Initial attempts to sign up for ObamaCare go about as well as expected

[Cry Havoc]

http://mediamatters.org/blog/2013/10...account/196509


NPR media reporter David Folkenflik writes in his forthcoming book Murdoch's World that Fox News' public relations staffers used an elaborate series of dummy accounts to fill the comments sections of critical blog posts with pro-Fox arguments.

In a chapter focusing on how Fox utilized its notoriously ruthless public relations department in the mid-to-late 00's, Folkenflik reports that Fox's PR staffers would "post pro-Fox rants" in the comments sections of "negative and even neutral" blog posts written about the network. According to Folkenflik, the staffers used various tactics to cover their tracks, including setting up wireless broadband connections that "could not be traced back" to the network.

A former staffer told Folkenflik that they had personally used "one hundred" fake accounts to plant Fox-friendly commentary:

On the blogs, the fight was particularly fierce. Fox PR staffers were expected to counter not just negative and even neutral blog postings but the anti-Fox comments beneath them. One former staffer recalled using twenty different aliases to post pro-Fox rants. Another had one hundred. Several employees had to acquire a cell phone thumb drive to provide a wireless broadband connection that could not be traced back to a Fox News or News Corp account. Another used an AOL dial-up connection, even in the age of widespread broadband access, on the rationale it would be harder to pinpoint its origins. Old laptops were distributed for these cyber operations. Even blogs with minor followings were reviewed to ensure no claim went unchecked. [Murdoch's World, pg. 67]

In the book's endnotes, Folkenflik explains that "four former Fox News employees told me of these practices." It's unclear whether these tactics are ongoing.



If the AFA is going to be such a failure, why the need for this?

Scared

Desperate

[boutons_deux]

http://mediamatters.org/blog/2013/10...account/196509

In the book's endnotes, Folkenflik explains that "four former Fox News employees told me of these practices." It's unclear whether these tactics are ongoing.

OF COURSE "these tactics are ongoing"

Roges Ailes' Dirty Tricks go WAY BACK to Tricky Nixon and right through dubya/ head's LYING USA into Iraq.

Roger Ailes' Secret Nixon-Era Blueprint for Fox News

Republican media strategist Roger Ailes launched Fox News Channel in 1996, ostensibly as a "fair and balanced" counterpoint to what he regarded as the liberal establishment media. But according to a remarkable do ent buried deep within the Richard Nixon Presidential Library, the intellectual forerunner for Fox News was a nakedly partisan 1970 plot by Ailes and other Nixon aides to cir vent the "prejudices of network news" and deliver "pro-administration" stories to heartland television viewers.

The memo—called, simply enough, "A Plan For Putting the GOP on TV News"— is included in a 318-page cache of do ents detailing Ailes' work for both the Nixon and George H.W. Bush administrations that we obtained from the Nixon and Bush presidential libraries. Through his firms REA Productions and Ailes Communications, Inc., Ailes served as paid consultant to both presidents in the 1970s and 1990s, offering detailed and shrewd advice ranging from what ties to wear to how to keep the pressure up on Saddam Hussein in the run-up to the first Gulf War.

http://gawker.com/5814150/roger-ailes-secret-nixon+era-blueprint-for-fox-news

[boutons_deux]

More legal trouble for Affordable Care Act

The Affordable Care Act proposes to make health insurance affordable to millions of low-income Americans by offering them tax credits to help cover the cost. To receive the credit, the law twice says they must buy insurance "through an exchange established by the state." But 36 states have decided against opening exchanges for now. Although the law permits the federal government to open exchanges instead, it does not say tax credits may be given to those who buy insurance through a federally run exchange. Apparently no one noticed this when the long and complicated bill worked its way through the House and Senate. Last year, however, the Internal Revenue Service tried to remedy it by putting out a regulation that redefined "exchange" to include a "federally facilitated exchange." This is "consistent with the language, purpose and structure … of the act as a whole," the Treasury Department said.

But critics of the law have seized on the glitch. They have filed four lawsuits that urge judges to rule the Obama administration must abide by the strict wording of the law, even if doing so dismantles it in nearly two-thirds of the states. And the Obama administration has no hope of repairing the glitch by legislation as long as the Republicans control the House.

"My jaw dropped when I first saw this," said Michael F. Cannon, a health policy expert at the Cato Ins ute and a fierce critic of the law. He and others credit Jonathan Adler, a Case WesternReserve University law professor, with first highlighting the glitch.

