"7.1 [million], they can't even document the number, and even if it is true, 7.1 is nothing when the law requires everybody."
Sounding off on Obama's victory lap presser, explaining how it was 'beneath the dignity of the office,' Rush turned to Obama's criticism of all those Americans opposing Obamacare. This president essentially called all of us liars who are 'working so hard for people to not have health insurance.' Rush responded exquisitely...
"Mr. President, you're the only guy that's canceling people's health insurance. You're the only guy making that happen. Not me. There's not one Republican who's taken anybody's health insurance away from 'em. There's not one Republican nor one conservative who wants to take anybody's health insurance away from 'em.
There's not one conservative or Republican who wants this health care system to worsen. You're the only guy making all that happen, Mr. President. You, you alone with your party, you are the one seeing to it that people are losing their health insurance. You are the one that lied to them 23, 24 times over three years that if they like their plan they could keep it, that if they like their doctor they could keep it. Millions of Americans have lost their health insurance finding out they couldn't keep their plan or their doctor, as you promised them they could.
Nobody is taking anybody's health insurance away from anybody except you, sir. There is nobody in the opposition to Barack Obama who is mad about people getting health insurance or treatment. There is nobody upset about anybody getting insurance or getting treatment. What people are upset about is you are breaking a system under the guise of reforming it. You are putting it under your control, and you don't know what you're doing.
You're not qualified to run this system. You're not qualified to run health care. You're not qualified to run health insurance. You're not qualified to run a hospital or a whole series of them or anything of the sort. You're not qualified to run an HMO. You've never done anything like it. You've not even paid for your own health care ever before. You don't know anything about this. People don't like being lied to for three straight years. People don't like seeing their policies canceled. They don't like seeing their premiums doubled and their deductibles tripled. They don't like seeing their prescription costs skyrocket when they're told the opposite.
It was you, Mr. President, that promised everybody that the average health care premium's gonna come down $2,500 a year. Nobody's seeing that. Nobody is working hard for people not to have health insurance. What people are trying to accomplish, what we seek to achieve is the preservation of the greatest health care system the world has ever devised. You, Mr. President, have it in your crosshairs, and you are trying to destroy it under the guise you know better how to fix it. We're not trying to work hard for people not to have health insurance. We're not mad about people having health insurance. Maybe some of us get mad at having to pay for other people's health insurance, involuntarily.
Maybe a lot of people are kind of fed up, Mr. President, with your hand being in their back pockets all day, every day. Maybe people who are providing for themselves are little upset being told they're the problems, that they're not paying their fair share, and here comes your big hand in their back pocket and taking money out and giving it to somebody else, or forcing them to do that. "Many of the tall tales that have been told about this law have been debunked." No, they have not.
Just the other day a couple, Covered California, received in their packet a premarked voter registration card for the Democrat Party, exactly what we predicted would happen on this program, and that couple is afraid to change that registration, Mr. President, 'cause they're afraid of you. They're afraid of their own government. They're afraid of retribution if they cancel the fact that you preregistered them in the Democrat Party, or that Covered California did. There aren't any tall tales being told. So now you're calling all these people that have been denied cancer treatment liars, joining with Dingy Harry on this? That's why this is beneath the dignity of the office, I think."
Let me just say that if this guy can say it, every Republican politician on Capitol Hill should be able to articulate a similar sentiment. If they can't, it's time for them to go!
Finally responding to Obama's demand that 'the debate over repealing this law is over' and that this law is 'progress' in the direction of 'making sure that we are not the only advanced country on earth that doesn't make sure everybody has basic health care,' Rush debunked yet another leftist fallacy...
"Well, except that we do make sure that everybody has basic health care. There's not a person in this country that doesn't get treated. All they gotta do is go to the emergency room. It's the law of the land. (impersonating Obama) "We're the only the civilized country that doesn't have forced health care, only civilized country in the world, western industrialized, doesn't have socialized medicine." Well, maybe there's a reason why we're the only one that didn't have socialized medicine. It is not progress. That's the problem. It's destruction."
Related links: MONTAGE: RUSH: Media Celebrate Obama’s ‘Victory Lap’ Condemned Bush For ‘Hubris’
REVOLUTION! Opie And Anthony Explode Over ObamaCare Cancelations
Levin was FUMING after Obama's propagandist victory lap presser, leading last evening's show off with one question: "What the hell is going on in Washington,DC?"
"They think we're a bunch of rubes? They think we're a bunch of morons? We know what's going on with our health care system. We know what we're paying. Those of you losing your health care know you're losing your health care. Those of you who are losing your jobs to part-time jobs or no jobs at all, you know why you're losing them. Individuals out there who can't get their cancer treatments and all the rest. What the hell's going on? Washington, DC. It's like a completely different America.
