Category Archives: health insurance
Pope and President
The president met the pope last week. Obama came bearing a gift box of seeds from Michelle’s garden. He hoped that some of Francis’s popularity, if not infallibility, might grow on him.
The pope gave the president a copy of Evangelii Gaudium (Joy of the Gospel). The 223 page document is Francis’s first papal publication. The pope comes down hard on trickle-down economics in one part of his writing.
President’s Favorite Pope Parts
That part might be Obama’s favorite. This other part, maybe not so much (No, I haven’t read it. I got this from David Weigle in Slate):
Among the vulnerable for whom the Church wishes to care with particular love and concern are unborn children, the most defenceless and innocent among us. Nowadays efforts are made to deny them their human dignity and to do with them whatever one pleases, taking their lives and passing laws preventing anyone from standing in the way of this. Frequently, as a way of ridiculing the Church’s effort to defend their lives, attempts are made to present her position as ideological, obscurantist and conservative. Yet this defence of unborn life is closely linked to the defence of each and every other human right. It involves the conviction that a human being is always sacred and inviolable, in any situation and at every stage of development. Human beings are ends in themselves and never a means of resolving other problems. Once this conviction disappears, so do solid and lasting foundations for the defence of human rights, which would always be subject to the passing whims of the powers that be. Reason alone is sufficient to recognize the inviolable value of each single human life, but if we also look at the issue from the standpoint of faith, “every violation of the personal dignity of the human being cries out in vengeance to God and is an offence against the creator of the individual.”
Precisely because this involves the internal consistency of our message about the value of the human person, the Church cannot be expected to change her position on this question. I want to be completely honest in this regard. This is not something subject to alleged reforms or “modernizations”. It is not “progressive” to try to resolve problems by eliminating a human life. On the other hand, it is also true that we have done little to adequately accompany women in very difficult situations, where abortion appears as a quick solution to their profound anguish, especially when the life developing within them is the result of rape or a situation of extreme poverty. Who can remain unmoved before such painful situations?
ObamaCare Deadline Extension
We are shocked shocked that President Obama has extended the deadline to sign up for ObamaCare. Here’s Politico’s list of the president’s various deadline extensions.
The WSJ says the only health care mandate still intact is the one “forcing nuns to sponsor birth control”.
Deadline Extension
Obama say’s the plan is working the way it should but for some reason he can’t tell us how many have actually paid for coverage. Jim Angel at Fox News has a good idea why. The back end of the website where you check out and pay your premium still isn’t fixed. And that’s despite giving Accenture a no bid contract to finish the job.
Grandaddy Big Bucks Harry Reid has a simpler explanation for the deadline extension: You don’t know how to use the internet.
Dem Hopes Sink
With the defeat of Alex Sink in a Florida special Congressional election, some Democrats’ hopes may be sunk.
Hopes Sink
Sink was a capable moderate Democrat running in a district that supported Obama twice for president. She couldn’t be blamed for ObamaCare because she wasn’t in Congress when it passed. But rather than run away from the ACA she let it stick to her by promising to mend it, not end it. She ended up losing to David Jolly, a former lobbyist who promised to repeal the thing.
Between the Ferns
In an attempt to reach his target audience of young customers for ObamaCare, the president appeared on the Zack Galifianakis show, Between Two Ferns.
The president took some flak for being unpresidential – but so what – he’s unpresidential most of the time. Here he was funny. And Galifiankis was really funny. Plus Zack is a way better pitchman for ObamaCare than Pajama Boy. Actually, he didn’t even make a pitch for the ACA. He mocked it.
Not Between any Ferns
Well, it’s all fun and games until we come to Megan McCardle’s Bloomberg analysis of the McKinsey survey of who’s actually buying ObamaCare. It’s not the previously uninsured “young invincibles”:
If the McKinsey numbers turn out to be correct, I think we should expect that the individual mandate will simply not be enforced. Otherwise, we would be “helping” the uninsured by raising the cost of the insurance available to them, and then fining them hundreds or thousands of dollars for not buying it. I believe the technical term for this is “political suicide.”
Says Jonah Goldberg, “Obamacare, was designed from the outset to screw young people, overcharging them for products they don’t need in order to subsidize older Americans.”
IRS Shared Responsibility Payment
In America we’re innocent until proven guilty. Thanks to the fifth amendment we aren’t required to testify against ourselves. That would be the same fifth amendment IRS boss Lois Lerner invoked to avoid testifying about IRS harassment of conservative groups.
As it happens, the one area where we don’t have fifth amendment protection is when it comes to reporting our obligations to the IRS.
In order to bestow on the federal government the power to force us to buy health insurance, Chief Justice Roberts deemed the penalty for not buying insurance to be a tax. That’s because while the U.S. Constitution overlooked insurance sales, it does give Congress the power to tax.
Being a tax, we are required to prove to the IRS that we don’t owe it.
IRS
To soften the blow the IRS isn’t calling this tax the Individual Mandate to Violate of Our Constitutional Rights. They are calling it your Shared Responsibility Payment. Kind of has a ring to it – the Affordable Care Act’s Shared Responsibility Payment.
Where the hell are we?
Just for the fun of it if you want to hear Obama insist again to George Stephanopoulos that the mandate isn’t a tax Click here. (You’ll have to watch a short commercial but it’s worth it.)
