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Monday, March 31, 2014

Carney: "We"re Talking About Private Insurance, This Is Not A Government Program"

JON KARL, ABC NEWS: How many of the 6 million who have signed up, how many of those who have signed up actually paid?

CARNEY: We don’t have those figures. When we do, we’ll give them to you. As you know, and I think it’s very important, and I look forward to everybody making this clear in their reports, we’re talking about private insurance. This is not a government program.

The contract that you sign if you get health insurance through Healthcare.gov or through a state marketplace is a private contract between you and an insurance company.

RealClearPolitics Video Log

Carney: "We"re Talking About Private Insurance, This Is Not A Government Program"

Sunday, March 30, 2014

Health Insurance Rates Are Going Up Next Year, But It"s Nothing to Panic Over

The LA Times has a piece today about the next battleground for Obamacare: rate increases for 2015. The warnings are already coming thick and fast:

WellPoint Inc., parent of California’s leading health insurer in the exchange, Anthem Blue Cross, has already predicted “double-digit-plus” rate increases on Obamacare policies across much of the country.

…. Health insurers aren’t wasting any time sizing up what patients are costing them now and what that will mean for 2015 rates. Hunkered down in conference rooms, insurance actuaries are parsing prescriptions, doctor visits and hospital stays for clues about how expensive these new patients may be. By May, insurance companies must file next year’s rates with California’s state-run exchange so negotiations can begin.

I hope everyone manages to restrain their hysteria over this. Here in California, we’ve played this game annually for years. Health insurers in the individual market propose wild increases in their premiums—10 percent, 20 percent, sometimes even 30 percent—and then dial them back a bit after consumer outrage blankets the media and the Department of Insurance pushes back. But even then, we routinely end up with double-digit increases. Just for background, here are the average annual rate increases requested by a few of California’s biggest insurers over the last three years:

Anthem Blue Cross: 10.7%

Aetna: 12.1%

Blue Shield: 15.4%

HealthNet: 12.0%

And this doesn’t include changes in deductibles or out-of-pocket maximums. Add those in, and the annual proposed increases are probably in the range of 15-20 percent. Obamacare, of course, limits both those things, which means that in the future insurance companies will have to put everything into rate hikes instead of spreading the increases around to make them harder to add up.

Bottom line: if we end up seeing double-digit rate increases, it will be business as usual. Insurance companies will all blame it on Obamacare because that’s a convenient thing to do, but the truth is that we probably would have seen exactly the same thing even if Barack Obama had never been born. Let’s all keep our feet on the ground when the inevitable huge rate increase requests start flowing in.

MoJo Blogs and Articles | Mother Jones

Health Insurance Rates Are Going Up Next Year, But It"s Nothing to Panic Over

Tuesday, January 14, 2014

Insurance ad blitz to preempt Medicare cuts

A senior citizen is pictured receiving medical care. | AP Photo

More than 14 million people are enrolled in the private Medicare Advantage plans. | AP Photo

This time around, the insurance industry isn’t even waiting for the Obama administration to threaten cuts to private Medicare plans: It’s launching a peremptory strike.

America’s Health Insurance Plans will announce Tuesday an all-out advertising campaign. “Seniors are Watching” is the group’s biggest ad mobilization for Medicare Advantage, a spokesman said, in advance of an annual notice that sets the plans’ payment rates for the upcoming year.

The ads will appear in Washington-area buses next week, and the campaign will expand to include TV, print and digital promotions, as well as grass-roots mobilization of the Coalition for Medicare Choices, an advocacy group that AHIP says includes 1.5 million seniors — who are “ready to defend the Medicare Advantage coverage they like and want to keep,” according to one aggressive ad.

AHIP says the campaign is well-financed but declined to specify how much money is behind it.

The blitz follows a successful campaign last year to reverse a proposed 2.3 percent cut by CMS. Every February, the agency releases a notice of proposed pay rates for Medicare Advantage plans for the following fiscal year. The estimate is supposed to be based largely on expected health care costs, which of late have been growing at a historically slow rate.

For the past decade the calculation has assumed that a draconian cut to physician payments, called for by the sustainable growth rate formula, would take effect and reduce those expected costs — when in fact Congress has reversed the physician cuts each year. A bill moving through Congress would permanently repeal the flawed formula.

