The Affordable Care Act II - Because Mr. Obama Loves You All

[Dante]

It's a day of the week ending in the letter 'y,' so you know what that means!

 

Time for another Obamacare delay...this time in hopes to keep the Senate. Only the knob-gobblingest of fools defends this abortion of a law.

WTF? If this thing is so great why all the delays? What a fuggin joke this is. Not only that but how come no one calls him on the unconstitutionality of him just unilaterally adjusting the law on his own? Just sad.

[OCinBuffalo]

American Thinker

 

[Obamacare Delay, etc.]

Who is advising the POTUS? I mean seriously. Who the F thinks another delay is going to help anybody, and be anything other than yet another political bomb that blows up the left's face?

 

There has to be polling. Or something. Something that says this makes sense? Doesn't there? If not, then these people have gone completely off the rails. Ron Fournier is going to be white hot pissed. Does the WH think that these people are going to carry thier water forever? No matter what happens?

 

This is getting out of hand. It's funny, sure. It's hilarious that we can use it to make fun of birdog, and b-large, and whoever else. But, we can't run the country this way.

 

And, we've already been here. So many times. That's what makes this mind-boggling. Who the hell cares about another delay? Who is the target demo that's going to hear this and respond? How is this going to fix the D's electoral problems? People have made up their mind about Obamacare, every poll shows this.

 

Now it's more digging, instead of putting the shovel down?

 

Has ANY Democrat here considered that now, we are talking about seriously F'ing up 2016, when all of what has been delayed until after the 2014 election, comes to pass, in a 2 year period? Do they honestly believe they can then delay things past 2016, and not instantly kill Hillary's campaign?

 

All a competent R has to do is say: "look at the Ds, trying to hide Obamacare just like they did before 2012. Are you gonna fall for that again?"

[B-Man]

Obama Administration to Invoke Constitution’s Little-Known ‘Election Year’ Clause

More from the article in the Hill, Elise Viebeck writes that:

The Obama administration is set to announce another major delay in implementing the Affordable Care Act, easing election pressure on Democrats.

As early as this week, according to two sources, the White House will announce a new directive allowing insurers to continue offering health plans that do not meet ObamaCare’s minimum coverage requirements.

Prolonging the “keep your plan” fix will avoid another wave of health policy cancellations otherwise expected this fall.

The cancellations would have created a firestorm for Democratic candidates in the last, crucial weeks before Election Day.

The White House is intent on protecting its allies in the Senate, where Democrats face a battle to keep control of the chamber.

“I don’t see how they could have a bunch of these announcements going out in September,” one consultant in the health insurance industry said. “Not when they’re trying to defend the Senate and keep their losses at a minimum in the House. This is not something to have out there right before the election.”

 

This anonymous “consultant” appears to have forgotten that this is a constitutional republic, not a benevolent dictatorship.

 

How could the Obama administration have a “bunch of these announcements going out in September”? Well, because the Obama administration’s signature law demands that these announcement go out in September — and, as we are all utterly bored of being reminded every time that someone suggests changing it by the proper channels, that law was passed through Congress, signed by the president, and upheld by the Supreme Court. If its opponents are expected to accept that Obamacare is the “law of the land” — and, too, that it can only be altered if they win an election and pass their coveted changes through the established order — shouldn’t its supporters be expected to accept that rule, too?

 

This law, remember, was a tantalizingly close affair — haggled over, subject to extraordinary political conflict, and passed by the slimmest of partisan margins. The Democratic party “won,” yes. But they won Obamacare-as-written — an overly broad and overly executive-friendly monstrosity to be sure, but not a carte blanche enabling act that affords the president the unassailable right to control the entire healthcare sector until such time as he is replaced by a Republican. Does the party know this?

 

That their decision to rush ahead anyway might eventually yield some unpleasant results for those who backed it is unfortunate for them. But it is not an excuse for them to subvert the American settlement. Indeed, there is only one thing worse for a free country than for it to have got the stage at which the executive branch is rewriting the laws with impunity, and that is for it to have got to the stage at which the executive branch is rewriting the laws with impunity while the media nonchalantly explains that it had to do that or it could have lost the next election. Thing is, there are supposed to be consequences to political decisions. That’s why we have elections: So that the people who have been entrusted with power might be judged by the electorate. It doesn’t make it better to explain that the government is willfully breaking the rules in order to limit its accountability. It makes it far, far worse.

