'Affordable' Care: $1 Pay Hike Costs Middle-Class Family $9,355 Hike in Premiums

(CNSNews.com) - When the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (AKA Obamacare) is fully enforced on individuals and families next year, a middle-aged, middle-class couple with three children could be hit with a $9,355 hike in their annual health-insurance premiums if their annual household income happens to increase by just $1.

Under ACA, all Americans are required to secure health insurance. Those who do not get it through their employer can buy it through government-run health-insurance exchanges, which the law requires to be set up in every state. People buying their Obamacare-mandated health coverage through these exchanges will be eligible for federal subsidies in the form of a refundable tax credit---as long as their adjusted gross household income is between 100 percent and 400 percent of the Federal Poverty Level (FPL).

People whose household income is too small to qualify for the subsidy will be put on Medicaid. People whose household income exceeds 400 percent of the FPL will get no subsidy at all.

According to the IRS, which responded to a CNSNews.com inquiry on the issue, a household earning an annual income that is just $1 more than 400 percent of the FPL is ineligible for an Obamacare subsidy, period.

As explained by both the IRS—which wrote the regulation governing the Obamacare subsidy--and the Congressional Research Service, which published a July 31 report on the matter (Health Insurance Premium Credits in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act), the Obamacare insurance-premium subsidy essentially works as a cap on the percentage of annual income an eligible person is required to pay in health-insurance premiums.

VIA: CNS News

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GAO opens investigation into Planned Parenthood's use of taxpayer money \

WASHINGTON –  The non-partisan Government Accountability Office confirmed Thursday it is launching an investigation into how the country’s largest abortion provider spent millions of taxpayer dollars.

Planned Parenthood received more than a half billion dollars in federal funding last year. The GAO’s investigation is in response to a request made by more than 50 members of Congress in February who asked for a detailed report on how money is being used by Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers across the country.

Specifically, lawmakers want to know what procedures and services they provided and the number of people who were served and how much it cost.

The GAO’s investigation comes on the heels of a settlement involving a Texas affiliate of the organization, which paid $4.3 million in July to settle allegations of fraud in billing to a health program for the poor. The settlement was $3 million more than what had been announced earlier by the Texas Attorney General.

However, when finalizing the settlement, which included state and federal recovery money, Planned Parenthood strongly refuted claims it has frequently over-billed the system.

Casey Mattox, a lawyer for Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative organization that has filed lawsuits against Planned Parenthood and is providing free legal assistance to former workers-turned-whistleblowers at Planned Parenthood, told Fox News that the group is surprised at how little media attention the fraud story has received.

Mattox also said his organization has proof of falsified claims.

Via: Fox News

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CHRISTIAN COLLEGE RE-FILES LAWSUIT CHALLENGING OBAMACARE CONTRACEPTION MANDATE

LAWSUIT HIGHLIGHTS OBAMA ADMINISTRATION’S NARROW VIEW OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY, EXPERTS SAY

A Christian college in Colorado reopened its lawsuit on Wednesday against the Department of Health and Human Services challenging the Obamacare mandate requiring them to provide employees access to contraceptives.

Colorado Christian University (CCU) filed its suit in a federal district court in Colorado, announced the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which is representing the school. This makes it the first nonprofit organization to reopen its suit against the federal government after courts dismissed a similar suit late last year.

The courts dismissed the previous suit because the federal government had pledged to create an accommodation.

The suit presents yet another controversy around President Barack Obama’s signature domestic legislation. The mandate that employers provide insurance to their employees was previously delayed, and questions surround subsidies intended for those who enter government-run health careexchanges.

Some groups, primarily Catholic ones, objected to covering all forms of contraceptives, while CCU and others only objected to covering certain drugs they considered abortion-inducing.

Obama initially announced the contraception mandate at the beginning of 2012, setting off a firestorm of controversy over the administration’s perceived indifference to religious groups’ concerns. CCU, along with over 200 other plaintiffs, sued the federal government over the mandate.

