Tag Archives: Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act

J. D. Heyes ~ South Carolina To Criminalize Implementation Of Obamacare; Showdown With Feds Inevitable

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NaturalNews May 13 2013

SC Governor Nikki Haley

More and more states are beginning to challenge the Obama Administration over what they view as unconstitutional abuses of power, especially regarding firearms and health care. The latest example comes from South Carolina, whose legislature has passed a measure declaring Obamacare to be “null and void” and criminalizing its implementation.

Lawmakers in the House passed the Freedom of Health Care Protection Act by a vote of 65-39, which seeks to “prohibit certain individuals from enforcing or attempting to enforce such unconstitutional laws; and to establish criminal penalties and civil liability for violating this article.”

According to reports, the measure would permit the state attorney general, with reasonable cause, “to restrain by temporary restraining order, temporary injunction, or permanent injunction” anyone who is believed to be causing harm to any state resident or business through implementation of the Obamacare law.

‘Not now, not ever’

House members appear to be following the lead of Republican Gov. Nikki Haley, who declared in her State of the State Address earlier this year that South Carolina neither wants nor can afford President Obama’s signature legislative accomplishment, “not now, not ever.”

“To that end, we will not pursue the type of government-run health exchanges being forced on us by Washington,” she said. “Despite the rose-colored rhetoric coming out of D.C., these exchanges are nothing more than a way to make the state do the federal government’s bidding in spending massive amounts of taxpayer dollars on insurance subsidies that we can’t afford.”

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The Obamacare “Death Panel” Is Real: Republicans Refusing To Appoint Serving Members

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Before It’s News May 13 2013

One of the most politically intense fights over the Affordable Care Act was over the creation of the Independent Payment Advisory Board, infamously dubbed a “death panel” by Republicans during the 2010 elections.

On Thursday, Republican House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell signaled that they would keep working to keep opposition alive by doing everything they can to impede the board’s implementation.

The two leaders wrote a letter to President Barack Obama, notifying him that they would not be submitting any recommendations to the panel because of their opposition to it and to the law in general.

Here’s the relevant part of their letter explaining why they aren’t offering any recommendations:

In order to allow supporters to claim that the law’s Medicare cuts would be realized in the future, it tasked IPAB with reducing payments to providers or eliminating payments for certain treatments and procedures altogether. These reduced payments will force providers to stop seeing Medicare patients, the same way an increased number of doctors have stopped taking Medicaid patients. This will lead to access problems, waiting lists and denied care for seniors.

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Rick Ackerman ~ ObamaCare: Economy Can’t Survive It [Video]

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USAWatchdog May 6 2013

Trader and forecaster Rick Ackerman says, “As far as the Fed getting off the easing regimen, it’s not possible . . . You’d kill the system right now. There’s no way out, and although we put off the day of reckoning, it can’t be put off indefinitely.”

ObamaCare is one of the biggest headwinds facing the economy. Ackerman says, “January 1st, everybody is going to get socked with at least a 30% increase in their insurance premiums . . . Obama Care is the worst bill ever . . . I don’t see how the economy can survive it.”

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Michael Snyder ~ They Are Murdering Small Business: The Percentage Of Self-Employed Americans Is At A Record Low

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Economic Collapse blog May 3 2013

The percentage of Americans that are working for themselves has never been lower in the history of the United States.  Once upon a time, the United States was a paradise for entrepreneurs and small businesses, but now the control freak bureaucrats that dominate our society have created a system that absolutely eviscerates them.  This is very unfortunate, because by murdering small business, the bureaucrats are destroying the primary engine of job growth in this country.  One of the big reasons why there are not enough jobs in America today is because small business creation is way down.  As I mentioned yesterday, entrepreneurs and small businesses are being absolutely devastated by rules, regulations, red tape and by oppressive levels of taxation.  If anyone doubts that small business in the United States is dying, just look at the charts below.  Sadly, this is what the bureaucrats that run things want.  They don’t want us to be independent of the system.  Instead, they are much more comfortable when as many of us as possible are heavily dependent on the system in one way or another.  If all of us have to go running to the government or to one of the big corporations for a job, then we are much easier to control.  But as the control freaks continue to construct their bureaucratic utopia, they are also killing off what once made the U.S. economy so great.

