Did we forget that? Our bad

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You know how it is when you are up against Christmas Eve vote deadlines and having to deal with pesky pro-life Congressmen (in our own party, even!) and Senators who want some kick-back love while you are attempting to ram through your 22-hundred page signature legislation... some things are just going to fall through the cracks, right? Stuff happens, right?

State officials are pushing back hard against what they view as shortcomings in the healthcare reform law for fear they'll be barraged with complaints when people have trouble affording insurance.

Federal regulators are writing the rules governing key aspects of the law, including the guidelines to determine who's eligible for subsidies to buy private insurance.

Those benefits will be delivered through state-based exchanges, however, leaving state officials on the receiving end of angry phone calls if glitches in the law aren't ironed out by 2014.

One key shortcoming is found in the law's subsidies for people who don’t have access to affordable coverage through their employer. As The Hill first reported in July, the law links the subsidies to the cost of coverage for a single employee. If that coverage is found to be affordable, the individual does not qualify for subsidies in the state health exchanges.

But the determination is based on the single-employee rate regardless of whether the individual has a spouse and/or children — meaning that someone could end up disqualified from the federal assistance yet unable to afford the family coverage that an employer offers.

(emphasis, ours)


Ooops.

Minor actuarial details like factoring in how many crumb-catchers are laying about the house got left out of the pages of ObamaCare? Shocking.

"Such an outcome would undermine Maryland's goal of reducing the number of uninsured residents," Maryland Health Benefit Exchange officials wrote in comments to the Department of Health and Human Services that were due Monday.

"It could also engender significant frustration with the Exchange among affected families."

But it gets better. There are nine states that don't have individual income tax, including Florida and Texas, so it will be nigh impossible for the IRS to determine who qualifies for federal assistance. (ed. note: it is never, repeat, never a good thing when you are forced to mention the IRS in relation to your health care. But you all knew that.)

NAIC (National Association of Insurance Commissioners) consumer advocate Tim Jost this past week urged the group to take a "leadership role" in pressing states to address potential gaps in the healthcare law's consumer protections.

Self-insured plans are exempt from most of the law's regulations, Jost pointed out, and policies offered by large employers also don't have to meet certain requirements.

Jost also said small businesses are shifting toward self-insurance, so employees will be stuck without benefits Congress intended to provide.

(italics, ours)

Allow us to translate what The Hill article does not: small businesses can't afford the mandates in ObamaCare so it just make more sense for them to apply for a waiver or just drop health care coverage for their employees altogether. So, that means the President's promise that if you liked your health care plan you could keep it, came highly qualified.


Former Speaker Pelosi was right: like cordwood, the shortcomings, gaps, pratfalls and outright lies contained in ObamaCare have been stacking up once our dear leaders passed ObamaCare and we are now getting a chance to see what's actually in it.

Wait, what?

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One in a series that takes a look at the unexpected and the absurd.*




Here's the Senate Majority Leader on employment priorities in this nation in the year of our Lord 2011:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) on Wednesday said Congress needs to worry about government jobs more than private-sector jobs, and that this is why Senate Democrats are pushing a bill aimed at shoring up teachers and first-responders.

"It's very clear that private-sector jobs have been doing just fine; it's the public-sector jobs where we've lost huge numbers, and that's what this legislation is all about," Reid said on the Senate floor.

Wait, what?

Private sector jobs have been doing fine? Reid said that?





For those of you wondering why D.C. is "broken" or perhaps why it's "dysfunctional", maybe it wouldn't be so if incompetents such as Harry Reid didn't keep getting sent back there.

And what Reid was talking about was the President's jobs bill which the obstructionist Republicans who hate this country refuse to pass because they surmise, rightly so, that it's merely a half-pint repeat of the original jobs bill, Porkulus Pt. I, passed back in 2009 that worked so well...

... that, evidently, we're going to have to do again. One gets the sense that Reid believes that we're going to have to keep doing this until we get it right.




Also:

Reid reiterated his emphasis on creating government jobs by saying Democrats are looking to "put hundreds of thousands of people back to work teaching children, have more police patrolling our streets, firefighters fighting our fires, doing the rescue work that they do so well … that's our priority." He said Republicans are calling the bill a "failure" because they are "using a different benchmark for success than we are."

Teachers, police and firefighters are matters of the state and local levels. It's not incumbent upon the federal government to tend to the funding of these jobs. Never was. Porkulus Pt. I helped prop up these jobs and in many cases also helped states paper over their budget shortfalls without those same states making the necessary budget cuts and/or budget reforms so that many of those same basic need services could be retained. That states like California won't address their fiscal woes is now, apparently, a matter of federal concern.

Good luck with that.

* We thought about making this a Sarah Sez installment but what Reid says was even beyond the pale of any insanity that "Sarah" could muster.

Video clip of the day

Look on the bright side: Would you rather hear Nancy Pelosi breaking down Cal-Stanford?


Before we can get to work on the DREAM Act or the Food Safety Act, we can use this as a replacement for our usual Tuesday night viewing of CBS College Sports Network's lineup of college football highlight and analysis shows.


Step aside, Tony Barnhart, because... It's good to be the King.





Oh, quit whining. You were spared the entire 5 minute rant which you can see if you so desire in all its visual-tryptophan glory, here.


Mediaite notes that the best part may be that they are starting "morning business" around 2 P.M.



H/T: Hot Air

Sarah sez

One in a series that takes a look at some of the zany and madcap things said by Sarah Palin.

David Brody [Interviewer]: Can you think of a greatest living American?

Palin: I’m glad I had the opportunity to know Ted Kennedy. Whether you agreed with him or not, what a life he lead with his two brothers being assassinated, his other brother being killed in World War II. And Robert Byrd who just died. What a– he was in the Congress of the United States for more than 25 percent of the time that we have been a country. That’s fairly remarkable.

Unfortunately, this interview was done back in July and both Byrd, the ex-Clansmen and the drunk manslaughtering, Kennedy were still both dead. And even more unfortunately, that was not Palin responding to the question but rather the current Senate majority leader, Harry Reid.

Dead or alive, that this doddering old fool would think either one of those two people as "greatest" Americans is proof that it's time to show Harry the door.

Barometer

How bad is it when it’s poor ol’ Harry Reid that gets done what she couldn’t originally?

"Under the leadership of our chairman, Barney Frank, as I called him on the floor, a maestro, we were able to make improvements, working in a bipartisan way, making improvements in the legislation, and then make more improvements in the legislation before it came back to the floor today."

Maestro? It’s like a bad dream from which you never wake up.

"Reid.... You Miserable Bastard, You!"

Because the man, himself, confessed to the town’s main industry transitioning from mining to prostitution at the time of his birth, we’ve always tried to cut him some slack for his behavior and actions rationalizing it as being reared in less than optimal circumstances.

Well, for the first time in recent memory Harry Reid actually made a modicum of sense or at least, we’re hoping, had his heart in the right place when he asked both candidates to stay away from the Capitol while Congressional leaders are trying to hammer-out this bailout bill. In Reid’s words, having both of them there would “risk injecting presidential politics into this process or distract important talks about the future of our nation’s economy”.

Well… you know, there is something to be said for having both potential leaders of this country there with their sleeves rolled up to try to fix this thing but, yeah… we totally see Harry’s point… putting the good of the nation ahead of partisan politics. Cool.

But then he goes and blows all that short-lived goodwill by injecting politics into this process… Reid, the source says, thinks McCain's maneuver is a gimmick born from bad poll numbers and the fact that "debate prep must not be going very well."

Poor ol' Harry Reid. So close but yet (again) so very far away.