Head of Clinton Foundation: The Clintons are paranoid loonies

Clinton Foundation head Donna Shalala** privately expressed concerns about Bill and Hillary Clinton’s mental state in the mid-1990s, saying they had become “paranoid” and fixated on “right-wing conspiracies,” according to previously unpublished audio recordings obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

In 1994, four years before Hillary Clinton said a “vast right-wing conspiracy” was trying to take down her husband’s presidency, top aide Shalala said this theory was already embraced by the Clintons.

“They’ve become paranoid. Paranoia. Thinking people are out to get them, this right-wing conspiracy stuff,” said Shalala, who was the head of Health and Human Services during the August 1994 interview.

This isn’t new to anyone who has watched the Clintons. In addition to being grifters with no sense of propriety, they are clinically diagnosable as paranoids under DSM-5. What makes this newsworthy is that everyone knows this, even their cronies, but no one in the press has reported on it until now.

“[The Clintons are] feeling sorry for themselves. They talk about [conspiracies] all the time,” said Shalala. “That there really is a conspiracy out there to get us. That we don’t have a chance, people don’t understand how much good we’ve done. Our message isn’t getting across because these people are beating us up.”

Shalala said documents about supposed right-wing conspiracies were also being distributed to White House staffers.

“There is a feeling in the White House, and I don’t know whether it’s [James] Carville or [Paul] Begala or who’s giving them the materials,” said Shalala. “But sitting on the desks of their staff there’s these materials on this right-wing conspiracy.”

Rather than abating since they made their Clampett-esque exit from the White House, literally taking the furniture with them, the feelings of persecution seem to have metastasized– at least in regards to Hillary. Bill was confident enough to party with a pedophile. Her use of a private email server and having a handler follow a reporter into the bathroom are great examples of the ongoing paranoia. It also explains Hillary avoiding press questions and unscripted encounters with voters.

**Full disclosure. I have seen Donna Shalala in a tennis skirt (Montrose Park tennis courts, Washington, DC) and survived with only 20% of my body turned to stone, minor loss of sight in my left eye, and a permanent gag reflex at the sight of small curd cottage cheese.

Via: Red State

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Feds Can’t Verify $2.8 Billion in Obamacare Subsidies

CMS does not know if subsidies went to ‘confirmed enrollees, in the correct amounts’

The federal government cannot verify nearly $3 billion in subsidies distributed through Obamacare, putting significant taxpayer funding “at risk,” according to a new audit report.

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Inspector General (OIG) released an audit Tuesday finding that the agency did not have an internal system to ensure that subsidies went to the right enrollees, or in the correct amounts.

“[The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services] CMS’s internal controls did not effectively ensure the accuracy of nearly $2.8 billion in aggregate financial assistance payments made to insurance companies under the Affordable Care Act during the first four months that these payments were made,” the OIG said.

“CMS’s system of internal controls could not ensure that CMS made correct financial assistance payments,” they said.

The OIG reviewed subsidies paid to insurance companies between January and April 2014. The audit found that CMS did not have a process to “prevent or detect any possible substantial errors” in subsidy payments.

The OIG said the agency did not have a system to “ensure that financial assistance payments were made on behalf of confirmed enrollees and in the correct amounts.”

In addition, CMS relied too heavily on data from health insurance companies and had no system for state-based exchanges to “submit enrollee eligibility data for financial assistance payments.”

The government does “not plan to perform a timely reconciliation” of the $2.8 billion in subsidies.

The audit was released as the country awaits a Supreme Court ruling that could make all federal subsidies invalid, since the majority of states did not set up their own health insurance exchange.

