Reistance is futile... unless they're the ones doing the resisting

Polling data has indicated that though the Affordable Care Act, as a whole, remains unpopular with the American people, individual aspects of the law are viewed upon quite favorably. It's a damn shame then that those favorable aspects of the law keep getting delayed.


To date, the Obama administration has delayed implementation of the employer mandate and delayed the subsidy qualifying verification mechanism both by one year. The administration has also acknowledged there are no background checks in place for the tens of thousands of state health insurance exchange "navigators" they will be hiring that will have access to personal and private medical, income and tax information leaving many Americans open to fraud and identity theft.


And on Monday, Team O announced a one year delay of the the cap on out-of-pocket medical expenses:

ObamaCare's limit on out-of-pocket costs is being delayed until 2015. According to the New York Times, the cap, which includes co-pays and deductibles, "was not supposed to exceed $6,350 for an individual and $12,700 for a family. But under a little-noticed ruling, federal officials have granted a one-year grace period to some insurers, allowing them to set higher limits, or no limit at all on some costs, in 2014."

"Federal officials" should not be confused with "Congress" who are the people that actually make the laws that most of us are required to live by. Here again, we have a completely arbitrary and unilateral selective enactment of a law.




More from linked article:

'The health law, signed more than three years ago by Mr. Obama, clearly established a single overall limit on out-of-pocket costs for each individual or family. But federal officials said that many insurers and employers needed more time to comply because they used separate companies to help administer major medical coverage and drug benefits, with separate limits on out-of-pocket costs."

This is indicative of that "consults with businesses" clause of the constitution that our constitutional scholar-in-chief told us about on Friday and which he used as legal mechanism to delay the employer mandate. That ObamaCare is the law of the land doesn't really seem to faze the guy as being the smartest guy in the room apparently gives him the discretion to do whatever the hell he wants with respect to a law we absolutely had to have yesterday.


And speaking of ObamaCare is the law of the land, Health and Human Services HMFIC, Kathleen Sebelius (pictured), kindly warned (?) of this fact at a meeting of pols and health officials on Monday:

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told several hundred legislators and state health officers Monday that resistance to the 2010 health-care overhaul should end, and that they can play a role in implementing the still hotly debated act.


"This is no longer a political debate; this is what we call the law," Sebelius told a group that includes Democrats and Republicans, elected officials, political appointees and bureaucrats. "It was passed and signed three years ago. It was upheld by the Supreme Court a year ago. The president was re-elected. This is the law of the land."

(italics, ours)


That happened.


The hack's boss has been the biggest obstructionist to the full implementation of his own law but... Republicans.


We have news for this woman: if this be the law then the law be an ass.


We will continue to be relentless in our criticism of this monstrosity and we will forevermore work via civil and peaceful means to subvert and undermine this law at every turn as it will turn out to be the very antithesis of keeping your healthcare decisions between yourself and your doctor and which will also be the largest incursion to our personal freedoms and liberties that we have known in our lifetime. We cannot in good conscience act in any other manner but to resist.

Seemingly, all "popular" aspects of #ObamaCare being delayed. The unpopular ones...? Right on schedule!

— Dean R. Riehm (@deanriehm) August 13, 2013

.

A sure-fire winning message

When the President's signature piece of legislation's rollout is quickly turning into a trainwreck, one can always count on this administration to resort to shameless pandering and race-baiting to sell it otherwise.

Head of the Department of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius (pictured) was at the annual NAACP convention in Orlando and made the following remarks on Tuesday.



From CNSNews:

"The Affordable Care Act is the most powerful law for reducing health disparities since Medicare and Medicaid were created in 1965, the same year the Voting Rights Act was also enacted," Sebelius said. "That significance hits especially close to home. My father was a congressman from Cincinnati who voted for each of those critical civil rights laws, and who represented a district near where the late Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth lived and preached.

"The same arguments against change, the same fear and misinformation that opponents used then are the same ones opponents are spreading now. 'This won't work,' 'Slow down,' 'Let's wait,' they say.

"But history shows that upholding our founding principles demands continuous work toward a more perfect union...And it requires the kind of work that the NAACP has done for more than a century to move us forward.

"You showed it in the fight against lynching and the fight for desegregation. You showed it by ensuring inalienable rights are secured in the courtroom and at the ballot box. And you showed it by supporting a health law 100 years in the making.

"With each step forward, you said to forces of the status quo, 'This will work,' 'We can't slow down' 'We can't wait,' 'We won't turn back.'

Sebelius then hailed the "voices of progress" that "we hear and honor this year," as people start signing up for mandatory health insurance on Oct. 1:

"They echo from church bells rung at midnight 150 years ago to educate our nation of a people's emancipation. They echo from a speech on our nation's mall 50 years ago next month about the promise of our nation's dream. And they still echo and guide us today in a second term of a historic presidency.

"So let us seize this moment. We can't slow down. We can't wait. We won't turn back. We move forward."

Good grief. Where to even start with this nonsense?

Well, how about here: when fighting fear and misinformation, it's always good to compare your political opposites to Jim Crow-loving segregationists. That's the politics of unity and a pitch-perfect example of that new civility we've been hearing so much about.

And We can't wait explains why the administration has decided to delay for a year 3 different key provisions of the law in direct violation of constitutional provisions to uphold the laws that are on the books. For a law that absolutely had to pass because, as claimed by the champions of the law, upwards of 40,000 people/year were dying because they didn't have health insurance, this would seem to be a particularly cruel and heartless way of implementing it.

Let's just call it the ObamaCare tease where tens of thousands of Americans anticipating the saving graces of the law, will meet their ultimate demise because of incompetence at the executive, legislative and bureaucratic levels. Hey, don't look at us that way - they have hoisted themselves atop their own fear-mongering petard.

And as a reminder to you young voters out there, especially those young healthy ones that do not necessarily need health insurance but will be forced to buy it any way: the man you probably voted for in 2012 and possibly as well in 2008, made it clear a couple of days ago that while he was cool with letting big business off the hook for the employer mandate, he would veto any legislation coming out of Congress that would suspend/delay implementation of individual mandate. Don't worry, he still (hearts) you for buying that bumper sticker and, of course, for your vote.


.

Photo image of the day

Alternate headline: It’s come to this


Over the years, when we told you one of the dangers of the new federal health care law would be that it would infringe into parts of your life you never thought imaginable, you may have doubted us.


