UnitedHealth drops thousands of doctors from insurance plans: WSJ

(Reuters) - UnitedHealth Group dropped thousands of doctors from its networks in recent weeks, leaving many elderly patients unsure whether they need to switch plans to continue seeing their doctors, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday.

The insurer said in October that underfunding of Medicare Advantage plans for the elderly could not be fully offset by the company's other healthcare business. The company also reported spending more healthcare premiums on medical claims in the third quarter, due mainly to government cuts to payments for Medicare Advantage services.

The Journal report said that doctors in at least 10 states were notified of being laid off the plans, some citing "significant changes and pressures in the healthcare environment." According to the notices, the terminations can be appealed within 30 days.

Tyler Mason, a UnitedHealth spokesperson, was not immediately available for comment when reached by Reuters.

The insurer told the WSJ that its provider networks were always changing and that it expected its Medicare Advantage network to be 85 percent to 90 percent of its current size by the end of 2014.

UnitedHealth is participating in about a dozen new state insurance markets that launched on October 1 to offer subsidized health coverage under President Barack Obama's healthcare overhaul.

The insurer said previously it planned to withdraw from some markets in 2014 because of the government funding cuts.

Another top health insurer, Aetna Inc , also warned in October that it expected slowing growth in 2014 in its Medicare Advantage plans.

Via: Yahoo

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Report: Record number of taxpayers flee U.S. over taxes

Experts believe tax enforcement is the major factor driving a record number of U.S. taxpayers to renounce their citizenship or relinquish their green cards this year, according to a Wall Street Journal report.

The Treasury Department recently published the names of 560 people who became expats during the third quarter of this year, bringing the total to 2,369 for the year according to tax lawyer Andrew Mitchel, who tracks the data at his International Tax Blog.

“The number of published expatriates for the first three quarters of 2013 has been 2,369 (679 + 1,130 + 560).  As stated last quarter, 2013 will clearly be the year with the highest number of published expatriates ever,” Mitchel explained at his blog this week. “The highest number of annual published expatriates prior to 2013 was 1,781 in 2011.”

See Mitchel’s chart: 

The total for 2013 represents a 33 percent increase over the previous high in 2011.

Experts speaking to the Wall Street Journal noted that while people are not required to provide the government with a reason for their renunciation, the tougher enforcement of tax laws could be to blame.

“Nothing has changed in immigration law that would make people want to renounce,” Freddi Weintraub, a partner at Fragomen Worldwide and immigration expert, told The Wall Street Journal. “Current or anticipated changes in tax law and enforcement are driving this increase.”

Via: Daily Caller

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[WATCH] Fox News guest claims al Qaeda could’ve run Obamacare better than the president

The implementation of Obamacare has been so bad, according to a recent guest on Fox News, that the terrorist organization al Qaeda could have run the program more efficiently.

Robert Laszewski, a former insurance executive and the president of Health Policy and Strategy Associates, made that assertion to Fox News’ Megyn Kelly Monday night.

“The federal health care exchange is simply not going to be working” by January 1st, he said. “The Health and Human Services Department held a briefing on Friday, a progress report, and said every time they find something broken, they fix it, and then find something else broken. This is just a disaster. Al Qaeda couldn’t have run this worse than the Obama Administration has run Healthcare.gov.”

Laszewski also added that he had been in contact with several insurers, who confirmed the bleak enrollment numbers released by The Wall Street Journal Monday. According to the Journal, less than 50,000 Americans have successfully purchased private insurance through the Healthcare.gov website. Despite the website’s many technical issues, the number represents about one-tenth of the Obama Administration’s initial enrollment target.

“The numbers the Wall Street Journal reported, 50,000, are accurate,” Lasczewski said. “They jibe with the numbers I have been hearing. More than that. It’s 50,000 people, but it works out to about 50 people per state per day. Do the math. 30 days, 36 states, 50 people a day…That’s the trickle that’s getting through Healthcare.gov right now. Very, very few people are able to make it through this gauntlet.”

Watch the exchange below.

Via: Red Alert Politics

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U.S. Wants BofA To Pay $864M Over Bad Loans: WSJ

WASHINGTON –  The U.S. government wants Bank of America to pay a penalty of $864 million for bad mortgages made from August 2007 until April 2008 and purchased by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac , according to a [l:Wall Street Journalstory|http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304448204579187942897087218|NEW] that ran Saturday. The mortgages were part of a program called "Hustle," which aimed to quickly make loans that were then sold to government sponsored enterprises Fannie and Freddie, according to the Journal's story. The government said the sought penalty amount would cover Fannie and Freddie's gross losses from "Hustle," according to the story. "Hustle" was created by Countrywide, which Bank of America purchased in 2008.