"This has the potential to sink Obamacare. It could make the current website problems seem minor by comparison," Cannon said.

Defenders of the law say the courts are being used as part of the political campaign against the law.

"This is definitely heating up. It is now the major focus of the Republican strategy for undoing the Affordable Care Act," said Simon Lazarus, a lawyer for the Cons utional Accountability Center. "The lawsuits should be seen as preposterous," he said, because they ask judges to give the law a "nonsensical" interpretation.

No judge has ruled directly on the claim that the IRS rule put forth by the administration is illegal and contradicted by the words of the law. Indiana Atty. Gen. Greg Zoeller filed one of four lawsuits this month. A federal judge in Oklahoma is considering a similar suit filed by that state's attorney general. A fourth suit is scheduled to be heard by a judge in Richmond, Va.

If any of the four judges agree with the challengers, they are likely to be asked to put the law on hold until the legal dispute is resolved. And that in turn could quickly send the issue to a U.S. appeals court and then to the Supreme Court.


"They are betting on getting five votes at the Supreme Court," Lazarus said. "I don't think it will happen."

http://touch.latimes.com/#section/17.../?related=true

In SCOTUS, we know which 4 JINO assholes would vote against ACA, Roberts again would be the swing vote.

[boutons_deux]

The Myth Of The $634 Million Obamacare Website

Glenn Beck's site, The Blaze, also debunked the number. "While the federal website to signup for Obamacare was riddled with errors and had a rocky rollout, it didn't cost $634 million to build," wrote Liz Klimas. Citing an official inside GCI,

The Blaze reported the $634 figure "includes all of the company's contracts for a Health and Human Services Department program over the last seven years."

Independently, the Sunlight Foundation estimated it cost $70 million to build the much-maligned website, not $634 million. (Officially, CGI was awarded a $93 million contract for the healthcare.gov job.)

And today in his Fact Checker column in the Washington Post, Glenn Kessler looked at the question of the healthcare.gov cost and concluded, "A conservative figure would be $70 million. A more modest figure would be $125 million to $150 million." Kessler noted that the cost for the entire health care project beyond the website would be "at least $350 million."

Despite those red flags, the bloated figure has been widely embraced as factual within the conservative press.

http://mediamatters.org/blog/2013/10...website/196585

[Winehole23]

Health plans are sending hundreds of thousands of cancellation letters to people who buy their own coverage, frustrating some consumers who want to keep what they have and forcing others to buy more costly policies.


The main reason insurers offer is that the policies fall short of what the Affordable Care Act requires starting Jan. 1. Most are ending policies sold after the law passed in March 2010. At least a few are cancelling plans sold to people with pre-existing medical conditions.


By all accounts, the new policies will offer consumers better coverage, in some cases, for comparable cost -- especially after the inclusion of federal subsidies for those who qualify. The law requires policies sold in the individual market to cover 10 “essential” benefits, such as prescription drugs, mental health treatment and maternity care. In addition, insurers cannot reject people with medical problems or charge them higher prices. The policies must also cap consumers’ annual expenses at levels lower than many plans sold before the new rules.


But the cancellation notices, which began arriving in August, have shocked many consumers in light of President Barack Obama’s promise that people could keep their plans if they liked them.


“I don’t feel like I need to change, but I have to,” said Jeff Learned, a television editor in Los Angeles, who must find a new plan for his teenage daughter, who has a health condition that has required multiple surgeries.
An estimated 14 million people purchase their own coverage because they don’t get it through their jobs. Calls to insurers in several states showed that many have sent notices.


Florida Blue, for example, is terminating about 300,000 policies, about 80 percent of its individual policies in the state. Kaiser Permanente in California has sent notices to 160,000 people – about half of its individual business in the state. Insurer Highmark in Pittsburgh is dropping about 20 percent of its individual market customers, while Independence Blue Cross, the major insurer in Philadelphia, is dropping about 45 percent.

http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org/Stor...insurance.aspx

[Winehole23]

CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield is being forced to cancel plans that currently cover 76,000 individuals in Virginia, Maryland, and Washington, D.C., due to changes made by President Obama's health care law, the company told the Washington Examiner today.

http://washingtonexaminer.com/carefi...rticle/2537782

[Winehole23]

The lead technology contractor behind the problem-ridden federal online health insurance marketplace is a beneficiary of the Texas Enterprise Fund, according to a money-in-politics watchdog group.