At the time, it was all in the abstract as the new healthcare law and its effects would not come into full effect until Jan. 1, 2014.


For you sports fans, maybe it started sinking in when Department of Health and Human Services Secretary, Kathleen Sebelius, falsely asserted that she was in active and enthusiastic negotiations with the NFL in running ObamaCare ads to inform the public about the new healthcare law. Fortunately, the NFL did not want to have any part of this political hot potato and denied Sebelius’s happy talk and with it any hopes of being Team O’s patsies and thus keeping the holy day of the week reserved for God, family, friends and football.


From a personal standpoint, our contention hit home last week while reading the latest issue of the WestCoaster SD, a fine monthly periodical documenting the craft beer industry in San Diego. While flipping through the pages, we came across the following:

That’s right, ladies and gentleman… a publication dedicated to a beverage that is said to be proof that God loves us and which we faithfully read as a matter of education, enjoyment and, yes, as escapism cannot even elude the grasp of the ever-expanding tentacles of this horrible, miserable and wretched damn ruinous piece of legislation.


If it can happen to us, it will happen to you.



Don’t ever say we didn’t tell you so.

.

Ads guaranteed to annoy the living hell out of us coming this fall

A not-so-wonderful confluence of two subjects of immense interest to us: the NFL and the not-so-new federal healthcare law.

We can't imagine anything more than some bland yet peppy PSA-type ads starring, perhaps, Peyton Manning, the most trusted man in America? but still....

Can we get a "C'mon Man!"?

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said Monday she is in talks with the NFL to help promote new insurance options under ObamaCare.

Sebelius said the football league has been "very actively and enthusiastically engaged" in discussions about a partnership to encourage people to enroll in newly available insurance plans.

"We're having active discussions right now with a variety of sports affiliates" about both paid advertising and partnerships to encourage enrollment, Sebelius told reporters.

HHS is reportedly also in talks with the NBA to promote the law.

Partnerships with sports organizations are especially promising to HHS because the department hopes large numbers of young, healthy men will enroll in the law's new coverage options.

Recall it was Sebelus that, ahem, solicited donations from health insurance and tax preparation firms, some of the very firms her department regulates, in order to help with ObamaCare information awareness.


Wonder how those conversations between the two groups are going down? There's not the link between HHS and the NFL that there is in the situation described above but Congress always rattles its anti-trust saber from time to time and especially if they feel any particular professional sports league is getting out of line or not cooperating sufficiently with Congress. Hey, don't look at us that way. Sebelius has done nothing to dissuade us from any baseless suspicions.


Anyway, to Twitter we went to vent our dissatisfaction:

http://t.co/ucea8ksPrj Hey, @NFL @NBA don't be stoolies for a politician. #ObamaCare

— Dean R. Riehm (@deanriehm) June 24, 2013

http://t.co/ucea8ksPrj Hey, @NFL, one of the reasons I watch football is to escape this crap. Don't ruin my Sundays. #politics #ObamaCare

— Dean R. Riehm (@deanriehm) June 24, 2013

Though it is our beloved NFL, this situation has rankled us to the degree we're not above some cheap shots. Sue us.

http://t.co/ucea8ksPrj Entity that is being sued for essentially medical malpractice set to pimp #Obamacare. Fitting.

— Dean R. Riehm (@deanriehm) June 24, 2013

http://t.co/ucea8ksPrj Employer whose former employees' life expectancy is far below national average set to push #ObamaCare.

— Dean R. Riehm (@deanriehm) June 24, 2013

Anyway, and again, we expect nothing more than some cheerily bland 30 second spots but our reviling of ObamaCare and then to have it infringe on sacred turf might just have us turning the air blue on Sundays in just a few short months.


Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.

A bake sale would appear to be so much more dignified.

.

... if not more ethical and/or legal.

It's been well-documented in these pages just how poorly the Affordable Healthcare Act (aka ObamaCare) roll-out is coming along as the ranks of those who wrote and/or voted for the law have been playing CYA of late with respect to, in their words, the coming "trainwreck".


Now, count the Secretary of Health and Human Services Secretary, Kathleen Sebelius (pictured), as one of those going into panic mode because she feels a hugely controversial and high-profile piece of legislation that became the law of the land over 3 years ago is not being properly educated to the public. In fact, things are so bad that she is being reduced to going hat in hand to solicit donations from not only tax-preparers but the health insurance lobby itself in order to jump start a broader public awareness campaign for Obamacare.


Quick side note: About 2-1/2 years ago we wrote of Sebelius fretting over the lack of public awareness with respect to the law. 2-1/2 years later and they really haven't done a damn thing to improve the situation. 2-1/2 years later and they're still thrashing around in the shallow end of the pool. Heckuva job, Kathy.



From the New York Times:

WASHINGTON — Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of health and human services, has solicited sizable donations from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and H&R Block, the tax preparation service, as part of a multimillion-dollar campaign to ensure the success of President Obama’s health care law, administration officials said Sunday, even as a leading Senate Republican raised questions about the legality of her efforts.

The foundation is expected to contribute as much as $10 million, while H&R Block is expected to make a smaller donation of about $500,000, the officials said.

The senior Republican on the Senate health committee, Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, said the fund-raising “may be illegal.” He likened it to efforts by the Reagan administration to raise money for rebels fighting the leftist government of Nicaragua in the 1980s, after Congress had restricted the use of federal money. Aides to Mr. Alexander said Sunday that he would ask the Government Accountability Office, an investigative arm of Congress, to examine the propriety of the Obama administration’s fund-raising efforts.

Repeat the following slowly: Funds are being "solicited" from tax preparer services for a law that will be enforced by the federal tax agency, the IRS. For those of you in Placentia, California, that would spell "conflict of interest".

And that's a nice touch by the Senator from Tennessee: always invoke a scandal from the other side's bête noir for a proper display of bipartisan skepticism.




Back to the article:

The Department of Health and Human Services said that Ms. Sebelius’s actions to supplement money appropriated by Congress were proper and would continue, despite criticism from Republicans. After first denying that administration officials had engaged in fund-raising, the department confirmed Friday that Ms. Sebelius had made calls soliciting support from the health care industry, including insurance and pharmaceutical executives.

Jason Young, a spokesman for Ms. Sebelius, said she had suggested that health care executives and others support the work of Enroll America, a private nonprofit group that shares the president’s goal of securing coverage for people without insurance. Several people who received solicitations said that current and former administration officials had suggested seven-figure donations.

