SOLOPOWER: ANOTHER SOLYNDRA IN WAITING?

The Department of Energy's loan guarantee program has already had two significant failures in the solar industry, the best known being Solyndra. Now a third company, San Jose's SoloPower, seems to be following in Solyndra's footsteps and threatening to leave taxpayers on the hook for millions more.

Last August, as Solyndra was going bankrupt, the Department of Energy issued a loan guarantee in the amount of $197 million to help SoloPower manufacture their thin-film solar power product. Like Solyndra, SoloPower has a nice-looking product. Its panels are thin and flexible and don't require heavy brackets to mount on a roof. And like Solyndra, the company's plans to expand were welcomed by politicians excited about the promise of hundreds of new jobs.

But as was the case with Solyndra, SoloPower's product advantages don't necessarily mean the company will survive stiff competition from China. Industry analyst Andrew Soare of Lux Research tells Fox News that China can still undercut US manufacturers by 30 percent, making it difficult to see how SoloPower can compete in the marketplace. It's this ability to undercut price that doomed Solyndra and Abound, another failed solar power company with a government-backed loan.

William Yeatman of the Competitive Enterprise Institute says of SoloPower, "It looks like it will fail for the same reasons as Solyndra." If it does, taxpayers will once again be on the hook. So far, the stimulus-funded DOE loan program has lost $600 million on solar company bankruptcies.

Via: Breitbart

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More than 2,200 Hospitals Face Penalties Under ObamaCare Rules

A provision of ObamaCare is set to punish roughly two-thirds of U.S. hospitals evaluated by Medicare starting this fall over high readmission rates, according to an analysis by Kaiser Health News.

Starting in October, Medicare will reduce reimbursements to hospitals with high 30-day readmission rates -- which refers to patients who return within a month -- by as much as 1 percent. The maximum penalty increases to 2 percent the following year and 3 percent in 2014. 

Doctors are concerned the penalty is unfair, since sometimes they have to accept patients more than once in a brief period of time but could be penalized for doing so -- even for accepting seniors who are sick. 

"Among patients with heart failure, hospitals that have higher readmission rates actually have lower mortality rates," said Sunil Kripalani, MD, a professor with Vanderbilt University Medical Center who studies hospital readmissions. "So, which would we rather have -- a hospital readmission or a death?"

But according to federal government figures, nearly one in five Medicare patients is readmitted to a hospital within 30 days of release, costing taxpayers an estimated $17.5 billion.

"Readmissions has been a low-hanging fruit for Medicare," said Jordan Rau, a staff writer with KHN, an editorially independent program of the non-partisan Kaiser Family Foundation. "They've been very unhappy that about 2 million Medicare beneficiaries are being readmitted every year between 30 days of discharge."

Medicare evaluated readmission rates at 3,367 of the nation's hospitals and will impose penalties on 2,211 starting in October, according to KHN. The analysis shows 278 hospitals will receive this year's maximum penalty of 1 percent. On the other side of the spectrum, 50 hospitals will receive the minimum penalty of 0.01 percent, KHN reports.

Via: Fox News

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OBAMA CAMPAIGN CAUGHT PULLING ANOTHER FAST ONE

 Willie Geist, MSNBC: What would you say to that same person that said, 'Well, that hasn't worked for four years. I haven't had the job over time, it's time for a change.'

 

Stephanie Cutter, Obama deputy campaign manager: Well, I think that worker probably has a good understanding of what's happened over the past four years in terms of the president coming in and seeing 800,000 jobs lost on the day that the president was being sworn in, and seeing the president moving pretty quickly to stem the losses, to turn the economy around, and over the past, you know, 27 months we've created 4.5 million private sector jobs. That's more jobs than in the Bush recovery, in the Reagan recovery, there's obviously more we need to do, and as I said to Mika at the at beginning of the program, I think that unemployed worker probably sees one person in this race trying to move the country forward and that's the president.

 

(h/t) RCP

 

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The Obama campaign is cherry-picking the numbers…

Job Growth

·         Obama: Cutter counts the job gains from the low point of Obama’s term forward. The low point was February 2010 when U.S. nonfarm payrolls measured 129,244,00. In July, they measured 133,245,000 for a gain of 4.0 million jobs in 27 months

·         Reagan: If you measure the Reagan recovery the same way, he created 8.0 million new jobs in 27 months.

·         Bush: And if you measure the Bush recovery the same way, the low point was in August 2003 when U.S. employment stood at 129,820,00. But 27 months later, the figure was 134,654,000 in November 2005 — a gain of 4.8 million jobs.

In this recovery, we’re still down over 3 million private sector jobs. By any number of measures, according to the AP, this recovery has been the weakest since WWII.

Via: Fox News