One year later, former Congressman Bart Stupak is still feeling the effects of the critical role he played in healthcare reform. In an interview with ‘The Atlantic,’ Stupak said he still gets “accosted” by angry citizens. (more)
An often-overlooked portion of President Barack Obama’s prized health care law, the creation of the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB), will face heat in the coming months from Congress and from the courts. Congressman Phil Roe, Tennessee Republican, told The Daily Caller the IPAB is the “real death panel” in the health care law, as compared to “end-of-life counseling” provisions in Obamacare that former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin once deemed “death panels.” (more)
Leading conservatives and Mitt Romney supporters say the former Massachusetts Governor’s healthcare reform initiative will not act as a “deal-breaker” for a 2012 presidential run, offering him support in the face of growing attacks on “RomneyCare,” The Hill reported Thursday. (more)
If liberals like Ezra Klein are right, yesterday’s olive branch “compromise” offer by President Obama on his controversial health care law won’t win any supporters among the law’s opponents, because, in so many words, it comes from Mr. Obama himself, and they don’t trust him enough to go for any “compromise” that he endorses. (more)
As chances grow that the Supreme Court will take up the constitutionality of the 2010 health care law, a political battle is brewing over whether some justices should recuse themselves from what is likely to be a high-profile case. (more)
On Wednesday, the House of Representatives passed a repeal of President Barack Obama’s health care reform bill by a margin of 245-189. And although it can be viewed as the start of getting the entire measure repealed, many critics say it won’t go anywhere because it has no chance of making it through the Senate, or beyond a presidential veto. (more)
T-mobile gets better reception than Obamacare. Support for the law cratered to just 43 percent — an all-time low — in last month’s Washington Post poll. And since two more provisions took effect on January 1, repeal ought to be Republicans’ top priority — come Hell or high water. (more)
On January 5, Representatives Michele Bachmann (R-MN) and Steve King (R-IA) introduced H.R. 141 to repeal Obamacare. A vote on the bill, scheduled for this week, has been postponed because of the shootings of Representative Gabrielle Giffords and 19 others in Arizona. When it does come up in the House, it will pass; but even if it also passed in the Senate, the White House has said that President Obama will veto it. The question then becomes, what can Republicans in Congress do to thwart the implementation of Obamacare while they work to elect a Republican president and a Republican Senate in 2012 so they can repeal it in 2013? (more)
Americans have a love/hate affair with health insurers. We like that they provide coverage for expensive things like hospitalization and surgeries, but get annoyed when they deny coverage for medications or other services we think should be covered. We are sometimes annoyed with the high compensation level of their executives, but we like the fact that some 80+ percent of us have coverage through our employer, so we don’t have to spend time shopping in the individual market to make sense of complicated policies. Of course, getting coverage through group plans at work naturally limits the number of available options, so we tend to bitch and moan about this as well. Hence, our attitudes about health insurance companies are often contradictory and ambivalent. (more)
Key parts of the new healthcare law will go into effect on Jan. 1, just before a Republican-controlled House returns to Washington. (more)
Calling Obamacare a government takeover of health care is the “lie of the year,” according to the self-proclaimed oracle of all things true and untrue in the political debate. That outrageous proclamation from PolitiFact shows that its editors need a Truth-O-Meter of their own. (more)
This week, U.S. District Judge Henry Hudson in Virginia declared that a central provision of the law in Obamacare requiring that individuals obtain health insurance by 2014 is unconstitutional. The judge determined that the health care law went too far and Congress must push forward to repeal Obamacare and replace it with common-sense — and constitutional — legislation that aims at lowering health care costs. (more)
District Court Judge Henry Hudson gave an early Christmas present to many conservatives this week, ruling that the individual mandate in the Democrats’ healthcare bill is unconstitutional. (more)
In March, New Hampshire preschool teacher Gail O’Brien, who was unable to obtain health insurance through her employer, was diagnosed with an aggressive form of lymphoma. Her subsequent applications for health insurance were rejected because of her condition. With each round of chemotherapy costing $16,000, she delayed treatment because she knew her savings wouldn’t last. (more)
A federal judge in Virginia ruled on Monday that President Obama’s health care reform law exceeds Congress’s authority under the Constitution’s commerce clause. (more)
Shortly after a Virginia judge ruled the individual mandate in the health care bill passed earlier this year is unconstitutional, Republican Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina released a statement applauding the verdict. (more)
| Obama must convince liberal rich people that it is OK for them to keep their money – We’re gonna need a bigger shoe: Carbon footprint of Cancun climate conference significantly larger than last year – WaPo finds GAO flat-out lied in for-profit report – Indian ambassador groped by TSA for second time in three months – Cruel irony: This year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner earned it, but can’t attend – Earmarks may be dead in the House, but phone-marks are alive and well |
