ObamaCare

“Le ronca el mango” and other things that people are saying about the ObamaCare premiums!

by

You don’t have to read any polls to figure out that the public is very disappointed.

Just talk to them. Ask adults about a job or young people about looking for one!

Or ask them about paying higher premiums so that ObamaCare can work.

Let me tell you what one of my sons’ friends said recently: “That’s not what he said during the campaign”!

That’s right!

He said a lot of things but paying higher premiums was not one of them,

In fact, there is a CNN story that makes this point:

“”All we ever heard about Obamacare is that it would lower our deductibles and premiums,” said Jennifer Slafter, 40 of Mabel, Minn. “That’s just not what’s happened.

“”Slafter and her husband, Steve, are scrambling to find affordable care for themselves and their two children.

The exchange’s Blue Cross Blue Shield plan was $1,087 a month with a $6,000 deductible, while a Medica plan was $877 a month with a $12,700 deductible.

Both are steeper than their current plan.

“Everything got higher,” said Slafter, who is still waiting to hear whether they qualify for a premium subsidy.

But even if they do, she said she’d still find it very tough to meet the deductibles.

So the Affordable Health Care Act is not affordable.   What a shock!

 

A word for Obama: “Camarón que se duerme se lo lleva la corriente”

by

Wake up Obama or you may drifting downstream with all of the other “camarones”.

The latest explanation about the ObamaCare “fumble” is that President Obama does not like to hear “bad news”.

This is from Gloria Borger:

“People don’t like to tell him bad news,” says an ex-White House staffer. “Part of it is the no-drama culture.””

My guess is that President FDR did not like getting the bad news from Pearl Harbor or those horrible casualty reports from 1943-44.  Also, President GW Bush did not enjoy hearing  about planes flying into the World Trade Center or that violence was out of control in Iraq 2006.

To say the least, bad news comes with the job.  In other words, a man who does not like “bad news” should be holding a safe Illinois Senate seat in Rev Wright’s neighborhood rather than serving as commander in chief of the US.

My guess is that this is a lot more complicated than the “boss” does not like bad news.

I think that there are two problems in this White House:

1) The boss is “disengaged”, “disinterested” or “an abdicative manager” as Frank Burke wrote at American Thinker in 2011:

“In classic management theory, Barack Obama would have to be described as an abdicativemanager.

The abdicative manager evidences a tendency to flee from responsibility and is frequently encountered in situations where he or she never wanted the job in the first place (for instance, a son or daughter who inherits a company or the individual who discovers that they are incapable of adequate performance). Abdication can be exhibited in a variety of ways, ranging from physically removing oneself through travel (the confusion of movement with action), to obsessing about personal interests or a limited range of controllable subjects.

Obama’s frequent vacations and absences, especially in times of crisis, coupled with his unwillingness to personally invest himself in key initiatives, are demonstrative of this style. An excellent example occurred after passage of the healthcare initiative.

Having ceded authority in what would later be described as his key achievement to Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, he watched as they forced the bill through under a manufactured emergency that precluded lawmakers from having time to read it.

He then went on a four-day vacation before signing it.”

2) No one was put in charge of the ObamaCare project. There were lots of people with titles or who made appearances before Congress. Unfortunately, there was no project manager who oversaw all of the components and held people accountable along the way.

President Obama has been using a lot of football analogies, i.e. fumble, my team, etc.

The truth is that he fell asleep on the job!  He did not take the time to get engaged or to demand explanations.  Sadly, the message came down the chain of command that the boss was not demanding results!

He should have read what Lee Iococca said about being the boss:

“I’ve always found that the speed of the boss is the speed of the team.”

 

“El que tiene palanca”: ObamaCare is so great that some of Obama’s friends get waivers

by

There are many reasons to dislike ObamaCare, such as the whole issue of federal overreach and impact on the private insurance market.

However, the #1 reason is that the law does not apply equally to all.    President Obama has unilaterally changed the law to give groups special favors or treatment.

The Wall Street Journal reminds us of how “unions” are about to get another one of those “waivers“:

“The unions ought to consider this tax a civic obligation in solidarity with the (uninsured) working folk they claim to support.

Instead, they’ve spent most of the last year demanding that the White House give them subsidies and carve-outs unavailable to anyone else.

But don’t expect ObamaCare favors unless you helped to re-elect the President.

In an aside in a Federal Register document filed this month, the Administration previewed its forthcoming regulation:

“We also intend to propose in future rulemaking to exempt certain self-insured, self-administered plans from the requirement to make reinsurance contributions for the 2015 and 2016 benefit years.”

Allow us to translate.