An insurance executive said that some insurers had been asked for $1 million donations, and that “bigger companies have been asked for a lot more.”

Again, let's ease ourselves into the way back machine and touch on the relationship enjoyed between Sebelius and the health insurance industry. As soon as the ink was dry from the President's signature, health insurance companies faced with covering more people and more people with more mandated coverage provisions, warned that insurance premiums would necessarily rise significantly because of this. This did not set well with Sebelius as she engaged in some not-so-subtle bullying of her own.


From September of 2010:

President Barack Obama's top health official on Thursday warned the insurance industry that the administration won't tolerate blaming premium hikes on the new health overhaul law.

"There will be zero tolerance for this type of misinformation and unjustified rate increases," Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said in a letter to the insurance lobby.

"Simply stated, we will not stand idly by as insurers blame their premium hikes and increased profits on the requirement that they provide consumers with basic protections," Sebelius said. She warned that bad actors may be excluded from new health insurance markets that will open in 2014 under the law. They'd lose out on a big pool of customers, as many as 30 million people nationwide.

(italics, ours)


We suppose we can't blame her for being mildly chapped as the Health lobby itself was also in those backrooms writing up the legislation. Imagine the sense of betrayal amidst the cozy corporatist arrangement enjoyed by Big Health and the federal government.


She later backed off that threat but the damage had been done as the message was made entirely clear: Mighty fine health insurance company you got there. It'd be a shame...


So, considering this highly, err... passive-aggressive relationship between the two entities since the passage of ObamaCare we now have this:

While Ms. Sebelius asked for support from health care executives, she did not make “a direct fund-raising appeal” to entities regulated by the government, Mr. Young said. In any event, he said, under a decades-old federal law, the secretary can encourage support for private nonprofit entities promoting public health.

Terrific: on one hand we have a high-ranking administration official threatening the livelihood of private businesses for speaking frankly and on the other we have that same person looking for financial support from said private businesses. We'd be impolite to call this a shakedown but does this administration have any idea how horrible the optics on this look? Any idea whatsoever? We'd also call this relationship adversarial but since they're in bed together, can we just call it a bad marriage? A bad marriage made permanent by a horrible law?


If those folks who claim they live in the reality-based community want the rest of us to put our tin foil hats away, they're going to have to do a better job than this. Within the same calendar week that the IRS has admitted to bureaucratic harassing of conservative groups, we have the federal government soliciting donations from tax-prep agencies and private entities to help fund a public-awareness campaign for their miserable law.


And what if those "offers" are refused? Do you want to tell the person who once threatened your business livelihood you aren't going to be her patsie? Do you want to tell the entity that regulates your business that you do not wish to voluntarily fund its folly?


For those of you who question the inherent dangers of a corporatist style of governance favored by this administration, here it is writ large and with feeling.

.

Obama's America: when constitutional republics just won't do...

... it's mandate mania, baby!

Alternate headline: U.S. Public School System: making the case for home-schooling on a daily basis


Have a moral objection to providing certain healthcare services to your employees? Tough luck, champ. Hand over the pill. Think that turkey sandwich is part of a healthy home-packed lunch for your cheap labor. Think again - and will that be cash or charge for the chicken nuggets?



More bad behavior from the excrable Department of Health and Human Services:

A North Carolina elementary school forced a preschool student to eat cafeteria chicken nuggets for lunch on Jan. 30 after officials reportedly determined that her homemade meal wasn’t up to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s standards for healthfulness, according to a report from the Carolina Journal.

The newspaper reported that the four-year-old girl brought a turkey and cheese sandwich, a banana, potato chips and apple juice in her packed lunch from home. That meal didn’t meet with approval from the government agent who was on site inspecting kids’ lunches that day.

The Department of Health and Human Services’ Division of Child Development and Early Education requires that all lunches served in pre-kindergarten programs must meet USDA guidelines. Meals, the guidelines say, must include one serving each of meat, milk and grain and two servings of fruit or vegetables. Those guidelines apply to home-packed lunches as well as cafeteria meals.

The Carolina Journal reported that the girl and her mother wish to remain anonymous to avoid public scrutiny, but she did write to her state representative to complain about it.

(ed. note: At this poinit, we're thinking it's the lunch Nazi government inspector who probably desires anonymity more, perhaps.)

“I don’t feel that I should pay for a cafeteria lunch when I provide lunch for her from home,” the mother wrote in a complaint to her state representative, Republican G.L. Pridgen of Robeson County.

“What got me so mad is, number one, don’t tell my kid I’m not packing her lunch box properly,” the girl’s mother told a reporter. “I pack her lunchbox according to what she eats. It always consists of a fruit. It never consists of a vegetable. She eats vegetables at home because I have to watch her because she doesn’t really care for vegetables.”

Personal supervision of the kid's diet because the parent knows she won't eat veggies on her own sounds like the very model of responsible parenting which, we're sure, puzzles the hell out of Sebelius' thugs.


At the end of the day, for the statist-left, all this talk of choice and freedom of choice is so much bunk. Coersion, whether it's forcing employers to violate their conscience or ordering kids to eat crappy cafeteria food or sweeping physical assault under the carpet because it clutters the narrative, really is the order of the day.


.

When being pro-choice really isn't about choice (UPDATED)

.

(please scroll down for update)




(This article was originally posted on Saturday. It has been re-posted as we felt it important enough not be relegated to the relative unread back pages of the slower-trafficked weekends.)





But first this, from Cardinal-Designate, Timothy Dolan:

“Never before has the federal government forced individuals and organizations to go out into the marketplace and buy a product that violates their conscience. This shouldn’t happen in a land where free exercise of religion ranks first in the Bill of Rights.”

This is in reference to the Obama administration's (via the Department of Health and Human Services) gracious decision to allow Catholic organizations that provide health care until August of 2013 to start covering contraceptives.

How exactly is mandating more coverage going to bend the cost curve downward? But more importantly, what about freedom of choice and your individual right of religious and moral conscience?


Here's B-Daddy on the matter:

Even beyond religious conscience, this limits everyone's choice. What if I want a plan that costs a lot less? Cutting back on mandated services like contraception that have no co-pay could reduce the cost of insurance. Why isn't that a consumer choice? The assault on freedom from the health care law is so vast, that it sometimes helps to just think about one assault at a time.

Those who argue otherwise just hate me as an individual and hate the whole concept of consumer choice. They are called leftists or statists and they have decided to regulate everyone lives, individual choice and conscience be damned.