Texans for Public Justice reported Friday afternoon that Montreal-based CGI Group, which provides IT consulting services, received a $1.8 million state investment in 2011 through the Texas Enterprise Fund, a state business incentive fund overseen by Gov. Rick Perry.

http://www.texastribune.org/2013/10/...xchange-websi/

[TSA]

@ Mic e Obamba's Princeton classmate being a top executive at the company that built healthcare.gov

[boutons_deux]

http://washingtonexaminer.com/carefi...rticle/2537782

people in the INDIVIDUAL market getting cancelled so they go buy INDIVIDUAL policies in the exchanges.

A pain in the ass, but I don't understand an insurer's logic, if the insurer is in the exchange and will sell another policy back to the INDIVIDUAL he just terminated.

The obvious advantage is for insurers in the individual market that are not selling in the exchanges, that want to exit the individual policy market soon or later.

[boobie4three]

October 26, 2013
Toward Single-Payer: We're Almost There

Seventy-five years ago, it was lawyers, doctors, and shop owners; today, it's insurance companies. These free-enterprise for-profits are the main obstacle to ins uting a single-payer health care system in the U.S. They must be removed from the equation if Obama is to realize his dream.
While everyone focuses on the latest ObamaCare IT screw-up, the ongoing abolition of for-profit insurance companies continues.
Consider this timeline. In June 2003, Obama made his future intentions clear.

From an Illinois AFL-CIO speech:
I happen to be a proponent of a single payer universal health care program. [Applause.] I see no reason why the United States of America, the wealthiest country in the history of the world, spending 14 percent of its Gross National Product on health care cannot provide basic health insurance to everybody. And that's what Jim is talking about when he says everybody in, nobody out. A single payer health care plan, a universal health care plan. And that's what I'd like to see. But as all of you know, we may not get there immediately. Because first we have to take back the White House, we have to take back the Senate, and we have to take back the House.

Five years after his AFL-CIO declaration to bring single-payer/universal health coverage to America, Obama was asked in a Feb. 21, 2008 debate if he differed with his opponent Hillary Clinton concerning insurance mandates. Obama replied that their goals were the same but that "we have to take a different way."
Five days later, on February 26, 2008, in Cleveland, the future president clarified how insurance companies would play a key role in achieving his 2003 vision of "everybody in, nobody out." In other words, a single-payer system.


If we don't know the level of subsidies that [Hillary's plan is] going to provide, then you can have a situation, which we are seeing right now in the state of Massachusetts, where people are being fined for not having purchased health care but choose to accept the fine because they still can't afford it, even with the subsidies.
And they are then worse off. They then have no health care and are paying a fine above and beyond that. And the last point I would make is, the insurance companies actually are happy to have a mandate. The insurance companies don't mind making sure that everybody has to purchase their product. That's not something they're objecting to.

The promise of millions of new customers would be music to any free-market company's ears. Obama's strategy to partner with the middle-man in order to overhaul America's health care system materialized when he became president in 2008.
Nominating a former Kansas insurance commissioner, Kathleen Sebelius, to be secretary of health and human services was Obama's first move. Kathy Greenlee, who worked with Mrs. Sebelius at the Kansas insurance commission and is now an assistant secretary at HHS, lauded the secretary: "Kathleen knows everything there is about insurance."
Insider Sebelius would be important in fostering the kind of relationships Obama needed to quell dissent among naysayers in the health industry. In August 2009, the Huffington Post reported that the president had hosted at least 27 meetings with some of the most influential private health-industry executives in the country "in an effort to placate or at least quiet potential opponents of reform in what remains a tenuous legislative process."
Prior to HuffPo's revelation, the White House convened a health forum bringing together all the major players in the industry. At the conference, health insurers pledged their support to Obama's plan for health care reform, with one stipulation: that Obama drop the public option.
Obama's relentless pursuit of the insurance companies continued throughout the first year of his presidency. Lobbyists in turn persuaded D.C. politicians to pass the Affordable Care Act despite an outcry from a majority of Americans.
A few months after the ACA was passed in December of 2009, and two weeks before Obama signed it into law, the president hauled insurance executives from the top five companies into another meeting. It didn't take long before they realized that the honeymoon was over. He vilified the health insurance providers for caring more about profits than about folks going through hard times.
Propped up by his former insurance commissioner Kathleen Sebelius, Obama read aloud a letter from a 50-year-old cancer survivor whose premiums were set to rise 40% in 2010. "This is clearly unacceptable and unsustainable," the president told the CEOs. Sebelius proceeded to call out the executives for enjoying healthy profits in the billions of dollars while "sick people are segregated" and saddled with high premiums.