| 1.) Deep Democratic pockets may dry up after tax-cut deal – “President Obama’s advisors are confident that liberals dismayed by his agreement to extend tax breaks for the wealthy will forgive him by the time the 2012 election kicks into gear,” reports the LA Times. But will less forgetful and more moneyed liberals be as starry-eyed? The Times found that “some stalwart party donors are vowing to withhold funds because of their anger over the tax-cut deal.” Hedge fund manager Art Lipson, for instance, told the paper, “I do not plan to support Obama and his reelection effort,” because Obama is not willing to steal more of Lipson’s money. The Times counters its own thesis by pointing out that the DNC raised some big bucks “despite anger in the liberal wing about the lack of a public option in healthcare reform and the slow pace of repealing the ban on gays serving openly in the military.” New York Magazine’s John Heileman explained best what Obama must do to keep the money rolling in: “If he is going to climb up on top of Casa Blanca and urinate all over congressional Democrats, he will need to learn the trick that Bill Clinton mastered: doing it with such a big bright smile that they mistake his piss for Champagne.” |
| 2.) Cancun climate conference run by hypocritical clowns – “In the middle of all the global-warming demagoguery and calls for developed nations to shell out $100 billion per year by 2020 in climate reparations to help less-developed countries cope with the unfair burden of climate change, one thing has very obviously not changed,” notes The Daily Caller’s Amanda Carey–”the hypocrisy.” Yes, that’s right. There was lots of “Do what I say, but not as I do,” at this week’s freakout fiesta. “The carbon footprint of the Cancun conference is five times larger than it was for the 2009 conference in Copenhagen, despite the fact that attendance this year was significantly lower,” writes Carey. “The figure of the carbon footprint released by the Mexican government is 25,000 tons.” The pollution caused by guests’ use of private jets, round-the-clock but oft-empty shuttle buses, and electricity use at the resort’s five-star hotel will be “offset” by planting trees in nearby poor-person communities. |
| 3.) The GAO lied, stock prices dived – In August, the Government Accountability Office released a damning report exposing unethical recruiting practices by some of the country’s top for-profit colleges, many of which make the bulk of their profit from government-backed student loans. The Department of Education seized on the findings as evidence that new regulations for the for-profit industry were needed. The feeding frenzy had begun: Liberal bloggers, then mainstream papers like the New York Times, wielded the GAO report like a bludgeon, causing for-profit stocks to plummet. This week, the Washington Post uncovered its own unethical practice: The GAO had lied. And it had lied to such an extent, in fact, that it quietly released a heavily revised version of its report in late November. For some reason, “Oops” just doesn’t seem adequate, does it? |
| 4.) TSA gropes the wrong diplomat – “The foreign minister said Thursday that it was unacceptable that the Indian ambassador to the United States was patted down by a security agent at a Mississippi airport, and that he would complain to Washington,” the Associated Press reports. “The ambassador, Meera Shankar, was returning from giving a speech at Mississippi State University last week when she was pulled out of line at the airport and given a pat-down by a female Transportation Security Administration agent. Foreign Minister S. M. Krishna said this was the second time the ambassador had been chosen for a pat-down in the past three months.” If only Ambassador Krishna were an American politician, she could forego the screening process altogether! |
| 5.) Winner of Nobel Prize actually earned it this year– “Imprisoned in China and with close family members forbidden to leave the country, the Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, this year’s Nobel Peace Prize laureate, is to be represented at the prize ceremony here on Friday by an empty chair,” reports the New York Times. Not since 1935, when Adolf Hitler imprisoned Count Carl von Ossietzky in a concentration camp, has a Nobel prize winner been prohibited from attending by his government. In response to the news, Pres. Obama payed Xiaobo the highest compliment an egomaniac can pay another human being: “Mr Liu Xiaobo is far more deserving of this award than I was.” Meanwhile, the Russian government has suggested that Australian activist Julian Assange should have won the award for nearly giving Hillary Clinton an aneurysm. |
| 6.) Earmarks are only half the problem – While the House may have taken up an earmark ban, there’s nothing to stop representatives from ordering their pork over the phone. “They still will be able to call or write to federal agencies to ask that funds are spent on projects they recommend, and there’s currently no official record of how often representatives and senators do this,” reports TheDC’s Matthew Boyle. “Though the process, dubbed ‘phone-marking,’ doesn’t forcibly require those federal agencies to grant a congressional members’ request, they frequently do because of the clout representatives and senators carry in Washington. Brian Riedl, a fellow for The Heritage Foundation, said the only difference between phone-marks and earmarks is that there is no ‘paper trail’ of members’ requests. Riedl said federal agencies grant the requests more often than not for fear of their budgets being cut by spurned legislators.” Will Republicans take up a phone-mark ban as well? Probably not! |
Sometimes, being a new-school leader requires making both political opponents and supporters uncomfortable and upset in the process of breaking the mold to benefit the future. (more)
The Obama Administration has quietly granted even more waivers to one provision of the new federal health reform law, doubling the number in just the last three weeks to a new total of 222. (more)
Job-based health care benefits could wind up on the chopping block if President Barack Obama and congressional Republicans get serious about cutting the deficit. (more)