The pressure brought to bear by the industry in 2013, which included advertising in New York, Pennsylvania and Louisiana and letters from at least 160 supportive lawmakers, forced CMS to reverse its standard assumption. Instead of a 2.3 percent cut, the plans saw a 3.3 percent increase.

This year could be different, however. Because of the way the calculations are made, low-ball estimates of spending one year because of the SGR typically leads to offsetting higher payments the following year. If CMS follows the same methodology this year, the private Medicare plans would not receive that compensation.

The 2013 adjustment “just moved up when the plans got the extra bump,” said Edwin Park, a Medicare expert at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

The campaign comes as Medicare Advantage faces a host of payment reductions and fees under the Affordable Care Act, as well as cuts from the budget sequester.

“This is just setting the stage so that when the 2015 announcement comes out, AHIP will try to argue that these are new cuts,” Park said. “But there are no new cuts.”

More than 14 million people are enrolled in the private Medicare Advantage plans — about one-fourth of the total in the federal health care program for seniors. On average, the government spends more per person on Medicare Advantage than on Medicare, in part because the private plans offer additional benefits.

Certain ACA provisions were designed to bring the private Medicare payments in line with the traditional program. But the insurance industry hopes that the plans’ popularity with seniors will convince CMS to avoid proposing any cut next month, saying that plan choices and benefits could be limited as a result.

“If CMS doesn’t keep Medicare Advantage payment rates flat next year, it is going to create a huge political problem for members of Congress this fall when they have to face millions of angry seniors who just found out they are losing benefits and choices they were promised they could keep,” said an insurance industry source familiar with the campaign.

POLITICO – TOP Stories

Insurance ad blitz to preempt Medicare cuts

Monday, January 13, 2014

Get Ready for the Obamacare Bailout of Insurance Corporations

Taxpayers will pay 78 percent of any Obamacare losses

Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
January 13, 2014

If Republicans in Congress are unable to muster the forces required to repeal Obamacare – and there is a reasonable chance they will not be able to do so with the current political climate – the socialist scheme will be rescued by the American tax payer. In 2008 through 2009, the banksters had their bailout, followed by General Motors and Chrysler. This cost hundreds and hundreds of billions in devalued dollars. Nobody really knows how much the subprime implosion will ultimately cost and what the lasting effect will be on housing and mortgage markets.

Next up the insurance companies. Back in 2010 the media ignored Max Baucus climbing into bed with Liz Fowler, the former VP of Wellpoint, the largest managed health care for-profit company in the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association. Baucus and Fowler cobbled together what is today Obamacare. Baucus, the Montana senator who is chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, is considered the father of Obamacare.

“The insurance industry has spent their money well, spreading it across both parties. They got what they paid for with this neoliberal health care bill,” writes Jane Hamsher. In addition to the globalist menu of free trade and open markets – open and free, that is, for banksters and transnational corporations, at the expense of everybody else – the neoliberal health care bill moves under the heavy hand of government to monopolize and consolidate the market. Back in the day, Mussolini called this fascism.

Even Democrats understand what Obamacare really is. In December 2009, Howard Dean, the former Democratic National Committee Chairman, said the legislation poised before Congress was “a bigger bailout for the insurance industry than AIG.” Dean characterized it as “an insurance company’s dream.”

Obamacare “does nothing to restructure the health insurance industry, anymore than the Dodd-Frank Act restructures the banking industry,” writes Nomi Prins, a former director at Goldman-Sachs and analyst at Bear Stearns. “This means everything else it attempts to do, positive or negative, will be vastly overshadowed by an industry accelerating to morph itself into an acquisition machine in order to circumvent anything that even smells like a restriction, including laws that exist and ones to come.”

Jeffrey H. Anderson notes today that Obamacare is projected “by the Congressional Budget Office to funnel $ 1,071,000,000,000.00 (that’s $ 1.071 trillion) over the next decade (2014 to 2023) from American taxpayers, through Washington, to health insurance companies.” Anderson cites Robert Laszewski, a prominent consultant to health insurance companies, who explains how a massive transfer of wealth will occur through the Obamacare “private-public hybrid,” in other words classically fascist arrangement.

Laszewski says taxpayers will pay for 78 percent of any losses accrued by “managed health care” companies (as Wall Street calls them) through a “Risk Corridor Program that limits overall losses for insurers” in addition to business costs. Call it socialism for the transnationals, a carbon copy of socialism for the international banksters.

