Tag Archives: Affordable Care Act

May 16, 2013 · 5:40 AM

Four Better Ways To Spend The $55 Million Wasted On Votes To Repeal The Affordable Care Act

The irony seems to escape the GOP and their sycophants  in Congress.  They’ve implemented “sequestration” to curb superfluous spending yet waste $55 million dollars on trying to repeal the Affordable Care Act thirty-seven times…

Think Progress

For the 37th time since 2011, House Republicans will hold a vote to repeal Obamacare on Thursday, bringing the total cost of all of their failed repeal votes to roughly $55 million in taxpayer money, according to one estimate.

Last year, CBS News calculated that the number of hours spent on 33 repeal votes — then roughly 80 hours, or two full work weeks — cost taxpayers an estimated $48 million. Since then, Republicans have held three more votes (another $4.5 million) and will add another $1.5 million with their latest.

At a time when lawmakers have implemented $85 billion in across-the-board cuts on top of$1.5 trillion in spending cuts over the next decade, no dollar can be spared. And the country has serious health-related needs that could use funding. Here are some better health care uses for the more than $50 million these symbolic votes against the Affordable Care Act have wasted:

1. Restore cuts from sequestration to Title X family planning programs and Title V maternal and child health services. The National Women’s Law Center calculates that a 5 percent cut to the budgets of each program will reduce them by $15 million and $32.5 million, respectively. Rather than voting to repeal a bill that expands women’s access to preventative services, the House could use the money to expand them.

2. Double the Department of Justice’s budget for sexual assault services, which has currently been authorized a $50 million budget. The program gives money to states so that they can support rape crisis centers and other nongovernmental organizations that provide direct intervention, core services, and other assistance to the victims of sexual assault. Current funding is inadequate, as some states receive less than $300,000 and many programs lack the resources to meet victims’ needs.

3. Grant a request for $50 million to train 5,000 new mental health professionals as part of a new initiative to expand mental health treatment and prevention services. This proposal came in the wake of the Sandy Hook shooting to address gaps in the mental health system.

4. Help states implement paid leave policies. President Obama included a $50 million State Paid Leave Fund in his 2011 budget to provide start-up support for states that want to enact paid leave for workers. More than 40 percent of workers don’t have access to paid sick leave, heading to work when they or their family members experience an illness, but this funding could help give them a better option.

The current Congress is on track to be the most unproductive since the 1940s, but still has time to hold votes that won’t result in actual legislative change. There are many other priorities lawmakers could focus on instead and better ways to spend taxpayer dollars.

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April 30, 2013 · 5:52 PM

Republican Refusal to Fix the Sequester Has Created a Death Panel For the Poor

Undoubtedly, we can count on the GOP to continue to not give a crap…

PoliticusUSA

Throughout history, human beings have debated, and decided that the power of life and death is not within the purview of human beings except in times of war and in countries that cling to the barbaric practice of capital punishment. It is certainly true that no population would willingly give a government arbitrary power of life and death over its own citizens, and yet it became a popular claim shortly after Barack Obama became President. In 2009, the immutable American idiot, Sarah Palin, propagated what was deemed the “Lie of the Year” when she went around the country declaring the Affordable Care Act would impose a panel of bureaucrats who would hold the power of life and death over Americans.

Republicans however, have assumed the power of life and death over Americans in need of basic sustenance, shelter, and healthcare over the past two years in their pursuit of trickle down fiscal purity, austerity for austerity sake, and Draconian spending cuts targeting safety nets.  Despite warnings the sequester would arbitrarily cut access to food, housing assistance, and healthcare for the elderly, children, and Veterans, Republicans proudly imposed the sequester on the nation as a necessary step to abridge the phony debt crisis they manufactured with valuable assistance from ignorant Democrats anxious to join the austerity frenzy.

For four years, Republicans prevented the government from operating through obstructionism that effectively shut down normal government processes, and yet when their sequester inconvenienced affluent Americans with the horrid prospect of an hour-long flight delay, they jumped into action and passed legislation within a week to unburden their favorite Americans from sharing in the sacrifice the rest of the nation will suffer for over nine more years. However, their quick action did not go unnoticed by other Americans who face hunger, homelessness, and slow painful death as a result of sequestration cuts that are, for all intents and purposes, their version of death panels.

Continue reading here…

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March 27, 2013 · 7:56 AM

An Affordable Care Act report card, three years in

Obama’s signature on Affordable Care Act

This is great news…

Daily Kos

The Sunday New York Time’s editorial page celebrated the third anniversary of the Affordable Care Act by detailing some of its achievements, even ahead of its full implementation next year. That includes:

  • Some 6.6 million people ages 19 through 25 who have been able to stay on their parents’ insurance plans and more than than 3 million young adults getting health insurance.
  • 17 million getting some kind of free preventive service, like flu shots, and 34 million Medicare recipients getting free preventive services in 2012;
  • 17 million children with pre-existing conditions being protected against being uninsured;
  • More than 107,000 adults with pre-existing conditions finally having insurance under the federally run insurance program;
  • 21 million received care from expanded community health centers, 3 million more than previously served;
  • $1.1 billion in rebates, an average of $151 per family paid by insurers that failed to meet the benchmark of 80 to 85 percent of premium revenues on medical claims or quality improvements;
  • Since 2010, more than 6.3 million older or disabled people have saved more than $6.3 billion on prescription drugs;

Beyond that, as the editorial notes, the annual growth of health care expenses has declined sharply, both in private care and Medicare. But the focus on quality of care seems to be working. “The percentage of Medicare patients requiring readmission to the hospital within 30 days of discharge dropped from an average of 19 percent over the past five years to 17.8 percent in the last half of 2012.” That’s largely because Medicare can impose penalties now for poor performance, but can also pay incentives for quality care.