Via Fox Business
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KURTZ: The Media’s Hillary Bandwagon Loses a Wheel

Well, that was quick: Hillary Clinton is no longer inevitable.

The media giveth and the media taketh away. And so the consensus that she will be sworn in as president in January 2017 has begun to crumble.

All right, I’m exaggerating a bit. More than two years before the Iowa caucuses, normal people haven’t even tuned in. And many in the press undoubtedly believe that Clinton will be facing off against Chris Christie, who as expected won a huge reelection victory yesterday. (For junkies: a network exit poll had her beating Christie in New Jersey, 49 to 43 percent.)

I’ve always had problems with the whole Hillary inevitability scenario, having seen that evaporate in 2008. But the conventional wisdom in the press seemed set in cement, notwithstanding the fact that Clinton hasn’t said she’s running.

Now comes liberal New York Times columnist Frank Bruni to say that, gadzooks, she’s slipping in the polls. An NBC/Wall Street Journal survey found that Clinton’s favorability rating had slipped from 56 to 46 percent, while her unfavorable rose from 29 to 33 percent. Stop the presses!

“Here we go. The beginning of the end of her inevitability...

“Voters are souring on familiar political operators, especially those in, or associated with, Washington. That’s why Clinton has fallen. She’s lumped together with President Obama, with congressional leaders, with the whole reviled lot of them.”

That’s an excellent and underappreciated point.

“And some of the ways in which she stands out from the lot aren’t flattering. She comes with a more tangled political history of gifts bestowed, favors owed, ironclad allegiances and ancient feuds than almost any possible competitor does…

“And what would the argument for a Hillary presidency be? Something interesting happens when you ask Democrats why her in 2016. They say that it’s time for a woman, that she’ll raise oodles of dough, that other potentially strong candidates won’t dare take her on. The answers are about the process more than the person or any vision she has for the country. There’s no poetry in them. That’s not good.”

Via: Fox News

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Obamacare: Not Enough Young, Healthy Enrollees to Offset Costs

Younger, healthier Americans needed to make Obamacare financially viable are not signing up in sufficient numbers. Most enrollees have been people over 50, many with pre-existing medical conditions.
 

The skew toward the older crowd raises concerns that there will not be enough payments from young people to offset the cost of providing coverage for the older ailing population, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The early numbers, while statistically too small to draw conclusions, raise concerns about the practicality of the insurance marketplaces.

"We need a broad range of people to make this work, and we're not seeing that right now," Heather Thiltgen of Medical Mutual, one of Ohio largest insurers told the Journal. "We're seeing the population skewing older."

The target enrollee is someone around 40 years if age.

If the drift continues, a more expensive cohort of customers, older and less healthy, would drive up costs for everyone. The federal government had committed to reimburse insurers if they underestimated costs.

This may still not be enough to keep the system afloat should the overall customer pool be appreciably older than forecast.

Widespread problems with the healthcare.gov system serving the 36 states that are not operating their own marketplaces have dissuaded younger, healthier applicants from enrolling. Those who cannot chance being without coverage have persevered.

Testifying before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee on Tuesday, Medicare chief Marilyn Tavenner said the administration is seeking to remedy the problems with youth enrollment as soon as the website is fully operational.

“Based on our analysis we will have it fully functioning by the end of November,” Tavenner told the committee.

Via: Newsmax

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A dishonest presidency

The Wall Street Journal broke the news this weekend that, even as President Obama was telling the American people they could keep their health plans, “some White House policy advisors objected to the breadth of Mr. Obama’s ‘keep your plan’ promise. They were overruled by political aides.”

Overruled by political aides? This is simply damning.

It’s not easy to get a lie into a presidential speech. Every draft address is circulated to the White House senior staff and key Cabinet officials in something called the “staffing process.” Every line is reviewed by dozens of senior officials, who offer comments and factual corrections. During this process, it turns out, some of Obama’s policy advisers objected to the “you can keep your plan” pledge, pointing out that it was untrue. But it stayed in the speech. That does not happen by accident. It requires a willful intent to deceive.

In the Bush White House, we speechwriters would often come up with what we thought were great turns of phrase to help the president explain his policies. But we also had a strict fact-checking process, where every iteration of every proposed presidential utterance was scrubbed to ensure it was both accurate and defensible. If the fact-checkers told us a line was inaccurate, we would either kill it or find another way to make the point accurately. I cannot imagine a scenario in which the fact-checkers or White House policy advisers would tell us that something in a draft speech was factually incorrect and that guidance would be ignored or overruled by the president’s political advisers.

