Man Stuck with $407,000 Medical Bill After ObamaCare Breakdown

The busted ObamaCare websites cost a lot of people a lot of time. But for one Nevada man, problems with the state insurance exchange reportedly cost him $407,000.

The Las Vegas Review-Journal reported that Larry Basich, a 62-year-old Vegas resident, has been stuck with the massive medical bill despite signing up for an insurance plan via the state exchange last fall. 

Basich, according to the article, selected a UnitedHealthcare plan in November, and even paid his first premium. But he never received confirmation that he was enrolled, despite being assured that he was by Nevada Health Link.

Amid the confusion, Basich suffered a heart attack at the end of December, and had to undergo a triple bypass. Now, according to the Review-Journal, no insurer will claim his bills -- and he's caught in a financially frightening battle as he appeals to the exchange and its contractor, Xerox, for help.

"All I wanted to do when I moved here was buy a house, get a dog and go to some spring training games for the Dodgers," Basich, who moved from Hawaii, told the newspaper.

Xerox reportedly tried to assign Basich's bills to another insurance plan, but that plan is refusing to accept them. Basich's insurance broker also complained that Xerox is spending a lot of time lawyering up and documenting all of Basich's communications. 

Via: Fox News

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Californians Fleeing to Nevada

Taxes have consequences. That’s something tax increasers don’t understand. Remember how Gov. Jerry Brown and others campaigned last year for Prop. 30, saying millionaires had to “pay their fair share” (even though “millionaire” was defined, in California math, as someone making $250,000 a year)? But they insisted the tax increase would not drive people out. Wrong.

The reality, from Joel Fox:

Anecdotal, yes, but a news report indicates that warnings made during the Prop 30 campaign last year are playing out — higher taxes are sending some Californians across the state line to Nevada.

Under the headline, California Rich Seek Nevada Tax Haven, in the Tahoe Daily Tribune, the article says that Californians accounted for 43 percent of the 288 sales so far this year in Incline Village and Crystal Bay. More to the point, an Incline Village real estate broker reports that of the 39 sales on Nevada shores of Lake Tahoe to Californians since the beginning of the year, 15 buyers, forty percent of the total, specifically said they moved to Nevada to escape the Prop. 30 tax hikes. 

Other brokers confirmed that there has been an increase in high-end housing sales that the reporter wrote was attributed to California residents’ “desire to get beyond the reach of the Golden State taxman.” Sales on the Nevada side of Lake Tahoe were stronger than on the California side with a broker quoted as saying, “Prop. 30 probably has something to do with that.”

Some would argue the numbers reflected in the article are not significant. However, since the California tax system is built something like an upside down pyramid with the few at the bottom holding up the structure, a small but significant stream of high end taxpayers moving to low tax states could have consequences on California’s bottom line.

I hope so. I hope tax collections plunge sharply so the taxpayers get to keep more of their money and the state’s finances implode faster. The faster that happens, the faster we can enact reforms.

Via: California Political Review

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Report: Unions Pressuring Non-Citizens To Vote In Nevada…

Voter registration fraud is not a groundless conspiracy. It is not a hypothetical threat to election integrity.

In Nevada, a battleground state that could decide the presidency and control of the U.S. Senate, it is real.

Last week, I met with two immigrant noncitizens who are not eligible to vote, but who nonetheless are active registered voters for Tuesday's election. They said they were signed up by Culinary Local 226.

They speak and understand enough English to get by. But they don't read English especially well. They say the Culinary official who registered them to vote didn't tell them what they were signing and didn't ask whether they were citizens. The immigrants said they trusted that the union official's request was routine, thought nothing of it and went about their work.

Then the election drew closer. Then the Culinary canvassers started seeking them out and ordering them to go vote.

One of the immigrants was visited at home by a Culinary representative and said the operative made threats of deportation if no ballot was cast.

They didn't understand how, as noncitizens, they could be registered to vote if it's illegal for them to vote in a U.S. election. They didn't understand that, upon being signed up, not only is their registration public record, but the record of whether they've voted is public as well.