Not a bad track record for the first three years, before the meat of the reforms kick in. What’s particularly important—and so far ignored by policy-makers—is the real slowdown in the growth of health care costs. It suggests that Medicare isn’t a hair-on-fire emergency right now, and that any changes to it should be dealt with outside of deficit grand-bargaining. It’s not an immediate crisis.

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January 9, 2013 · 12:05 AM

Taco Bell joins Wendy’s in gutting blue-collar employee hours allegedly to avoid Obamacare

America Blog

Yo no quiero Taco Bell.

Funny thing about Taco Bell’s franchise in Oklahoma claiming it’s gutting blue collar employee hours in order to avoid Obamacare’s requirement that employees working an average of 30 hours a week or more must be provided health insurance. I called around, and the requirement doesn’t kick in until 2014. So why is Taco Ball cutting employee hours now, a year early?

Same question for Wendy’s.

But it gets even odder.  The company that owns the local Taco Bells seems to be saying that they still don’t fully know what Obamacare (aka the Affordable Care Act) requires of them.

Treadwell Enterprises released the following statement Monday to News 9:

“Treadwell Enterprises, like most businesses, is still researching what the Affordable Care Act means to our operations. Regardless of the conclusion of our analysis, we will comply with this law, as we do all laws.”

If the company is still analyzing how Obamacare affects their business, then why is the franchise owned by this company already cutting back employee hours in order to save money on something that not only reportedly hasn’t even been implemented yet, but about which they haven’t even reaching any “conclusions” yet?

The more these big brands like Wendy’s and Taco Bell strike out against their blue collar employees supposedly because of an Obamacare provision that reportedly doesn’t even apply to them yet, the more it sounds like these are Republican companies simply taco belltrying to save money by making a political statement about a Democratic program and Democratic President they don’t like.

And I’m getting tired of hearing these parent companies tell us that they’re not responsible for what their franchises do.  You license them your good name, you’re responsible for what they do under your name. Period.

It’s time to write Taco Bell off along with Wendy’s, unless both companies get their franchises in line.  I go to both Taco Bell and Wendy’s.  But I wont in the future if it means financing Republican activists who are out to hurt their workers.

And this parent company of the Taco Bell in Oklahoma also runs a series of KFC’s and Ruby Tuesdays in the state, so those brands are implicated in this as well, since KFC and Ruby Tuesday seem to think this company is a fine business to partner with.

PS Someone on Facebook just made a fascinating point: There are employees at Taco Bell and Wendy’s who are touching our food and who don’t have adequate health insurance, and thus adequate health care? And they’re touching our food.

 Video:  Guthrie Taco Bell Worker Speaks After Hours Cut To Avoid Health Insurance Mandate.

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June 30, 2012 · 5:33 PM

Good Info Seen On the Internet – 6-30-2012

Courtesy of Connect The Dots USA

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· 12:10 AM

West Wing Week: 06/29/12 or “The Right Thing To Do”

The White House

This week, the President spoke at the annual NALEO conference, hosted the Congressional Picnic and addressed the nation on the Supreme Court’s decision on the Affordable Care Act, while his administration announced grants for cities hiring veterans as police officers, and spoke with students about college affordability.

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June 21, 2012 · 11:39 AM

Health insurance plans owe $1.1 billion in rebates

The Washington Post

Millions of consumers and businesses will receive $1.1 billion in rebates this summer from health insurance plans that failed to meet a requirement of the new health-care law, according to the Health and Human Services Department.

That Affordable Care Act rule requires insurance companies to spend at least 80 percent of subscriber premiums on health-care claims and quality improvement initiatives. The other 20 percent is left for administrative costs and profits.

Health insurance plans that don’t hit that threshold will send a rebate to consumers to cover the difference.

There could, however, be one big hitch. If the Supreme Court overturns the health-care law — a decision that could come as early as Thursday morning — experts say those checks are unlikely to hit Americans’ mailboxes.

“If [the Supreme Court] says the law is unconstitutional, insurers couldn’t be forced to pay rebates based on unconstitutional laws,” said Tim Jost, a law professor at Washington and Lee University.

In a new report, the Obama administration found that 12.8 million Americans will receive rebates this year, with an average value of $151 per household.