Via: WFB

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U.S. marketplace health plan enrollment falls to 10.2 million

Roughly 1.5 million Americans lost their marketplace health coverage between February and March as national exchange enrollment fell from 11.7 million to nearly 10.2 million, the Obama administration reported Tuesday. In photo, Nurse practitioner Blen Abdi prepares a second set of injections for her patient at the Minute

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2015/06/02/268588/us-marketplace-health-plan-enrollment.html#storylink=cpy

- Roughly 1.5 million Americans lost their marketplace health coverage between February and March as national exchange enrollment fell from 11.7 million to nearly 10.2 million, the Obama administration reported Tuesday.

Officials expect the enrollment to fall to 9.1 million throughout the year as people drop coverage for a variety of reasons, including nonpayment of premiums, relocation and changes in employment and marital status.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said the 10.2 million enrollees through March is consistent with their target enrollment goals for 2015.

The Congressional Budget Office had originally projected marketplace enrollment would reach 13 million in 2015, 24 million in 2016 and a “steady rate” of 25 million in 2017 as the program is fully implemented.

That aggressive growth assumed a significant decline over the next two years in both employer-based insurance and non-marketplace individual coverage. But a subsequent HHS analysis found the CBO projections were unrealistic.

Senior administration officials said there was “mixed evidence” and “considerable uncertainty” about the CBO’s expectation of a large two-year movement away from job-based coverage and individual coverage purchased outside the marketplace.

In 2014, 8.1 million people initially signed up for marketplace coverage during the extended enrollment period that ended in May. But total enrollment fell to 6.3 million by the end of the year.

Of the 10.2 million plan members in 2015, about 85 percent, or 8.7 million, are receiving federal subsidies, or tax credits, to help pay for their coverage. The average 2015 tax credit was $272 per month, HHS reported.

Via: McClatchy DC

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Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2015/06/02/268588/us-marketplace-health-plan-enrollment.html#storylink=cpy

What Might Happen if Obamacare's "King vs. Burwell" Challenge Is Upheld?

 

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act has only been in force since Jan. 1, 2014, but it's had some amazing ups and downs in its short history.

Known better as Obamacare, the PPACA struggled out of the gate to enroll uninsured consumers due to a host of IT-architectural design issues underlying a number of state- and federally run marketplace exchanges. It took more than two months for permanent fixes to be put into place on the federally run exchange, Healthcare.gov, allowing consumers to finally complete the sign-up process for health insurance.

Fast forward a year and change, and everything is generally running very smoothly. Obamacare enrollment approached 12 million by the end of the 2015 regular enrollment period on Feb. 15. This is well ahead of the estimated 9.1 million enrollees that the Department of Health and Human Services believed would be signed up by the end of the year.

But just because Obamacare is succeeding now in its enrollments doesn't mean the law itself is out of the woods.

Obamacare faces a major challenge
One challenge set to shake things up in the coming weeks is a case being reviewed by the Supreme Court, King vs. Burwell. The plaintiffs in this challenge are focused on the verbiage of the law, which states that subsidies are to be paid to exchanges "established by the State."

As you probably know, not all states chose to establish their own exchanges. Some 37 states -- a figure that seemingly grows by the year -- are now a part of the federally run healthcare marketplace, Healthcare.gov. Some states found it easier to simply join Healthcare.gov from the get-go (especially those idealistically opposed to Obamacare that didn't want to accept federal funds to set up state exchanges). Meanwhile others, such as Hawaii, Oregon, and Vermont, were coerced to join Healthcare.gov after their state-run exchanges failed to either get off the ground or be profitable enough to continue running. But the one thing in common here is that for these states, the federal government is in charge of doling out subsidies on the states' behalf, rather than the states themselves handing them out. The plaintiffs are arguing against this practice and hoping to eliminate it.

Via: The Motley Fool

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HHS Confirmation Hearings: 49,000 Words, Zero on Abortion-Drug Mandate

Two Senate committees held hearings this month on the nomination of Office of Management and Budget Director Sylvia Mathews Burwell to succeed Kathleen Sebelius as secretary of Health and Human Services, the federal agency most responsible for overseeing implementation of Obamacare.

