Congress made a legal mistake while rushing through the health law. Now it's come back to haunt the administration.
Even if ObamaCare survives Supreme Court scrutiny next spring, its trials will be far from over. That's because the law has a major glitch that threatens its basic functioning. It's so problematic, in fact, that the Obama administration is now brazenly trying to rewrite the law without involving Congress.
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act offers "premium assistance"--tax credits and subsidies--to households purchasing coverage through new health-insurance exchanges. This assistance was designed to hide a portion of the law's cost to individuals by reducing the premium hikes that individuals will face after ObamaCare goes into effect in 2014. (If consumers face the law's full cost, support for repeal will grow.)
The law encourages states to create health-insurance exchanges, but it permits Washington to create them if states decline. So far, only 17 states have passed legislation to create an exchange.
This is where the glitch comes in: ObamaCare authorizes premium assistance in state-run exchanges (Section 1311) but not federal ones (Section 1321). In other words, states that refuse to create an exchange can block much of ObamaCare's spending and practically force Congress to reopen the law for revisions.
The Obama administration wants to avoid that legislative debacle, so this summer it proposed an IRS rule to offer premium assistance in all exchanges "whether established under section 1311 or 1321." On Nov. 17 the IRS will hold a public hearing on that proposal. According to a Treasury Department spokeswoman, the administration is "confident" that offering premium assistance where Congress has not authorized it "is consistent with the intent of the law and our ability to interpret and implement it."
Is it just a coincidence that the people that President Obama nominates to fill high-level governmental posts tend to favor government-directed health care rationing? Last year, Obama nominated Donald Berwick to head Medicare and Medicaid. Now hes nominated Henry J. Aaron to head the Social Security Advisory Board.
Aaron and Dr. William B. Schwartz, professor of medicine at Tufts University School of Medicine, recently completed a study of how these choices are made in Britain, a country which spends half as much per person as the United States on health care.
Some medical services widely available in the United States are strictly rationed in Britain, Aaron and Schwartz report in their book, The Painful Prescription. For example, British doctors order half as many X-rays per capita as their American counterparts, and use half as much film per X-ray. They do one-tenth as much coronary artery bypass surgery. British hospitals have one-sixth as many CAT scanners and less than one-fifth as many intensive care unit (ICU) beds....
Half the patients with chronic kidney failure in Britain are left untreated and die as a result .
The key to the British system, they contend, lies not in regulation but in a different attitude toward medicine, mortality and the scarcity of resources.
Unlike their American counterparts, who tend to believe in saving lives at all cost, British doctors define what is best in terms of what is available, Aaron said."
#3
Do we have a comment yet from that jerk at AARP?
Posted by: Bill Clinton ||
11/16/2011 11:07 Comments ||
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#4
we should be grateful that there is an intellectually honest fellow who is willing to tell us where Obamacare will lead us. Of course Obamacare will give us death panels and still manage to increase costs faster than they would otherwise.
Posted by: Lord Garth ||
11/16/2011 12:52 Comments ||
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#5
Just look at the Indian Health Service to see where we are all heading. Billings Gazette yesterday:
CROW AGENCY Everyone affiliated with the Crow-Northern Cheyenne Hospital would love to see it operate smoothly.
But myriad problems, including intermittent closures, staffing troubles and patient complaints, have plagued the Crow Agency facility.
Crow tribal representatives say their concerns are heard but not acted on. An Indian advocacy group has called for a congressional inquiry into the hospital...The hospital opened in 1995, replacing an earlier building that had become inadequate. One of the biggest reasons it was built was to decrease wait times for patients to see providers a problem that remains today.
Health care, education and a permanent home on the reservation were guaranteed to American Indians in the 1800s, when tribes were forced to give up millions of acres of land to the federal government. The quality of that health care concerns members of the Crow Tribe.
Heather Whiteman Runs Him, an attorney for the tribe, said patients have difficulty getting in to see a doctor and wait hours to fill prescriptions. High employee turnover makes it difficult for patients to build relationships with medical providers, she said.
Some patients feel their complaints are ignored, Whiteman Runs Him said. They are sent home with aspirin and no answers.
We have people who have gone to the ER several times within the span of 24 hours complaining of symptoms that I think the average person would find alarming and being sent home, she said. Finally they take it upon themselves to go up to Billings to the [public] emergency room [operating under an EMTALA mandate] and are admitted and treated for something they could very well have died from.
This is what the rest of you can look forward to when Whiteman Runs US All takes over--except there won't be an alternative ER to go to, unless you live close to Mexico or Canada.
#6
In case y'all missed it the guidlines for mammogram screenings has been adjusted from every year to every other or even third year. Suppose that has anything to do with anything?
Very accomplished local missed one year, now has stage 4.