Continue reading here…

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March 27, 2012 · 9:02 AM

Rep. Gohmert warns of ‘redneck’ mandates if Obamacare upheld

There is no doubt than Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert is one fry short of a Happy Meal. The Tea Party favorite has been spewing crazy rhetoric for the past two years…

The Raw Story

Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert (R) on Monday said liberals should be opposed to the insurance mandate in the Affordable Care Act because it could be used against them by a future “redneck” president, according to The Hill.

“Let’s say you want to follow this administration’s idea of greatest good for the greatest number of people,” he said at a press conference. “It ought to scare liberals to come run and join conservatives, because what it means is when this president’s out of the White House and you get a conservative in there, if this president has the authority under Obamacare to trample on religious rights, then some redneck president’s got the right to say, ‘you know what, there’s some practices that go on in your house that cost people too much money and healthcare, so we’re going to have the right to rule over those as well.’”

The U.S. Supreme Court began hearing arguments on Monday on the so-called individual mandate in the Affordable Care Act.

Obama’s landmark law grants 30 million Americans health insurance for the first time, bringing universal coverage closer than ever before.

But its requirement that all Americans purchase personal health insurance or pay a penalty is seen by Republicans as a breach of the U.S. Constitution.

In Monday’s 90-minute hearing, the justices considered arguments on the narrow question of whether they have jurisdiction in the case, or must wait until the law has fully entered into force after 2014 to rule on it.

“My sense was that… they seemed to be, through their questions, indicating that they thought that the court ought to rule on this,” said Price, who attended the hearing.

On the Senate floor, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell attacked Obama’s signature legislative achievement as “a mess,” and said that while the president was right to seek reform, “the bill he gave us and that Democrats forced through Congress on a party-line vote just isn’t working.”

“Regardless of what the court decides, it needs to be repealed and replaced with common sense reforms that actually lower costs and that Americans really want.”

Senate Republican Jeff Sessions, who attended the hearing, expressed concern that “the courts have given too much deference to the power of the federal government and its reach.”

“This is going to be a challenge to this court to move away from the idea that anything the federal government wants to do, it’s empowered to do. That is not so,” he added.

Every Republican in the Senate and House of Representatives is on record opposing the health care reform law.

Obama’s Affordable Care Act “has become a malignant tumor, it’s metastasizing now and it feeds on American liberty,” said Iowa congressman Steve King, who has been instrumental in crafting anti-Obamacare legislation.

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· 12:36 AM

Supreme Court Clerks Predict Health Care Reform Will Be Upheld

Supreme Court ObamacareAccording to many pundits who appeared on all the news shows today, as well as some Supreme Court Clerks, the SCOTUS is not likely to overturn the law.  It’s not unprecedented, but imagine the ramifications and slippery slope if an interest group doesn’t like a law passed by Congress and they ultimately petition the Supreme Court of the United States to have it declared unconstitutional.

The Huffington Post

The lawyers who know the Supreme Court justices best seem largely certain that they’ll uphold the president’s health care law following the next three critical days of oral arguments.

The Republican-leaning American Action Forum and the centrist-Democratic group Blue Dog Research Forum released a poll of former clerks of current justices, as well as attorneys who have argued before the court. In it, they asked for predictions about how the court will rule on the Affordable Care Act.

Only 35 percent of respondents felt that the individual mandate penalizing those who decline to buy health insurance would be ruled unconstitutional. More than a quarter of respondents (27 percent) expected that the case would be thrown out until the mandate actually comes into effect in 2014, with the justices citing the Anti-Injunction Act as a way to argue that there is no standing for a suit.

The findings are far from scientific. Only 66 people participated in the survey — 43 former clerks and 23 other attorneys — a group American Action Forum compiled through public records searches of recent cases. Moreover, the tilt of the respondent pool was, like the court, a bit conservative. The survey describes the respondents as follows: “Of the Supreme Court clerks, 12 clerked for the ‘left’ block of the Court (Justices Breyer, Ginsburg, Kagan, Sotomayor), 21 clerked for the ‘right’ block of the Court (Justices Alito, Roberts, Scalia, Thomas), and 10 clerked for Justice Kennedy.”

But the percentages still reflect what has been the conventional wisdom among those in the legal community heading into this week’s oral arguments. As it stands now, the bet is that the court will ultimately rule the Affordable Care Act constitutional. The reasoning for this usually falls into one of three categories: that the small sliver of legal precedent suggests the law will be upheld, that the court would respect congressional action as a default position, or that individual justices are invested in establishing their bipartisan credentials this go-around.

That latter bit of armchair psychology always seemed a bit of a reach, with law professors pontificating about how Chief Justice Roberts wanted to shape his legacy. The poll by American Action Forum and Blue Dog Research Forum, at the very least, relies on the opinions of those individuals who have actually worked with the justices.

All the respondents were asked what would happen if the court ruled that the mandate was unconstitutional. Thirty-six percent said that the justices would end up ruling that the mandate was subsequently severable from the law, meaning that the rest of the legislation could legally stand without it. Thirty-eight percent said that they believed it was partially severable, meaning that other provisions (likely the language prohibiting discrimination against people with pre-existing conditions) had to fall with it. Just over a quarter of respondents (27 percent) said that the mandate was non-severable.

http://www.docstoc.com/docs/117149514/Court-Obamacare

 

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