In these two hearings, according to transcripts published by CQ Transcriptions, the senators and the nominee spoke approximately 49,000 words. Not one of these words directly addressed the contraception-sterilization-abortion-inducing drug regulation that Sebelius issued under Obamacare and that is now the target of more than 90 lawsuits.

The closest anyone came was Republican Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas, who told Burwell he was going to ask her a question in writing in "regard to abortion coverage transparency for insurance plans offered in the federal exchanges."

The central question in the lawsuits filed against Sebelius is whether the federal government can force Americans into complicity with the taking of innocent human life by compelling them to buy or provide health insurance that covers abortion-inducing drugs.

Via: CNS News

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$250,000 FINE FOR LYING ON OBAMACARE APPLICATION

Obamacare customers caught lying on their applications in an effort to bag bigger taxpayer-funded subsidies could get slapped with a $25,000 to $250,000 fine.

Page 409 of the recently released Health and Human Services regulations states that "any person who fails to provide correct information" on the Obamacare application "may be subject to a maximum civil money penalty of $25,000 for each application." Anyone who "knowingly and willfully provides false information" is subject to a "maximum civil money penalty of $250,000 for each application." 

A recent Washington Post investigation of internal Obama administration documents determined that "potentially hundreds of thousands of people are receiving bigger subsidies than they deserve" because they "listed incomes on their insurance applications that differ significantly--either too low or too high--from those on file with the Internal Revenue Service."

So will the Obama administration actually slap hundreds of thousands of Obamacare customers with $25,000 to $250,000 fines for submitting incorrect information on their Obamacare applications to score lower taxpayer-funded health insurance premiums?

No, says University of Michigan assistant law professor, Nicholas Bagley.

"The money at stake in any given case is too small, and the process for imposing civil money penalties too cumbersome, to justify much in the way of governmental enforcement," Bagley told Vox.

Obamacare will cost U.S. taxpayers $2.6 trillion over the next ten years.

Via: Breitbart

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Dem Mayor Who Helped Sebelius Push Obamacare Charged With Fraud

A Democratic mayor who appeared alongside U.S. Health and Human Services Sec. Kathleen Sebelius earlier this year to promote Obamacare has been charged with wire fraud in connection with an $8 million mortgage scheme.

Lucie Tondreau, who has been marred by scandal since she was elected mayor of North Miami last year, will be charged in the conspiracy alongside three other suspects.

According to the indictment, between 2005 and 2008, Tondreau conspired with the president of a South Florida mortgage company to recruit straw borrowers to obtain mortgages.

Tondreau and the mortgage company president aired advertisements on a radio show that they hosted to help prop up the scheme, the indictment alleges. The duo “recruited and paid some of the listeners who responded to those advertisements, as well as other individuals, to pose as borrowers to purchase properties”.

The indictment also alleges that the co-conspirators fabricated HUD-1 Settlement forms which misrepresented that straw borrowers had made down payments and closing payments on homes.

The fraudulent loans were made for 20 properties.

In February, Tondreau, North Miami’s first Haitian-American mayor, helped the Obama administration and HHS Sec. Kathleen Sebelius promote Obamacare. Both spoke at a National Youth Enrollment Day event to increase awareness of Obamacare among young people six weeks before the March 31 sign-up deadline.

Even before Monday’s indictment and February’s appearance with Sebelius, Tondreau was the center of another fraud probe.

Via: Daily Caller

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Townhall's Benson Slams Media for Uncritically Swallowing Obama's '5 Million Enrolled' Spin

Townhall's Guy Benson today took Washington Post's Aaron Blake and Vox.com senior editor Sarah Kliff to task for uncritically furthering Obama White House spin that 5 million Americans have successfully registered for ObamaCare.

