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Blogger/Editor/Founder: Bill Smith, Ph.D. [aka: OzarkGuru & 2010 AFP National Blogger of the Year]
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One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors. -- Plato (429-347 BC)

Monday, April 14, 2014

Reid: “"’It’s Not Over Yet’ | Obamacare Chaos - Workers Face Loss of Employer Health Plans | NY Exchange Bars Individuals ‘From Choosing Any Doctors Or Hospitals They Want’

Today in Washington, D.C. - April 14, 2014
The Senate and House aree not in session today and will return for legislative business on April 28th.

When the Senate returns, a series of votes is scheduled: on confirmation of Michelle Friedland to be a United States Circuit Judge for the 9th Circuit, on cloture on the controversial nomination of David Weil to be the administrator of the wage and hour division at the Department of Labor, on confirmation of the Weil nomination if cloture is invoked, and on confirmation of the nomination of Katherine O’Regan to be an Assistant Secretary of Housing and Urban Development.

It's Not Over Yet!
Democrat Senator and Majority Leader Harry Reid doesn't seem content in only blocking the votes on House bills that would help people gain access to jobs and help mitigate the heavy handiness of government on the economy. Today at the Univ. of Nevada, Reno, "Reid, speaking at an event hosted by The Young Democrats, declined to go into detail about the controversy that has emerged from Bundy's long-standing refusal to pay federal grazing fees for his cattle. Reid also gave short answers on the subject before the students and faced questioning from a non-student who was highly critical. 'I have been very clear in saying this thing is not over, OK?" Reid said as he was walking out the door of the meeting room at the Mathewson-IGT Knowledge Center. "It's not over. You can't have someone violate the law. I have said that many times.'"

Wow, Reid talking about violating the law, guess he likes to "paper over" the recent abuse by the Federal government in Nevada against one of Reid's own constituents. Note that the head of the Bureau of Land Management, Neil Kornze of Elko, was named to his new post just days before the Bundy-BLM standoff. Before moving to the BLM, Kornze served as senior policy adviser for Reid, working on public lands issues. Reid's progressive actions and votes evidnces his love for big government and for greater loss of citizens rights including land and land use rights. More at RGJ News.

Returning to the problems and failures of Obamacare which  just keep coming:
The Wall Street Journal reports today, “Susan Caspersen was in a hospital in Akron, Ohio, last November recovering from an emergency appendectomy when she got some unwelcome news: as of Jan. 1, 2014, she would no longer be eligible for the health-insurance plan offered by her employer, food-service giant Sodexo USA. Ms. Caspersen, a waitress at Virtues Restaurant in the Summa Akron City Hospital, falls into part of the workforce that may feel the strongest effects of the Affordable Care Act: workers whose hours change on a weekly or seasonal basis. Thousands of these so-called variable-hour employees—many of whom work on college campuses that don't operate during summer months—could lose their benefits as employers use new formulas to classify workers as full time or part time. The distinction determines which employees are entitled to company-sponsored health coverage. . . . A large portion of Sodexo's 125,000 U.S. workers are variable, and about 10,000 of them are losing access to health insurance, paid vacation and sick days and other benefits available to full-timers. Sodexo says it has taken steps to ease the strain on workers, but avers that the new formula lets it manage costs and stay competitive in a business driven by low-margin contracts. Other employers are likely to follow Sodexo's lead in reclassifying workers as they get closer to the ACA's Jan. 1, 2015 compliance deadline, said Gary Claxton, a vice president at the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, who said that businesses sought clear guidance from government officials on how to handle workers with nonstandard hours. . . . [Julie] Peterson [Sodexo's vice president of compensation and benefits] . . . says ‘the ACA, on a net basis, is costing the company material amounts of money.’ The law's requirement that individuals buy coverage ‘has driven thousands of employees into our medical benefits and that's offset any savings from the change in eligibility,’ she said.”

The Washington Free Beacon picks up on another local report of Obamacare hurting part-time employees. “A well-loved Maryland supermarket is being forced to limit the amount of full time workers they hire because of the harsh mandates imposed by Obamacare. Snider’s Superfoods, family owned and operated since 1946, says that they will not be hiring any new baggers or cashiers in order to avoid the 50 worker threshold, which under the new Obamacare stipulations, would require that they provide health insurance if they employ 50 or more full time workers. Kevin Kuhlman, Manager of Legislative Affairs at the National Federation of Independent Businesses, explained employers’ financially motivated decision not to hire more workers to avoid the hefty mandate, telling WBFF-MD, ‘I think small businesses, especially those that offer health insurance, will really see it in their bottom line.’” The Snider’s manager tells Fox 45, “[We] hire a lot of people that work in the area here, you know, young kids. We also have baggers. So we’ll not be hiring any baggers or any more cashiers for right now.”