B-Daddy's exactly right. Those who support ObamaCare but were the ones back in the 80s and 90s running around in their "Keep your laws off my body" t-shirts are bald-faced, lying-ass hypocrites.

ObamaCare isn't about bending the cost curve downward. ObamaCare isn't about providing better health care for more Americans. Everything you've heard about this excrable law from its supportes is bunk. ObamaCare is about control- nothing more and nothing less. It's about them getting you to sing their tune and dance their jig by legislative and regulatory fiat whether you like it or not.


It simply gives lie to the whole notion of being "pro-choice". What a sick, sick joke.



(UPDATE #1): KT was kind enough to link to us and we will return the favor as he also provided some trenchant commentary on the subject at hand:

Like I said above, there's no financial reason for it. There's no access reason for it, either. It's not like contraception isn't available down to the point where you can buy it in vending machines in the bathrooms at bars. It's not that there's insufficient education about the topic - they no longer read Charles Dickens, but our kids know all about condoms and the pill.

So what is it?

We don't want to give it away so go to the link to find out but suffice to say the statist-Left's fascination with it we find both troubling and dangerous. It was as if the 20th century never happened.

Ready, fire, aim

So it begins...

An advisory panel of experts on Thursday recommended that the Obama administration emphasize affordability over breadth of coverage when it comes to implementing a key insurance provision of the 2010 health-care law.

Obama officials charged with stipulating what “essential benefits” many health plans will have to cover should make it a priority to keep premiums reasonable, even if that means allowing plans to be less comprehensive, counseled the committee of the National Academy of Science’s Institute of Medicine (IOM).

Isn't that whole panel of experts making recommendations thing and stipulating details of legislation thing sound like something that is done before you pass a law.

“The question is what is the fairest, most transparent way to get a reasonable set of benefits and still keep it affordable for both the user and for the taxpayers,” said committee member Marjorie Ginsburg. “We don’t want to say that one is more important than the other. . . . But the limiting issue obviously is affordability.”

And would not the consumer be best equipped to make that decision instead of panel of experts, a congressman, the Director of Health and Human Services or the government at large?

The findings highlight the difficult balancing act the administration faces in carrying out one of the the health-care law’s most sweeping, yet ambiguous, mandates. The statute sets out 10 general categories — ranging from hospitalization to prescription drugs — that all new insurance plans for individuals and small businesses must offer starting in 2014. It also states that the scope of the essential benefits package should be equal to that of a “typical employer plan.”

And that's just the rub now isn't it? Obamacare's cake-and-eat-it-too approach attempts to rein in the cost of healthcare via sweeping, yet ambiguous, mandates. How do you square that circle?

But Congress did not specify whether this referred to the more generous plans sponsored by large employers or the more minimalist versions bought by many small businesses. And it gave Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius ultimate authority to decide both how much more detailed to make the package and what to include in it.

If she adds little to the legal requirement, the market could end up split between cheap, bare-bones plans of use only to the healthy, and exorbitantly priced full coverage plans financially out of reach of many sick people who need them most.

If she adds too many requirements, premiums for all plans could soar — with consequences for not just individuals but the success of the law as a whole. That’s because many healthy people could decide to pay a penalty instead of buying pricey insurance, skewing the risk pool toward the sick and causing premiums to spiral higher.

Is it becoming clear by now why it is that businesses are completely freaked out by this monstrosity? It's regulation by whim and worse... regulation by the whim of a single person. Call us crazy but this doesn't souund like the recipe for good governance.

The committee proposed that the law be interpreted to require that the scope of benefits be equivalent to a typical small-employer plan. HHS officials would then determine what the national average premium of small-employer plans would be in 2014. They would then ensure that the benefits they require will not end up costing more than the premium target they set.

Weren't those mini-med plans provided by small businesses to their employees in order to keep employees' health care costs down precisely what Obamacare intended to eliminate?

The panel, commissioned by Sebelius to propose a process for setting the benefits package, said it approached its task like a trip to the grocery store.

“One option is to . . . fill up your cart with the groceries you want, and then find out what it costs,” the committee wrote in a report released Thursday. “The other option is to walk into the store with a firm idea of what you can spend and to fill the cart carefully, with only enough food to fit within your budget. The committee . . . recommends the latter approach.”

Again, that sounds like a prudent way to approach legislation before
that legislation is passed but now that horse has left the barn and we're stuck with sweeping yet ambiguous mandates, the final shape of which will be determined by a single person and which we are told by Obamacare's most ardent supporters will result in bending the cost of healthcare downwards. The evidence provided by the linked article leaves us highly skeptical that will come anywhere near being accomplished.

Free Captain Elliott's Party Boats (cont.).... (UPDATED)

(please scroll to bottom of post for update)



Despite the door for allowing anymore applicants allegedly slamming shut back in December, waivermania keeps rolling and shows no sign of slowing down!

The Obama administration approved 204 new waivers to Democrats' healthcare reform law over the past month, bringing the total to 1,372.

The waivers are temporary and only apply to one provision of the law, which requires health plans to offer at least $750,000 worth of annual medical benefits before leaving patients to fend for themselves. Still, Republicans have assailed the waivers as a sign of both favoritism and of major problems with the law.


"The fact that over 1,000 waivers have been granted is a tacit admission that the healthcare law is fundamentally flawed," Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) said in March. Upton is one of three House committee chairmen who has used new oversight powers to investigate the annual limit waivers.

At 1,372 waivers to businesses and unions who fought so hard for ObamaCare, that is nearly twice the amount since the Dept. of Health and Human Services bothered to update their waiver list back at the end of January. 646 more waivers in less than 4 months? Not too shabby. Can you blame them, though? Who's got time for paperwork, messy admin. stuff and transparency when you are scrambling to save employers from ObamaCare.

And speaking of transparency and despite the administration's claim to the contrary, no one, still, really knows what is the qualifying criteria for being granted a waiver. Picking winners and losers, baby?




(UPDATE #1): The hits, they just keep on coming: look who else is trying to get out from under the burdensome requirements of Obamacare.

The new health care law is supposed to fix the problem by guaranteeing access to affordable coverage for all. But many nursing homes and home care agencies, alarmed at the cost of providing health insurance to hundreds of thousands of health care workers, have started a lobbying effort seeking some kind of exemption or special treatment.