President of the United States has a campaign rally, supposed to make a statement, like the old Castro days, the 1960's and '70's. And there he is, with his handpicked sycophants, clapping like a bunch of seals, going on and on with his lies, his LIES, like some kind of dictator when the shelves are empty and you can't get meat, you can't get canned goods or anything, going on and on about the wonders of Communism, but today he goes on and on about the wonders of Obamacare!
And the media sit there and spew this stupidity and this idiocy and these lies! It's just unbelievable."
"Here's the bottom line, the best numbers we have: 858,000 people previously uninsured have enrolled and paid their premiums. And in many cases, those premiums are subsidized by you and me."
This administration spent TRILLIONS to tear down our current health care system, spent BILLIONS on propaganda in an effort to sign up single-digit Millions, and all it's gotten them in reality is 858,000 primarily via wealth redistribution. Talk about a banana republic.
Why would Obama be ensuring high prices for insurance companies? Why wouldn't Obama be guaranteeing low prices for his voters? Here's what health insurance companies agreed to and where the private sector health insurance market is headed, folks...
"They partnered with Obama, and he's paying them off, before he wipes them out."
Now, if you'd rather not take Rush's word for it, take an Obamacare architect at his word, Ezekiel 'Dr. Death' Emanuel, who said in early March, 'Insurance companies as we know them are about to die, and here's what's going to replace them'...
The good news is you won’t have insurance companies to kick around much longer. The system is changing. As a result, insurance companies as they are now will be going away. Indeed, they are already evolving. For the next few years insurance companies will both continue to provide services to employers and, increasingly, compete against each other in the health insurance exchanges. In that role they will put together networks of physicians and hospitals and other services and set a premium. But because of health care reform, new actors will force insurance companies to evolve or become extinct. The accountable care organizations (ACOs)...and hospital systems will begin competing directly in the exchanges and for exclusive contracts with employers. ...
In January 2012 Jeffrey Liebman and I predicted in The New York Times the end of health insurance companies by 2020. We might have been a bit optimistic—or provocative. But it is certain they will end. Insurance companies will largely cease to be the middle man—taking premiums, paying providers, saying no to consumers, and making a profit—that we blame. ...
So be prepared to kiss your insurance company good-bye forever.
As these masterminds usher in bigger, more intrusive government...because, after all, government knows best.
Related link: Subterfuge: Obamacare's the Trojan horse for single-payer Medicare
Six million by the weekend, 7 million by Monday, and if you believe the L.A. Times, it's more than 9 million! But wait, wasn't the mandate delayed? Didn't the regime just extend the deadline to give more time to reach their numbers? And now, oh wait, we reached'em! Uh huh...anybody smell a grease fire? 'Cause they're cooking the books on this like they've done with economic data and so much more...
HotAir: I’m not sure what “on track” means given that the deadline’s now come and gone. Presumably it’s a reference to last week’s extension for people who are “in line”: All you need to do is swear that you tried to sign up before March 31st but ran into technical problems and you get extra time to complete the process. That extension was, transparently, all about giving the White House a better chance to reach seven million sign-ups — their original projection for enrollment this year — so that they can now declare “mission accomplished.” It was, like so many of O-Care’s exemptions and shifting deadlines, all about politics. Even though anyone who’s following this issue knows that a good million or more of these sign-ups are or soon will be invalid due to nonpayment of premiums or the simple fact that “sign-ups” includes some people who selected a plan on Healthcare.gov even though they didn’t actually complete the purchase.
Not only are “sources” whispering to the media about up-to-the-minute sign-up data, an HHS spokesman reported last night that the website had received nearly five million visits on Monday alone. Which led Byron York to marvel:
Precisely! It's a sham. But even so, what of the millions more who've been kicked off their private health insurance due to Obamacare? Shhh! How many of those are being forced onto Obamacare to avoid a tax penalty? No, we can't talk about that. Oh, and how about Medicaid sign-ups vs. actual Obamacare enrollment?!
Allahpundit leaves us with a final ponderance:
In case you missed it yesterday, by one estimate, three-quarters of new ObamaCare enrollees are paying higher premiums now than they used to — which, of course, is very much by design, no matter what The One might tell you. If you’re going to have guaranteed issue and community rating for the sick, the extra revenue to pay for their treatment has to come from somewhere. Exit question: What happens next year when roughly half of new enrollees with subsidized coverage lose their subsidies, bumping them down to Medicaid coverage or no coverage at all?