After a few days of early voting, the union knew the immigrants still hadn't voted. So union canvassers kept visiting.

One day, when a Culinary representative was told the immigrant wasn't a citizen and wouldn't vote, things got testy. The immigrant was "in so much trouble," the Culinary operative said, according to Brenda Moraine, a local immigrant advocate who was there.

The immigrants spoke with me on the condition that I provide no identifying information about them beyond their membership in the Culinary. They're afraid of reprisals from the union, they're afraid of losing their jobs, and they're concerned that their signatures are on a government document that says, in part, "I swear or affirm I am a U.S. citizen. I declare under penalty of perjury that the foregoing is true and correct."

Via: Las Vegas Review-Journal

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Republican National Committee alleges voting machine troubles in Nevada, other swing states

Secretary of State Ross Miller called claims of voter machine irregularities in Nevada by the Republican National Committee “irresponsible and unfortunate” on Thursday.

Miller, a Democrat, was responding to a letter sent to his office and election officials in five other states on Thursday in which the RNC alleged voting machines cast ballots for President Barack Obama, a Democrat, when the vote was intended for his Republican challenger, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.

The RNC did not provide documented proof of its allegation aside from media anecdotes.

In Washoe County, a man reported a problem with a voting machine in which he tried to vote for Obama but the machine kept registering a vote for Romney. The machine was recalibrated by election officials.

Miller responded in a letter sent to the RNC on Thursday that said unsubstantiated allegations of voting machine problems based on rumor, media reports and hearsay, “undermine the public’s confidence in the electoral process.”

The RNC letter expressed concerns that the voting machine problems were the result of “miscalibration and hyper-sensitivity of the machines.” Letters were sent to officials in Ohio, North Carolina, Colorado, Kansas and Missouri.

The RNC asked officials to recalibrate voting machines on Election Day and instruct poll workers to remind voters to double-check their votes.

Eric Herzik, the chairman of the political science department at the University of Nevada, Reno, said the RNC needs to “put up or shut up.”

Via: RGJ.com

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Obama Makes 10th Las Vegas Trip Since Telling Bankers Not To Visit The City “On The Taxpayers Dime”…

(CNSNews.com) - Less than three weeks into his presidency Barack Obama warned executives of banks that had received federal bailout money that they better not take business trips to Las Vegas. Since then, Obama himself has made 9 trips to Vegas—and is making a tenth today.

“You can't get corporate jets,” Obama said at a Feb. 9, 2009 townhall meeting in Elkhart, Ind. “You can't go take a trip to Las Vegas, or go down to the Super Bowl on the taxpayers' dime.”

By May 27, 2009, Obama was in Las Vegas to tour a “solar photovoltaic array” at Nellis Air Force Base with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

According to an archive of the president’s official schedule maintained by the Chicago Sun Times, Obama has frequently returned to Vegas for purposes ranging from pushing his jobs bill, to campaigning with Reid, to attending fundraisers.

Via: CNS News

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UNEMPLOYMENT GOES UP IN 44 STATES IN JULY

WASHINGTON - Unemployment rates rose in 44 U.S. states in July, the most states to show a monthly increase in more than three years and a reflection of weak hiring nationwide.

The Labor Department said Friday that unemployment rates fell in only two states and were unchanged in four.

Unemployment rates rose in nine states that are considered battlegrounds in the presidential election. That trend, if it continued, could pose a threat to President Barack Obama's re-election bid in less than three months.

Nationwide, hiring improved in July after three months of tepid job gains. But the national unemployment rate ticked up to 8.3 percent from 8.2 percent. Monthly job gains have averaged 150,000 this year. That's barely enough to accommodate population growth. As a result, the unemployment rate is the same as when the year began.

Still, 31 states gained jobs in July, while 19 lost them. Unemployment rates can rise in a state even when more jobs are created if more people start looking for work. People who are out of work are counted as unemployed only if they're looking for a job.

Via: Newsday
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