The other day I came across the following two charts in an article by Charles Hugh Smith, and I was absolutely stunned by what I saw.  This first chart shows that the number of unincorporated self-employed Americans has dropped back to levels that we have not seen since the mid-1980s even though our population has increased by tens of millions of people since that time…

The Number Of Self-Employed Americans

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Mike Adams ~ U.S. Lawmakers Secretly Negotiating To Exempt Themselves From Obamacare

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NaturalNews April 26 2013

Top lawmakers on Capitol Hill are negotiating a secret deal to exempt themselves from Obamacare. The Obamacare mandate is a total nightmare, of course, and it doubles health insurance rates while providing nothing resembling actual “health” care. It’s such a nightmare that the very people who passed it now want to exempt themselves from it.

That would leave it in a state where only the constituents are subjected to its onerous costs and mandates, not the lawmakers who passed it into law. How’s that for hypocrisy in America?

According to a report from Politico, “Congressional leaders in both parties are engaged in high-level, confidential talks about exempting lawmakers and Capitol Hill aides from the insurance exchanges they are mandated to join as part of President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul, sources in both parties said.”

Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell has the best reply to all this: “Let’s exempt the entire country from Obamacare,” he said according to a Breitbart.com report.

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Ethan A. Huff ~ ObamaCare Tax Surprise: Millions Of Americans Could Owe Government More Than They Think

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NaturalNews April 23 2013

This fall, millions of already cash-strapped Americans will apply for taxpayer-funded government subsidies to help pay for their mandatory ObamaCare coverage, which is set to begin next year. But according to new reports, individuals who incorrectly predict their future income on the subsidy forms, or who end up having lower income in 2012 than in 2013, will end up having to pay back some or all of the subsidy money back to the government, which could come as a major surprise for many people.

As reported by CBS News, October 1 marks the first day that Americans will be able to apply for federal government subsidies to purchase health care from private health insurance exchanges, which will reportedly be set up on a customized, state-by-state basis. But because the federal government has no idea how much income applying individuals will have next year, it can only go by this year’s income levels, which could be higher or lower than next year depending on each individual’s situation.

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Jonathan Benson ~ Obamacare Causes Huge Decrease In Job Growth As Employers Aim To Avoid Penalties

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NaturalNews April 21 2013

As the nation gears up to usher in some of the first installments of Obamacare, job growth appears to be grinding to a halt, particularly within the small business sector, according to new reports. An expert economist analyzing the latest employment figures says the rapid decrease in job growth that has been taking place over the past few months is a direct result of employers’ hesitancy concerning not only the requirements of Obamacare, but also the penalties for non-compliance.

Many experts have been warning for years that the implementation of Obamacare would result in decreased job growth and job losses. But because the issue became a highly-politicized “left-right” debate, many people did not take the issue seriously, even though its implications affect everyone negatively regardless of their individual political persuasions.

“I think health care reform might be having an impact,” explained economist Mark Zandi during a recent segment on CNBC about current job growth trends. “Those companies with employees (totaling between) 50 to 499 — that’s the group that would be affected by the health care reform — we’ve seen a rather sharp slowing in job creation. Forty-three thousand in January; 20,000 in February; and minus-5,000 in March.”

Obamacare has already resulted in negative job growth — companies are continuing to shed employees just to stay in business

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Tim Brown ~ Obama Ignores Nullification, Says Federal Agents Will Enforce Obamacare

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Before It’s News March 26 2013

In a move that reminiscent of the tyrannical actions of Abraham Lincoln that led to the War of Northern Aggression, Barack Obama says that he will not wait on states to enforce Obamacare. Instead his administration has announced its intent is to completely disregard the state’s Tenth Amendment rights to nullification of the Obamacare law, via their passed legislation and state constitutions. In fact, his administration has said that in states where they refuse to comply with federal healthcare mandates that agents from the Department of Health and Human Services will assume absolute control over the state’s health insurance industry.

Politico reports,

Insurance regulation is a huge responsibility that’s been closely guarded by the states. That’s why the Obama administration and those closely watching the rollout of Obamacare believe that even states that have sworn off the law’s coverage expansions will still enforce its new measures — including new benefit mandates, cost-sharing guidelines and rules on how insurers rate customers — to retain control over their health insurance markets.

But the feds will be overseeing the health care law in Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas and Wyoming after those states told HHS they couldn’t or wouldn’t implement the new rules.

