When Congress required most Americans to obtain health insurance or pay a penalty, Democrats denied that they were creating a new tax. … “For us to say that you’ve got to take a responsibility to get health insurance is absolutely not a tax increase,” the president said last September, in a spirited exchange with George Stephanopoulos on the ABC News program “This Week.” When Mr. Stephanopoulos said the penalty appeared to fit the dictionary definition of a tax, Mr. Obama replied, “I absolutely reject that notion.” Congress anticipated a constitutional challenge to the individual mandate. Accordingly, the law includes [...]
New regulations issued by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) on Tuesday outline federal standards for the electronic health records that every American must have by 2014. The regulations, developed by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology and issued by HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, are the first concrete step for the government as it pursues the goal – first outlined in the 2009 economic stimulus law – of making all health care providers use the electronic record systems by 2014. -CNS
I’m certain you know the [...]
What do you call it when a bunch of people get together into an organization and refuse to work for a given pay level, or without certain benefits? A union.
We believe individuals are strengthened when they work together for the common good. As education professionals, we improve both our professional status and the quality of public education when we unite and advocate collectively. -NEA
Unions give workers a voice on the job about safety, security, pay, benefits—and about the best ways to get the work done. Union workers earn 30 percent more each week than nonunion workers [...]
As you glance through these, remember one thing: the discounts you receive by allowing people to track you aren’t free. They cost you your privacy. I don’t know what your privacy is worth, but mine’s worth more than a few dollars a year. Be careful with “discount programs” that want to track everything about you.
A Dairy Queen restaurant in the Indianapolis region is providing its customers with RFID-enabled loyalty stickers that attach to their phones, thus enabling them to redeem coupons sent to those handsets via text messages. If the system is successful, Dairy Queen intends to [...]
President Obama guaranteed Americans that after health reform became law they could keep their insurance plans and their doctors. It’s clear that this promise cannot be kept. Insurers and physicians are already reshaping their businesses as a result of Mr. Obama’s plan.
The health-reform law caps how much insurers can spend on expenses and take for profits. Starting next year, health plans will have a regulated “floor” on their medical-loss ratios, which is the amount of revenue they spend on medical claims. Insurers can only spend 20% of their premiums on running their plans if they offer policies [...]
Come 2013, America’s bachelors may want to think twice before popping the question. Thanks to Obamacare, some couples can save thousands on health insurance just by opting to cohabit rather than marry. How? The subsidy system erected in the complicated new health law manages to create a brand new “marriage penalty.” Under the law, individuals who earn between 133 and 400 percent of the federal poverty level and can’t get health coverage through their employers qualify for generous subsidies to buy insurance in the government-run exchanges. These subsidies decrease with need, so the more you make, the less [...]
Happy Meal toys and other promotions that come with high-calorie children’s meals will soon be banned in parts of Santa Clara County unless the restaurants meet nutritional guidelines approved Tuesday by the county Board of Supervisors. “This ordinance prevents restaurants from preying on children’s’ love of toys” to sell high-calorie, unhealthful food, said Supervisor Ken Yeager, who sponsored the measure. “This ordinance breaks the link between unhealthy food and prizes.” -Los Angeles Times
I don’t often eat at McDonald’s; I don’t like the taste of their food, nor do I like the toys in their happy meals. On [...]
We have become a nation of experts.
They are everywhere: on TV, advising us about raising our children or improving our sex life; in magazines and newspapers, lending a measure of weight to opinion pieces disguised as news; in business, promising to improve productivity and bolster profits through higher productivity, or slicker marketing, or yet another reorganization or “team-building” project. They are ubiquitous in government and politics, lending credence to the implausible and certainty to the unpredictable. Armed with statistics, and studies, and the ethereal proclamations of other unnamed experts like unto themselves, they saturate our psyche with innumerable [...]
Just replace the friendly storekeeper with a friendly doctor, and you get the picture.
Two weeks after President Barack Obama signed the big health care overhaul into law, Americans are struggling to understand how — and when — the sweeping measure will affect them.
Questions reflecting confusion have flooded insurance companies, doctors’ offices, human resources departments and business groups.
“They’re saying, ‘Where do we get the free Obama care, and how do I sign up for that?’ ” said Carrie McLean, a licensed agent for eHealthInsurance.com. The California-based company sells coverage from 185 health insurance carriers in 50 states. -McClatchy
Who would have ever thought this would happen? I mean, for months on [...]
According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), over half of President Barack Obama’s new $940 billion health care entitlement is paid for by price-fixing Medicare cuts.
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This doc fix is big enough that, if it had been included as a cost of Obamacare, it would have sent the President’s bill into the red all by itself. But the half trillion dollars in Medicare cuts used to fund the rest of Obamacare are a much bigger problem.
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The left’s solution to this problem has been simmering for some time now. Senate Budget Committee chairman Kent Conrad (D-ND) [...]
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