[Dawn] MILITANTS operating in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa ... formerly NWFP, still Terrorism Central... seem intent on depriving women of any hopes of a bright future as reports emerge of the destruction of three more girls` schools over the weekend from Nowshera, Swabi and Bannu districts. Combine the latest attacks with the assaults that have taken place in the settled areas of the province since July, and one arrives at the figure of 12 schools destroyed in the same districts, including three in Mardan and one in Charsadda. Bara, a Beautiful Downtown Peshawar suburb in the Khyber Agency, has also taken similar hits on girls` schools, while the overall number of those targeted by the Taliban and their ilk in Fata and the erstwhile Taliban-infested Malakand division, including Swat, since 2007, is simply staggering. It is true that new schools and colleges are being built and some of the existing ones are being up- graded in the affected areas of the province, but the fact remains that few attacks on the existing schools have been preven- ted. Hundreds of children, mostly girls, have lost their schools, with parents understandably worried about their children`s safety in sending them for makeshift classes in areas where such stop-gap arrangements have been made. Women teachers in many settled areas of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, including Peshawar and Kohat, have also been subjected to harassment and threats by jihad boys, who have attacked or threatened them for stepping out of their houses to go to work in recent months.
The situation calls for increased vigilance by putting in place innovative and affordable mechanisms such as community-based policing, as the province`s law-enforcement agencies are woefully inadequate: they are understaffed, under-trained, underpaid and thus little motivated to rise to the challenge to contain the threat at hand. While President Asif Ali President Ten Percent Zardari ... sticky-fingered husband of the late Benazir Bhutto ... `s initiative, launched two years ago, of building 1,000 new schools in the affected areas of the province with federal assistance has seen little work done on the ground, especially now after the devolution of power and resources to the provinces, the promise of building new schools, even where they are being built, will be neutralised by the failure to secure the existing ones.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/16/2011 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[4 views]
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#1
They ALWAYS attack schools, anything that doesn't bow dowh to he holy crayon.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
11/16/2011 0:10 Comments ||
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[Dawn] THERE is no running away from Imran Khan ... aka Taliban Khan, who ain't the brightest knife in the national drawer... , not as yet when some of the important people around have just acknowledged his presence.
The prime minister, a veteran politician in the old school who had initially refused to be drawn into discussing the Imran option, or even his jalsa, finally spoke on the subject last week. As did indeed Mian Nawaz Sharif ... served two non-consecutive terms as prime minister, heads the Pakistain Moslem League (Nawaz). Noted for his spectacular corruption, the 1998 Pak nuclear test, border war with India, and for being tossed by General Musharraf... , who was away while the agents of change got together to hold a big anti-Sharif rally in the heart of the Sharifs' Lahore.
Since he has just been taken real notice of, the Pakistain Tehrik-i-Insaaf (PTI) chief has now entered a phase where his opinion is urgently sought on sensitive subjects such as the ISI, who the army chief owes his allegiance to and the controversial blasphemy law.
He is under watch for each step he takes, each word he utters and any sign of his old impatient, even self-righteous, self he may
betray.
Not only Imran Khan's own gestures but also the moves of his party men are being closely followed for any giveaway that could come in handy later. The large numbers that are behind him are right now all too willing to ignore any PTI slips as teething problems for a born-again party of a born-again someone.
Thus the talk about a complaining senior PTI member who suddenly finds a television studio in Lahore too small for his expanding ambitions does not rise above a whisper.
Imran Khan's own rather curt -- typical? -- reaction to a television anchor, who was discourteous enough to cut him short while he was giving his opinion on the cricketers' conviction in London, also goes unchallenged in a manner that is so atypical of our media. The anchor is constrained to murmur an apology and allow the leader of change in Pakistain to speak his truth.
The truth from Imran Khan's side that has emerged so far portrays a polarised country that allows one set of people to persecute and prey on another on the basis of belief and the law.
In the PTI chief's opinion, the British introduced the blasphemy law to ensure harmony in society and it is our indigenous invention -- the current polarisation -- that exposes someone like Salmaan Taseer or Shahbaz Bhatti to the assassin's gun. Pressed by the interviewer, a non-Pak, he eventually concedes that reform may be in order -- which prevents misuse of the law.
A procedural change in the blasphemy law is perhaps what Imran Khan is willing to concede, something which Gen Musharraf has attempted and what the current PPP-led government had at least promised.
If this amounts to skirting the issue then the PTI chief appears to be doing it as well and as skilfully as any other politician around. But obviously now is not the time to raise such questions for fear of being cast by Imran lovers as the perpetrators of the status quo.
Imran Khan says he is different. His proclaimed strength lies in his high morals and his promised ability to better execute what others can at best support in theory. He reacts strongly to suggestions that he is being propped up by the ISI, taking on Mian Nawaz Sharif over his statement about the new PTI being a creation of the agencies.