“We are enforcing because Oklahoma notified … that it has not enacted legislation to enforce or that it is otherwise not enforcing the Affordable Care Act market reform provisions,” Gary Cohen, director of the federal Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight, wrote to the Oklahoma Insurance Department on Friday. Officials in Missouri, Texas and Wyoming received similar letters, an agency spokeswoman said.

The enforcement letters come a little more than a month after a Commonwealth Fund report found just 11 states and Washington had started to adjust state laws to prepare for seven major ACA insurance reforms taking effect in 2014.

In a statement by Oklahoma Insurance Commissioner John Doak he said, “It is unfortunate that health insurers are being forced into a system of dual regulation by the overreaching Obama administration. My position on this has never wavered, and I welcome every opportunity to try to overturn Obamacare.”

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J. D. Heyes ~ Health Insurance Rates To Double As Obamacare Fully Kicks In

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NaturalNews March 26 2013

obamacare_cost

Writing on the blog of the Department of Health and Human Services on the third anniversary of the passage of the Affordable Care Act, more popularly known as Obamacare, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius had this to say about the impact of the law on insurance rates:

As a former state insurance commissioner, I know that for too long, too many hard-working Americans paid the price for policies that handed free rein to health insurance companies. For more than a decade before the Affordable Care Act, premiums rose rapidly, straining the budgets of American families and businesses. And insurers often raised premiums without any explanation. … The Affordable Care Act is working to bring affordability and fairness to the marketplace by barring insurers from dropping your coverage when you get sick or placing a lifetime dollar limit on coverage.

Sebelius goes on to imply that provisions within the law (requiring more “transparency” from insurance companies, for instance) will eventually help lower rates (though she never says so directly). In other words, she’s dodging the issue of rising premiums, and with good reason: Premiums under Obamacare are likely to double for most Americans, according to health insurers who are being forced to comply with Obamacare’s stringent coverage requirements.

Wait – weren’t premiums supposed to go down?

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J. D. Heyes ~ The Fraud Roll-Out Continues: Obamacare Costing Taxpayers Twice As Much As Originally Claimed

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NaturalNews March 20 2013

cartoon_obamacare1

When he was selling the Affordable Care Act during his first term, President Obama claimed that the government’s near-complete takeover of the nation’s healthcare industry would be, well, affordable.

Everyone from the president on down in his administration and in the Democratic leadership insisted that the naysayers and critics were wrong, that Obamacare would not tank the nation by becoming another parasitic entitlement drain on the treasury.

Well, that was 2010. In 2013, fewer than three years later and as more and more provisions of this monstrosity of a law take effect, Americans are beginning to feel the full effect of exactly what then-House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., meant when she said of Obamacare, “We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it…”

Yes, healthcare is about to get a lot more expensive

Take the cost of Obamacare. When he was stumping for it, the president promised Americans that, not only could the nation pay for it, but that it would cost around $900 billion over the next decade.

As congressional and independent studies are now confirming; however, Obama’s cost claims were grossly understated.

“President Obama promised a joint session of Congress in 2009 to spend $900 billion over ten years on his health care law: ‘Now, add it all up, and the plan that I’m proposing will cost around $900 billion over 10 years.’ Adding up all the different spending provisions in the health care law; however, (including closing the Medicare ‘doughnut hole,’ implementation costs, and other spending) total gross spending over the FY 2010-19 period is about $1.4 trillion, based on CBO estimates,” explains the Senate Budget Committee Republican staff.

“And most of the major spending provisions in the law do not even take effect until 2014. Congressional Democrats delayed these provisions in order to show only six years of spending under the plan in the original 10-year budget window (from FY2010-19) used by CBO at the time the law was enacted,” said the staff report. “Therefore, the original estimate concealed the fact that most of the law’s spending only doesn’t even begin until four years into the 10-year window. A Senate Budget Committee analysis (based on CBO estimates and growth rates) finds that that total spending under the law will amount to at least $2.6 trillion over a true 10-year period (from FY2014-23) – not $900 billion, as President Obama originally promised.”

Partisan sour grapes? You may have noted that the figures used by the GOP staff report come from CBO (the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office).

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Chris Carrington ~ DARPA Endorses New Tracking Technology: ‘Event’ Set for Valentines Day

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The Daily Sheeple February 13 2013

In recent months much has been said in the news regarding Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology. School children have been told they are required to wear them and there is talk about  mandatory chipping as a condition  of treatment in the Obamacare bill.