Even in a piece trying to pitch the New York Obamacare exchange as a “success,” The New York Times is finding a lot of frustrating choices being made by bureaucrats for consumers in that state. The Times writes that “New York also took some aggressive and unpopular steps that few other states have taken, by creating a highly centralized system limiting consumer choice, essentially giving insurance seekers little incentive to shop off the exchange. As a result, most New Yorkers who are not insured through an employer are effectively barred from choosing any doctors or hospitals they want. At least 100,000 people have lost their old health plans because they did not conform to new federal requirements. Thousands more freelancers and other ‘sole proprietors’ were barred from banding together for group insurance rates, a change in longstanding practice that almost certainly pushed more consumers to buy insurance on the exchange. . . . In an unusual decision that had a strong impact on consumer choices, New York required insurers to offer the same type of coverage on the exchange as off. The result was that none of New York’s insurers offered out-of-network coverage for individuals, except in a small part of western New York, because they wanted to hold down costs and avoid being swamped by sick people. So regardless of whether individuals buy their plans on the exchange or off, they cannot get coverage outside a fixed network of doctors and hospitals, even if they are willing to pay more for it.”

The report continues, “The sickest customers tend to be the most upset, like Abigail List, a 53-year-old therapist in Manhattan, who said she had to choose one of the most expensive plans, costing $300 more a month than others, so she could have coverage for her longtime cancer doctors at NYU-Langone Medical Center. ‘I’m being railroaded, that’s why I’m so furious,’ Ms. List said. The most prestigious and specialized hospitals tend to take the fewest plans on the exchange. Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, the renowned cancer hospital, takes only two exchange plans for individuals, Health Republic and Oscar. ‘It’s fairly difficult to take the pricing that some of the other insurers on the exchanges are proposing,’ said John Gunn, the chief operating officer for Sloan-Kettering. ‘It was way below our cost of providing the service.’” But The New York Times considers this a “success.”

Meanwhile, the rules, regulations, and advertisements concerning Obamacare are creating a great deal of confusion for Americans. According to The Wall Street Journal, “Access to preventive care at no charge to the patient is a key tenet of the federal health law. But questions about what qualifies as ‘preventive’ are causing discord between doctors and patients, particularly when it comes to the traditional annual checkup. Some patients, anticipating free visits to address all their health issues—past, present and potential—are upset to find that only some of that qualifies as preventive care, exempt from deductibles and copays. ‘Patients are scheduling “physicals” because physicals are free,’ says Randy Wexler, a family-medicine physician in Columbus, Ohio. ‘But they come in and say, 'I've been having headaches. My back has been bothering me and I'm depressed.' That's not part of a physical. That will trigger a copay.’ A long list of services do qualify as preventive care under the Affordable Care Act . . . . But care related to existing health problems, or new issues, is considered ‘evaluation and monitoring,’ not preventive. That is hard for some patients to grasp, doctors report. ‘They'll say, “I have diabetes and hypertension and heart disease and seeing you is preventing them from getting worse, so that should be fully covered,”’ Dr. Wexler says. ‘But under that theory, everything would be free with no copay.’ . . . Adding to the confusion, insurers aren't required to cover preventive services from out-of-network providers. And grandfathered plans that began before September 2010 aren't required to follow the ACA rules.”

In an interview with Newsmax, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell lamented the “chaos” Obamacare has caused throughout the country, saying, “People's premiums are going up, jobs are being lost — and even some of these folks who have been forced into this government insurance and are a part of the 7.5 million are going to find that they are paying more for less. . . . In many of these insurance policies, the deductible is so high that even if you are insured — and you paid for it — you can't meet the deductible. It's worthless insurance for a whole lot of people. . . . It's the worst piece of legislation that's been passed in at least the last half century — and it is the single biggest step in Europeanizing our country. If the American people will give us the votes to do it, we intend to repeal it.”

Tags: Harry Reid, land rights grab, BLM, Obamacare, Obamacare Chaos To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
Posted by Bill Smith at 12:35 PM - Post Link

2 Comments:

Anonymous Edmond Turner said...

The best piece I have seen on this situation and the overarching issues involved....... About eleven minutes in duration.....

http://youtu.be/HFiosLqjoQQ

4/15/2014  
Blogger Bill Smith said...

Edmond, Thank you - just watched it.

4/15/2014  

Post a Comment

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