by Tina
Uh oh…looks like Obamacare’s healthcare mess will just keep rolling along. HHS made an announcement that they had, “significantly relaxed the rules of the federal health-care law for millions of consumers whose individual insurance policies have been canceled,” saying they can “buy bare-bones plans or entirely avoid a requirement that most Americans have health coverage.”
This comes on the heels of another <i>relaxation</i> of the rules wherein insurers are now forced “to provide retroactive, discounted coverage to the many Americans who are about to lose their insurance plans ”
Huh? So now we don’t have to buy official Obamacare plans and retroactive discounted plans will be available but only if our plans were cancelled?
Does this law have any teeth left, legally speaking?
Patients with chronic conditions have been thrown into chaos along with their healthcare providers. Insurance companies are now wondering if they will need a bailout because of this edict and because the number of enrollees they were promised are just not materializing. Some of them made a “corporatist deals” with the administration and now they think they might deserve a bailout? It will serve those who made the deal right if the administration tosses them under the bus. But the insurance companies that refused to play the game will be harmed too. Ultimately, as always, it is the consumer/patient that will pay. In fact, none of us will escape damage from this massive debacle.
Happy New Year? Doubt it!
Given all of the changes the Prez has illegally made to Obumblecare, shouldn’t it be nullified by now?
In case you weren’t aware, Mr. Prez – CLOWNGRESS makes the laws – not the Executive Branch.
PS Editor’s notice: This comentary has been removed because it violated the E-R rules of responsible conduct. The actual text that prompted this action was of a nature that has been used in the past to insult a minority group. This will not be tolerated on Post Scripts.
Good luck knowing whether or not your policy is legal and binding.
The administration has waived the law for some and not others and changed the law without going through the legislative process.
We are all set up perfectly to be the victims of endless lawsuits or bound up in complex issues about our coverage, disputes over payments, and delays or rejection of treatment. It’s happening already.
You don’t care if the entire thing falls apart, if it hurts real people with real critical conditions, if it destroys businesses and doctors practices.
It is npt the law…the law has been fatally compromised!
Nobody knows for certain what is legal.
We would love to move on…unhappily we are stuck in a dog (bleep) system run by morons and idiots.
obamaCare step #1 to single payer government health care.
Step #2 grant enough wavers to bankrupt insurance companies.
Step #3 government bails out insurance companies and poof we have socialized government owned health care.
ObamaCare was designed to fail from the very beginning.
Story of the year:
By Charles Krauthammer
“The lie of the year, according to Politifact, is “If you like your health care plan, you can keep it.” But the story of the year is a nation waking up to just how radical Obamacare is — which is why it required such outright deception to get it passed in the first place.
Obamacare was sold as simply a refinement of the current system, retaining competition among independent insurers but making things more efficient, fair and generous. Free contraceptives for Sandra Fluke. Free mammograms and checkups for you and me. Free (or subsidized) insurance for some 30 million uninsured. And, mirabile dictu, not costing the government a dime.
In fact, Obamacare is a full-scale federal takeover. The keep-your-plan-if-you-like-your-plan ruse was a way of saying to the millions of Americans who had insurance and liked what they had: Don’t worry. You’ll be left unmolested. For you, everything goes on as before.
That was a fraud from the very beginning. The law was designed to throw people off their private plans and into government-run exchanges where they would be made to overpay — forced to purchase government-mandated services they don’t need — as a way to subsidize others. (That’s how you get to the ostensible free lunch.)”
Continued
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/charles-krauthammer-story-of-the-year/2013/12/19/1d862c98-68f9-11e3-ae56-22de072140a2_story.html?wprss=rss_charles-krauthammer
At this point in Obamas tenure he has started to MORPH the Executive and the Legislative Branch’s of Government into one!
believers and followers of HIS actions are not complaining one bit. Both the elected and voters who helped create this current monster-est form of Liberal socialist welfare that Obama champions, follow like lemmings over the cliff edge while continuing to live idly off the largess of a Government, they are VERY willing to accept his illegal LAW MAKING actions.
Harold the irony is that Obama is now accomplishing, a little at a time through presidential fiat, what Ted Cruz wanted in the government partial shut down stand-off…the repeal of the law.
Before leaving for his extended Hawaiian Christmas vacation the president took responsibility in his usual, half-a$$ed fashion: “Since I’m in charge, obviously we screwed it up”
And then gave people whose insurance was cancelled a “hardship exemption” from compliance with the penalty tax for noncompliance.
Then he went on to claim victory for one million sign ups in a “messy process” three days before his own deadline for sign ups in a nation of a little over 300 million people.
Obama agreed to deliver this to the American people but we cannot forget it was Nancy pelosi and Harry Reid who did the heavy lifting and they did it in the name of the Democrat Party socialists that have worked toward universal healthcare for over a century. It represents a major leg on a stool in their plan to fundamentally transform the republic in the manner and style of European socialist countries.
What that amounts to for the people is loss of freedom…freedom to choose a healthcare plan that fits their needs and pocketbook, freedom of insurers to offer plans based on what is possible and affordable rather than on what can be subsidized and artificially held up with taxes and debt. It also amounts to loss of personal power to organize ones life according to personal goals and needs.
James C. Capretta of The Weekly Standard does a very nice job of summing up the Democrat party “mess”:
Repeal and replace is sounding better all the time.
There re several alternative plans from which to choose all that is needed is the political will to get it done. We the people are the power that energizes political will.
From another source on the web:
The Truth About the Health Care Bills
– Michael Connelly, Ret. Constitutional Attorney
Well, I have done it! I have read the entire text of proposed House Bill 3200:
The Affordable Health Care Choices Act of 2009.
