Triage for HealthCare.gov: Administration Punts on Small Business Exchange

Sometimes to save the patient, you have to chop off a limb. The Obama administration is doing just that with the underperfoming HealthCare.gov website, announcing Wednesday that it will give up on opening the exchange for small businesses for another year and will rely on direct enrollment through insurance companies and brokers instead.

“This allows small employers to sign up for coverage through offline enrollment while [the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services] works on creating a smoothly functioning online experience in the SHOP Marketplace,” an official at the Department of Health and Human Services said.

The move allows the administration to focus all of its efforts on the individual exchange, which is expected to face a crush of users as the clock clicks closer to a Dec. 23 deadline for enrollment to be insured on Jan. 1. Administration officials Wednesday afternoon were already warning that the website would be able to handle 50,000 people at a time — or about 800,000 per day — but could continue to have problems handling spikes in volume.

There are some positives for small businesses in the decision, according to details provided by an HHS official. Small businesses will no longer have to be certified as eligible for tax credits before signing up for their plans. They will merely have to have their applicaiton done before filing their taxes.

But the latest announcement is another stunning setback for the administration’s signature initiative and comes just a day before Thanksgiving and days before a self-imposed Dec. 1 deadline for the main website to be ready for the vast majority of users — one that the administration has been worried enough about of late to not engage in a full-court promotional press to get Americans to apply.

Republicans quickly pounced.

Via: Roll Call

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Gallup: Obamacare’s Hurt/Had No Effect: 10; Helped:1

(CNSNews.com) - The percentage of Americans who say that Obamacare has either hurt them and their family or has had no effect yet outnumbers those who say it has helped by a margin of approximately 10 to 1, according to a new poll released by Gallup.

On Nov. 23-24, Gallup asked 1,034 adults this question: “As you may know, a few of the provisions of the healthcare law have already gone into effect. So far, has the new law helped you and your family, not had an effect, or has it hurt you and your family?

Only 9 percent said that Obamacare had helped them and their family. Meanwhile, 19 percent said it had hurt them and their family and 69 percent said that it had had no effect on them and their family.

The combined 88 percent who said it either hurt them and their family or had no effect on them and their family represented 9.7 times as many people as the 9 percent who said it had helped them and their family.

Via: CNS News

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U.S. airlines advised to give China flight plans over new defense zone

WASHINGTON/TOKYO (Reuters) - The United States advised its commercial airlines to notify Chinese authorities of flight plans when travelling through an air defense zone that Beijing established a week ago over the East China Sea, ratcheting up regional tensions.

The United States said it expected U.S. carriers to operate in line with so-called notices to airmen issued by foreign countries, adding, however, that the decision did "not indicate U.S. government acceptance of China's requirements.

The advice is in contrast with America's close ally Japan, where the two major airlines have agreed with the Japanese government to fly through the zone without notifying China.

Beijing wants foreign aircraft passing through the zone - including passenger planes - to identify themselves to Chinese authorities.

A U.S. administration official said China's action appeared to be a unilateral attempt to change the status quo in the East China Sea, which could "increase the risk of miscalculation, confrontation and accidents".

"We urge the Chinese to exercise caution and restraint, and we are consulting with Japan and other affected parties throughout the region," the official said.

The zone includes skies over islands at the heart of a tense territorial dispute between Japan and China and represents a historic challenge by the emerging new world power to the United States, which has dominated the region for decades.

Via: Yahoo News

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RUMOR CHECK: A ‘MESSIANIC’ OBAMA DEPICTED IN BOOK FOR GRADE SCHOOLERS?

The scuttlebutt is that the poetry-based mini-biography “Barack Obama: Son of Promise, Child of Hope” paints the president with a “messianic” brush and is reportedly a Common Core fave.

Gateway Pundit noted “Common Core kid’s book teaches 3rd graders that Barack Obama is honest, kind, fair and godlike.” It went on to quote EAG News:

… a new lesson that casts America’s 44th president in a messianic light. Literally.

And – surprise – it’s Common Core-aligned.

EAG called attention to a teacher’s guide for “Son of Promise” which is titled “Barack Obama Lesson Plan and Prezi,” authored by Sherece Bennett, and is for sale atTeachersPayTeachers.com.

TheBlaze picked up a copy of “Son of Promise.” Here’s what we found out:

Via: The Blaze

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@BarackObama’s (and the Democrats’) war on the scourge of piano teacher nonprofit associations.

Background: the Federal Trade Commission got a bug up ah, decided that some boilerplate, non-binding, non-enforceable language in the Music Teachers National Association (a small nonprofit out of Ohio) represented an attempt to jack up prices in the high-stakes, ruthlessly competitive world of piano lessons (average lesson, according to the WSJ: $30). Not having any friends in court – and no, I don’t think that I’ll strike that out, given that it’s brutally truthful – the MTNA simply surrendered to the tender mercies of the FTC. The result?