He is quite frank in pointing out how Nawaz Sharif's remarks about the agencies' backing for PTI had resulted in a further swelling of PTI ranks. "The PML-Nawaz is the only party created by agencies" in Pakistain, he says, before he tells everyone that only those with a corruption record would be susceptible to bowing to the ISI's wishes.
The ISI's reputation is not in question here. The target of the growing public tirade are the politicians who have failed to deliver after they were installed in power, something that according to the general belief cannot be done without the agencies. There is surely another way of looking at the situation, but who wants that in the excitement of a new Pakistain dawning on its deprived people.
If it has taken Imran Khan 15 years to mature as a popular politician, it has taken Nawaz Sharif double that time to recognise his potential as an anti-establishment politician.
And it has taken the PPP, not exactly a novice in the field of wheeling and dealing, much longer to unabashedly clarify that the agencies were on its side.
This is an interesting sequence: Imran Khan says the ISI went after only corrupt and moral-less politicians; Nawaz Sharif accuses him of being the agencies' stooge and Imran Khan reciprocates in kind; Yousuf Raza Gilani ... Pakistain's erstwhile current prime minister, whose occasional feats of mental gymnastics can be awe-inspiring ... , the ultimate believer in parliament's supremacy, happily claims to be saddled by the agencies. All three have been heard speaking of reform.
It is fine to be critical of weak-kneed, corrupt politicians who cannot stand up to the agencies. It is also okay for a politician calling for change to be pushing his credentials as an incorruptible and strong alternative to past and present rulers.
That true reform would mean taking the ISI off the politicians' back is a thought that perhaps doesn't occur to the PTI 'supremo' who boasts that no one can control him.
The crucial question is, how can an agency be allowed to gather dirt on politicians and then how does it use these dossiers of misdeeds to discredit and then dismiss the politicians?
No one is asking Imran Khan this question at the moment. All embarrassing queries are directed at the poor souls who have set the stage for an awakening.
How can the so-called democrat in Prime Minister Gilani allow himself to be flaunting the agencies' support? How can Nawaz Sharif deny someone else what he has himself enjoyed for so long?
If not a new Pakistain, a large number in this country right now are wedded to the idea of a new cast in Pakistain. That, the word goes around, will be a huge relief in itself.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/16/2011 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[6 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistan
#1
Is there LSD in the drinking water in Pakistain?
Posted by: Bill Clinton ||
11/16/2011 11:11 Comments ||
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#2
I think the entire nation sits on a lake of the stuff.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/16/2011 18:29 Comments ||
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#3
It's in the dirt and absorbed through their foreheads.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
11/16/2011 0:06 Comments ||
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#2
Mohammad Javad Larijani, who has a facebook page, is apparently a pretty smart guy. He has studied engineering, math and physics. However, he is a hardline cleric as well and has no problem condemning dissidents to death, inciting violence against minorities, etc.
Posted by: Lord Garth ||
11/16/2011 7:41 Comments ||
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#3
he is a hardline cleric as well and has no problem... Part of the basic job description for Iranian oligarchs.
[Iran Press TV] In an unprecedented move, the Arab league decided to suspend Syria and call for sanctions on the country, an act which evidently reeks of the influence the West and others exercise on those who should be the main game players rather than being merely influenced by others. What a shame!
It is not difficult to conjecture that the move is a prelude to a US-led military invasion of Syrian in the style of the Libya war and an eventual war in the region. It hardly needs saying that the Arab League ...an organization of Arabic-speaking states with 22 member countries and four observers. The League tries to achieve Arab consensus on issues, which usually leaves them doing nothing but a bit of grimacing and mustache cursing... would have acted with calculated wisdom and prudence, if it had thought about the consequences of such irrationality.
The decision comes at a time when Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad Before going into the family business Pencilneck was an eye doctor... has accepted the reforms proposed by the vaporous Arab League.
A statement, read by the Qatari Prime Minister, Hamad bin Jassem al-Thani, said the League had decided "to suspend Syrian delegations' activities in Arab League meetings'' and to implement ''economic and political sanctions" against Damascus ...The City of Jasmin is the oldest continuously-inhabited city in the world. It has not always been inhabited by the same set of fascisti...
Sheikh Hamad said the suspension would last "until the total implementation [by Syria] of the Arab plan for resolving the crisis accepted by Damascus on November 2."
In response to this move fraught with impending threat, tens of thousands of Syrians poured into the streets of Damascus, Aleppo ...For centuries, Aleppo was Greater Syria's largest city and the Ottoman Empire's third, after Constantinople and Cairo. Although relatively close to Damascus in distance, Aleppans regard Damascenes as country cousins... , Latakia, Tartous and Hasakeh to protest the move which they see as clear betrayal of their country by the Arab League.