Via: Washington Post

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NBC/WSJ poll: Obama approval sinks to new low

President Barack Obama’s approval rating has declined to an all-time low as public frustration with Washington and pessimism about the nation’s direction continue to grow, according to a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll.

Just 42 percent approve of the president’s job performance, which is down five points from earlier this month. By comparison, 51 percent disapprove of his job in office -- tied for his all-time high.

Kevin Lamarque / Reuters

President Barack Obama speaks about health insurance at Faneuil Hall in Boston.

The NBC/WSJ pollsters argue that no single reason explains Obama’s lower poll standing. Rather, they attribute it to the accumulation of setbacks since the summer -- allegations of spying by the National Security Agency, the debate over Syria’s chemical weapons, the government shutdown and now intense scrutiny over the problems associated with the health care law’s federal website and its overall implementation.

Those events have combined to erase some of the advantage the president gained with polls showing most Americans blame congressional Republicans for the shutdown.Read the full poll here (.pdf)

Via: NBC News

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Medicaid Enrollment Surging Despite Obamacare Problems

More people are enrolling in Medicaid rather than in private insurance plans, leading critics of Obamacare to charge that the federal government will end up playing a much bigger role in the nation's healthcare system than had been expected.

Medicaid expansion always was expected to be a major part of bringing health coverage to the uninsured, reports The Wall Street Journal. The state reports are seen as good news for Obamacare advocates who said the law would bring health insurance to even more Americans.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, 9 million people were expected to sign up for Medicaid in 201; 7 million were expected to sign up for private coverage. 

But the Obamacare website's ongoing problems are slowing the number of people able to sign up for private plans.

No figures are available for Medicaid expansion in the 36 states where people are being enrolled through the troubled federal HealthCare.gov website. But in states which have set up their own exchanges under Obamacare, Medicaid enrollment is booming.

In Kentucky, for example, 82 percent, or 21,342, of those enrolling in new insurance plans under Obamacare are signing up for Medicaid, the Journal reported. In Washington, it's 87 percent of 35,528; and in New York, 64 percent of some 37,000.

Part of the growth is because states are reaching out to people who already receive federal benefits such as food stamps, said Matt Salo, executive director of the National Association of Medicaid Directors.

Via: Newsmax

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VA Backlog at 400,000 Claims, Untouched for 4 Months

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More than 400,000 claims from the nation's warriors have been left untouched for more than four months in the offices of the Department of Veterans Affairs, it has been revealed.

And it's not even the fault of the government shutdown — the number actually went down during the 16 days that Washington stood nearly idle.

The latest figure, from last Friday, stands at 411,704, The Wall Street Journal reports. These are claims that were filed before June 15. 

Urgent: Should the House Have Agreed to Debt Deal? Vote Here 

On the last Friday before the shutdown, the number of backlogged claims stood at 421,973, so during the time Washington was on furlough, the numbers went down by more than 10,000.

GOP Rep. Doug Lamborn of Colorado, who sits on the House Veterans Affairs Committee, said, "This drop is stunning in light of the administration's threats the backlog would increase as a result of a government shutdown."

Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki had said that claims processors would lose ground during the enforced break. Employees had been working mandatory overtime shifts to clear the backlog. When the government closed up shop, claims were processed but hours were cut.

The VA has struggled with a backlog problem for years. New computer systems have enabled employees to clear claims faster, but the VA still fell short of its own processing goal this year. Republican Rep. Jeff Miller of Florida believes this is the issue to focus on.

"Instead of debating whether or not VA's dire predictions regarding the shutdown’s impact came to fruition, I remain focused on a much more important question: Why is the department still falling short of its own backlog goals?" he said. 

The agency had planned to process 1.27 million claims by the end of June, but only processed 1.17 million claims.

Via: Newsmax

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Developing Obamacare's Health Care Exchanges Has Cost More Than Apple's Original iPhone Comment Now Follow Comments

This is a stunning number from Farhad Manjoo over at the Wall Street Journal. The development cost of the health care exchanges necessary under the ACA (aka Obamacare) is larger than the development cost of the original iPhone at Apple. Indeed, by some estimates it might be four times the cost:

If users found a few bugs in their iPads, she argued, most wouldn’t consider them a complete disaster. Instead, they’d recognize that technology is complicated, that errors are common, and they’d wait for an update. Apple Inc., she added, has “a few more resources” than her department, so “hopefully [citizens will] give us the same slack they give Apple.”

