according to CNN’s Bash, the Democratic Party is coordinating an effort to support a delay in the individual mandate.

“new: senior dem source tells me to expect every sen dem running in 2014 to back @JeanneShaheen proposal to delay #ACA enrollment deadline,” Bash tweeted on early Wednesday evening.

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) is on record as supporting a one-year delay in the individual mandate as well, although Manchin is not up for re-election in 2014.

The Democrats' push comes shortly after Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) recently launched a crusade against Obamacare. Cruz’s efforts and those of Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) showed the American people the president and Senate Democrats were unwilling to compromise on Obamacare, and the Democrats’ stubbornness resulted in a temporary partial government shutdown and a short-lived debt crisis scare. 

Many Republicans, including the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), have been predicting for months that the Democrats would look for an Obamacare “escape hatch” ahead of 2014.

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CONVERSATION WITH THE OBAMACARE CALL CENTER

Please take time to listen to this 11 minute telephone call that Sean Hannity made to the Obamacare Healthcare Marketplace Call Center and his enlightening conversation with a girl named Erline Davis (or something close to that). You do not want to miss this conversation. 

http://youtu.be/ofu630ZpbbE