Second-Term Nightmare

ObamaCare's chickens come home to roost.

Talk about being between a rock and a hard place. The Obama administration and its allies in Congress are faced with the challenge of trying to convince Americans there are wide-ranging benefits to their 2010 takeover of our nation's health-care system, while at the same time working to delay it so as to minimize the negative consequences before the 2014 elections.

The last thing congressional Democrats want is a repeat of the drubbing their party took in 2010, courtesy of the ObamaCare backlash. But recent events have put ObamaCare and its outcomes front and center, adding to a growing fear on the left that Republicans not only will hold the House but could take the Senate.

Voters anxious for job growth cannot help but notice recent discussions about the law's detrimental effect on employment.The employer mandate, which requires entities with at least 50 full-time employees to provide costly federally approved insurance, acts as an incentive to keep payrolls at 49 or fewer or move workers to part-time status. The administration apparently agrees, as it announced it is postponing the start of the employer mandate by one year, to 2015. Even casual observers of the electoral calendar may note that's on the other side of the midterms.

Leaving aside for a moment whether it is legal for an administration simply to decree that a law won't be enforced until next year, such action keeps ObamaCare in the news. Earlier this month the House passed legislation that would make it legal to delay the employer mandate. The House passed another bill to delay the individual mandate by a year, with the logic that individuals and families deserve the same break busineses are getting. Both bills will languish in the Senate, but they have led to the rather odd situation of the president actually vowing to veto legislation that would put his extralegal action on solid footing.

Via: The Wall Street Journal

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Obamacare Fallout: More Doctors Opting Out of Medicare

Three times more doctors are refusing Medicare patients than three years ago, many citing Medicare's increasing rules and lowered payment rates.

According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which administers the program, even doctors who still see some Medicare patients are limiting the number of Medicare patients they will treat, reports The Wall Street Journal.

The declines are in addition to the growing number of doctors who won't accept new Medicaid patients, and come just as millions of Americans are poised to become eligible for coverage under Obamacare. 

Editor's Note: Should ObamaCare Be Repealed? Vote in Urgent National Poll 
The numbers of doctors refusing both Medicare and Medicaid payments won't completely undermine Obamacare, health experts say, but some patients may have problems finding doctors who will accept their new coverage under the healthcare-reform law. 

According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, 9,539 doctors who had accepted Medicare payments opted out of the program last year. That seems like a large number, but 685,000 doctors nationally were enrolled as participating Medicare physicians in 2012. 

Eight-one percent of them were family doctors, a drop from 83 percent in 2010, the American Academy of Family Physicians reports. The journal Health Affairs, however, reported this month that one-third of primary-care physicians did not accept new Medicaid patients in 2010-2011.

Part of the problem is that Medicare payment rates have not kept pace with inflation, and Medicare reimbursements could be slashed by 25 percent next year unless Congress delays the cuts. In addition, the amount of paperwork and information required from doctors and providers is massive
Via: Newsmax

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Obama's HUD to Expand Middle Class

How? Just move people from low income neighborhoods into middle class neighborhoods.

This brilliant stratagem is being promoted by Shaun Donovan, Obama's newly appointed head of HUD.

According to Donovan, the middle class is the middle class because they have all the advantages of living in middle class neighborhoods. After all, middle class neighborhoods have better  "schools, jobs, transportation, and other important neighborhood resources that can play a role in helping people move into the middle class."

Move people from low income neighborhoods with poor "assets" into neighborhoods with good "assets" and presto  they will have middle class jobs and all the other "assets" of being in the middle class.

Not only is this economically sound, it follows from the moral principle that every American has  the right "to choose to live in a community they feel proud of."

That being the case, not only is it immoral to discriminate on the housing front on the basis of ethnicity and sexuality, it is equally immoral to discriminate on the basis of ability to pay. Under HUD"s  new "Fair Housing" plan, HUD, one way or another, will make sure taxpayers eat the tab for this brilliant piece of social engineering..  Unlike the old failed  Housing Choice Voucher(HCV) program,  this one under HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan  is going to work because Donovan is going to use "21st Century methods":

Via: American Thinker

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Peggy Noonan: Obama Got To Point Where People Stopped Listening To Him Faster Than Most Presidents

"I think every president in the intense media environment we have now, certainly every two-term president, gets to a point where the American people stop listening, stop leaning forward hungrily for information. I think this president got there earlier than most presidents. And I think he's in that time now."

So said the Wall Street Journal's Peggy Noonan on ABC's This Week Sunday

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS, HOST: You are seeing (ph) more populist Democrats, I agree with that, but Peggy Noonan, you know, the president going back to the country one more time, it's unclear that these speeches are doing much to move public opinion, much less Washington.

PEGGY NOONAN, WALL STREET JOURNAL: Yes, I think that's true. But when the White House calls it a pivot, somebody counted it up and said it's probably the tenth pivot to the economy the president has done since he came in.

I noticed that in one of the speeches, it went over an hour. There was a heck of a lot jammed in. That tells me something. It said we're not sure exactly what to say, so we're going to say everything, but a speech about everything is a speech about nothing. Beyond that, I think every president in the intense media environment we have now, certainly every two-term president, gets to a point where the American people stop listening, stop leaning forward hungrily for information. I think this president got there earlier than most presidents. And I think he's in that time now.

Via: Newsbusters

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Report: 4 in 5 Americans at risk of poverty, joblessness, reliance on welfare

Four in five adults in America have dealt with unemployment, risked falling into poverty or relied on welfare for portions of their life, The Associated Press reports.

As President Obama pivots to discussions about the economy, the AP’s report offers a dreary picture of the current personal economy many in America experience.

The AP reports that the struggle is largely due to globalization, the widening gap between the rich and poor and the declining availability of good-paying manufacturing jobs.

The findings include an increase in economic insecurity — or a period of joblessness, reliance on welfare for a year or income below 150 percent of the poverty line — among whites, narrowing the racial disparity between whites and minorities when it comes to the likelihood of ending up in poverty, with 76 percent of white adults experiencing economic insecurity by the time they reach the age of 60.

Further, while the poverty rate for blacks and Hispanics are three times that of whites, by straight numbers, with 19 million whites in poverty, whites make up more than 41 percent of the population in poverty — nearly twice the number of black Americans in poverty, the AP reports.

To be sure, nonwhites are still more likely to experience economic insecurity, at 90 percent, compared to 76 percent for whites. Across all races, the risk of economic insecurity is 79 percent. According to the data trends, however, by 2030, nearly 85 percent of working-age adults will deal with economic insecurity, the AP reports.

The findings, reported by The Associated Press, were calculated by Mark Rank, a professor at Washington University in St. Louis and include additional analysis by experts and Census data. The Oxford University Press is set to publish Rank’s analysis next year.

“Poverty is no longer an issue of ‘them,’ it’s an issue of ‘us,’” Rank told the AP. “Only when poverty is thought of as a mainstream event, rather than a fringe experience that just affects blacks and Hispanics, can we really begin to build broader support for programs that lift people in need.”

Via: Daily Caller

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