I studied it with particular emphasis from my area of expertise, constitutional law. I was frankly concerned that parts of the proposed law that were being discussed might be unconstitutional. What I found was far worse than what I had heard or expected.
To begin with, much of what has been said about the law and its implications is in fact true, despite what the Democrats and the media are saying. The law does provide for rationing of health care, particularly where senior citizens and other classes of citizens are involved, free health care for illegal immigrants, free abortion services, and probably forced participation in abortions by members of the medical profession.
The Bill will also eventually force private insurance companies out of business, and put everyone into a government run system. All decisions about personal health care will ultimately be made by federal bureaucrats, and most of them will not be health care professionals. Hospital admissions, payments to physicians, and allocations of necessary medical devices will be strictly controlled by the government.
However, as scary as all of that is, it just scratches the surface. In fact, I have concluded that this legislation really has no intention of providing affordable health care choices. Instead it is a convenient cover for the most massive transfer of power to the Executive Branch of government that has ever occurred, or even been contemplated. If this law or a similar one is adopted, major portions of the Constitution of the United States will effectively have been destroyed.
The first thing to go will be the masterfully crafted balance of power between the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches of the U.S. Government. The Congress will be transferring to the Obama Administration authority in a number of different areas over the lives of the American people, and the businesses they own.
The irony is that the Congress doesn’t have any authority to legislate in most of those areas to begin with! I defy anyone to read the text of the U.S. Constitution and find any authority granted to the members of Congress to regulate health care.
This legislation also provides for access, by the appointees of the Obama administration, in direct violation of the specific provisions of the 4th Amendment to the Constitution, of all of your personal healthcare information, your personal financial information, and the information of your employer, physician, and hospital. All of this is a protecting against unreasonable searches and seizures. You can also forget about the right to privacy. That will have been legislated into oblivion regardless of what the 3rd and 4th Amendments may provide.
If you decide not to have healthcare insurance, or if you have private insurance that is not deemed acceptable to the Health Choices Administrator appointed by Obama, there will be a tax imposed on you. It is called a tax instead of a fine because of the intent to avoid application of the due process clause of the 5th Amendment. However , that doesn’t work because since there is nothing in the law that allows you to contest or appeal the imposition of the tax, it is definitely depriving someone of property without the due process of law.
So, there are three of those pesky amendments that the far left hate so much, out the original ten in the Bill of Rights, that are effectively nullified by this law. It doesn’t stop there though.
The 9th Amendment that provides: The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people;
The 10th Amendment states: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are preserved to the States respectively, or to the people. Under the provisions of this piece of Congressional handiwork neither the people nor the states are going to have any rights or powers at all in many areas that once were theirs to control.
I could write many more pages about this legislation, but I think you get the idea. This is not about health care; it is about seizing power and limiting rights. Article 6 of the Constitution requires the members of both houses of Congress to “be bound by oath or affirmation to support the Constitution.” If I was a member of Congress I would not be able to vote for this legislation or anything like it, without feeling I was violating that sacred oath or affirmation. If I voted for it anyway, I would hope the American people would hold me accountable.
For those who might doubt the nature of this threat, I suggest they consult the source, the US Constitution, and Bill of Rights. There you can see exactly what we are about to have taken from us.
Michael Connelly
Retired attorney,
Constitutional Law Instructor
Carrollton , Texas
RHT, due to a back log of unread email I missed telling you congratulations on escaping California’s craziness and tyranny in favor of good ol Texas liberty! No doubt many more Californian’s will be following you, it’s a smart move at the right time. I’m truly happy for you and hope all is going well in your new home! Please feel free to let us know about the differences you discover between these two states…should be very interesting.
RH.T447 good to hear from you. Thanks for the article. It makes me wonder why someone hasn’t brought a case that the Supreme Court could get behind making the law unconstitutional. Just goes to show our system is only as good as the people who are charged with executing.
Merry Christmas!
“The law does provide for rationing of health care, …
Healthcare in this country has always been rationed. It used to be just a matter of who’s got the bucks. Now, it will be (just a little) more of a need-based accessment.
“… particularly where senior citizens and other classes of citizens are involved, …”
We all know that it’s just wrong to blow through hundreds of thousands of dollars of medical resources … when you’re gonna die anyway. What’s more, a lot of people who do this do not, in fact, have the bucks, and so everybody else’s bills get padded, and this is one factor in spiraling healthcare costs. It will have to stop.
“… free health care for illegal immigrants, ….”
Seemingly, Mr. Connelly thinks providing healthcare to illegals is a bad thing. I do not. I’m not onboard with denying any contraband three-year-old her shots. And it won’t be free. They’ll be charged, and pay what they can, and we’ll pay the rest.
“… free abortion services, …”
Again, “covered” isn’t “free”.
“… and probably forced participation in abortions by members of the medical profession.”
And this paranoid horsepucky is not worth refuting at all.
Libby I appreciate that you see yourself as incredibly compassionate and thoughtful.
I do not appreciate your utter dismissal of the facts concerning the sustainability of this entitlement addition to the entitlement basket that is already ding greatly to the nations debt. I don’t appreciate your blindness to the ways this law will destroy the healthcare industry, hospitals and doctors practices. And I don’t appreciate your brushing off that patient care will decline.
I also don’t appreciate the lies and deception used to sell the unworkable, expensive legislation to the public.
“And I don’t appreciate your brushing off that patient care will decline.”
For you, you mean?
Know why lawyers have Aetna and secretaries have Kaiser? So lawyers don’t have to sit in waiting rooms with secretaries.
Gonna fix that. Heh, heh, heh.