... people across America who are really frightened that they are priced out of the market, don't know what's coming next, want some information about how this is happening and what strategies we have for looking at costs into the future. Because they are terrified that they are next.

Sebelius's heartfelt ploy on behalf of a citizenry, most of whom were vehemently opposed to ObamaCare, led to her suggestion that the CEOs practice increased transparency. The secretary asked them to make information on rate requests public along with the actuarial data that supports those rate requests: what they're paying out, what they are collecting for overhead costs, and what they're collecting for administrative costs.
At the meeting, Obama proposed more regulations in an industry already heavily regulated. What Americans attending town halls had been warning their representatives about for over a year -- namely, a total government takeover of the health care system -- had begun.
Fast-forward to October 2013. Due to this month's $600-million IT blunder, the same ensnared insurance companies set to add 30 million new individuals to their books are finding out the real cost, financial and human, of joining their fortunes to Obama's radical plan to transform one sixth of the economy.
Insurance companies like Florida Blue, Kaiser Permanente, and Highmark Pittsburgh have already sent out hundreds of thousands of letters to consumers in recent weeks canceling their health care policies. The plans do not meet essential health benefits required by the health care law and are not eligible for the state- and federally run exchanges. According to policy experts, if members dropped from the rolls shop for coverage in off-exchange alternatives, they will not qualify for subsidies.
If this is the case, the road to single-payer will be littered with canceled policies and desperate consumers looking for a solution.
A few days ago, Fox News's Chris Stirewalt suggested that the bumbling IT rollout could lead to a break in the relationship between insurance carriers and Obama.

While Hill Democrats might be placated with promises of urgent action to fix the fouled Web site and sign-up system, the insurance chiefs are likely to be less understanding If ObamaCare doesn't deliver the millions of desirable customers the president has promised, widespread rate shocks even higher than those already reported could cause more insurers to dump customers and get out of the business altogether.

What Stirewalt and others don't get or don't want to believe is that putting the private insurance industry out of business was all part of the plan. The president's 2003 utopian agenda of a single-payer system cannot happen as long as they exist.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/...ost_there.html

[Bill_Brasky]

ITT: people who haven't read one word of ACA yet like to debate as if they did.

[boobie4three]

ITT: people who haven't read one word of ACA yet like to debate as if they did.

All Right!
Someone who's read all 2000 pages. Enlighten us with your knowledge please.

[Bill_Brasky]

the funny thing is I could make up whatever I want because you haven't read it. if I worded it as supportive of ACA you'd dig around and disprove it, but if it was against it bet you'd use it as a talking point.

[boobie4three]

[boobie4three]

the funny thing is I could make up whatever I want because you haven't read it. if I worded it as supportive of ACA you'd dig around and disprove it, but if it was against it bet you'd use it as a talking point.

I, along with others here, have put forth evidence that the ACA is extremely flawed. You, a supporter I take it, wishing to present evidence that it is a success, have instead presented nothing.

[boutons_deux]

ACA is flawed, absolutely no surprise in any system so complex.

what is "extremely flawed" is you stinkin asshole tea baggers and Repugs sabotaging ACA at every turn, rather than helping to make it work, and fix it. iow, you're ing over your fellow Americans.

[boobie4three]

ACA is flawed, absolutely no surprise in any system so complex.

what is "extremely flawed" is you stinkin asshole tea baggers and Repugs sabotaging ACA at every turn, rather than helping to make it work, and fix it. iow, you're ing over your fellow Americans.

Saboteurs . Hey, just because you're paranoid, it doesn't mean people still aren't out to get you.

[ElNono]

not a fan of repeal for that exact reason... I'm hoping this turd is a stepping-stone towards single-payor... going back to the previous status-quo isn't appealing nor a solution...

[boutons_deux]

GOP’s Obamacare conspiracy: Sabotage from the inside

Filibustering personnel: In particular, Senate Republicans prevented the confirmation of an Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid until May, 2013. That’s the agency that has the lead in getting things running. The general conventional wisdom, almost certainly true, is that neither an acting director or a recess appointed director has the clout within an agency of a properly nominated and confirmed presidential appointee.