This is patently false, Benson charges, noting that, at best, the number is somewhere closer to 4 million, assuming the very generous estimate of a 20 percent "non-payment" rate on the registered policies. Benson explains (emphasis mine):

Back in reality, the generally-accepted estimate of the nationwide non-payment rate is 20 percent -- meaning that one-fifth of the "newly enrollment" are not, in fact, enrolled. The administration "counts" anyone who's placed an Obamacare exchange plan in their virtual shopping cart as signed up. Kathleen Sebelius again testified last week that HHS is not keeping track of who checks out and pays their first month's premium, which are necessary steps to becoming fully enrolled. (I've included that video below). As of a few weeks ago, payment delinquency rates were close to 50 percent in certain states. Nearly half of the few previously-uninsured Americans who have selected plans through Obamacare are not paid up. Also, the overwhelming majority of these "new" enrollees are not obtaining coverage for the first time. Most had insurance prior to Obamacare. According to estimate, fewer than 30 percentof those signing up are first-time enrollees. Two independent studies revealed that roughly 90 percent of eligible consumers who were uninsured before the law's implementation have chosen not to purchase plans on Obamacare's exchanges. The top reason cited was lack of affordability. Here's my back-of-the envelope math about the real progress
That's based on the White House's original target of seven million, which they've since tried to pretend never happened. If you take these calculations a step further by only tallying enrollments of (a) newly-insured people who (b) have activated their coverage by paying, the accurate "new enrollment" number sits just north of one million. And that's using the relatively generous 20 percent nonpayment rate assumption. Remember, according to the McKinsey study, the delinquency percentage among this group is more than double the broader national one-fifth figure.

Via: Newsbusters

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Report: Premiums rising faster than eight years before Obamacare COMBINED

Health insurance premiums have risen more after Obamacare than the average premium increases over the eight years before it became law, according to the private health exchange eHealthInsurance.

The individual market for health insurance has seen premiums rise by 39 percent since February 2013, eHealth reports. Without a subsidy, the average individual premium is now $274 a month. Families have been hit even harder with an average increase of 56 percent over the same period — average premiums are now $663 per family, over $426 last year.

Between 2005 and 2013, average premiums for individual plans increased 37 percent and average family premiums were upped 31 percent. So they have risen faster under Obamacare than in the previous eight years.

An important caveat is that eHealth’s prices don’t include subsidies, so the prices for anyone earning between 100 and 400 percent of the federal poverty level will be lower. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has repeatedly claimed patients will pay as little as $18 per month, without noting the taxpayer cost.

Premiums are being hiked across the board for several reasons, but the biggest contributor is the Obama administration’s highly touted “essential health benefits,” services that insurers on and off exchanges must provide.

Some benefits, such as emergency and laboratory services, are uncontroversial. But others, like maternity, newborn and pediatric services, are causing headaches for huge swaths of the population that don’t need them. Anyone past childbearing age, single men, the infertile, even nuns — their premiums are rising as well, because their plans must, by law, provide more services.

But premiums aren’t the only key to health care costs — deductibles and out-of-pocket costs like co-pays are also rising. When it comes to employer health plans alone, four out of five U.S. companies have increased deductibles or are considering doing so. (RELATED: 4 of 5 companies may hike deductibles due to Obamacare)

Prices may be people away from purchasing health insurance. The latest survey from consulting firm McKinsey found that half of those who haven’t purchased health insurance yet this year cited their inability to pay the premium.

Via: The Daily Caller

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Why Liberals Can’t Govern

Back in late February, a new contract document revealed that the Department of Health and Human Services would be paying $60 million for the computer cloud that supports back-end data sharing for HealthCare.gov and state Obamacare marketplaces, more than five times the amount in the original contract. This week HHS revealed that the contract has been further revised — to roughly $120 million, now more than ten times the original $11 million value of the contract when Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services first awarded it in 2011.

In most professions, when you end up spending ten times what you budgeted, the consequences are swift and severe. Heads roll. Responsibilities are reassigned. Budgetary authority gets yanked. This, of course, is not how things work in the federal government.