Well, then the government will say the system's utterly broken, nothing works, so we have to begin the discussion of the government completely taking over and force-enrolling us all on single-payer Medicare of course, 'cause somehow that will work. What a damn disaster.
Related links: RUSH: It Is An All Out Regime And Media Swarm On ObamaCare
RUSH: Obama Media Is In Full Rejoice Mode Over ObamaCare Sign-Ups
Apprehended more than Bush? Well, that's a crock, but let's say we buy that. It's pretty much a disqualification if you catch-and-release back into America! And some of the most violent criminals among them at that...
TheHill: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials last year released 68,000 illegal immigrants with criminal convictions, undercutting Democratic claims that President Obama has strictly enforced immigration laws.
An internal Department of Homeland Security document compiling statistics on arrests and deportations in 2013 showed that ICE agents encountered 193,357 illegal immigrants with criminal convictions but issued charging documents for only 125,478. More than 67,800 were released.
The data came from an end-of-year “Weekly Departures and Detention Report.”
The Center for Immigration Studies, a research group that favors stricter enforcement of immigration laws, estimates ICE agents released more than a third of illegal immigrants with criminal records they detained.
“ICE released 68,000 criminal aliens in 2013, or 35 percent of the criminal aliens encountered by officers. The vast majority of these releases occurred because of the Obama administration’s prosecutorial discretion policies,” Jessica Vaughn, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies, wrote in a memo summarizing the DHS document.
ICE classifies illegal immigrants as criminal if they have been convicted of a crime, not including traffic offense, Vaughn noted.
Here's a few more details left out of The Hill's report:
TheDC: The Obama administration is threatening public safety by deliberately hampering immigration law and releasing aliens with criminal records, according to a new review of internal Immigration and Customs Enforcement data.
A Center for Immigration Studies report to be released Monday and obtained in advance by The Daily Caller, found that last year ICE reported nearly 722,000 encounters with illegal or criminal immigrants. But ICE officers filed immigration charges against less than 195,000 aliens.
“According to ICE personnel, the vast gap between the number of encounters reported and the number of aliens put on the path to removal exists because officers are not permitted to file charges against aliens who do not fall into the administration’s narrowly defined criteria for enforcement, regardless of the criminal charges or the circumstances in which the alien was identified,” the report, authored by CIS director of policy studies Jessica Vaughan, reads.
Other key findings included in the review:
- In 2013, ICE charged only 195,000, or 25 percent, out of 722,000 potentially deportable aliens they encountered. Most of these aliens came to ICE’s attention after incarceration for a local arrest.
- ICE released 68,000 criminal aliens in 2013, or 35 percent of the criminal aliens encountered by officers. The vast majority of these releases occurred because of the Obama administration’s prosecutorial discretion policies, not because the aliens were not deportable.
- ICE targeted 28 percent fewer aliens for deportation from the interior in 2013 than in 2012, despite sustained high numbers of encounters in the Criminal Alien and Secure Communities programs.
- Every ICE field office but one reported a decline in interior enforcement activity.
- ICE reports that there are more than 870,000 aliens on its docket who have been ordered removed, but who remain in defiance of the law.
- Under current policies, an alien’s family relationships, political considerations, attention from advocacy groups, and other factors not related to public safety can trump even serious criminal convictions and result in the termination of a deportation case.
- Less than 2 percent of ICE’s caseload was in detention at the end of fiscal year 2013. About three-fourths of the aliens ICE detained in 2013 had criminal and/or immigration convictions so serious that the detention was required by statute.
Sweetness&Light summarized this perfectly: "In another time this one issue alone would be enough to get a President removed from office. But it’s not even considered to be one of Obama’s top ten scandals."
Related links: 68,000 illegal aliens with criminal records caught and released
Study Finds Nearly 70,000 Criminal Illegal Aliens Released Back Into the U.S.
Report: ICE Releasing Criminal Aliens if Activists Hold 'Vigils,' Create Petitions
"If you are looking for a biblical movie, this is definitely not it."
From Rock People to Noah being conflicted about killing his own family...do HUH?! Sounds like a floater alright...Aronofsky probably should've gone lighter on the pork sandwich...
After this:
And this:
"It is a complete reversal of what the Biblical narrative is in terms of sin."
Yeah, don't think I'll be wasting my money on Darren Aronofsky's latest piece of crap irreverently entitled Noah, which apparently has little to do with the actual story of Noah other than the title. Go figure.
Related links: Atheist ‘Noah’ director brags film is least biblical Bible movie ever
Movie Noah trades redemption for destruction
Another lawless dictate, no doubt installed so that more individual Americans won't experience a liberty tax on April 15th! But let's go through the laundry list of failures: No way of enforcing the penalty, no way of knowing who's paid, not even Sebelius knows, phony enrollment numbers, and now all you have to do to get a no-questions-asked extension from Obamacare via the regime is check a box which says you tried to enroll but couldn’t. Geniuses...