Mark Parkinson, president of the American Health Care Association, the largest trade group for nursing homes, says the problem is that reimbursement rates for Medicaid and Medicare, set by government agencies, do not pay them enough to offer their employees medical coverage. “We do not have much ability to increase prices because we are so dependent on Medicaid and Medicare” for revenue, he said.

Mr. Parkinson acknowledged that when nursing homes do offer health insurance to employees, the benefits are often limited. The coverage “is probably not up to what will be required” by the federal law, he said.

The problem is compounded by the fact that the current deplorable condition of individual state finances has forced cuts to Medicaid in many states.

Suffice to say, intense lobbying efforts on behalf of nursing homes and home care agencies have begun to either exempt them from ObamaCare altogether or, at least, grant them tax credits for the penalties they would pay for not providing coverage to their employees because they simply cannot afford to do so under ObamaCare fiat.

Nancy Pelosi was right: now that we have passed the bill, we really are finding out what is in it and more importantly how it is impacting this nation's employers and employees.

Free Captain Elliott's Party Boats Pt.....?

... we're beginning to lose track.

Just when you thought the grand charade had come to a merciful conclusion, waivermania continues:

The number of temporary healthcare reform waivers granted by the Obama administration to organizations climbed to more than 1,000, according to new numbers disclosed by the Department of Health and Human Services.

HHS posted 126 new waivers on Friday, bringing the total to 1,040 organizations that have been granted a one-year exemption from a new coverage requirement included in the healthcare reform law enacted almost a year ago. Waivers have become a hot-button issue for Republicans, eager to expose any vulnerabilities in the reform law.

We were led to believe at the last reporting period back in January that the deadline for applying for the coverage limit exemption was December 1st (at which time HHS reported 500 new business and union entity exemptions, bringing the total to 729) so right now we don't know if these additional exemptions represent the backlog of applicants or if HHS decided to extend the deadline because that many more people needed the O-Care exemption.

Indeed, HHS hasn't even bothered to update thier own list to reflect the 300+ that have been granted waivers since the last reporting period and now totalling about 2.6 million people.

Most requests for waivers have been accepted, but dozens have been denied because they "did not demonstrate that compliance with the minimum annual limits requirements would significantly increase premiums or decrease access to benefits," an HHS spokeswoman told The Hill in January.

Dozens!



That's the employees of 300 more outfits forced to slog through life without the joys and benefits of ObamaCare as denied them by the person of Kathleen Sebelius, the Secretary of Health and Human Services.

Free Captain Elliott's Party Boats: the Epilogue

The mad dash for the exits has concluded as Kathleen Sebelius, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, has granted waivers for the annual limits to be spent on individual's health care plans by their employers for 729 business and union entities representing over 2.1 million people.

(Perhaps, not coincidentally, of those 2.1 million people, 40% are union workers while according to Department of Labor statistics, union workers make up only 7% of the country's labor force)*

Of course, with the random and arbitrary nature of ObamaCare, there may be a waiver period extended for more companies to apply for this waiver, but for all intents and purposes, the 729 are spared for one calendar year starting January 1st whereby they will have the opportunity to apply for the waiver again.

So what will be required of the 729 in return for granting of this waiver? Atop the list of the 729 is some text spelling out what it is the 729 will have to do in return for being granted this waiver.

The money paragraphs are as follows:

Mini-med plans have lower limits than allowed under the Affordable Care Act. While mini-med plans do not provide security in the event of serious illness or accident, they are unfortunately the only option that some employers offer. In order to protect coverage for these workers, the Affordable Care Act allows these plans to apply for temporary waivers from rules restricting the size of annual limits to some group health plans and health insurance issuers.

Waivers only last for one year and are only available if the plan certifies that a waiver is necessary to prevent either a large increase in premiums or a significant decrease in access to coverage. In addition, enrollees must be informed that their plan does not meet the requirements of the Affordable Care Act. No other provision of the Affordable Care Act is affected by these waivers: they only apply to the annual limit policy.

When the President said that if you liked your health care plan, you could keep it, we don't think he intended that some opaque, slap-dash waiver process would be the vehicle for doing so.

In fact, reading closely the two paragraphs above, reveals more than just a little irony and hypocrisy.

ObamaCare is requiring the employers to inform the employees that because the law was cobbled together in such shabby and politically-expedient fashion, they will be saddled with, for at least one more year, a substandard health care plan as defined by ObamaCare.

That's right... the benevolence of the overseers at the Department of Health and Human Services has seen fit to stick it to the employees holding unfit mini-med plans for up to another 3 years.

We're sure those union folks who campaigned for Obama and/or hit the streets in support of this landmark health care legislation will be very pleased to hear about this latest development.

For a bill that absolutely, positively had to get passed as soon as possible such was the health care crisis in this country, denying people the full benefits of that bill seems awfully cruel and very much disingenous.

Exit question: How many people will die between now and 2014 because of ObamaCare?

"Please save us from your consumer protections"

The CATO Institute has a nice little round-up of the market-distorting effects of ObamaCare in the 5-minute podcast below and which many of the concepts hit on have been discussion points at this blog as well.

The 2nd half of the video zeroes in on developments with respect to child-only insurance and how the insurance companies were going to handle pre-existing conditions that we were heretofore unaware.

(if embed no worky, please go here)




We were not aware of this letter sent from Sebelius to health insurers offering a waiver of price controls for children with pre-existing conditions so that the health insurers could charge these particular children more. Note the podcast claims that they weren't even sure if Sebelius could do this under the law but that she did it anyway.

We did a search and the following is what we came up with from this past October. As we read the news story a recurring theme kept coming back to us: no one knows what the hell is going on.

The Obama administration, aiming to encourage health insurance companies to offer child-only policies, said Wednesday that they could charge higher premiums for coverage of children with serious medical problems, if state law allowed it.

Earlier this year, major insurers, faced with an unprofitable business, stopped issuing new child-only policies. They said that the Obama administration’s interpretation of the new health care law would allow families to buy such coverage at the last minute, when children became ill and were headed to the hospital.

In September, the administration said that insurers could establish open-enrollment periods — for example, one month a year — during which they would accept all children.

Now, on Wednesday, the administration, answering a question raised by many insurers, said they could charge higher premiums to sick children outside the open-enrollment period, if state laws allowed such underwriting, as many do.

Insurers “can adjust their rates based on health status until 2014, to the extent state law allows,” said Jay Angoff, director of the Office of Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight at the Department of Health and Human Services.