A few Republicans are attempting to blunt the risk corridor swindle. In November, Florida Senator Marco Rubio introduced legislation to abolish risk corridors built into Obamacare. “Risk corridors are generally used to mitigate an insurer’s pricing risk,” Rubio wrote for the Wall Street Journal. “Under ObamaCare, risk corridors were established for the law’s first three years as a safety-net for insurers who experience financial losses… ObamaCare’s risk corridors are designed in such an open-ended manner that the president’s action now exposes taxpayers to a bailout of the health-insurance industry if and when the law fails.”

Conservatives and tea party Republicans agree that Obamacare will fail. Unfortunately, they are blinded by their own narrow ideology. They insist Obamacare has a built-in failure mechanism that will “give rise to a coordinated lefty push for single-payer,” as Guy Benson explains. Indeed, Democrats dream of single-payer – a system in which the government, instead of private insurers, pays for all health care costs – but the system was not built as a humanitarian effort to provide healthcare for the downtrodden masses. It was built to enrich the elite and allow them political cover to consolidate even more wealth.

In addition to transferring wealth into the coffers of transnational banks and the interlocking directorship corporations they own, Obamacare is designed to crush the middle class in the United States. It runs parallel with the Federal Reserve’s operation to eradicate the middle class and usher in a new era of serfdom.

“Ben Bernanke’s ZIRP, QE1, QE2, Operation Twist, and the upcoming ‘Operation Screw the Middle Class Again’ have succeeded in expanding the net worth of millionaires, billionaires and the bonuses of Wall Street bankers, while destroying the fragile finances of little old ladies and middle class risk adverse savers,” Jim Quinn wrote in 2012.

“In 21st century America, the few people who have experienced income gains are the executives and shareholders of firms who offshored their production for US markets, Wall Street which makes bets covered by the Federal Reserve, and the military-security complex which has been enriched by the neoconservatives’ wars,” writes Paul Craig Roberts.

This article was posted: Monday, January 13, 2014 at 2:49 pm

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Infowars

Get Ready for the Obamacare Bailout of Insurance Corporations

Saturday, December 28, 2013

Falling off the unemployment insurance cliff

Graph showing share of unemployed workers receiving unemployment insurance, dropping precipitously as federal emergency benefits end at the end of 2013.

Thanks to congressional inaction, emergency unemployment insurance for people who’ve been unemployed longer than six months expired today with long-term unemployment at double the level it’s been when such benefits expired after past recessions. That’s a very big deal to 1.3 million people who will now not have the jobless benefits that are in many cases what’s standing between them and the loss of a home or other basic necessities.

The lapse in emergency unemployment insurance will hit middle-class—or formerly middle-class—people hard:

Unlike food stamps—another safety net program that Congress likes to kick around—Americans don’t qualify for unemployment insurance by being poor. In fact, you can only qualify for unemployment benefits if you had a solid work history prior to being laid off. And you can only remain eligible by continuing to search for work.
Roughly 40 percent of Americans who’ve received long-term unemployment benefits since 2008 had previously earned between $ 30,000 and $ 75,000, according to an analysis of Census data by the White House Council of Economic Advisers. Earlier research by the Congressional Budget Office has shown that more than two-thirds of recipients had annual incomes more than twice the poverty level and that such households received 70 percent of all unemployment payments.

Still, they’re not rich, so Republicans are all too willing to screw them.

Daily Kos

Falling off the unemployment insurance cliff

The lapse in emergency unemployment insurance will hit middle-class—or formerly middle-class—people hard:

Unlike food stamps—another safety net program that Congress likes to kick around—Americans don’t qualify for unemployment insurance by being poor. In fact, you can only qualify for unemployment benefits if you had a solid work history prior to being laid off. And you can only remain eligible by continuing to search for work.
Roughly 40 percent of Americans who’ve received long-term unemployment benefits since 2008 had previously earned between $ 30,000 and $ 75,000, according to an analysis of Census data by the White House Council of Economic Advisers. Earlier research by the Congressional Budget Office has shown that more than two-thirds of recipients had annual incomes more than twice the poverty level and that such households received 70 percent of all unemployment payments.

Still, they’re not rich, so Republicans are all too willing to screw them.

Daily Kos

Falling off the unemployment insurance cliff

Tuesday, December 17, 2013

ABC"s Karl To Carney: Will Anybody Insurance Because Barack Obreezy Tells Them To?