That argument is as clueless as it is misleading. While it’s true that Apple is fantastically wealthy, its product-development costs aren’t necessarily greater than those of the federal government. As Fred Vogelstein reports in his coming book, Apple spent about $150 million developing the iPhone. The health-insurance exchange—which, let’s remember, is merely a website meant to connect citizens to insurance companies, something quite a bit less complex than Apple’s groundbreaking miniature computer—so far has cost at least $360 million, and possibly as much as $600 million.

That’s a pretty bad indictment of the way those health care exchanges have been built: the most egregious problems being with the Federal one that covers the 36 states that did not decide to build their own. After all, the iPhone was not just a new product category, it was also a new operating system and a new paradigm for how to do computing. One would expect this to cost rather more than what is, at root, just a website calling on a few databases. But apparently not so it’s worth trying to work out what went wrong here. Manjoo gives us one reason here:

Today, any company looking to work with the government must navigate an obstacle course of niggling, outdated regulations and arbitrary-seeming requirements. For instance, your technology must be Y2K-compliant just to get in the door. The process locks out all but a tiny handful of full-time contractors—companies who also happen to be big federal lobbyists.

Via: Forbes
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[VIDEO] The Clock Is Ticking ... Time to End This Comedy of Political Errors

The Debt Denouement
It's time to wrap up this comedy of political errors.
WALL STREET JOURNAL - The Beltway budget melodrama rolls on to its predictable and dreary end, with both sides now split over increasingly small differences. None of this is worth a partial government shutdown, much less the risk of a debt default, and both sides are looking like losers. Let's get it over with.

As we went to press Tuesday night, Republican leaders in the House had abandoned a plan to pass a debt-increase bill that was nearly identical to the one that Senate leaders agreed to on Monday. The main differences were funding the government only through December 15, rather than January 15 in the Senate bill, and a provision to require Members of Congress and their staff to live by ObamaCare's subsidies.

None of that was enough to please the small band of 20 or so House conservatives who have been all but running the House since this fiasco began. They refused to support House Speaker John Boehner and even Budget Chairman Paul Ryan. Another 30 or so Members were tired of getting kicked around by Heritage Action and Senator Ted Cruz and want the whole thing settled. With Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi keeping her troops in line for a no vote, GOP leaders pulled the bill from the floor.

The conservatives thus undermined whatever small leverage the House GOP had left. Without a united majority of 218 votes, Republicans might as well hand the Speaker's gavel to Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid. Senate leaders announced immediately that they would resume negotiating to finish a deal that they would bring to the floor as early as Wednesday.

Via: Fox News
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Report: Washington political reporters flak for President Obama at meeting with Leon Panetta

When former Obama administration Defense Secretary Leon Panetta dared to criticize his old boss’ handling of the government shutdown, a group of Washington political reporters were there to leap to President Barack Obama’s defense.

“You have to engage in the process,” Panetta said, criticizing Obama at a Monday breakfast sponsored by The Wall Street Journal, according to an account by liberal Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus. “This is a town where it’s not enough to feel you have the right answers. You’ve got to roll up your sleeves and you’ve got to really engage in the process … that’s what governing is all about.”

This propelled some political reporters in the room to justify Obama’s lack of leadership, reports Marcus.

“To some extent, the reporters in the room seemed more forgiving of the circumstances in which the president finds himself,” she wrote. “Jackie Calmes of The New York Times noted that the Panetta-envisioned budget deal was illusory because Republicans refuse to consider new tax revenue. Doyle McManus of the Los Angeles Times observed that the White House would argue that its previous efforts at schmoozing and deal-making had fizzled.”

Panetta, who also served as CIA director under Obama, is an expert in budget negotiations from his experience serving as chief of staff and director of the Office of of Management and Budget under President Bill Clinton, and as chairman of the House Budget Committee when he served as a Democratic representative in Congress. According to Marcus, he pushed back against the reporters’ justifications for the president’s failure to come to a budget deal with Republicans.

“Just because you’ve engaged in some set of negotiations and they haven’t gone anywhere — for one reason or another there’s been a breakdown — is no reason to walk away from the table,” he reportedly said. “In this town, you’ve got to stay with it. You’ve got to stay at it.”

According to Marucs, Panetta dismissed the idea of creating “some razzle-dazzle supercommittee” to solve the budgetary impasse, arguing that the key players need to be locked in a room until they come to a solution.

“If the president, for whatever reason, feels he can’t do it because the Republicans don’t want to confront him, then he ought to be willing to delegate that responsibility to someone who can do it,” Panetta reportedly concluded.