The difficulty in preserving access to child-only insurance policies is the latest example of unintended consequences of the new law, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The problem may be solved in 2014. If Democrats can beat back Republican efforts to dismantle the law, most Americans will be required to carry health insurance, starting in 2014, and insurers will be required to accept all applicants, regardless of pre-existing conditions.

The new policy statement, issued Wednesday by Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of health and human services, came with a fresh blast of criticism of the insurance industry.

“Unfortunately,” Ms. Sebelius said, “some insurers have decided to stop writing new business in the child-only insurance market, reneging on a previous commitment made in a March letter to ‘make pre-existing condition exclusions a thing of the past.’ ”

The White House has been tussling with insurers for months, trying to get them to provide coverage for children with cancer, autism, heart defects and other conditions.

In a letter Wednesday to the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, Ms. Sebelius said the decision of some insurers to stop issuing child-only policies was “extremely disappointing.”

But Ms. Sebelius acknowledged, “Nothing in the Affordable Care Act, or any other existing federal law, allows us to require insurance companies to offer a particular type of policy at this time.”

Insurance industry lobbyists say Ms. Sebelius mischaracterized their commitment. They denied that they had promised to continue offering child-only policies.

In a series of questions and answers intended to clarify its reading of the law, the administration said Wednesday that insurers had two options. They can enroll all children year-round, or decline to enroll all children outside the open-enrollment period.

... and on it goes.

Again, what sort of warm and fuzzy are you getting that anyone has a firm handle on precisely how this law is going to be implemented? Neither do we because at this point it's all being negotiated. The government is not governing, it's haggling. In between rounds of granting waivers, that thug Sebelius will saber-rattle, threaten and cajole before offering up another round of waivers, relaxations, open enrollment periods and out clauses. Sorry, this isn't our idea of a constitutional republic rather one more of the banana variety.

As KT reminded us, when the government can at once force an economic activity on you while simultaneously granting exceptions and waivers, the resultant arbitrariness and uncertainty is an invitation to disaster.

A little bit of Chicago-style politics in Connecticut?

After originally approving insurance premium rate hikes for as high as 47% for Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans, the state of Connecticut Insurance Department has has reversed course and rejected premium hikes of 20% for individual health plans.

In the 22-page decision, Franklin recommends that Acting Insurance Commissioner Barbara C. Spear deny the increases. The department did an actuarial analysis with revised assumptions and concluded that a zero-percent increase would be both "reasonable and actuarially sound." Spear signed the decision Friday, officially denying the rate request.

(italics, ours)



It should be noted that previous Insurance Commissioner, Thomas Sullivan, who had approved the rate hikes originally back in September has since resigned to take another job ahead of outgoing governor Jodi Rell, and who told Attorney General, Richard Blumenthal, who had complained about the rate hikes to take his complaints to Congress.

So, we go from rate hikes ranging from 20-47% that were approved without change by the state's Insurance Department to no rate hikes at all? Those must've been some very significant "revised assumptions".


Let's go to the White House blog and see what Nancy-Ann DeParle, the director of the White House Office of Health Reform had to say about all this and see if it sheds any light into what is going on in Connecticut.

On Friday, consumers in Connecticut got some good news when the state insurance commissioner rejected Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield’s plan to raise insurance premiums by 20 percent. The premium increase would have raised rates for 48,000 consumers. After a thorough look at the facts, Connecticut officials determined that the rate hike was “excessive” and that no rate increases would be necessary. You can read media coverage of the Connecticut decision here.

The work in Connecticut shows the power of premium review – a process used by states to evaluate and approve proposed health insurance premium increases. Today, some states have stronger premium review processes than others, so the Affordable Care Act included $250 million in grants to states that will help them strengthen their premium review efforts and protect consumers. We’ve already seen premium review hold down rate hikes in California, Massachusetts, Maine and now, Connecticut and we expect to hear more good news from other states in the months ahead.

You know, if we didn't know any better, we'd have sworn that DeParle was talking about some sort of quid pro quo arrangement. Was that $250 million to ensure state insurance commissions made sure there were no rate increases? This is ObamaCare we are talking about, after all.

Supporting state efforts to crack down on premium hikes is just one of the steps the Affordable Care Act takes to help control health care costs for families nationwide. In addition to setting up exchanges -- new competitive health insurance marketplaces where Americans can shop for affordable coverage options – the law:

•Requires insurance companies to publicly justify any unreasonable premium increases beginning in 2011.
•Requires insurance companies to spend at least 80 percent of premium dollars on health care instead of overhead, salaries or administrative expenses, in 2011. If they don’t, they will be required to provide a rebate to consumers.

And this is precisely why companies like Jack in the Box and McDonald's applied for and were granted waivers for the health plans of their low-wage employees. Overhead costs as a percentage of what is spent on these high-turnover employees are naturally going to be higher and what this points to is the folly of the one-size-fits-all approach taken by ObamaCare.

•Insurance companies who unreasonably raise rates between now and 2014 may be denied the opportunity to participate in the new exchanges.

Uhh, according to what just happened in Connecticut, the rates weren't raised precisely because the Insurance Department deemed them to be unreasonable so we have no idea what that statement meant. And the whole concept of "unreasonable" now seems to be a moving target, at least, in Connecticut.

Oh, that's right. This is just thinly-veiled threat language directed at the insurance companies that they better not make too many waves by even requesting "unreasonable" rate hikes. We'll let that thug, Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services explain it in plain language that leaves nothing to the imagination:

"There will be zero tolerance for this type of misinformation and unjustified rate increases," Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said in a letter to the insurance lobby.

"Simply stated, we will not stand idly by as insurers blame their premium hikes and increased profits on the requirement that they provide consumers with basic protections," Sebelius said. She warned that bad actors may be excluded from new health insurance markets that will open in 2014 under the law. They'd lose out on a big pool of customers, as many as 30 million people nationwide.

So, to be clear: Not even will health care providers be forbidden from seeking "unreasonable" rate hikes, they will not even be permitted to voice their opinions on the matter.


Some greasin', some threatin'... it all kind of makes sense.

Owning it

Health and Human Services Secretary, Kathleen Sebelius, on portions of the health care bill that suck: Don't blame me...

Dozens of politicians got elected on Nov. 2 by calling the health care overhaul laws passed in March a "government takeover," but its implementer-in-chief characterized the laws as a public-private partnership with the business community in a speech Monday.