JONATHAN KARL, ABC NEWS: What do you think of some of these efforts by Obamacare supporters to reach out? I mean some of them, you know, the upside-down keg stands and what not. I mean, is anybody going to buy health care because Barack Obreezy tells them to buy it because it’s hot?

JAY CARNEY: I think having not designed advertising campaigns myself, I’m not an expert but I think that, you know, people, there are efforts underway to reach potential consumers. You know, where they live if you will and to get them to be aware of the options available to them and the wisdom of getting covered, of having health insurance and I think that is what all these efforts are about. And we certainly believe that there has been — I mean, one fact is in spite of, we know, it was being noted that the effort, the advertising efforts and the like had been pushed back because of the problems with Healthcare.gov. And one of the facts I think often went unnoticed is that even despite that we still have extraordinary levels of interest demonstrated by the number of visits to the website itself and that continues. We continue to see, I think, something like half a million over the weekend of visitors to Healthcare.gov. The demand is there and it is our responsibility to make sure that the system works so that the demand can be met.

RealClearPolitics Video Log

ABC"s Karl To Carney: Will Anybody Insurance Because Barack Obreezy Tells Them To?

Monday, December 2, 2013

Having the Backbone to Set Minimum Standards for Health Insurance

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Having the Backbone to Set Minimum Standards for Health Insurance

Friday, November 29, 2013

Insurance Insider On Obamcare Reboot: "It"s Still All Jacked Up"

With less than 24 hours to go until its self-imposed November 30 deadline, the Obama administration is scrambling to cobble together a new and improved Obamacare website in the hopes of staunching the president’s and the program’s public opinion nosedive.

However, insurance industry insiders tell CNN that whatever improvements users may see on the front end merely mask the serious data errors occurring for insurance companies on the back end.

“It’s still all jacked up,” an insurance industry insider told CNN. “If they come out and claim victory over the weekend, it’s just not true.”

The problem, say industry experts, is that the personal information of those enrolling through the healthcare.gov website is not being properly sent to the correct insurance company individuals are selecting. According to CNN, “customers who signed up for coverage are calling the companies with questions and finding they aren’t in the system.”

So will the back end customer insurance data mix up be solved in the next 24 hours?

“There’s no part of us that thinks all of this will be fixed in three days from now,” another industry official told CNN.

Failure to fix Obamacare’s behind-the-scenes insurance technology could result in those who believe they successfully signed up and received coverage arriving at doctor’s offices to find they have no insurance.

The day before Thanksgiving, the Obama administration also announced Obamacare’s small business enrollment platform, which it calls the SHOP system, will not be ready for the November 30 website relaunch and has been delayed another year until after the 2014 midterm elections.

On the eve of the healthcare.gov website relaunch, Obama officials are busy tamping down expectations.

“It is not a magical date,” Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services spokeswoman Julie Bataille said. “There will be times after November 30 when healthcare.gov does not function properly.”

Obamacare remains deeply unpopular. The latest RealClearPolitics average of polls shows 57% of Americans oppose Obamacare.

Breitbart Feed

Insurance Insider On Obamcare Reboot: "It"s Still All Jacked Up"

Thursday, November 28, 2013

CNN: Insurers Worried People Will Pay For Obamacare But Not Get Insurance

JIM ACOSTA: And while the administration works to improve the Obamacare Web site on the front end, insurers are worried about problems on the back end. Our Investigative Correspondent Chris Frates is digging into that story. So, Chris, explain that difference between how it’s working on the front end or may work on the front end but not on the back end.

CHRIS FRATES, CNN INVESTIGATIVE CORRESPONDENT: Well, right, Jim. What insurers are worried about is this idea that once the Web site’s working and people can actually go on and sign up, that their personal data won’t get transmitted correctly to insurance companies. Insurance companies need that data to enroll people. And when I talked to officials in the insurance industry, they’re telling me that that information that’s coming across, it’s inaccurate, it’s duplicative and, in some cases, they’re not getting it at all.

ACOSTA: OK, that sounds like a major problem to me. Does that mean that people who thought they were insured when they sign up actually don’t have coverage?