FoxNews: The Obama administration will grant extra time to Americans who say they are unable to enroll in health care plans through the federal insurance marketplace by the March 31 deadline, in a decision that swiftly drew Republican ridicule.
All consumers who have begun to apply for coverage on HealthCare.gov, but who do not finish by Monday, will now have until about mid-April to ask for an extension.
"We are experiencing a surge in demand and are making sure that we will be ready to help consumers who may be in line by the deadline to complete enrollment -- either online or over the phone," Health and Human Services Department spokeswoman Joanne Peters told Fox News.
The Washington Post first reported that users will have a chance to check a box on the website indicating they tried to enroll before the deadline, though the government will not try to determine whether the person actually made an effort to sign up.
I purposefully cut out the feigned outrage from Boehner and Priebus...hope you don't mind. And you can be assured there's no surge. However, there is yet another delay...need I remind you when Sebelius told Congress there wouldn’t be anymore of those...
...and yet, Americans keep looking to the government to fix something else Washington's screwed up! Come on, guys...use your noggin...
Related links: Brutal: Just one in 10 uninsured who qualify for ObamaCare exchange plans has signed up
Eight Ways To Opt Out Of Obamacare
Las Vegans find inventive ways to get around Obamacare - the law of the land
Opt-Out Obamacare Penalty Can't Be Enforced -- Unless You Get a Tax Refund
Heartbreaking! Rush: Millions Are Losing Their Health Insurance
Health Care Expert: Obamacare not signing up enough people to make insurance pool sustainable
H/t: tRS
"This isn't Nazi Germany, this is modern day Britain!" ~ Mark Levin
Call the Midwife might put a glossy finish on Britain's NHS, but it's hard to find words to describe this uncivilized EVIL...
Telegraph: The bodies of thousands of aborted and miscarried babies were incinerated as clinical waste, with some even used to heat hospitals, an investigation has found.
Ten NHS trusts have admitted burning foetal remains alongside other rubbish while two others used the bodies in ‘waste-to-energy’ plants which generate power for heat.
Last night the Department of Health issued an instant ban on the practice which health minister Dr Dan Poulter branded ‘totally unacceptable.’
At least 15,500 foetal remains were incinerated by 27 NHS trusts over the last two years alone, Channel 4’s Dispatches discovered.
The programme, which will air tonight, found that parents who lose children in early pregnancy were often treated without compassion and were not consulted about what they wanted to happen to the remains.
One of the country’s leading hospitals, Addenbrooke’s in Cambridge, incinerated 797 babies below 13 weeks gestation at their own ‘waste to energy’ plant. The mothers were told the remains had been ‘cremated.’
Another ‘waste to energy’ facility at Ipswich Hospital, operated by a private contractor, incinerated 1,101 foetal remains between 2011 and 2013.
They were brought in from another hospital before being burned, generating energy for the hospital site. Ipswich Hospital itself disposes of remains by cremation.
Makes one ask the question, 'What of America's discarded?' But the establishment moderates, the consultant class, the appeasers among us say we shouldn't discuss any of this. We need to drop it. It's divisive. It's too much of a single issue.
I don't think it can be said anymore, 'they know not what they do,' because it seems to me, they know precisely what they're doing. It is WRONG and it is EVIL...to do and to ignore.
This is the level of depravity that occurs in a society when we forget that what’s growing inside a woman is a life created by God Almighty and deserves a chance to live and breath just as we were given that chance. ~ tRS
Wow. The White House and their lapdog media don't even realize that the small business opt-out penalty is already here...or maybe they were hoping you wouldn't realize it!
WT: Left leaning media outlets criticized Internet news mogul Matt Drudge’s tweets on Friday, but the backlash stemmed from a misunderstanding of how Obamacare will affect small businesses.
On Friday, Matt Drudge tweeted, “Just paid the Obamacare penalty for not ‘getting covered’… I’M CALLING IT A LIBERTY TAX!”
A few minutes later, Jason Lee, the Director of Progressive Media at the White House, tweeted a response, saying Mr. Drudge’s tweet was a, “flat lie, no fee for previous year. Scary how much influence he once had.”
From there, the tweets came rolling in, attacking Mr. Drudge via social media and liberal news outlets, Breitbart reported.
What each critical tweeter and pundit failed to realize was that Mr. Drudge, as the self-employed proprietor of The Drudge Report, files taxes as a small business on a quarterly basis.