[OCinBuffalo]

Obama Administration to Invoke Constitution’s Little-Known ‘Election Year’ Clause

That consultant is an idiot then.

 

If I'm the consultant for the other side? When my guy's Senate race really begins in September, I tell him to go out and say:

 

"Obamacare's been delayed again, that makes 12 times. They think you're stupid. They think they can keep lying to you, and that you'll let them. You know that delaying something doesn't make it go away. So why do they think this is going to fool you? We know that this law is terrible, and we know those policies are going to be cancelled next year, instead this of year. (Insert picuture of woman with cancer from state) Suzy's policy will be cancelled next year, instead of this one. How is that fair to Suzy? She's going to spend all year unsure of what Obamacare is going to do to her.

 

Bob is trying to lie to you, just like Obama lied to you in 2012, because Bob voted for Obamacare. Bob got his buddy Obama to try and save him from voting for this awful law. But, we won't be lied to again. We have too much self respect to have these people keep lying to us and walking all over us. We won't be fooled again."

 

Nothing like finishing with a The Who quote. And, the whole thing targets women. Idiot consultant doesn't seem to get that women have been lied to here. Such a crime will not go unpunished, and, by delaying again, all they are doing is reinforcing the "you were lied to" meme.

[Doc]

I'm thinking they got polling numbers and see that the Senate is in real danger of being lost. But I doubt this will make a difference because people are starting to see through the chicanery.

[Taro T]

I'm thinking they got polling numbers and see that the Senate is in real danger of being lost. But I doubt this will make a difference because people are starting to see through the chicanery.

I'll believe people will vote the D's out when it actually happens. We could have had a grown up with executive experience in the WH but people didn't want one.

[IDBillzFan]

I'll believe people will vote the D's out when it actually happens. We could have had a grown up with executive experience in the WH but people didn't want one.

 

There remains every chance the GOP will screw this up, but short of that, if you're an incumbent Dem and there's video of you doing the Obama knob-gobbling "If you like your plan..." speech, you're screwed.

 

You have the head of the Senate passing his days bashing the Koch brothers, Obama delaying ACA every chance he gets, and let's face it...when was the last time you heard from Nancy Pelosi (after her embarrassing stint on Stewart's show) or Debbie Wasserman-Schultz? Throw in horrible employment numbers, plummeting consumer confidence, Putin pissing in Obama's Cheerios with Obama trying to sound tough while seemingly standing on the set of "Wreck-It Ralph," and that scent you're detecting is called Eau De Flopsweat Panic.

 

Not that it'll change much, but we can at least lay low for the last two years of this thing and hopefully stop the blood flow. Look around. Any progressive people with whom you share social media are talking about freaking Christie.There's no one left supporting this guy but the gatormans and lybobs of the world.

 

But like I said, the GOP could easily find a way to screw this up the moment one idiot says someone is a slut.

[OCinBuffalo]

Look around. Any progressive people with whom you share social media are talking about freaking Christie.

Which, as I've said, will backfire. Do any of the people you share social media with realize how dumb they are being with this? Here's what I say to mine:

 

"You're giving him free name recognition, that very soon will be on par with Clinton's, so he won't have to spend $ on that. He'll spend all his $ attacking Hillary on Benghazi, and attacking all of you for Obamacare."

 

That's usually puts an end to it.

 

All Christie has to do is start being Christie again, in a few months, and then? Not only will everybody know him, they will like him, for the same reasons they liked him before. IF we don't remember what first made Kim Khardashian famous, who the hell is going to remember a traffic problem in 2 years? The media? The media has almost inocculated Christie from this entire incident. Again, who cares about 2 year old news?

 

When he gets to come out, and do his righteous indignation thing? The left will be peeing themselves...in shock, horror and amazement at the monster they created. I bet MSNBC would beg to have him on...just for the ratings alone. He will deny them of course, and then go on Hannity or Greta and bust their balls.

 

EDIT: Then again...the more I think about it: why should Christie be afraid of MSNBC? It's not like he can't destroy those mental midgets, and get himself a viral video or 3 out of the deal. Start with Andrea Kramer: she's a soft target. Then, on to the fatass blowhard. (Hehehe. 2 fat ass blow hards on one screen? Thank God for HD.) Then move in for the kill shot: take on the It, otherwise known as Maddow, and run her into the boards.