FRATES: Well, that’s the concern. And the insurers need this information. They need good data to make sure that people get enrolled. They need to know where people live. They need to know who their dependents are. And without this information, there’s big trouble brewing. And insurers are worried that the worst case scenario here is somebody goes to the Web site, they click sign up, they think they have insurance but the insurers never got that information so that when they go to the doctor, they’re not actually enrolled in a plan. And it’s a little bit like going to Amazon, hitting the buy button and then not having Amazon send that information to the warehouse and then you never receive your product.

ACOSTA: That’s a big — that’s a big problem to say the least. So, how do insurers know they aren’t getting the information? Have they been testing it out?

FRATES: Well, you know, I asked that same question. How do you prove a negative? How do you know you’re not getting that information? And what insurers tell me is two ways. One, they’re receiving calls from people who think they signed up and are asking, where’s my insurance card? Or I haven’t received my policy number yet and realizing that they, in fact, have no information for that person who is trying to get insurance through them. The other way is that insurance companies are testing the system. They’re sending John Doe records through the system and trying to track if they come out in the back end. And some folks aren’t receiving those records and that’s how they know that they still have a problem here.

ACOSTA: That’s incredible. Now, when you go to the White House with this, how are they responding? Are they saying — are they acknowledging it? Are they saying they’re going to fix it?

FRATES: They are acknowledging it and they’re saying that they are working on this and they want to reiterate that everybody who signs up by December 23rd and pays the premium by December 31st will have coverage. They emphasize that when you get to the end of the process, you’ll see a big orange screen that says you still need to pay for your insurance in order to be enrolled.

And once they see that orange screen, they should be contacted by an insurer that they chose to — for their coverage. If they’re not contacted by that insurer, officials are telling me the customers and the consumers need to call their insurers and get in touch with insurance companies to make sure that their information was transmitted and that they will, in fact, be able to pay and get covered by January 1st.

RealClearPolitics Video Log

CNN: Insurers Worried People Will Pay For Obamacare But Not Get Insurance

Wednesday, November 27, 2013

U.S. delays online health insurance enrollment for small businesses

A man looks over the Affordable Care Act (commonly known as Obamacare) signup page on the HealthCare.gov website in New York in this October 2, 2013 photo illustration.

Credit: Reuters/Mike Segar

Reuters: Politics

U.S. delays online health insurance enrollment for small businesses

Wednesday, November 20, 2013

Treasury nominee says bank regulations won"t work for insurance firms

Treasury nominee says bank regulations won"t work for insurance firms
http://currenteconomictrendsandnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/f856b__p-89EKCgBk8MZdE.gif

Federal Reserve Board Governor Sarah Bloom Raskin delivers a speech entitled ”Mortgage Servicing Issues” before the National Consumer Law Center conference in Boston, Massachusetts November 12, 2010.

Credit: Reuters/Brian Snyder

Reuters: Economic News

Read more about Treasury nominee says bank regulations won"t work for insurance firms and other interesting subjects concerning Economy at TheDailyNewsReport.com

Sunday, November 17, 2013

Obama’s fix for canceled insurance policies could raise costs, again

Fox News
November 17, 2013

President Obama going over his lies and disinformation prior to a speech.

President Obama’s proposal to allow insurance companies to keep offering consumers plans that would otherwise be canceled under the federal health care law could lead to an increase in premiums, according to insurance industry experts and state regulators.

America’s Health Insurance Plans, the main industry trade group, said Obama’s offer comes too late and could lead to higher premiums, since companies already have set 2014 rates based on the assumption that many people with individual coverage will shift over to the new markets created under the law.

“Changing the rules after health plans have already met the requirements of the law could destabilize the market and result in higher premiums for consumers,” Karen Ignagni, president of the industry group, said in a statement in reaction to Obama’s plan.

This article was posted: Sunday, November 17, 2013 at 11:51 am

Tags: domestic news, healthcare

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Infowars

Obama’s fix for canceled insurance policies could raise costs, again

Fox News
November 17, 2013

President Obama going over his lies and disinformation prior to a speech.

This article was posted: Sunday, November 17, 2013 at 11:51 am

Tags: domestic news, healthcare

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Infowars

Obama’s fix for canceled insurance policies could raise costs, again

Friday, November 15, 2013

Ezra Klein: WH Trying To Buy Time Until People Realize Obamacare Offers Better Insurance

LAWRENCE O’DONNELL: What you heard from today from the White House about how the president hopes to fix this situation. What’s your reading of how that will work?