The IRS requires self-employed business owners to file annual returns and pay estimated quarterly taxes. When entrepreneurs like Mr. Drudge file their 2014 first quarter taxes, they have to pay the individual health care mandate if they are not getting Obamacare coverage.
The IRS form also allows adding the mandate to the section labeled “other taxes,” hence Mr. Drudge’s chosen name “Liberty tax.”
A Senate Budget Committee aide told Breitbart News, “It is true that thousands of small businesses will be forces to pay Obamacare taxes quarterly in 2014.”
Hear that media? Despite the shielding of criticism towards both the man and his namesake, small businesses WILL be paying Obama's 'liberty tax' this year. And by piling on Drudge for abiding by the law, the media have displayed not only their ignorance of the law, but also their blind allegiance to this left-wing administration.
Rush also discussed the topic this morning, as he will also be affected by this tax on liberty...
Related links: Liberals Outraged After Obamacare Opt-Out Penalty Deemed “Liberty Tax”
White House and left wing media lie about ObamaCare penalty
Yes, I said Medicare. Sorry to leave this to a Friday post, but we've gotta move past Flight 370 for a moment to help unobscure a disaster that affects every single American...
WashingtonTimes: President Obama promised that we could keep our health care plans and our doctors, but he knew that was a lie. He pretended Obamacare was the endgame. That was also false.
Mr. Obama’s objective has always been to entrench the doomed law into our lives so that it would lead to a government takeover of the whole health care system. This maniacal plan is working.
In advance of the March 31 deadline for individuals to enroll, the White House touted this week that 5 million people had signed up for Obamacare.
That sounds somewhat impressive until Jay Carney, the White House press secretary, was unable to answer reporters’ questions about how many of those people had actually paid premiums.
We also don’t know which of these enrollees are among the millions who were insured last year but were dropped from their plans that didn’t measure up the new mandates. Nor do we know how many of those who signed up are the young, healthy people needed to keep the system afloat.
Alright, now here's the kicker...and you know it's bad when even a turncoat like Rubio can see it coming. The so-called single-payer solution is to dump everyone on Medicare!
Anyway, Mr. Obama and his cohort in Congress are secretly dancing a jig because the convoluted program was intended to fail. They believe that Uncle Sam makes better health care decisions than Dr. Smith.
“From the very beginning, they wanted a single-payer system of health care,” Sen. Marco Rubio told me on the “Shooting Straight with Emily Miller” radio show. “They obviously didn’t think they could get that far, so they went with Obamacare.”
The Florida Republican said the current trajectory will lead to insurance companies in the exchanges making up their losses from this year with much higher premiums next year, which is when the left will pounce.
“What they want to do is go to the public and say, ‘Look, these exchanges prove these insurance companies are greedy. Thats why it’s unaffordable. That’s why we need the government to be the single health insurance company for the whole country. Let’s put everyone on Medicare,’” Mr. Rubio explained about Mr. Obama’s strategy.
Most in the know understand that because Democrats, even with across-the-board majorities, were unable to foist a single-payer health care system onto Americans, they settled instead for Obamacare as a stepping stone towards those ends. However, now as clarity begins to reveal that projection, so too shines the strategy to get there:
- Hike the rates.
- Blame the 'greedy' insurance companies.
- Claim the government needs to be the sole carrier of health insurance in America, vis-Ã -vis everyone on Medicare.
But there's one catch to that last maneuver. Medicare's 375,000 case appeals backlog!
Politico: REP. WORRIED ABOUT MEDICARE APPEALS BACKLOG — Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.) is sounding the alarm this morning about a massive backlog within the Office of Medicare Hearings and Appeals. The 357,000-appeal clog delays providers from having their cases heard for longer than two years, McDermott noted in a letter to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. “ “The agencies must review their administrative procedures and act now to protect seniors who are struggling to get Medicare payment appeals addressed,” he wrote. He argued that problems with recovery auditors have been identified as the leading cause of the backlog. http://1.usa.gov/1nCaTGC
So these geniuses, these masterminds, with Obama at the helm, will have effectively transitioned America from a private health care system that, despite the complaints, worked, to a broken public system (both in itself & what it's doing to the private market), and then ultimately to a Medicare system that's been hemorrhaging and busted for decades. And that's just the practicalities of the process without even mentioning the infringements on our liberties and the utter unconstitutionality of it all.
Related links: Get ready for #obamacare premium increases. Or possibly ‘brace for impact.’
It’s come to this: Lefty groups now offering young people cash prizes to enroll in Obamacare
Another big week for Obamacare in the courts
Obamacare: Destruction By Design
Bankrupting America