But like I said, the GOP could easily find a way to screw this up the moment one idiot says someone is a slut.

There's no doubt that this is problem #1.

 

In a way, I'm quite pleased with Mike Huckabee. Coming out and mangling his message like he did(he didn't say what he meant) will hopefully give pause to anyone else who feels the useless need to pontificate.

 

Ever since Huckabee, the message has been clear: Obamacare, Obamacare, and a little bit of IRS/Benghazi, just to prevent it from being dull.

Edited March 5, 2014 by OCinBuffalo

[3rdnlng]

http://www.gopusa.com/commentary/2014/03/05/the-inevitability-of-obamacare-for-illegal-aliens/?subscriber=1

You knew it was coming. I knew it was coming. When government expands entitlements, illegal aliens always end up with a piece of the pie. Obamacare promoters relented to GOP pressure to include an illegal alien ban on eligibility and vowed endlessly that no benefits would go to the "undocumented." But denial isn't just a river in Egypt. It's the Obama way.

In Oregon this week, officials confessed that nearly 4,000 illegal immigrants had been "accidentally" steered from the state's low-income Medicaid program and instead were enrolled in Obamacare in violation of the law. Oopsie. The Oregonian newspaper's Nick Budnick reported that the health bureaucrats "discovered the problem several weeks ago and are correcting it." Get in line. The beleaguered Cover Oregon health insurance exchange has been riddled with ongoing problems, errors and glitches since last October that have yet to be fixed.

Take note: This wasn't a one-time computer meltdown. Because Oregon's health insurance exchange website has been offline and its software architects under investigation for possible fraud, the Oregon Obamacare drones have been processing each and every application manually. That means nearly 4,000 illegal alien applications with "inaccurate" data somehow passed through government hands and somehow ended up getting routed through as new enrollees with Obamacare-approved full-service health care.

Read more at the link above.

[Doc]

I'll believe people will vote the D's out when it actually happens. We could have had a grown up with executive experience in the WH but people didn't want one.

Mid-terms are different than presidential elections. I see this going the way of the 2010 mid-terms. The 2016 presidential election...

[B-Man]

Media update:

 

Out: Obamacare wasn’t responsible for the canceled plans.

 

In: Our Hero has taken a decision that will keep your canceled plans legal.

 

 

 

 

Reminder: Seeking changes through legislative process = sabotage.

 

Obama not enforcing own law = totally cool

 

 

 

 

Nowhere in the announcement of this delay, of course, is any answer as to how that is remotely legal. Why? Because it is not.

 

 

 

 

I can't overstate how disturbing it is that you can count on a law being amended based on it's proximity to a federal election.

 

Is no one on the Left willing to voice concern ?

 

 

I don't know about you, but I'm totally a fan of a law that passed in 2009, but has had most of its provisions delayed until like 2016.

(sarcasm...for the poorer posters here)

 

 

 

Reminder:

If you delay THIS part of Obamacare you're just being sensible;

 

if you want to delay the other parts you're an unhinged extremist.

 

 

.

[Taro T]

Mid-terms are different than presidential elections. I see this going the way of the 2010 mid-terms. The 2016 presidential election...

They definitely are, and the incumbant's party always loses ground in year 6, but I'll hold off on cheering getting Reid out of the driver's seat and Pelosi getting pushed farther to the back of the bus until it actually happens.

[B-Man]

Administration Extends Obamacare Grandfathering for 2 More Years.

 

Where, exactly, does the legal authority to do this come from?

 

Plus, most hilarious part of all: “senior administration officials denied a political motive.”

 

 

 

 

 

Bait-and-Switch Libs : Obamacare and the politics of deception.

 

 

 

Medicare’s Private Option It shows that the market is the solution.

[DC Tom]

Administration Extends Obamacare Grandfathering for 2 More Years.

 

Where, exactly, does the legal authority to do this come from?

 

Technically, they don't have the legal authority to do that. However, HHS does have the legal authority to regulate what is and is not the minimum standard coverage for a health insurance plan.

 

Which highlights the stupidity of the move: the administration would be WELL within the law if they changed the regulations so that those 2013 plans were compliant, then sunset the regulations in 2016. Instead, they rewrite the law. Idiots.

 

Plus, most hilarious part of all: “senior administration officials denied a political motive.”

 

Idiots.