EZRA KLEIN: It isn’t a fix. And part it’s not a fix because the situation actually isn’t that broken. What’s broken is another part of the law. So, what he said today, the new policy he’s got coming out, you’re basically dealing with an optional opportunity for insurers to keep putting forward plans that are not going to be profitable for them any longer. And the president really rolled over on insurance today and then fundamentally they are responding to a new set of rules that the Affordable Care Act brings out.

The idea that it’s kind of up to them now, I don’t think is actually all that accurate. I mean, some of them will take the opportunity to extended the plan for an extra year, but for a lot of them it’s not going all that profitable to do so because they simply would have to send out the cancelation notices a year later. They would have to reconstruct infrastructure around the plans in the meantime.

The problem, ultimately, is that the fundamental machinery of the law, mainly Healthcare.gov and the digital architecture it stands atop, is that it is still not working. It is that fundamental problem where people having their plans being canceled, if they can see, often times that they could get better insurance, they can’t see that now. I think fundamentally the White House is trying to buy time until those people can see that.

RealClearPolitics Video Log

Ezra Klein: WH Trying To Buy Time Until People Realize Obamacare Offers Better Insurance

Thursday, November 14, 2013

Right-Wing Media Use Provocative Insurance Ads To Slut-Shame Women

Right-wing media figures capitalized on provocative advertisements for Obamacare from non-profit groups in Colorado to attack a woman who uses free birth control as a “slut,” “whore,” and “prostitute.”

Colorado-Based Groups Release Series Of Insurance Ads Targeting Young People

Business Insider: Colorado Non-Profits Try To Promote Obamacare By “Crafting Ads They Hope Will Go Viral.” Business Insider reported on the “Got Insurance?” ad campaign from non-profits Colorado Consumer Health Initiative and Progress Now, which encourage young Americans to sign up for insurance on the new health care exchanges with references to beer, celebrities, and birth control, and explained that the ads were intended to be provocative:

The “Got Insurance?” campaign, which was launched by the Colorado Consumer Health Initiative and Progress Now, has three targets: young adults, women, and minority groups. And to encourage those groups to sign up for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act, they are creating ads they hope will go “viral” on social media.

[...]

So far, the ads are working at getting attention — even as the reaction has been mostly negative among commentators. The latest ads released Tuesday are aimed at young women, including a couple that feature actor Ryan Gosling[.]

“It’s been fun to watch how it all plays out,” Adam Fox, the director of strategic engagement for the Colorado Consumer Health Initiative. “We’ve seen both positive and negative reactions, but if people are seeing the ads and purchasing health insurance, that’s a good thing.”

It does appear to be working, at least in that sense. Traffic to the site that features the ads exploded so much on Tuesday that the site went down for a few minutes. [Business Insider, 11/12/13]

Right-Wing Media Respond To Ads By Slut-Shaming Women Who Use Free Birth Control

Rush Limbaugh: Obamacare Ads Tell Young People, “If You Like Being A Prostitute, Then Have At It.” Discussing the ads on his radio show and falsely claiming they were produced by the Obama administration instead of Colorado-based non-profits, Rush Limbaugh claimed that the ads promoted a “risky, promiscuous lifestyle”:

LIMBAUGH: What these ads are really promising: if you like your risky, promiscuous lifestyle, you can keep it. That’s what Obama’s promising. If you like being promiscuous, you can keep on being promiscuous. If you like being a prostitute, then have at it. If you like your risky, promiscuous lifestyle, you can keep it. That’s what Obama is promising in these ads. [The Rush Limbaugh Show, 11/13/13, via Media Matters]

Fox News’ Laura Ingraham: Colorado Ads For Obamacare Encourage “Promiscuity.” On her radio show, Fox News contributor Laura Ingraham claimed that the ads encouraged “promiscuity” and “unsafe sex,” while Laura Ingraham Show contributor Raymond Arroyo suggested that women who use birth control will “get cancer.” [Courtside Entertainment Group, The Laura Ingraham Show, 11/13/13]

Fox News’ Katie Pavlich: Keep “Hoeing Yourselves Out Ladies, Obamacare Depends On It!” Fox News contributor Katie Pavlich tweeted, “Keeping hoeing yourselves out ladies, Obamacare depends on it!” [sic] and included a picture of one of the ads, which featured a woman holding birth control pills:

[Twitter.com, 11/12/13]

Washington Times‘ Emily Miller Calls Women Depicted In Ads “Cheap Sluts.” Washington Times senior opinion editor Emily Miller claimed that the ads which featured women using birth control depicted “young women like cheap sluts,” and pointed out that neither the man nor woman depicted in one of the ads “is wearing a wedding band.” [The Washington Times, 11/12/13]

Fox News’ Michelle Malkin: “Floozycare!” Fox News contributor Michelle Malkin tweeted a picture of one of the ads with the caption, “FloozyCare!”