The administration’s accommodation requires the nonprofit organization’s health insurer to provide the organization’s employees access to the objectionable drugs. The administration announced the accommodation in June, which the Becket Fund immediately condemned as insufficient.

Via: WFB

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Censored! IRS Scandal Being Buried by Big Three Networks

The Big Three (ABC, CBS, NBC) networks have colluded with the Obama administration to censor the latest IRS scandal news. The following is a list of key developments in the IRS scandal and how many days it has been since they were discussed, if at all, by the Big Three on their morning and evening news shows:

Update, Thursday, August 8:

Issa Demands FEC Turn Over Communications With IRS

On August 7, as reported by CNN.com, “Darrell Issa demanded Wednesday that the Federal Election Commission turn over records of more than five years of communications with the Internal Revenue Service -- a move that significantly expands the California Republican's ongoing probe of alleged federal targeting of conservative groups.”

In the article written by CNN’s Dana Bash and Alan Silverleib, it was reported that the House Oversight Committee Chairman “asked for records of all communications between the IRS and the FEC dating back to the start of 2008. He also requested records of any FEC discussions relating to tax-exempt applications or organizations since 2008.”

Via: Newsbusters

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EXCLUSIVE: Alec Baldwin Set To Host New MSNBC Primetime Show

Mediaite has learned from a senior source in the cable news industry with knowledge of MSNBC’s programming that actor Alec Baldwin is getting his own weekly show in MSNBC’s primetime lineup.

According to our source, the so far untitled show will air Fridays at 10 p.m. ET and will feature a large dose of Baldwin’s outspoken liberal politics.

The gig would make sense, considering Baldwin’s long history with the NBC family. He starred on the network’s award-winning sitcom 30 Rock for seven years, has frequently hosted Saturday Night Live, and hosted the network’s American airing of 2007′s Live Earth concert. Most important, Baldwin’s fiercely liberal and often combative political views make sense for a network that has become the place for progressive viewpoints on cable.

The MSNBC 10 p.m. hour is currently occupied by Lawrence O’Donnell, but only Monday through Thursday. As such, this new Baldwin show will not replace any of the network’s primetime talk shows — just the Lockup prison documentary series that airs Friday evenings.

Our source insists its a done deal but there is no question MSNBC is not quite prepared for an announcement. Yet.

Viewers curious about Baldwin’s new role may do well to watch the video below from last year, when, according to The LA Times Baldwin helped O’Donnell out by reading his segment teasers. The Times article includes some interesting yet unintentional foreshadowing, suggesting all the way back in May 2012 that “Baldwin may find that anchor seat a little too comfortable.”

Check it out, via MSNBC:

Via: Mediaite.com

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Critics bash Obama's plans for vacay

President Obama and his family are heading to Martha's Vineyard on Saturday for a week of rest and relaxation, but not before facing the ritual partisan grumblings that presidential vacations are extravagant and waste taxpayer money.

While Congress is in the midst of its own five-week break, Republican officials haven't missed the opportunity to question the president for heading to the upscale Massachusetts community at a time when automatic cuts to the federal budget have left the Defense Department and other agencies furloughing employees.

Rep. Chris Stewart, R-Utah, said no one begrudges the president taking some time with his family. But Stewart, who earlier this year introduced a resolution calling on Obama to skip vacations until the White House restored public tours — mothballed as a result of across-the-board federal cuts known as sequestration— suggested the president's trip to the upscale community in Chilmark, Mass., appears "tone deaf."

"Most of the people in my district could never afford to visit Martha's Vineyard, and those who could would feel uncomfortable vacationing in a place that has a reputation for being for the elite," said Stewart in a telephone interview from his district.

Obama is scheduled to arrive on Saturday after he and first lady Michelle Obama travel to Orlando, where he will address the Disabled American Veterans National Convention. While on the Vineyard this year, the Obamas will be staying at the $7.6 million vacation home of David Schulte, a Democratic campaign donor and corporate finance manager.