This October, MTNA signed a consent decree—its contents as ludicrous as the investigation. The association did not have to admit or deny guilt. It must, however, read a statement out loud at every future national MTNA event warning members against talking about prices or recruitment. It must send this statement to all 22,000 members and post it on its website. It must contact all of its 500-plus affiliates and get them to sign a compliance statement.

The association must also develop a sweeping antitrust compliance program that will require annual training of its state presidents on the potential crimes of robber-baron piano teachers. It must submit regular reports to the FTC and appoint an antitrust compliance officer. (The FTC wanted the officer to be an attorney, but Mr. Ingle explained that this would “break the bank,” so the agency—how gracious—is allowing him to fill the post.) And it must comply with most of this for the next 20 years.

The MTNA is not yet free of fear; the FTC has still to approve the consent decree. An FTC spokesman told me the agency does not confirm or deny the existence of investigations. The organization to this day has no idea how it became a target, nor will it ever because the FTC doesn’t have to provide it.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you: our federal bureaucracy. If you were to ask one hundred Democrats, picked at random, whether or not they intended their support for big government to result in a world where a bunch of unelected bureaucrats could go wilding on a Cincinnati music teachers’ nonprofit, probably about ninety or so would say “No.” The problem is, if you asked them if they ever did anything to make sure that said bureaucrats would not have an opportunity to go wilding on said nonprofit, even more of them would say “No.” Despite the fact that we’ve known for decades that bureaucracies creep, and government expands, and government officials like to exercise their power. Apparently, once the government bureau is set up, Heroic Civic Space Newts are supposed to pop out of the aether and make sure that only the BAD people get drowned in paperwork*. That this does not happen is never adequately addressed by liberals; or, indeed, ever addressed at all. Which is a shame; we might trust big government more if its most devoted adherents showed any sign of wanting to ensure that big government functioned properly.

Assuming that either they, or it, even could.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

*This is a remarkably obscure literary reference, even for me.

Via: Red State

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Common Core Instructs Students To Learn About Gettysburg Address Without Mentioning Civil War

Is it possible to teach students the meaning behind President Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address without mentioning the Civil War?

According to the government’s new Common Core education standards, the Gettysburg Address must be taught without mentioning the Civil War and explaining why President Lincoln was in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

The Student Achievement Partners instructions tell teachers to, “Refrain from giving background context or substantial instructional guidance at the outset…This close reading approach forces students to rely exclusively on the text…and levels the playing field for all students as the seek to comprehend Lincoln’s address.”

Via: Fox News Insider

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Hard Sell - Going door-to-door for Obamacare

Hollywood, Fla. 

Standing here on the streets of Hollywood with two comely Obamacare cheerleaders by my side, I’m feeling fired up and ready to go. I’m feeling like the change I’ve been waiting for. I’m feeling like whatever Obama cliché you can think of. And all I want to say, like the late Todd Beamer before me, is, “Let’s roll.” Or more like, “Let’s enroll.” Because much as Beamer, God rest his soul, took on the terrorists who tried to take down America, we are now in a similar cataclysmic fight: the fight to guarantee that every American has the right to buy overpriced health insurance on a glitchy website, under threat of punitive tax penalties. 

GARY LOCKE

I’ve come to Florida to go door-to-door with the foot soldiers of Get Covered America, the boots-on-the-ground division of Enroll America, which bills itself as a “nonpartisan 501(c)(3) organization whose mission is to maximize the number of uninsured Americans who enroll in health coverage made available by the Affordable Care Act.” These Obamacare evangelists are very serious about the “nonpartisan” nature of their business. Nearly every Enroll America staffer I speak to emphasizes it, often repeatedly. And while it might strain credulity that an organization is nonpartisan which seeks to make sure people are Obamacared for by setting $100 million fundraising goals for itself, and conducting $5 million ad campaigns, and targeting 10 different states, 9 of which are coincidentally run by Republican governors, I choose to take them at their word. 

Via: Weekly Standard

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Obama Laughs Off Negative Poll Numbers to Barbara Walters: ‘Nowhere to Go But Up’

President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama sat down with Barbara Walters for a wide-ranging interview that aired Friday night, and the first issue Walters brought up was the president’s record low approval numbers. But Obama just shrugged them aside as the hazards of the job, joking, “The good thing about when you’re down is that usually, you’ve got nowhere to go but up.”

Walters brought up Obama getting booed at a basketball game. The First Lady said, “It’s part of the job,” and said she’s gotten booed as well, though Walters did point out her numbers have always been a bit better than her husband’s.

Obama is at roughly the same popularity level that George W. Bush was at at this poing in his presidency, but the current officeholder dismissed the poll showing people no longer consider him trustworthy. When Walters brought up his comment from years ago about preferring to be a good one-term president than a mediocre two-term one, Obama joked that he’d love to be a good two-termer if he had his druthers.

Via: Mediaite.com

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