Passing on state-run exchanges: With over half the states refusing to set up their own marketplaces, the job of the federal government was much larger than originally envisioned. And this was clearly not done with good intentions: ask 100 Republicans whether they believe the states or the federal government does a better job running things, and at least 99 are going to say the states.

Defunding: While the recent major defunding push failed, House Republicans successfully restricted funding for Health and Human Services and the agencies in charge of implementing the ACA, forcing Secretary Sebelius (and presumably various others at the department and various agencies) to scramble to make up for it.

Myths and lies: How many times since March 2010 has someone at the White House or a Democrat in Congress called over to HHS to ask about some crazy rumor that the press or a cons uent was asking about? How much time was dedicated to figuring out what it was all about so that it could be properly refuted?

The big lawsuit: Granted, there’s some legitimacy in challenging the Cons utional status of a law, as long as it’s not frivolous, and the partial success of the lawsuit is sufficient to show it wasn’t entirely frivolous. Still, the type of attack involved in the lawsuit made it clear that reform opponents, if they couldn’t defeat the law, would be happy to leave it dysfunctional.

Other lawsuits: There have been plenty of these, and many of them really have been frivolous. As with the one that reached the Supreme Court, all of these have had the effect of delaying implementation, given that the status of the law was under fire.

Medicaid expansion: Not only did the state-by-state fights over Medicaid expansion mean that the program could not work as intended — the ability of states to
opt out opens up a large hole for the not-quite-poor — but again, just dealing with this must have been yet another distraction.

Suppressing outreach: The administration knew that it had a major task in publicizing the rollout. What made that harder (and, presumably, distracted them from the critical task of making everything work smoothly) was a bizarre and perverse effort to undermine outreach: organizations such as the NFL were threatened if they helped to publicize the law, and an advertising campaign attempted to scare young people away from wanting to carry any health insurance.

http://www.salon.com/2013/10/26/gop_shares_blame_for_obamacare_glitches/

[boobie4three]

Only the 0bama sheeple will believe that the Republicans share any of the blame in this disaster.

[Winehole23]

The bottom line is that if the current State Medicaid expansion decisions persist, the unintended story of the ACA will turn out to be the redistribution of money from poorer States, to richer ones, an outcome imposed by the poorer states, upon themselves.

http://donaldhtaylorjr.wordpress.com...o-rich-states/

[boutons_deux]

http://donaldhtaylorjr.wordpress.com...o-rich-states/

and since the right-to-work-for-less red states refusing Medicaid expansion are nearly all otherwise net recipients of Federal aid (from blue states), this is self-inflicted justice! red state welfare cancelled by red states, to cut off their own noses.

[boutons_deux]

[Winehole23]

The disastrous rollout of HealthCare.gov may have another serious problem: A CBS News analysis shows that in many of the 15 state-based health insurance exchanges more people are enrolling in Medicaid rather than buying private health insurance. And if that trend continues, there's concern there won't be enough healthy people buying health insurance for the system to work.

As the Obamacare website struggles, the administration is emphasizing state-level success. President Obama said Monday, "There's great demand at the state level as well. Because there are a bunch of states running their own marketplaces."
But left unsaid in the president's remarks: the newly insured in some of those states are overwhelmingly low-income people signing up for Medicaid at no cost to them.


Matt Salo, executive director of the National Association of Medicaid Directors, said, "We're seeing a huge e in terms of Medicaid enrollments."
He says the numbers have surprised him and state officials.


CBS News has confirmed that in Washington, of the more than 35,000 people newly enrolled, 87 percent signed up for Medicaid. In Kentucky, out of 26,000 new enrollments, 82 percent are in Medicaid. And in New York, of 37,000 enrollments, Medicaid accounts for 64 percent. And there are similar stories across the country in nearly half of the states that run their own exchanges.


Medicaid experts say they're not sure why they're seeing the lopsided enrollment numbers, but point out it's easier to enroll in Medicaid than private insurance.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505267_1...are-structure/

[Winehole23]

and since the right-to-work-for-less red states refusing Medicaid expansion are nearly all otherwise net recipients of Federal aid (from blue states), this is self-inflicted justice! red state welfare cancelled by red states, to cut off their own noses.

cutting off one's nose to spite one's face, as we say in English. states going their own way, for better and for worse, is a feature of the original design.