“Self-insured” means that a business pays for the medical expenses of its workers directly and hires an insurer as a third-party administrator to process claims, manage care and the like. Most unions as well as big corporations use this arrangement.”

Don’t get me wrong.  I think that private sector unions are good.  They represent workers and should continue to do so.

My problem is with favors not unions.

This is why health care should not be run by politicians. They will find a way to take care of their friends at the expense of the rest of us.

Wonder when The NY Times will get their special little waiver for being such a staunch defender of the cause?

 

ObamaCare vs Katrina: The NY Times “sigue comiendo de lo que pica el pollo”

by

The Obama Care roll out is so bad that there is panic on the Democrat side of the aisle.

On Friday, 39 Democrats in the House voted with the GOP, or the Upton Bill.

Over at the US Senate, “red state Democrats” are desperately trying to explain their vote for ObamaCare to very angry constituents in places like Arkansas, Louisiana, North Carolina, and others.

Political reality aside, The NY Times has the latest and silliest explanation. They are comparing Katrina to ObamaCare:

“The disastrous rollout of his health care law not only threatens the rest of his agenda but also raises questions about his competence in the same way that the Bush administration’s botched response to Hurricane Katrina undermined any semblance of Republican efficiency.

But unlike Mr. Bush, who faced confrontational but occasionally cooperative Democrats, Mr. Obama is battling a Republican opposition that has refused to open the door to any legislative fixes to the health care law and has blocked him at virtually every turn. “

What are they smoking over at The NY Times?  Cooperative Democrats?

I am happy that Professor Althouse has fired an excellent response. This is so good that I want you to share it with your friends::

“1. Bush’s political party didn’t design and enact Hurricane Katrina.

2. Bush didn’t have 5 years to craft his response to the hurricane.

3. Bush didn’t have the power to redesign the hurricane as he designed his response to it.

4. The Republican Bush believed he could not simply bully past the Democratic Mayor of New Orleans and the Democratic Governor of Louisiana and impose a federal solution, but the Democrat Obama and his party in Congress aggressively and voluntarily took over an area of policy that might have been left to the states.

5. The media were ready to slam Bush long and hard for everything — making big scandals out of things that, done by Obama, would have been forgotten a week later (what are the Valerie Plame-level screwups of Obama’s?) — but the media have bent over backwards for years to help make Obama look good and to bury or never even uncover all of his lies and misdeeds.

6. If Bush experienced a disaster like the rollout of Obamacare, the NYT wouldn’t use its front page to remind us of something Bill Clinton did that looked bad.”

Last, but not least, let’s not forget the total and incomplete incompetence of the mayor of New Orleans and the governor of Louisiana.

Of course, we are really watching something more profound than a comparison between Katrina and ObamaCare.    The NY Times, and others in the left, are in a panic because the incompetent roll out has dealt liberalism a potentially fatal knockout, as Charles Krauthammer wrote yesterday:

“The damage to the Obama presidency, however, is already done. His approval rating has fallen to 39?percent, his lowest ever. And, for the first time, a majority considers him untrustworthy. That bond is not easily repaired.

At stake, however, is more than the fate of one presidency or of the current Democratic majority in the Senate. At stake is the new, more ambitious, social-democratic brand of American liberalism introduced by Obama, of which Obamacare is both symbol and concrete embodiment.”

The NY Times is going to get more hysterical, specially as the collapse of ObamaCare becomes inevitable.

The problem is that Obama “se ahoga en un vaso de agua”

by

“Obama the manager” is suddenly a topic for discussion.  Put me down as one who thinks that President Obama does not like “the managerial duties” of the presidency.  He loves Air Force One, the ceremonial tasks and White House Chef but not the often hard work of governing and dealing with difficult problems.

He is also “in over his head”.  In cubano, we say “se ahoga en un vaso de agua”.

My friend Frank Burke described Obama the manager like this:

“In classic management theory, Barack Obama would have to be described as an abdicative manager.

The abdicative manager evidences a tendency to flee from responsibility and is frequently encountered in situations where he or she never wanted the job in the first place (for instance, a son or daughter who inherits a company or the individual who discovers that they are incapable of adequate performance).  Abdication can be exhibited in a variety of ways, ranging from physically removing oneself through travel (the confusion of movement with action), to obsessing about personal interests or a limited range of controllable subjects.

Obama’s frequent vacations and absences, especially in times of crisis, coupled with his unwillingness to personally invest himself in key initiatives, are demonstrative of this style.

An excellent example occurred after passage of the healthcare initiative.

Having ceded authority in what would later be described as his key achievement to Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, he watched as they forced the bill through under a manufactured emergency that precluded lawmakers from having time to read it.