[Twitter.com, 11/12/13]

The Blaze Host Dana Loesch: “The ‘You’re A Whore’ Ad For Obamacare.” Blaze contributor and conservative radio show host Dana Loesch tweeted an image of one of the ads, writing, “So basically, hosurance,” and labeling it ”the ‘you’re a whore’ ad for Obamacare.”

[Twitter.com, 11/12/13, 11/12/13]

Media Matters for America – Research Items

Right-Wing Media Use Provocative Insurance Ads To Slut-Shame Women

Monday, November 11, 2013

White House orders health insurance companies to not criticize Obamacare

insurance Natural News – by J. D. Heyes

Just how cynical and oppressive is the administration of President Barack Obama? Just ask the CEOs of some of the nation’s health insurance companies.

According to one CNN reporter, they will tell you that the current regime is so adamant about controlling the narrative surrounding the Obamacare disaster that they have even taken to issuing threats.

During a recent segment on network star Anderson Cooper’s “360″ program, reporter Drew Griffin said that insurance companies have been told by regime operatives to “keep quiet” about the fact that millions of Americans are being informed that, contrary to Obama’s promise, they won’t be able to keep their current plans at current prices and deductible levels.

“Basically, if you speak out, if you are quoted, you’re going to get a call from the White House, pressure to be quiet. Several sources tell me and my colleague Chris Frates that insurance executives are being told to keep quiet,” said Griffin.

He added: “Sources (are) telling us they fear White House retribution.”

‘Despite all the rhetoric, you can’t keep your plan

Fear White House retribution. Can you even fathom that this is happening in the United States of America? And yet, according to these seasoned reporters, it is.

As summarized by InfoWars.com‘s Paul Joseph Watson:

The fact that the White House is threatening private companies with undisclosed forms of “retribution” if they criticize government policy is a shocking display of authoritarianism that wouldn’t look out of place in countries like Communist China or Stalinist North Korea.

As Griffin explains in his report, the Obama administration is trying to keep a lid on the dirty little secret that millions of Americans are losing their coverage as a result of Obamacare, illustrating how Obama blatantly lied when he made assurances that people could keep their existing policy.

That the president lied his behind off is becoming more and more well-known as more and more insurance companies cancel plans that no longer meet the legal requirements set forth in the “Affordable” Care Act.

The law calls for all health insurance plans to meet a certain set of minimum standards of coverage (including a requirement that single men must carry maternity coverage - a gaggle of coverage requirements that are often more than Americans want, need or can afford.

Here is the pertinent exchange between Cooper and Griffin:

COOPER: So, I mean, what specifically are, do they say they’re being told to keep quiet about?

GRIFFIN: About the fact that clarifications were made to the Affordable Care Act after the law was passed, and those clarifications are forcing the insurance industry to drop insurance plans that do not meet Obamacare requirements. There is a lot of coverage now required in these plans that was not part of many people’s private healthcare plans. Those are the people, Anderson, who are being dropped. And despite all the rhetoric, I should say, from the president, you simply cannot keep your current healthcare plan if it does not meet these requirements. Laszewski says the insurance industry is embarrassed about cancelling the plans, but in an interview last week, he told me the administration was warned about this very scenario and ignored the advice.

They knew this was coming

In addition, Griffin suggested that insurance companies were adhering to the White House gag order because, “It is the federal government that’s the biggest customer for these insurance companies.”

That is true. The Centers for Medicare and Medicare spend more than $ 1 trillion a year on health care services for beneficiaries [http://www.cnsnews.com]. That is more than defense, food stamps and transportation projects combined.

Bottom line: Not only did the president and his minions lie for years about Americans being able to keep their coverage if they liked it, they knew well in advance that the provisions of the law would not allow them to do so.

And now they don’t want insurance companies spilling the beans.

Does that sound like a free country to you?