The facts on the ground suggest that there is an urging demand for social and political reforms in the country but the situation is not as bad in Syria as in other Arab countries where the hope for reforms is zero. Calling for reforms on some levels is one thing but demanding an ouster of the ruler is a horse of a different color. As the situation stands in Syria, there is little demand for the ouster of President Bashir al-Assad. However, a woman is only as old as she admits... Western powers are calling on the Syrian president to step down. The influence of Western media on the international public opinion is so powerful that they are reluctant to see a foreign hand manipulating the events.
Reports reveal that the US and Israel have hired Saudi elements and the Saudi-backed Lebanese March 14 Those are the good guys, insofar as Leb has good guys... forces in order to foment tension in the country, thereby creating a rift between the Syrian people and the government. Washington is monitoring every move with minute precision as the fate of Syria is politically of paramount importance to the empire as it serves as an ally for Iran and poses a danger to the Zionist regime. Indeed there are some parties which follow their interests in the country.
Apart from Washington who cherishes the idea of overthrowing the regime of Bashir al-Assad and installing a puppet regime in Syria with the firm intention of serving the interests of the Zionist regime in the region, the Saudi Wahhabis insist on the collapse of the Syrian regime. For Washington and Israel, the ouster of al-Assad will ensure the two regimes' vantage point in the Middle East to contain the ever-increasing influence of the Islamic Theocratic Republic in the region and for the Saudis, it serves a similar purpose on a wider scope. In fact, the Saudi Wahhabis hold the Shia Moslems in abhorrence and make every possible effort to create Shiaphobia and Iranophobia in the world.
To the Wahhabis, Shia Moslems and moderate Sunnis are but infidels and should be killed and their blood is not upon their shoulders. What they conceive of the Shia Moslems is indeed a horrid image which fails to fit into any plausibly logical order. This irrational hatred becomes the prime motivation for the Wahhabis to engage in stoking up unrest in some border cities in Syria which throws full support behind Iran and Hezbullies. In a similar vein, the Saudi Wahhabis fully backed the dictatorial Bahrain regime in eliminating the Shia Moslems and crushing with brutality the popular uprising in the country. This double standard in Saudi policy deserves due attention. They back the despotic Bahraini regime which spares no efforts in quelling the pro-democracy protesters who are killed on a daily basis while on the other hand, they fund and back the bully boyz in Syria to overthrow the regime. It seems that democracy is defined differently in different contexts and situations.
Parenthetically, the Saudi Wahhabis play a double game in their relations with Washington and Israel. In fact, they have an ambivalent feeling for these two. On the one hand, Wahhabis treat them with hatred and eliminate their elements under the influence of their extremism and on the other hand, they enter into easy alliance with the Zionists and the US when the trio have a common enemy in several regions of the world.
There are times when you marvel at how events happening in one place are twisted to the benefit of one group and to the loss of another.
Concerning the US interference and the conspiracy of the Saudi Wahhabis in Syria, either we should choose to remain ignorant or we should open our eyes to the reality of things with surmountable doubt and reluctance.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/16/2011 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[4 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Iran
#1
Parenthetically,the Saudi Wahhabis play a double game in their relations with Washington and Israel. In fact, they have an ambivalent feeling for these two. On the one hand, Wahhabis treat them with hatred and eliminate their elements under the influence of their extremism and on the other hand, they enter into easy alliance with the Zionists and the US when the trio have a common enemy in several regions of the world.
#2
Rename it Kurdistan and then encourage Kurds from the region to move there and stop being a thorn to their Arab/Turk/Iranian brothers and call it a day. Win/win (unless you're an Arab in Syria that is).
All the folks protesting the wealthiest 1 percent seem so earnest how could anyone not take drum circles seriously? and yet they all blatantly ignore Americas most egregious example of unearned wealth. While the Occupy people pick on a few small-fry millionaires and billionaires, they havent taken on the one who has far, far too much money, got his wealth through dubious means and doesnt appreciate the cash he has.
Im speaking, of course, of that fat-cat weasel Uncle Sam.
If you want a great example of income inequality, compare Sam to any minuscule billionaire. He spends the net worth of Bill Gates in a couple of weeks. In fact, this one guy takes in a staggering 28 percent of all the wealth earned in this nation.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Congress made a legal mistake while rushing through the health law. Now it's come back to haunt the administration.
Is it just a coincidence that the people that President Obama nominates to fill high-level governmental posts tend to favor government-directed health care rationing? Last year, Obama nominated Donald Berwick to head Medicare and Medicaid. Now hes nominated Henry J. Aaron to head the Social Security Advisory Board.
[Dawn] THERE is no running away from 
Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir 