When George W. Bush was in the Oval Office, liberals often argued that conservative wariness and distrust of government made them poor managers of it. Because they didn’t believe in the power and benefits of an active, powerful federal bureaucracy, they tolerated and came to expect waste and mismanagement.

Alan Wolfe articulated this idea in the Washington Monthly in 2006. “Unable to shrink government but unwilling to improve it, conservatives attempt to split the difference,” he wrote, “expanding government for political gain, but always in ways that validate their disregard for the very thing they are expanding. The end result is not just bigger government, but more incompetent government. . . . As a way of governing, conservatism is another name for disaster.” His article was entitled simply “Why Conservatives Can’t Govern.”

Via: NRO

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ObamaCare's Secret Mandate Exemption - HHS quietly repeals the individual purchase rule for two more years.

ObamaCare's implementers continue to roam the battlefield and shoot their own wounded, and the latest casualty is the core of the Affordable Care Act—the individual mandate. To wit, last week the Administration quietly excused millions of people from the requirement to purchase health insurance or else pay a tax penalty.

This latest political reconstruction has received zero media notice, and the Health and Human Services Department didn't think the details were worth discussing in a conference call, press materials or fact sheet. Instead, the mandate suspension was buried in an unrelated rule that was meant to preserve some health plans that don't comply withObamaCare benefit and redistribution mandates. Our sources only noticed the change this week.

That seven-page technical bulletin includes a paragraph and footnote that casually mention that a rule in a separate December 2013 bulletin would be extended for two more years, until 2016. Lo and behold, it turns out this second rule, which was supposed to last for only a year, allows Americans whose coverage was cancelled to opt out of the mandate altogether.

In 2013, HHS decided that ObamaCare's wave of policy terminations qualified as a "hardship" that entitled people to a special type of coverage designed for people under age 30 or a mandate exemption. HHS originally defined and reserved hardship exemptions for the truly down and out such as battered women, the evicted and bankrupts

Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

But amid the post-rollout political backlash, last week the agency created a new category: Now all you need to do is fill out a form attesting that your plan was cancelled and that you "believe that the plan options available in the [ObamaCare] Marketplace in your area are more expensive than your cancelled health insurance policy" or "you consider other available policies unaffordable."

This lax standard—no formula or hard test beyond a person's belief—at least ostensibly requires proof such as an insurer termination notice. But people can also qualify for hardships for the unspecified nonreason that "you experienced another hardship in obtaining health insurance," which only requires "documentation if possible." And yet another waiver is available to those who say they are merely unable to afford coverage, regardless of their prior insurance. In a word, these shifting legal benchmarks offer an exemption to everyone who conceivably wants one.

Via: WSJ

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STUDY: OBAMACARE MEDICAL DEVICE TAX KILLED 33,000 JOBS

A new study finds that the Obamacare tax on medical devices killed 33,000 jobs.

The study, conducted by the Advanced Medical Technology Association (AdvaMed), said the Obamacare tax slashed 14,000 industry worker jobs and quashed the hiring of 19,000 more. 

"During a time when there is bipartisan support for growing high-technology manufacturing jobs, these results should serve as a wake-up call," said AdvaMed CEO and President Stephen J. Ubl. "The findings of the report underscore the need to repeal this tax." 

Even some Democrats like Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) have conceded that the Obamacare medical device tax is a "job-killing tax." 

The study's findings are just the latest round of job-killing news for Obamacare. Earlier this month, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) reported that Obamacare will reduce the U.S. workforce by 2.3 million full-time workers over the next seven years. 

However, embattled Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebeliusclaimed last week that "There is absolutely no evidence, and every economist will tell you this, that there is any job loss related to the Affordable Care Act."

According to the latest Investor's Business Daily Obamacare jobs scorecard, 401 employers have now slashed tens of thousands of worker hours and jobs due to Obamacare.

Via: Breitbart

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