Sources:

http://savingtherepublic.com

http://www.cnsnews.com

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/042862_White_House_health_insurance_companies_censorship.html#ixzz2kMBsUQLj

White House orders health insurance companies to not criticize Obamacare

Tuesday, November 5, 2013

What A Sexist Libertarian Thinks Of Women"s Health Insurance

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What A Sexist Libertarian Thinks Of Women"s Health Insurance

900,000 to lose health insurance in California as Obamacare disaster spreads

(NaturalNews) “If you like your plan, you can keep it.” These famous words, which were literally stated by Usurper Obama dozens of times during his Affordable Care Act hawking days, have proven to be a blatantly bald-faced lie. As reported by SFGate, some 900,000 Californians are expected to lose their existing healthcare coverage come December 31, adding to the millions of others from other states who will also reportedly lose their plans.

Peter Lee, Executive Director of “Covered California,” California’s Obamacare health insurance exchange, recently told the editorial board of the San Fransisco Chronicle that the individual market for health insurance is “changing dramatically.” Lee admitted, though sheepishly and with his own heavy dose of glossy rhetoric, that Usurper Obama essentially lied about people being able to keep their coverage and that many people will have to choose new plans.

When asked if the nearly 1 million Californians losing their coverage will have to pay more under Obamacare, Lee ‘fessed up that “some individuals will pay more.” But he was unable to delineate who would have to pay more, and how much more they would have to pay. Instead, he quickly changed the subject to Obamacare’s other alleged improvements over private insurance, which are all presumably lies just like the “if you like your plan, you can keep it” nonsense.

Usurper Obama’s rhetoric “may have been an inarticulate way of describing what the realities are,” Lee is quoted as saying, in what may be the grossest political understatement of the year.

Meanwhile, U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is taking the fall for the ongoing Obamacare nightmare. During a recent testimony before Congress, Sebelius told the listening crowd to blame her, not Obama, for all of Obamacare’s problems, which she openly admitted will only get worse. She actually referred to Obamacare’s “disruption of the existing health insurance market” as being “far broader than recent media coverage implied.”

But it gets worse. A recently unearthed report that was quietly filed in the Federal Register back in 2010 explains how the Obama administration knew all along that the illegal legislation would create massive chaos. In fact, the report explains that Obama officials were fully aware some three years ago that nearly one-third of all Americans would lose their coverage, which means that Usurper Obama has repeatedly lied under oath with his infamous statement about people keeping their existing coverage.

“It turns out that in an obscure report buried in a June 2010 edition of the Federal Register, administration officials predicted massive disruption of the private insurance market,” writes Avik Roy for Forbes. “As to the number of people facing cancellations, 51 percent of the employer-based market plus 53.5 percent of the non-group market (the middle of the administration’s range) amounts to 93 million Americans.”

So much for keeping your coverage if you like it. In reality, Obamacare will force tens of millions of Americans to either sacrifice their existing health coverage or pay far more for a rough equivalent. If ever there was a time to impeach the Usurper for his egregious offenses against the working and middle classes of America, this time is now.

“If private insurance was already unaffordable for many — which it was — then how could anyone with a brain imagine that adding layers of government bureaucracy, and subsidizing those who can’t afford insurance, could possibly do anything except cause premiums to go up drastically, and cause some insurers to drop out of providing individual coverage entirely?” asks one articulate commenter at SFGate.com.

Sources for this article include:

http://blog.sfgate.com

http://www.forbes.com

http://nymag.com

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NaturalNews.com

900,000 to lose health insurance in California as Obamacare disaster spreads

Monday, October 28, 2013

Florida Woman’s Insurance Rate Increases 10X Under Obamacare

Daniel Halper
The Weekly Standard
October 28, 2013

Americans are losing their insurance plans and being “offered” more expensive plans in return.

One Florida woman is going from paying $ 54 a month to $ 591 under Obamacare, CBS reports:

“For many, their introduction to the Affordable Care Act has been negative: A broken website, and now cancellation notices from insurance companies, followed by sticker shock over higher prices for the new plans,” says a CBS reporter. “It’s directly at odds from repeated assurances from the president.”

Obama is quoted as saying, “If you like your insurance plan, you will keep it. No one will be able to take that away from you.”

This article was posted: Monday, October 28, 2013 at 9:45 am

Tags: domestic news, economics, healthcare

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Florida Woman’s Insurance Rate Increases 10X Under Obamacare