Via: Daily Caller

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$2 Billion NSA Spy Center is Going Up in Flames

The National Security Agency's $2 billion mega spy center is going up in flames.

Technical glitches have sparked fiery explosions within the NSA's newest and largest data storage facility in Utah, destroying hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of equipment, and delaying the facility's opening by one year.

And no one seems to know how to fix it.

For a country that prides itself on being a technology leader, not knowing the electrical capacity requirements for a system as large as this is quite questionable.

Within the last 13 months, at least 10 electric surges have each cost about $100,000 in damages, according to documents obtained by the Wall Street Journal. Experts agree that the system, which requires about 64 megawatts of electricity—that's about a $1 million a month energy bill--isn't able to run all of its computers and servers while keeping them cool, which is likely triggering the meltdowns.

RELATED: GOVERNMENT WASTES MORE THAN YOU THINK

The contractor that designed the flawed system—Pennsylvania-based Klingstubbins--said in a statement that it has "uncovered the issue" and is working on "implementing a permanent fix."

But that's not the case, according to the Army Corps of Engineers (ACE), which is in charge of overseeing the data center's construction. ACE disagreed with the contractor and said the meltdowns are "not yet sufficiently understood." 

A report by ACE in the Wall Street Journal said the government has incomplete information about the design of the electrical system that could pose new problems if settings need to change on circuit breakers. The report also said regular quality controls in design and construction were bypassed in an effort to "fast track" the project.

Via: The Fiscal Times

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NBC/WSJ poll: NRA more popular than entertainment industry

As Washington prepares for a political battle over the Obama White House's proposals to curb gun violence after the Newtown, Conn., shootings, a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll finds that the National Rifle Association is more popular than the entertainment industry.

Forty-one percent of adults see the NRA -- the nation's top gun lobby -- in a positive light, while 34 percent view it in a negative light.

By comparison, just 24 percent have positive feelings about the entertainment industry, and 39 percent have negative ones.

The NRA's fav/unfav score is virtually unchanged from its 41 percent-to-29 percent rating in the Jan. 2011 NBC/WSJ poll, nearly two years before the Newtown shootings.

"That seems to me to be a pretty remarkably stable figure," says GOP pollster Bill McInturff, who conducted this survey with Democratic pollster Peter Hart.

But it's a substantial improvement from the 1990s, when the NRA's negative ratings outweighed its positive ones in the NBC/WSJ survey.

The current poll also shows a sharp divide between attitudes among gun owners and non-gun owners.

Among those who own a gun, 62 percent view the NRA favorably. But that percentage drops to just 25 percent among those who don't.

The full poll -- which was conducted Jan. 12-15 of 1,000 adults (including 300 cell phone-only respondents), and which has a margin of error of plus-minus 3.1 percentage points -- will be released at 6:30 pm ET.

Via: First Read

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Looming Tax Hike Motivates Owners to Sell

A looming increase in the capital-gains tax rate next year is fueling sales of some privately-held businesses.

Many business owners—mostly founders who could gain a lot from a sale—are looking to close deals before next year, when the maximum tax on investment income is scheduled to rise from 15% currently to at least 23.8% on most capital gains, at least for higher-income households. Many sellers intend to convert their equity into retirement funds or just start anew.

Eddie Seal for The Wall Street Journal

Bert Wolf of Acetylene Oxygen in Harlingen, Texas, says he plans to sell his compressed-gas business before 2013. Many business owners are looking to close deals by year's end.

"It just made more sense for me to take my chips off the table and go do something else," said Bert Wolf, 60 years old, who has an agreement to sell his compressed-gas business, Acetylene Oxygen Co. of Harlingen, Tex., before year-end.

Mr. Wolf added that if he waited until after the tax increase to sell, he would have to expand the business at the current rate "for at least 3 or 4 more years to achieve the same after-tax sales dollar." He is profiting on the sale of his business to Praxair Inc., PX +2.15% a public company.

"There's a kind of a panic on to get things done," said Beatrice Mitchell, co-founder of Sperry, Mitchell & Co. Inc., a New York investment bank that is advising Mr. Wolf on the sale.

To be sure, the weak economy has been difficult for many small-business owners across the board. The median selling price for U.S. small businesses in the quarter ended Sept. 30 was $174,000 down 8.2% from four years earlier, according to BizBuySell.com, an online small-business marketplace. The firm's findings are based on sales, reported voluntarily by business brokers and mostly of less than $1 million, in 70 major markets.

In the three quarters so far this year, 3,536 small businesses exchanged hands, down 34% from the first three quarters of 2008, when sales of small businesses were at a record high, it found.

Via: WSJ

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