Via: USA Today

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The tragedy of America's great food stamp binge

Let me put it this way, my jaw hit the floor. Earlier this week I was able to screen a portion of this Friday’s Fox News documentary “The Great Food Stamp Binge,” hosted by Bret Baier. It airs Friday at 10 p.m. and Sunday at 9 p.m. ET on the Fox News Channel. This investigation focuses on a federal program called SNAP, or "Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program." 

Once upon a time this was called food stamps, but the modern world is all about branding and image, not accuracy or substance.  Thus, a snappy new name was needed. 

All this change is a direct result of the Obama administration's surreptitious undermining of the law in the Stimulus Act in 2009 and the disingenuous gutting of President Clinton's overwhelmingly successful Welfare Reform law. This was achieved by administrative fiat in 2010.

As I watched the rough cut with Fox Editor-at-Large Peter Boyer, I found myself at a loss for words.  

I don’t know whether I was more saddened, or angered by the interview John Roberts did with an apparently healthy “surfer” who happily lives a life of leisure in Southern California subsidized by the taxpayer.  

It was simply mindboggling to listen to this grown man explain the logic he uses to justify taking food aid -- and thus free food -- rather than working and paying for it himself. 

Via: Fox News

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War by wordplay

Charles Krauthammer

Opinion Writer

Jen Psaki, blameless State Department spokeswoman, explained that the hasty evacuation of our embassy in Yemen was not an evacuation but “a reduction in staff.” This proved a problem because the Yemeni government had already announced (and denounced) the “evacuation” — the word normal folks use for the panicky ordering of people onto planes headed out of the country.

Thus continues the administration’s penchant for wordplay, the bending of language to fit a political need. In Janet Napolitano’s famous formulation, terror attacks are now “man-caused disasters.” And the “global war on terror” is no more. It’s now an “overseas contingency operation.”

Nidal Hasan proudly tells a military courtthat he, a soldier of Allah, killed 13 American soldiers in the name of jihad. But the massacre remains officially classified as an act not of terrorism but of “workplace violence.”

The U.S. ambassador to Libya and three others are killed in an al-Qaeda-affiliated terror attack — and for days it is waved offas nothing more than a spontaneous demonstration gone bad. After all, famously declared Hillary Clinton, what difference does it make?

Well, it makes a difference, first, because truth is a virtue. Second, because if you keep lying to the American people, they may seriously question whether anything you say — for example, about the benign nature of NSA surveillance — is not another self-serving lie.

And third, because leading a country through yet another long twilight struggle requires not just honesty but clarity. This is a president who to this day cannot bring himself to identify the enemy as radical Islam. Just Tuesday night, explaining theU.S. embassy closures across the Muslim world, he cited the threat from “violent extremism.”

Via: Washington Post

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Fox News Poll: Phony scandals? Not to voters

Benghazi. Snooping on reporters. The IRS and NSA. The White House dismisses them as phony and fake scandals. Americans do not.

A Fox News national poll released Thursday finds that 78 percent of voters think the questions over the administration’s handling of the terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi should be taken seriously. Just 17 percent call it a phony scandal. 

The attack, on the anniversary of September 11, killed four Americans -- including the U.S. ambassador.

Meanwhile, 69 percent of voters say the National Security Agency’s electronic surveillance of everyday Americans is serious, while 26 percent call that a fake scandal.

By a margin of 59-31 percent, voters are also more likely to view the seizure of reporters’ phone records by the Justice Department as serious rather than phony. 

And while the White House sees a Congressional investigation of the IRS targeting of conservative groups as a “distraction,” 59 percent of voters take it seriously. Some 33 percent agree with the administration that it’s fake.

In each of the four situations, voters across the partisan spectrum -- Republicans, independents and Democrats -- are more likely to say the situation should be taken seriously.

Democrats are most inclined to agree with the White House on the IRS scandal: 49 percent say it’s serious, while 42 percent call it a phony scandal. 

Via: Fox News

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