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When the people fear the government, there is tyranny; When the government fears the people, there is liberty.  ~ Thomas Jefferson

 

Entries Tagged as 'Reform'

Most Americans worry about ability to pay mortgage or rent, poll finds

October 29th, 2010 · Deception, Democrats, Economy, Federal Spending, Housing Industry, Reform, Selling Out the US, Tax Dollars, Unemployment

By Ariana Eunjung Cha and Jon Cohen Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, October 28, 2010; 12:52 AM

A majority of Americans now say they are worried about making their mortgage or rent payments, underscoring the extent of economic anxiety in the country heading into midterm elections.

A new Washington Post poll shows that concerns about housing payments have spiked since 2008 despite some improvements in the overall economy. In all, 53 percent said they are “very concerned” or “somewhat concerned” about having the money to make their monthly payment. Worries are the most intense among those with lower incomes and among African Americans.

The poll results highlight the political challenge facing the Obama administration: Despite committing hundreds of billions of dollars to bail out troubled financial firms, create jobs and keep distressed borrowers in their homes, it has not been able to make many people feel better about their personal situations or even relieve fears about the cost of a need as basic as shelter.

The recent foreclosure mess provides another example of this gap between the policy decisions in Washington and the sentiment of ordinary Americans. The poll reveals that just over half of the country thinks the administration should impose a national moratorium on foreclosures to sort out whether banks are improperly seizing the homes of struggling borrowers. But the White House rejected that idea, saying it would gravely wound the fragile housing market.

White House spokeswoman Amy Brundage said the administration has deployed every possible resource at its disposal to “pull our economy back from the brink.”

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Big Insurance, Big Medicine: ObamaCare is already driving a wave of health-care consolidation—and higher costs.

October 26th, 2010 · Deception, Democrats, Federal Spending, Government Control, Healthcare, Selling Out the US, Terrorism from Within

ObamaCare’s once and future harms have been well chronicled, but the major effects so far are less obvious and arguably more important: A wave of consolidation is washing over the health markets, and the result is going to be higher costs.

The turn toward consolidation among insurance companies is not new, and neither is it among doctors, hospitals and other providers. Yet the health bill has accelerated these trends, as all sides race to anticipate and manage political risk and regulatory uncertainty. This dynamic is leading to much larger hospital systems and physician groups, and fewer insurers dominated by a handful of national conglomerates. ObamaCare was sold using the language of choice and competition, but it is actually reducing both.

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The first surge will come among the 1,200 insurers doing business in the U.S., given that a major goal of ObamaCare is to convert these companies into de facto public utilities. Those regulations are now being written—and once they’re up and running some medium-sized carriers will collapse under the new mandates and higher overhead. State insurance commissioners warned the Administration this month that “improper or overly strident application . . . could threaten the solvency of insurers or significantly reduce competition in some insurance markets.” They also implied that bankruptcies are likely.

With these headwinds, investors and Wall Street analysts are now predicting a lost decade for health insurance stocks. But it may be more accurate to say that there will be a lot of losers and some very big winners. Mergers and acquisitions will increase dramatically once companies get a better look at the regulation and figure out the valuation of M&A targets. Larger carriers will swallow smaller ones quietly before they fail.

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Employers looking at health insurance options

October 25th, 2010 · Corruption, Deception, Democrats, Ethics, Federal Spending, Government Control, Healthcare, Immigration, Money Lost, National Security, Non-Transparency, Obama's Scheme, Selling Out the US, Small Business, Tax Dollars, Taxes, Terrorism from Within, Treason, Treasury, Unemployment

By RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR – The Associated Press
Monday, October 25, 2010; 4:12 AM

WASHINGTON — The new health care law wasn’t supposed to undercut employer plans that have provided most people in the U.S. with coverage for generations.

But last week a leading manufacturer told workers their costs will jump partly because of the law. Also, a Democratic governor laid out a scheme for employers to get out of health care by shifting workers into taxpayer-subsidized insurance markets that open in 2014.

While it’s too early to proclaim the demise of job-based coverage, corporate number crunchers are looking at options that could lead to major changes. Gov. Phil Bredesen, D-Tenn., said the economics of dropping coverage are “about to become very attractive to many employers, both public and private.”

That’s just not going to happen, White House officials say.

“The absolute certainty about the Affordable Care Act is that for many, many employers who cover millions of people, it increases the incentives for them to offer coverage,” said Jason Furman, an economic adviser to President Barack Obama.

Yet at least one major employer has shifted a greater share of plan costs to workers, and others are weighing the pros and cons of eventually forcing employees to strike out on their own.

“I don’t think you are going to hear anybody publicly say ‘We’ve made a decision to drop insurance,’ ” said Paul Keckley, executive director of the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions. “What we are hearing in our meetings is, ‘We don’t want to be the first one to drop benefits, but we would be the fast second.’ We are hearing that a lot.” Deloitte is a major accounting and consulting firm.