He then went on a four-day vacation before signing it.”

I think that Frank got it right back in 2011!

Today, Edward Luce added this to the picture of Obama the manager:

“The simple explanation is that Mr Obama’s White House is dominated by a coterie of insiders who have learnt that their boss does not like to hear bad news. Nor are friendly whistleblowers made to feel welcome. Whether on Syria, spying revelations or the White House’s preferred candidate to head the Federal Reserve, the president has been caught off guard by recent crises. “

My concern is that we have a man overwhelmed by events and surrounded by people who won’t give him the straight stuff.   The word around this White House is that “the boss” does not like conflict or people telling him that the website won’t be operational on time.

My bigger concern is that our enemies are also watching this president incapable of leading or running a minimally competent administration.

The world is watching Obama and that should worry everyone.  We are talking about the president of the US not some leader of a small nation with no leadership role.

 

Pres Obama: “Se te cayo el tabaco”

by

From time to time, we have to go to that philosopher of philosophers, the inimitable Beny More of Santa Isabel de la Lajas., a town near Cienfuegos and the likely inspiration for “El Santo de Tia Juliana”.

I think that Beny would be singing this about the collapsing political fortunes of President Obama:  “Se te cayo el tabaco, mi hermano, se te cayo!”.

Obama’s second term agenda has slowed to a crawl.   As we know, second term presidents have a short window to do something before they go “lame duck”.

How do you say “lame duck” in cubano?  The answer is “Se te cayo el tabaco”!

The real story is that the Obama agenda has gone off track and there are no signs that it will start moving again.

Senate Democrats killed gun control.  Climate change is not happening because there are too many Democrats who would rather keep jobs in their states than subscribe to theories that may or may not be true.

Immigration reform will be tough to get through Congress.  Foreign policy is as unpredictable as always.

And let’s not forget about the “roll-out problems” of ObamaCare.

Did anybody in this administration test the system?  Who got this huge contract and gave us this disaster of a roll-out?

To be fair, technical problems can be overcome if fixed quickly.

“Premium shock” in the Affordable Health Care Act will not be forgotten!

It looks more and more that the Affordable Health Care Act lowered premiums by increasing deductibles .  Most people will see through that, sign off and not come back!

What exactly is the Obama team looking forward to in the second of this term? Frankly, they don’t have much to cheer about.

We are likely to be in another fight in a couple of months, as Peter Baker reminded us.  After all, we just kicked the can a couple of months forward with the last deal.  We didn’t fix a single problem!

We are not going to have another “shutdown” but we will see a lot of that 2006 video of Senator Obama saying that raising the debt ceiling is a failure of leadership.

More importantly, can he lead? govern? get anything done?

I think that there is a growing sense in the land that President Obama is not capable of bringing people together or accomplishing things.

I smell a Carter and that’s an awful odor for any White House!

Ron Fourneir has a message for President Obama, and I hope that he reads the column:

“Okay, we get it: Obama is a winning politician. What’s in serious doubt is whether he will be remembered as a successful president.”

Well, he does not look like a very successful president!

Yes, Beny is right:  “Obama se te cayo el tabaco”!

http://youtu.be/AOYDnRsObqA

“Las 5 mentiras de” ObamaCare

by

Step back for a minute and think of this scenario.

Imagine a private sector company releasing a new product or service based on so much faulty information?

Imagine story after story of potential customers not able to enroll because of computer errors?

What would happen to the executives of that company?  At the very least, they’d be fired by the CEO after the owners or shareholders rioted at the company headquarters.

What about the customers?  They’d be lining up for one gigantic class action lawsuit!

What about the media?  They’d be running 24/7 stories of another company taking advantage of customers.

What about the Democrats?  They’d be calling for new regulations or an investigation.  They’d bring the executives of the company to a congressional hearing for explanations.

Obama Care is more than “computer glitches”.  It is a massive scam based on promises that will never be kept.

Scott Johnson of Power Line is one of my favorite pundits and today’s post is right on target:

“Deception #1: universal coverage

Deception #2: no new taxes on the middle class

Deception #3: annual premium savings of $2,500

Deception #4: no increase in the deficit

Deception #5: you can keep your plan if you like it”

There is something very wrong in this picture.

We were promised that “everyone would be covered”, “no new taxes except for those on the evil rich”, affordable premiums, no impact in the deficit and that you could keep your current plan.

None of that is true.   “Mentira”, “mentira” and more “mentiras”

And did I tell you that the computer system cost $634 million?

By the way, who got that contract?    Did they happen to make a nice contribution to the Obama campaign?

P.S. Catch my chat with Henry Louis Gomez here.