WASHINGTON DC – The Treasury Department rolled out Monday afternoon more tweaks to the health care law’s requirement that all large employers–those with 50 or more workers–provide insurance coverage to their workers. This is the part of Obamacare was supposed to take effect at the start of 2014, but was delayed by the White House this past summer as the White House was facing significant push back from employers.

In today’s final rule, the Obama administration is essentially relaxing the employer mandate for 2015–in a big way for medium-sized businesses, and a smaller way for the largest employers. Here’s a rundown of the key changes.

1. Employers with between 50 to 99 employees get another year of transition. The Obama administration will give medium-sized businesses another year’s pass on providing insurance coverage to workers. Treasury estimates that about 2 percent of American businesses fall into this category, but does not have numbers on how many people work for businesses of this size. For these companies, the employer mandate does not take effect until 2016. […] (more…)

2.5 Million Full Time Equivalent Jobs = 100 million hours of productivity removed from the economy.  

EVERY WEEK. 

As a consequence, @ $15/hr, that’s a $1.5 billion removal of positive production value from the economy and replaced with $1.5 billion dependency entitlement under the guise of a subsidy.  EVERY WEEK.

In very direct essence – This shifts $1.5 billion in additional taxation to the remaining productive class every week.   Or $78,000,000,000.00 ($78 Billion) per year. 

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama’s healthcare law will reduce American workforce participation by the equivalent of 2 million full-time jobs in 2017, the Congressional Budget Office said on Tuesday in a report that could fuel Republican efforts to paint the law as a job killer.

In its latest U.S. fiscal outlook, the nonpartisan CBO said the health law would prompt some lower-income workers to limit their hours to avoid losing federal subsidies that are available under the law to help pay for health insurance.

The CBO said the biggest impact on work hours from the health law would begin in 2017 because major provisions of the law will be well under way by then. The CBO said there would be smaller declines in work hours that would occur before then.

Work hours would be reduced by the equivalent of 2.5 million jobs in 2024, the agency said. (more…)

Following dramatic failures of the last two singles, “Share The Wealth” and “Income Inequality”, President Lip-Sync announces the catchy new single which has been typed into the teleprompter:

“Ladders of Opportunity”

Whether anyone buys it is yet to be determined – however, the media critics who have heard early snippets say: ‘it’s general sound is a remix heavy on the drum-beat’.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Income inequality is out, “ladders of opportunity” is in.

Eager to dispel claims that President Barack Obama is engaging in “class warfare” as he heads into his State of the Union address next week, the White House is de-emphasizing phrases focusing on economic disparity and turning instead to messages about creating paths of opportunity for the poor and middle class. (more…)

Functionally obsolescent = Impairment of the usefulness of a system due to its inability to be upgraded or modified to serve the user’s current needs.   In this case, private health insurance is now viewed as obsolete because government controlled ObamaCare moves in to replace private options. 

WASHINGTON DC – Moody’s announced Thursday it was downgrading its outlook for health insurers from stable to negative based on uncertainty related to ObamaCare.

The credit rating agency cited an unstable environment because of the healthcare law’s difficult rollout, and projected that insurers would earn 2 percent less than forecast in 2014.

“While we’ve had industry risks from regulatory changes on our radar for a while, the ongoing unstable and evolving environment is a key factor for our outlook change,” Moody’s Senior Vice President Stephen Zaharuk said in a statement. “The past few months have seen new regulations and announcements that impose operational changes well after product and pricing decisions were finalized.” (more…)

I’ll admit to being a little frustrated with the Charles Krauthammer’s of the world who talk about ObamaCare self-destructing because it is financially “unsustainable”.   This they also call the “death spiral” to describe the possible collapse of ObamaCare because the financial arrangements inherent within ObamaCare do not support it continuing.

Intellectually accurate.    BUT, when you think about how current political progressives operate, PROFOUNDLY NAIVE  and structurally false.

U.S. taxpayers will make up the difference between costs and revenues via the Reinsurance program:

[WSJ] Robert Laszewski—a prominent consultant to health insurance companies—recently wrote in a remarkably candid blog post that, while Obamacare is almost certain to cause insurance costs to skyrocket even higher than it already has, “insurers won’t be losing a lot of sleep over it.”  How can this be?  Because insurance companies won’t bear the cost of their own losses—at least not more than about a quarter of them.  The other three-quarters will be borne by American taxpayers. (more…)

President Obama Tuesday said he’s “not going to be waiting for legislation” from Congress to move forward on his agenda in 2014, further stoking a clash between both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue over the reach of executive power.

“I’ve got a pen, and I’ve got a phone,” Obama said before a Cabinet meeting at the White House Tuesday, issuing a challenge to GOP lawmakers who have blocked most of his second-term agenda. (more…)

The stupid is thick with this propaganda spin.   Of course most of the enrollees to the ObamaCare exchange would get a subsidy – because ObamaCare itself is more expensive than private plans for people who don’t qualify for subsidy.

The only reason you would use the ObamaCare Exchange is if your income level qualified for subsidy.   If your income level exceedes the subsidy limit a person is going to get a better price in a private exchange. 

WASHINGTON DC – More than 2.1 million Americans selected private health plans through healthcare.gov and state-run websites through Dec. 28, the Obama administration announced today. Another 1.6 million were judged eligible for Medicaid, the federal-state insurance program for the poor. Most of the new enrollees in private health plans—1.8 million—signed up in December, after the White House relaunched the Affordable Care Act’s stuttering website on Dec. 1. […]

(more…)

We’ve come a long way from Obama’s “open hand” Cairo speech in 2009.

(CNN) – From around Aleppo in western Syria to small areas of Falluja in central Iraq, al Qaeda now controls territory that stretches more than 400 miles across the heart of the Middle East, according to English and Arab language news accounts as well as accounts on jihadist websites.

Indeed, al Qaeda appears to control more territory in the Arab world than it has done at any time in its history.

The focus of al Qaeda’s leaders has always been regime change in the Arab world in order to install Taliban-style regimes. Al Qaeda’s leader Ayman al-Zawahiri acknowledged as much in his 2001 autobiography, “Knights Under the Banner of the Prophet,” when he explained that the most important strategic goal of al Qaeda was to seize control of a state, or part of a state, somewhere in the Muslim world, explaining that, “without achieving this goal our actions will mean nothing.” (more…)

Empirical evidence be damned.

The Milli Vanilli band director says definitions of success – regarding concert attendance – are contingent upon how they define success in attendance at any given moment. They don’t have to sell out a venue to be considered successful. They may determine that success is more appropriately defined as a merely a few enlightened concert goers who are enjoying the show.

The Kool-Aid concession tastes the same regardless of how many participants partake in the drinking of it.  So just shut up, watch the show, and we’ll tell you when to clap.

(more…)

(Independent Journal) An Open Letter to the Obama Administration and American Citizens:

My family’s journey with securing our new insurance under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) started on October 1, 2013. I have decided to write this letter to let the American people know what it has been like for us.

We are a family of four, with two little boys’ ages seven years old and three years old. My husband and I have had full time jobs for 6 years and 13 years respectively. We have been with the same two companies for those years.
We are a middle class family; we own our three bedroom two bath house, we own two cars, and previously provided our own insurance for the four of us. We have coverage through Individual Blue from Blue Cross Blue Shield of Alabama until 12/31/13. Our premiums have been $380.00 a month, which also included dental coverage for all four of us.
On October, 1, 2013 we received our letters like other Alabamians about our new premiums and plans for 2014 from Blue Cross Blue Shield (BCBS) of Alabama. When I opened our letter to say I had sticker shock was an understatement. (more…)