“My conclusion on all of this is that it is a huge roll of the dice,” said James Klein, president of the American Benefits Council, which represents big company benefits administrators. “It could work out well and build on the employer-based system, or it could begin to dismantle the employer-based system.”

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Panel close to deciding which costs health insurers can define as beneficial to patients

October 7th, 2010 · Democrats, Government Control, Healthcare, Obama's Scheme, Selling Out the US, Tax Dollars, Taxes

By N.C. Aizenman Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 6, 2010; 8:15 PM

At first blush, the mandate in the new health-care law sounds simple: Starting next year, health insurers must use at least 80 to 85 percent of the premium dollars they collect to pay medical bills or otherwise improve their customers’ health.

But deciding which expenses insurers can include has been proving a monumental and controversial task for the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, an independent body made up of state insurance commissioners that the law tasked with advising the federal government on the issue.

Write the “medical loss ratio” rules too expansively, consumer advocates warn, and insurers will subvert the spirit of the law by passing off overhead and administrative expenses as activities that benefit patient health. Write the rules too narrowly, insurers counter, and plans may be squeezed out of business or forced to cut back initiatives that are genuinely helpful to patients.

For months, NAIC officials have been holding hours-long conference calls, poring over hundreds of public comments and revising draft upon draft of their suggested guidelines.

Now the NAIC has entered the homestretch. As soon as Oct. 14, the last committee charged with signing off on its proposed regulations could hold its final vote, likely enabling the NAIC as a whole to approve its completed recommendations to the Department of Health and Human Services at its meeting in Orlando this month.

HHS officials aren’t obliged to adopt the commissioners’ advice, but HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has indicated that, for the most part, she will follow it closely.

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Health insurance costs are up, but it could be worse like McDonalds.

October 5th, 2010 · Deception, Federal Spending, Healthcare

By Joe Davidson Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, October 4, 2010; 7:09 PM

The good news is that the price federal employees and retirees will pay for their health insurance next year won’t go up as much as premiums did this year.

The bad news is that the 7.2 percent increase for 2011 is much greater than inflation or any pay increase or cost of living adjustment they might get.

The other news is that employee organizations say premiums in the Federal Employee Health Benefits Program could be lower if the Office of Personnel Management would stop refusing a subsidy.

“FEHBP premiums could have been lowered if it were not for the Administration’s decision to decline a payment available to other public and private employers who provide drug coverage as generous as Medicare’s,” National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association President Margaret L. Baptiste said in a news release Friday. “Once again, this year, the Administration left $1 billion on the table – a subsidy available to and accessed by private employers in the marketplace, which could be used to lower worker and annuitant premium costs.”

The subsidy was created in 2003 to encourage employers – including Uncle Sam – to keep their retiree prescription drug coverage even though a new Medicare prescription program had been created.

Sounds good at first blush, but federal organizations should be careful what they ask for.

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Mexico’s mayors becoming casualties of drug wars; many towns without leaders

October 4th, 2010 · Foreign Policy, Homeland Security, Immigration, Immigration, National Security, War on Terrorism

By Anne-Marie O’Connor and William Booth Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, October 3, 2010; 4:10 AM

TANCITARO, MEXICO – Gustavo Sanchez worked hard in this Mexican farming town at one of the most dangerous jobs in the country. He was a mayor. Last weekend, Sanchez and a town councilman disappeared. Their bodies were found Monday, the skulls smashed open in the fifth killing of a mayor in six weeks.

According to supporters at city hall, Sanchez was honest and brave. Less than a year ago, the 36-year-old schoolteacher and martial-arts instructor agreed to lead this prosperous western community after the previous mayor abruptly quit, citing threats by drug traffickers, and took the entire town council with him.

Sanchez’s short political career ended on the side of a muddy, lonely road, his handsome, mustachioed face unrecognizable. His mutilated colleague Rafael Equihua lay dead beside him.

At least 11 mayors have been killed this year across Mexico, as a spooky sense of permanent siege takes hold in the many communities where rival mafias fight for control of local drug sales, marijuana and poppy fields, methamphetamine labs and billion-dollar smuggling routes to the United States.

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Healthamburglar: McDonald’s meets ObamaCare. 29,500 employees lose coverage due to reform.

October 3rd, 2010 · Deception, Democrats, Economy, Federal Spending, Government Control, Healthcare, Obama's Scheme, Selling Out the US, Tax Dollars, Taxes, Terrorism from Within

 Among President Obama’s core health-care promises was that Americans can keep their current coverage if they like it. Among the reasons that a new ObamaCare squall blows in every other day is that this claim simply is not true, as people are discovering.

The latest fracas was incited by Janet Adamy’s scoop in the Journal this week that McDonald’s Corp. may be forced to cancel its current coverage for 29,500 employees as a result of ObamaCare. McDonald’s told Health and Human Services regulators that new mandates will make its plans “economically prohibitive” and cause “a huge disruption” unless it gets a waiver.