Speaking to the National Business Coalition on Health's annual meeting, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said most of the key concepts in the unpopular law originated in private business' attempts to cut health care costs and improve worker health. And she asked for continued help.

"We know that the business community is among the best innovators when it comes to prevention and wellness, and we want to give you the support you need to build on those efforts and share those best practices," she said.

(italics, ours)

In a horribly lame attempt to shift blame, did she more or less just admit right there that it was lobbyists that wrote large portions of the bill?

And then immediately after throwing them under the bus for doing such a lousy job, she actually solicits more help from these same people. Unreal.

Yep, we're in the very best of hands.


P.S. Related: Obama's pick to head up Medicare and Medicaid, Dr. Donald Berwick and his love affair with the collapsing-under-its-own-weight British healthcare system will be up on the Hill tomorrow for hearings

The Secretary of Health and Human Services can lead those with pre-existing conditions to water...

... she just can't (dammit!) make them drink.

We were sold ObamaCare on the premise that it would a) bend the cost curve downward and b) it would guarantee coverage for those without insurance, particularly those with pre-existing conditions.

With respect to b), how's that been working out so far?

To judge by President Obama’s rhetoric, the insurance industry’s victims have been wandering the country like Okies in “The Grapes of Wrath.” Thus ObamaCare gave the Health and Human Services Department the power to design and sell its own insurance policies. The $5 billion program started in July and runs through 2014, when ObamaCare’s broader regulations kick in.

Mr. Obama declared at the time that “uninsured Americans who’ve been locked out of the insurance market because of a pre-existing condition will now be able to enroll in a new national insurance pool where they’ll finally be able to purchase quality, affordable health care—some for the very first time in their lives.”

So far that statement accurately describes a single person in North Dakota. Literally, one person has signed up out of 647,000 state residents. Four people have enrolled in West Virginia. Things are better in Minnesota, where Mr. Obama has rescued 15 out of 5.2 million, and also in Indiana—63 people there. HHS did best among the 24.7 million Texans. Thanks to ObamaCare, 393 of them are now insured.
States had the option of designing their own pre-existing condition insurance with federal dollars in lieu of the HHS plan, and 27 chose to do so. But they haven’t had much more success. Combined federal-state enrollment is merely 8,011 nationwide as of November 1, according to HHS.

This isn’t what HHS promised in July, when it estimated it would be insuring 375,000 people by now, and as many as 400,000 more every year. HHS even warned that it would bill private carriers for any claims if HHS decided that they had cancelled coverage to dump costs on the government. That outcome would certainly be in keeping with Mr. Obama’s caricature of rampant discrimination against the sick.

(italics, ours)

By the numbers, that is a success rate of 2.13%, surely a smashing success by anyone's estimation.

So, we have a situation where ObamaCare's attempts to manipulate the health care sector have actually caused health care costs to rise at a faster rate than that which they were already rising (our running post "Nancy's Nuances: a journey of discovery" which helped chronicle such developments has disappeared into a Blogger worm hole but a few recent examples can be found here and here) and now the other half of the sales job looks to be failing miserably as well as the greed and rapaciousness of the health care providers appears to be a myth or, shall we, a smear job perpetrated by Team O.

The two pillars for justifying ObamaCare are falling apart in spectacular fashion a mere 8 months after its passage.

Video clip of the day

We love it when it's a respected and devoted (to you!) public official like Kathleen Sebelius kicking off this PSA of sorts.





heh

About that cost curve Pt. II

Recall back in September, the premium hikes sought by health insurers in Connecticut and the open threats made by Health and Human Services chief Kathleen Sebelius directed at those same insurers for having the gall to pass along the cost for the extra benefits mandated by ObamaCare.

These rate increases, some up to 22%, were approved without change by state regulators.

Well, now it appears things are a lot worse than originally thought as premium rate hikes for individual plans have been requested and also approved without change by Connecticut state regulators.

The state's largest insurer has been approved to raise health premium rates by 41 percent to 47 percent for some of its policies sold to individual buyers, in the largest price hikes yet seen in Connecticut since the adoption of national health care reform.

For all of its individual market plans, Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield has received approval to raise rates by at least 19 percent -- including a range of 30 percent to 44 percent for the brand of plans in the individual market that was most popular in 2009, Century Preferred.

The reason for the increases is the new federal health reform mandates, according to Anthem and the state Department of Insurance, which is defending its approval against charges by Attorney General Richard Blumenthal. Those reforms took effect Sept. 23.

Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, by letter, has asked the insurance Commissioner Thomas Sullivan to please reconsider approval of these rate hikes. Here's Sullivan's reply:

"There is not one person in the state of Connecticut who will see an increase in their current premiums based on what the department approved for Anthem and Aetna," Sullivan said last week in response to Blumenthal's letter. "The rates that were filed and approved reflect the current cost to deliver care and the impact of more comprehensive benefit designs required under the federal healthcare reform law. If the attorney general wants to complain to someone, he should be complaining to Congress.

(italics, ours)

That's some pretty nice smack, there.

We honestly can't believe that Team O or anybody else for that matter would express surprise for these premium increases. If you are going to mandate extra benefits, that cost has to be taken out of hide somewhere and in a free market system, that usually means the customer.

And this goes even more so for the low cost/low benefit individual plans favored by small businesses, students and the self-employed. The reason these types of plans are so popular with the aforementioned is precisely because they aren't loaded up with crap they neither want nor need. ObamaCare is effectively destroying the individual health plan market.

The President told us he was pursuing ObamaCare to bend downward the cost curve but because neither he nor his people have one clue as to how the free market operates, he has given us a piece of legislation that is doing the exact opposite of what he intended.

In this case at least, the President meant what he said

Last year, not too long after President Obama took office, he held a town hall meeting down in Florida and was asked questions regarding jobs, college tuition and health care by a rather breathless young chap, Julio Osegueda, a college student and McDonald's employee.







Remember when the President said that if you liked your current healthcare plan, you could keep it? Well, in the case of Mr. Osegueda who, at the time did not have health insurance, the President in a very perverse way via ObamaCare may fulfill that pledge.

McDonald's denies it McDonald's Senior VP Steve Russell, who is the head of human resources, calls reports that the company will drop its coverage "completely false." Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has also denied The Wall Street Journal's report, calling it "flat out wrong."

"I am sorry that they were not more accurate in their reporting," Sebelius said.