[Keukasmallies]

In a virtual town hall meeting with Spanish language media outlets yesterday, POTUS said the following:

 

"The main point that I have for everybody watching right now is, you don't punish me by not signing up for health care," Obama said. "You're punishing yourself or your family if in fact there's affordable health care to be had."

 

So even he has doubts about affordable health care availability as he said, "..if in fact there's affordable health care to be had."? Or, it's possible, he's just too bummed about the whole mess and mis-spoke? Nah, not that old silver tongued orator, that statesman of the people, that international diplomacy powerhouse.

 

As they often say in the cartoons, "What a' maroon." I've always thought they meant moron, but were being kind....

Edited March 7, 2014 by Keukasmallies

[B-Man]

JAMES TARANTO: Empty Souk: The uninsured aren’t buying what the ObamaCare marketplace is selling.

ObamaCare is now in the sixth and final month of its extended inaugural open-enrollment period. If you want to buy medical insurance through the exchange–a big if, we realize–you have until the end of the month to do it, or wait till autumn to buy a policy for next year.

 

This column has analyzed the disaster of ObamaCare in terms of three phases.

Phase 1

, the technical failure, was evident as soon as open enrollment began on Oct. 1 and many of the exchange websites proved to have been incompetently designed. Technical problems continue to emerge, including, as noted here last week, the Internal Revenue Service’s tardiness in preparing the final instructions for Form 8960, which taxpayers must file if they owe the new ObamaCare “net investment income tax.”

 

Phase 2 i

s the revelation that ObamaCare’s central promise–”if you like your plan, you can keep your plan”–was fraudulent. In an effort to appease defrauded consumers, the Obama administration has announced a series of unlegislated exceptions to the law, which the president himself attempted to explain the other day. . . .

 

The third phase

of failure is the slow revelation that the basic economic assumptions behind ObamaCare are wrong. A new survey from McKinsey & Co., conducted in February, found that only 10% of those who lacked insurance pre-ObamaCare had signed up for an exchange plan, and that of those who had signed up, just 27% were previously uninsured.

 

True, those numbers were up significantly from January’s figures, 3% and 11% respectively. Still, they’re low enough that the Washington Post sums it up: “The new health insurance marketplaces appear to be making little headway in signing up Americans who lack insurance, the Affordable Care Act’s central goal.”

 

 

It’s train wrecks all the way down.

[Keukasmallies]

 

 

Go ahead, click on it; it pretty much sums up the whole debacle.

Edited March 10, 2014 by Keukasmallies

[OCinBuffalo]

 

 

Go ahead, click on it; it pretty much sums up the whole debacle.

2500 pages....but that basically covers it.

 

Again, everthing is a zero-sum game to these people. They will always characterize an industry, a company, a business line etc. as slices of a finite pie(largey because they don't know anything about business)......

 

...as they type on their iPads, and search Google, and buy stuff on Amazon. These companies economic growth, just those 3, has accounted for 300+x the economic loss of typewriters, landlines, and God forbid the local seller of overpriced whatever.

 

Every time I read a leftist economist....I have to laugh. They know what happens when you grow GDP. EVERYBODY knows this. However, they want to pretend that GDP is a finite thing? Moronic.

 

Hence, this is precisely why the image above nails it. We "can't" have an increase in health care....supply. No. In "I contradict myself in my own sentences" land, supply can never grow. There is a fixed supply of health care, and then the government slices up that finite pie. That's called proper allocation of scarce resources.

Edited March 11, 2014 by OCinBuffalo

[IDBillzFan]

Yet another delay of the mandate, now for two years.

 

I'm sorry, but is there any part of this law left or has Obama repealed Obamacare?

[OCinBuffalo]

Yet another delay of the mandate, now for two years.

 

I'm sorry, but is there any part of this law left or has Obama repealed Obamacare?

We are going to get down to 2 things left, and you already know what they are, because these are the only 2 things they have been saying since 2009:

 

1. Pre-existing conditions

2. Stay on parent's plan until 26

 

The problem: lots of small problems, each requiring its own solution. The not-solution: trying to solve all these small problems with a massive solution, that creates more complex problems, and near-infinite dependencies, that must align at all times. Therefore, it creates more problems than it solves, large and small, and does a schit job of dealing with each original small problem, while trying to run the entire thing from DC.

 

Obamacare's ceiling is: mediocrity. We can already see what the floor looks like.