Vets agency furloughs 7K, closes offices

Regional offices run by the Department of Veterans Affairs closed Tuesday as furloughs began for 7,000 employees of the agency’s Benefits Administration (VBA). 

“All public access to VBA regional offices and facilities will be suspended ... due to a lack of funds,” Veterans Affairs Department spokeswoman Victoria Dillon said in a statement provided to The Hill. 

The government shutdown, in its eighth day, has caused agencies to send government workers home who are deemed “nonessential.” 

The Federal Emergency Management Agency, for example, called some of its furloughed employees back to work to track Tropical Storm Karen, but they were then refurloughed Monday. 

No one would be answering phones at regional VA offices, which veterans call to check on the status of their disability benefits. 

Consequently, many veterans’ benefits will be delayed. VA’s ability to reduce the claims backlog, Dillon says, is hampered without claims processors who work overtime. Overtime was eliminated when the shutdown began.  

“Clear progress for Veterans and their families is at risk without immediate action by Congress to make fiscal year 2014 funding available by passing a clean continuing resolution to reopen the government,” her statement said. 

House Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman Jeff Miller (R-Fla.) slammed Senate Democrats for not agreeing to piecemeal bills to fund the VA. The ball, Miller said, is now in Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's (D-Nev.) court.

“Harry Reid could stop these furloughs and ensure veterans’ benefits immediately by acting on either of these bills, but instead he’s content to let them gather dust on his desk," he said in a statement. "It’s well past time for Harry Reid to stop the games and fund VA. If not, he owes America’s veterans an explanation for why he’s putting their benefits at risk.”

Via: The Hill

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Covered California: Obamacare And Reality Collide

In the midst of a government shutdown, the ACA exchanges open to much fanfare and success. Well, actually, no they didn’t.  CNN and MSNBC tried all day to get them to work and could not sign up on live television. People browsing often couldn’t access the site or proceed through the process.  They tried to blame this on traffic, but even ACA supporters have dismissed this canard.

“I’m a very very big supporter of the health-care act, but I don’t buy the argument that the load was too unexpected.” – Washington Post

But Covered California had 5 million visits. That’s certainly a lot right?

Dana Howard, a spokesman for Covered California, said the error was the result of internal miscommunication. “Someone misspoke and thought it was indeed 5 million hits. That was incorrect,” he said.

Further, it appears that not one person has signed up in the entire state of California.

“Since Obamacare’s exchanges opened, none of the 645,000 people who visited California’s online exchange, coveredca.com, have enrolled in the healthcare program, California news station KUSI-CA reports.”

But you’re a do-it-yourself kind of person, so you want to go and do a rate comparison yourself. According to Covered California, that’s impossible.

The reasoning for this you get to find in the brochure on Covered California’s website.

Apparently it is impossible to compare these rates with rates you could have obtained because — well, because they say so.  It’s not as if someone can’t say “I paid x over the last 3 years, and now I pay y,” but I digress. The truth is that ACA has been designed to fail your average consumer and shift the cost burden to the young and healthy. Insurers, as you can see above, are no longer allowed to set prices based on your risk, but to charge everyone based on the risk level of a much sicker person even if that does not apply to you. The only variables allowed are age and geographic region, which also leads to some odd effects within a single state.  Many are finding that they can get a policy cheaper if they lived in another pricing region. California has 19 pricing regions. Clearly we can’t have interstate competition on insurance plans because that might actually offer consumers competitive choices, and now we can’t even have competition within a state.

Via:Pocket Full Of Liberty

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Obamacare Supporters Turn on the Law

For a sense of how poorly the rollout of Obamacare’s exchanges is being received even amongst people predisposed to being supportive of the law, it’s instructive to compare USA Today’s harsh Obamacare editorial today to the hopeful one it posted a week before the exchanges went live.

At the end of the month, the paper’s editorial board posted an editorial touting the availability of affordable coverage for all in just a week’s time. “Glitches are inevitable,” the piece warned. But it reminds readers that Medicare Part D went through a rocky implementation and rollout too, and it’s quite popular now. “Maybe that's what ObamaCare's critics really fear,” the unsigned editorial declared, “that once people realize the non-stop demonization of the new health law has been mostly lies and exaggerations.”

Today’s editorial is not so forgiving. Headlined, “Exchange launch turns into inexcusable mess,” it says the exchanges amount to “an epic screw up.” The piece goes on to make the comparison to Medicare Part D once again. And this time it’s not so friendly.

President Obama's chief technology adviser, Todd Park, blames the unexpectedly large numbers of people who flocked to Healthcare.gov and state websites. "Take away the volume and it works," he told USA TODAY's Tim Mullaney.

Via: The Reason

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NPS Threatened WWII Vets With Arrest But Now Opens Mall For Union Bosses’ Immigration Rally During #Shutdown

Updated.

It truly seemed like we’re living in a world dictated to us by Lilliputian bureaucrats when a group of World War II veterans were threatened with arrest for having the temerity last week to visit the World War II Memorial during the government shutdown.

Now, however, said Lilliputian bureaucrats who attempted to block America’s octogenarian war heroes last week are showing their two-faced true colors by opening the National Mall Tuesday to union bosses holding an immigrant rights rally.

Several immigrant groups, as well as the AFL-CIO and SEIU will be hosting Camino Americano: March for Immigrant Dignity and Respect on Tuesday–merely a week after the National Parks Service initially refused to allow World War II veterans’ visit to the World War Memorial.

Although the NPS retroactively gave the vets access to the memorial, it wasn’t until after vets and several members of Congress pushed the barricades aside under the watchful gaze of the National Park Police.

Via: Red State

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