--

McDonald's has threatened to terminate health benefits for almost 30,000 hourly workers if the government doesn't give the corporation a pass on a provision of this year's health care legislation, the Wall Street Journal reports.

The restaurant chain's insurer has refused to meet a 2011 requirement to spend 80 to 85 percent of its revenue from premiums on actual medical care, a McDonald's official told the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services last week. That high of a percentage, McDonald's says, according to the WSJ, doesn't make sense given the high cost of dealing with frequent worker turnover. The requirement was designed to curb executive salaries and other expenses not directly related to health care.

In a memo quoted by the WSJ, McDonald's said it would be "economically prohibitive" for their insurance provider to continue offering plans, in which workers currently can pay $13.99 a week ($727.48 annually) for $2,000 of annual coverage, $24.30 a week ($1,263.60 annually) for $5,000 of annual coverage or $32.30 a week ($1,679.60 annually) for $10,000 of annual coverage, according to the WSJ.

"We're not going to walk away from health-care insurance completely, but we're going to have to look for alternatives if we can't get the resolution we're seeking from Health and Human Services," McDonald's spokeswoman Danya Proud told Bloomberg.

(italicized is an update to the original news story)

The original story makes absolute sense. Why should McDonald's insurers comply with those ObamaCare proportion mandates when they are covering so many low/minimum wage workers that turnover on a regular basis? You think that there might be a tad bit more spent per employee on admin/overhead for those employees as opposed to higher wage earners who stay with the company for a longer period of time? This isn't rocket science except for those in the regime who think those admin. costs can magically be absorbed by McDonald's. In that case, it isn't rocket science for the regime either, rather voodoo.

And the fact that the update involves that thug Kathleen Sebelius indicates that either McDonald's is going to deny it in public for the time being and then just drop the coverage later on or there was some arm-twisting going on by the regime to comply with the mandates and retain the coverage.

We're going with the former.

Some life advice for Ms. Sebelius

Connecticut insurers are taking the Pelosi challenge... and now we will all be paying for it.


Recall a couple weeks back and Kathleen Sebelius's completely unveiled threat to freeze-out those health insurance providers whom she felt were gaming the system by requesting unreasonable rate hikes in anticipation of full implementation of ObamaCare.

"There will be zero tolerance for this type of misinformation and unjustified rate increases," Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said in a letter to the insurance lobby.

"Simply stated, we will not stand idly by as insurers blame their premium hikes and increased profits on the requirement that they provide consumers with basic protections," Sebelius said. She warned that bad actors may be excluded from new health insurance markets that will open in 2014 under the law. They'd lose out on a big pool of customers, as many as 30 million people nationwide.

These comments were made specific to health insurance providers in Connecticut such as Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield who were requesting rate hikes of 20% and more.

Well, lo and behold, Connecticut insurers were granted those rate hikes in full by the state regulators last week.

The state's largest health insurer was granted rate hikes Friday that will be well over 20 percent for some plans, drawing sharp criticism from the attorney general.

Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield in Connecticut requested a wide range of premium increases, which will take effect Oct. 1, to cover the costs of new benefits required by federal health reform. Higher prices mostly affect new members shopping for a health plan on the individual market rather than people who have group plans through an employer or some other organization.

The Connecticut Department of Insurance approved Anthem's request without changes, including a boost of as much as 22.9 percent just to comply with one provision: eliminating annual spending limits per customer. But it's unclear how much more customers will pay because of the variety of plans and the complexity of other factors, such as a person's age

(italics, ours)

That last sentence is key because it represents regulatory uncertainty which the market, any market, hates and which causes businesses to hedge their bets by raising prices. Look for more of the same with pending regulations imposed by the regime across the economic spectrum (And wags wonder why businesses are hoarding record amounts of cash).

Again, the smartest kids in the class that is Team O thought they were being too cute by a half by front-loading popular provisions while totally neglecting the reality that perhaps the reason why each of those provisions are so popular is because they are of some tangible market value which translates into a cost to the health insurance providers that will simply get passed along to their customer.

Follow the link above which does a good job of breaking down just what rate hikes the providers were requesting for each individual provision.

At first, Sebelius's remarks looked simply thuggish. Now that the very people who pore over the books of the providers requesting these rate increases have deemed them 100% justified, her comments also look completely ignorant as well.

Thuggish and stupid is no way to go through life, Kathleen.


Exit question: How much more politicized will become these state insurance regulator and commissioner posts now that they are central to justifying rate hikes caused by this legislative abortion?

Kathleen Sebelius would like you to mind your 1st amendment Ps and Qs

Get to meet your minders:

President Barack Obama's top health official on Thursday warned the insurance industry that the administration won't tolerate blaming premium hikes on the new health overhaul law.

"There will be zero tolerance for this type of misinformation and unjustified rate increases," Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said in a letter to the insurance lobby.

"Simply stated, we will not stand idly by as insurers blame their premium hikes and increased profits on the requirement that they provide consumers with basic protections," Sebelius said. She warned that bad actors may be excluded from new health insurance markets that will open in 2014 under the law. They'd lose out on a big pool of customers, as many as 30 million people nationwide.

Un-freaking real. Heckuva choice back in '08, America.

Anyone now opposed to our use of the term regime or thugs when talking about this crew?

"Health insurance premiums are increasing because of soaring prices for medical services, the impact of younger and healthier people dropping their insurance during the weak economy, and additional benefits required under the new law," said Karen Ignagni, president of the insurers' trade group. "It's a basic law of economics that additional benefits incur additional costs."

Sebelius asked Ignagni to help stop "misinformation and scare tactics."

Although the law's big expansion of coverage under the law won't take place until 2014, several new benefits go into effect starting later this month. Lifetime dollar caps on coverage are abolished, and plans must allow parents to keep their children on the policy up to age 26. Many plans will also have to guarantee coverage for children regardless of a medical condition, and provide preventive care with no cost-sharing for the patient.

Precisely what is it about a raft of mandatory new requirments like the totally non-comprehensive list in the paragraph above does Sebelius think will bring down the cost of healthcare?

We suppose, though, that Sebelius merely "asked" Ignagni rather than employing largely unveiled threats is a victory for free speech and democracy as a whole.

How completely freaked-out do you think the regime is regarding their prospects in November and the unruly nature of the electorate with respect to ObamaCare that their true authoriatarian ways are manifested as done so by Sebelius?

From our little perch here at BwD we look forward to continuing to be a thorn in the side of the regime and giving a voice to the ungovernable.