The Internal Revenue Service official in charge of the tax-exempt organizations at the time when the unit targeted tea party groups now runs the IRS office responsible for the health care legislation. Sarah Hall Ingram served as commissioner of the office responsible for tax-exempt organizations between 2009 and 2012. But Ingram has since left that part of the IRS and is now the director of the IRS’ Affordable Care Act office, the IRS confirmed to ABC News today. Her successor, Joseph Grant, is taking the fall for misdeeds…
“For example, one big reason that our rates are skyrocketing is that it is becoming illegal for CareFirst and all other health insurance companies to deny someone with a preexisting condition. What insurance provider in their right mind would cover someone new who say, just contracted flesh eating bacteria, for example? It’s the equivalent of a home insurance provider accepting a new customer whose house was already burning down. People can now pay a small fine/tax, and not get insurance until they get a major health problem and then the insurance provider has to accept them at the same rate that everyone else is paying. This is just plain stupid; it violates the entire point of insurance and will result in people gaming the system.”
How Medicaid and Obamacare Hurt the Poor - and How to Fix Them (by ReasonTV)
The problems outlined in this video = Canada in a nutshell except 30 times worse.
Introducing 30 million new consumers into the healthcare market while the supply of doctors is decreasing is not a recipe for a functioning healthcare system. Not to mention that the law pays for itself by imposing taxes on medical equipment or prohibits physician-owned hospitals. All that’s going to happen is the system is going to become even more dysfunctional which will be what they use for justification for more government regulation (while simultaneously blaming the free market).
“Aides and lawmakers in both parties fear that staffers — especially low-paid junior aides — could be hit with thousands of dollars in new health care costs, prompting them to seek jobs elsewhere. Older, more senior staffers could also retire or jump to the private sector rather than face a big financial penalty.”
That seems to be what AP scribe Bob Lewis wants everyone to think, anyway. Here’s the lede to his story about the effects of Obamacare on part-time faculty:
RICHMOND, Va. — Many adjunct instructors at Virginia’s 23 community colleges will see their hours cut starting this summer thanks to Virginia’s response to the new federal health reform law, a change that could cripple or kill livelihoods teachers like Ann Hubbard worked hard to build.
The Affordable Care Act mandates that employers with more than 50 workers provide coverage for any full-time worker, with full-time defined as 30 hours a week or more. This has presented a problem for many large employers. It’s not just Virginia that’s slashing hours; many big companies are doing the same thing.
As USA Today reports, “Many businesses plan to bring on more part-time workers next year, trim the hours of full-time employees or curtail hiring because of the new health care law, human resource firms say.”
Granted, all of these are “responses to the new federal health reform law.” By the same token, a stampede for the exits is a response to a fire in a movie theater. But the stampede is only a proximal cause. The ultimate cause is the fire. And the ultimate cause of the hour-cutting is not Virginia’s response — it is Obamacare.
In a report that could prove a big political headache for the administration, the Society of Actuaries estimated Tuesday that insurers will have to pay out an average of 32 percent more for claims on individual health policies under the Affordable Care Act, a cost likely to be passed on to consumers.
While some areas will see declines in medical claims costs, the report predicts the majority of states will see double-digit increases in their individual health insurance markets, where people purchase coverage directly from insurers rather than get coverage from employers.
By 2017, the estimated increase would be 62 percent for California, about 80 percent in Ohio and Wisconsin, more than 20 percent for Florida and 67 percent for Maryland. Much of the reason for the higher claims costs is that sicker people are expected to join the pool, the report said.
The costs associated with this study don’t even touch the tax hikes associated with the legislation. Let’s also not forget that the Department of Health and Human Services is projected to be the federal government’s first trillion-dollar-a-year department. All of this brings back that famous Thomas Sowell quote, “It is amazing that people who think we cannot afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, and medication somehow think that we can afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, medication and a government bureaucracy to administer it.”
“Starting next year, the IRS will assume responsibility for telling Americans just what kind of health insurance they must buy in order to … well, breathe free air, or something. Taxpayers will have to submit proof of health-insurance coverage along with their W-2s, and that health insurance has to meet minimum guidelines, which are classified by the IRS as “bronze,” the lowest of four tiers identified for tax purposes. And the average cost of a bronze plan for a family of four? Such a family will have to fork out twenty thousand dollars in health insurance”
Obama, sticking it to the middle class like the corporate shill he is.
Insurance companies are big bad scary corporations so you have to pay them at least twenty thousand dollars a year in order to not be fined by the government. Makes perfect sense.
“Contrary to what its name suggests, the Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act neither protects patients nor is affordable. It only protects a new mammoth bureaucracy created to enforce the law by pilfering precious healthcare dollars.”
“If the AffordableCare Act is not socialized medicine it will of necessity lead to it, by the exercise of regulatory mechanisms and fiscal pressure,” Naffah writes in the essay.
“Medicine will no longer be a liberal profession,” he argues, “but a government job, where your physician’s desire to excel in the delivery of care will cede its place to the fulfillment of government imposed requirements, the adherence to imperious rules and the fear of retribution.”
In the letter, the doctor argues that, “If all you know about Obamacare is that it will provide insurance to 32 million Americans who don’t have it; that patients with pre-existing conditions may not be excluded from coverage; that certain screening procedures are offered without co-payments, and that children may remain on their parents’ plan until the age of twenty-six, you would have no reason to fear or oppose it.”
“Sadly, that is exactly where the Obama White Housewants you to be: in sheer ignorance of the innumerable provisions that make up the 2,700 pages of the law,” he writes.
Add Applebee’s and Jimmy John’s to the growing list of small companies and franchisers warning that Obamacare will kill profits and force local stores to raise prices or slash employees and their hours.
“Somebody has to pay,” said Apple-Metro Chairman Zane Tankel on Fox Business Network. The Applebee’s chief added that it is unclear what Obamacare taxes, costs and fines will total, but said his restaurants will do whatever is necessary to stay in business.