At a Christian Science Monitor breakfast Thursday, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius claimed that the Journal story was “flat-out wrong,” adding that “I’m sorry that they were not more accurate in their reporting.” If only for the sake of her own credibility, at some point Ms. Sebelius is going to have to try to persuade people who actually know something about the industries she regulates.

In a statement, McDonald’s did say that it was “completely false” to suggest that “we plan to drop health care coverage for our employees,” and “regardless of how the regulations evolve over the next several months, McDonald’s is committed to providing competitive pay and benefits.” No doubt that’s true: McDonald’s will still need to attract workers—not to mention that corporations of its size and brand recognition are very sensitive to political intimidation.

But McDonald’s didn’t deny that the new rules will wipe out its existing plans. And that’s precisely the point. The entire philosophical and policy architecture of ObamaCare is explicitly designed to standardize health benefits and how those benefits should be paid for. Those choices and tradeoffs will be made for everyone by Ms. Sebelius’s regulators.

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Household income plunged in 2009; yet Obama says Recovery is working…For who?

September 28th, 2010 · Deception, Democrats, Federal Spending, Greed, Non-Transparency, Reform, Selling Out the US, Tax Dollars, Taxes, Terrorism from Within, Treason

By Carol Morello and William Branigin Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, September 28, 2010; 3:44 PM

Household incomes shrank for the second year in a row in 2009, as the recession eroded the share of American families earning over $100,000 and swelled the ranks of people who are poor or just barely making it, according to census statistics released Tuesday.

The income estimates from the American Community Survey, a wide array of census statistics reported annually, underscore the devastation the recession has caused to millions of American households and families.

In the Washington area, however, the outlook was far less grim. Although the census said median household incomes dropped in virtually all regional jurisdictions, the share of wealthier households remained fairly stable or even increased.

Loudoun County, for example, is seemingly the land the recession forgot. The census said almost 58 percent of the county’s households earned $100,000 or more, up from 53 percent in a continuous upswing during each of the past four years. At the same time, the number of households earning under $25,000 dropped from 7 percent to under 5 percent. The poverty rate of 3 percent has essentially remained unchanged.

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ObamaCare’s Hotel California: The state moves to impose price controls you can never leave.

September 28th, 2010 · Deception, Democrats, Economy, Federal Spending, Government Control, Healthcare, Immigration, Non-Transparency, Selling Out the US, States, Tax Dollars, Unemployment

California, the novelist Wallace Stegner famously wrote, is like the rest of America, only more so—meaning that wherever the country is headed, the Golden State is probably there already. So the state’s ObamaCare advance planning deserves closer scrutiny, given that it mirrors the regulatory and ideological model that the White House favors for everyone else.

In a matter of days, California will set a precedent for the future of the U.S. individual and small-business insurance markets via ObamaCare’s “exchanges,” where people will purchase coverage at heavily subsidized rates. The exchanges don’t start up until 2014, but the states were given wide bureaucratic latitude in how they’re run, and Sacramento is using this flexibility to convert them into a pretext for imposing de facto price controls on the insurance industry.

Jerry Seib and Gerard Baker discuss the renewed furor over health care, including the war of worlds between House Minority Leader John Boehner and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

That may be what Democrats had in mind when they passed the bill, but it’s particularly unfortunate because in principle exchanges could be a useful reform. States could sponsor transparent, neutral clearinghouses that compare costs and benefits among plans, encouraging insurers to compete to offer the products that consumers find most valuable. An exchange could operate much like travel websites such as Expedia.com, and a good one along those lines started in Utah last year.

California looked further east for inspiration—to Massachusetts, which has the only other exchange in the country. Known as the connector, it’s the centerpiece of the ObamaCare beta test that Mitt Romney passed in 2006 and is now the power center of the state’s public utility-style insurance regulation. In the daisy chain of “expertise” that is the health policy world, California’s regulations were shaped by Jon Kingsdale, a devout White House ally who used to run the Massachusetts connector and is now a consultant.

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McCain and Graham lash out at Levin over defense bill: Dems misleading again.

September 19th, 2010 · Deception, Defense, Democrats, Ethics, Federal Spending, Government Control, Immigration, Immigration, National Security, Non-Transparency, Obama's Scheme

By Foreign Policy’s Josh Rogin – Wednesday, September 15, 2010; 8:32 PM

McCain and Graham lash out at Levin over defense bill

The Senate is expected to take up the defense authorization bill next week, but top Republicans on the Senate Armed Services Committee are promising to oppose the legislation because of its language on gays in the military and the possible insertion of an amendment on immigration.

Every year, both parties agree to pass the defense bill, even while large parts of the rest of the legislative agenda go uncompleted. For that reason, it is often viewed by senators as a convenient vehicle for other legislation they want to move through Congress – whether or not it is related to the military.

Last year, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), to the chagrin of Republicans, successfully added language expanding protections from hate crimes. This year, Democrats are expected to attempt to tack on the “American Dream Act,” a bill that would provide a path to U.S. citizenship for illegal immigrant students.

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