There is however, a newer kid on the block that takes the technology of tracking individuals to a whole new level. The Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) has been working for a considerable time on developing transient electronics. Small, hair fine, bio-gradable electronic devices that can be implanted into humans and will disappear at a time that has been programmed into the chip prior to its implantation.

Transient electronics came to the fore last year when Tufts School of Engineering went public with the news that they had developed the first working, implantable chip. DARPA immediately saw the military implications of such a device. Their interest is understandable. Being able to implant military personnel with such a device would allow you to monitor where an individual is at any given time, and they would also have the ability to trigger the chip to dissolve if a situation was reached where the unit, either the chip itself or the person it was implanted in, became useless.

So interested are they in the technology that tomorrow, February 14th 2013, they are inviting scientists and manufacturers to come together on what they have called “VAPR DAY”  Vanishing Programable Resources Day. Officially the purpose of tomorrows event is to ‘facilitate interactions’ between scientists and manufacturers and to discuss developments in the field of Transient Electronics. It’s sure to be very well attended, if there’s money to be made from the government for fast-tracking such technology those more interested in money that freedom will be willing to sell their soul to the devil to get into the event.

The ramifications for the development of such technology is truly frightening. Those in favor cite the ability for a patient to carry all their medical information around with them cutting down on iatrogenic (doctor caused) deaths due to wrong prescribing of medications for example. It has even been suggested that implanting children would enable them to be traced should they become lost or be abducted.

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Michael Connelly, Constitutional Attorney ~ Tyranny By Executive Order

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Before It’s News | January 18 2013

What the hell just happened? That is the question that many Americans should be asking themselves following the news conference where Obama unveiled his plan for destroying the Bill of Rights to the U.S. Constitution. At first glance it appeared to be a case of Obama shamelessly using the deaths of innocents, and some live children as a backdrop, to push for the passage of radical gun control measures by Congress. Most of these have no chance of passing, yet, Obama’s signing of Executive orders initiating 23 so called Executive actions on gun control seemed like an afterthought.

Unfortunately, that is the real story, but it is generally being overlooked. The fact is that the with a few strokes of his pen Obama set up the mechanisms he will personally use to not only destroy the Second Amendment to the Constitution, but also the First, Fourth, and Fifth Amendments. It will not matter what Congress does, Obama can and will act on his own, using these Executive actions, and will be violating both the Constitution and his oath of office when he does it.

Here are the sections of the Executive Order that he will use:

“1. Issue a Presidential Memorandum to require federal agencies to make relevant data available to the federal background-check system.”

What exactly is relevant data? Does it include our medical records obtained through Obamacare, our tax returns, our political affiliations, our military background, and our credit history? I suggest that all of the above, even if it violates or fourth Amendment right to privacy will now be relevant data for determining if we are allowed to purchase a firearm.

“2. Address unnecessary legal barriers, particularly relating to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, that may prevent states from making information available to the background-check system.”

This should be read in conjunction with section 16 of the order that says:

“16. Clarify that the Affordable Care Act does not prohibit doctors asking their patients about guns in their homes.”

One of the few amendments successfully placed in Obamacare by conservatives does appear to prohibit doctors from asking such questions. Yet, with these two Executive actions, Obama is illegally amending an act of Congress and setting up a procedure for him to force doctors to gain information from patients about gun ownership, and to get our medical history.

Section 3 of Obama’s order states:

“3. Improve incentives for states to share information with the background- check system.”

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JG Vibes ~ Whole Foods CEO Identifies Obamacare As “Fascism”

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theintelhub.com | January 17, 2013

In a recent interview Whole Foods CEO John Mackey rightfully identified Obamacare as “Fascist”, reflecting on comments he made years ago when he referred to it as socialist.

According to The Hill:

“The CEO of Whole Foods Market said President Obama’s healthcare law is more like “fascism” than “socialism,” a parallel he drew in 2009, to some backlash.

John Mackey made the remark in an interview Wednesday with NPR.

“Technically speaking, it’s more like fascism,” Mackey said of the Affordable Care Act. “Socialism is where the government owns the means of production. In fascism, the government doesn’t own the means of production, but they do control it, and that’s what’s happening with our healthcare programs and these reforms.”

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