Obamacare: Chaos As Patients Walkout Of Hospitals Without Treatment

Hospital staff in Northern Virginia are turning away sick people on a frigid Thursday morning because they can't determine whether their Obamacare insurance plans are in effect.
Patients in a close-in DC suburb who think they've signed up for new insurance plans are struggling to show their December enrollments are in force, and health care administrators aren't taking their word for it.
In place of quick service and painless billing, these Virginians are now facing the threat of sticker-shock that comes with bills they can't afford.
'They had no idea if my insurance was active or not!' a coughing Maria Galvez told MailOnline outside the Inova Healthplex facility in the town of Springfield.
She was leaving the building without getting a needed chest x-ray.

'The people in there told me that since I didn't have an insurance card, I would be billed for the whole cost of the x-ray,' Galvez said, her young daughter in tow. 'It's not fair – you know, I signed up last week like I was supposed to.'

The x-ray's cost, she was told, would likely be more than $50

.'Some may have paid, some may have not,' she conceded.
It's unlikely that a valid insurance card would have changed Galvez' fortunes, however.

GALLUP: MOST AMERICANS HAVE OBAMACARE HORROR STORIES

Fifty-nine percent of Americans told Gallup pollsters that they have had negative experiences with the Affordable Care Act, according to the public opinion giant's latest survey.
Just 39 per cent said their experiences were positive.
Only 7 per cent called their Obamacare journeys 'very positive,' but 29 per cent said their interaction with the new system has been 'very negative.'
Gallup interviewed 1,500 uninsured Americans in December, 450 of whom said they had visited health insurance exchange websites.
As dismal as those numbers are, they represent a slight improvement: In November, Gallup found that 63 per cent of uninsured Americans had negative experiences with the president's new health care overhaul.

Her Carefirst plan, identified on the Obamacare website as BlueChoice Plus Bronze, carries a $5,500 per-person deductible for 2014 – an amount she would have to pay out-of-pocket before her coverage would apply to medical expenses.
The Inova radiology department wouldn't speak with MailOnline, and Carefirst did not respond to a request for comment.
A similar situation frustrated Mary, an African-American small businesswoman who asked MailOnline not to publish her last name. She was leaving the Inova Alexandria Hospital in Alexandria, Virginia with two family members.
'I had chest pains last night, and they took me in the emergency room,' Mary said. 'They told me they were going to admit me, but when I told them I hadn't heard from my insurance company since I signed up, they changed their tune.'
She told MailOnline that a nurse advised her that her bill would go up by at least $3,000 if she were admitted for a day, and her doctor told her the decision was up to her.

 

Sebelius: We don't know how many Obamacare sign-ups have paid

No x-ray for you: This patient left a Virginia medical facility without receiving a test her doctor recommended

'Should I be in the hospital? Probably,' she said. 'Maybe it's one of those borderline cases. I have to think that if I were really in danger, they wouldn't give me the choice. But what if I think I'm covered and I'm really not?'
'The emergency room bill is going to be bad enough.'

No card, no service: Hundreds of thousands of Americans are likely in health-insurance limbo with no proof of insurance as the new year begins

The Obamacare system has suffered from a long list of setbacks since its October 1 rollout, starting with an inoperable website and ending with rampant uncertainty about whether Americans who enrolled are actually covered.
'We're telling consumers if they're not sure if they're enrolled they should call the insurer directly,' White House Press Secretary Jay Carney old reporters on December 2.
The Washington Post reported that day that because of computer glitches in the 'back end' of healthcare.gov, enrollment records for as many as one-third of new insurance customers were corrupted or otherwise contain errors.
Given the Obama administration's latest claim that 2.1 million have signed up nationwide, that means as many as 700,000 Americans might falsely believe they have a current health insurance policy.
Mary and others like her, who took the time to enroll but may not follow the daily flood of news about Obamacare, likely don't know one way or the other.
'Why is this so complicated?' she asked. 'I had my own private insurance last year, but they cancelled me in November. I'm not sure which end is up.'
Private industry estimates put the number of policy cancellations as high as 4.7 million in the last quarter of 2013, mostly involving health care plans that didn't meet the Affordable Care Act's strict minimum standards.
Democrats serving on the House Committee on Energy and Commerce dispute that number, saying in a new report that no more than 10,000 will wind up without affordable insurance options after losing their old policies. 

Health overhaul: Updating coverage not easy

The Inova Healthplex in Springfield, Virginia offers free valet parking, but if you want to see a doctor you'll need proof that you've paid your Obamacare premium

Still working: Emergency services are still being provided at Northern Virginia hospitals, whether or not patients can prove they're covered -- but getting a bed in a hospital ward could come with a tremendous sticker-shock

President Obama has attracted widespread criticism, and a 'lie of the year' award from one newspaper's fact-checker, for promising that Americans who liked their health plans would be allowed to keep them.
Dr. John Venetos, a Chicago gastroenterologist, told the Associated Press on Thursday that he is seeing 'tremendous uncertainty and anxiety' among his patients who signed up for Obamacare plans but don't have insurance cards.
'They’re not sure if they have coverage,' Venetos said. 'It puts the heavy work on the physician.'
'At some point, every practice is going to make a decision about how long can they continue to see these patients for free if they are not getting paid.

Obama New Executive Order On New Gun Purchases

By REID J. EPSTEIN |

The Obama administration proposed two new federal rules Friday that it said would provide more information about the mentally ill to gun-background-check databases.
The rules, proposed by the Justice and Health and Human Services departments, would allow the federal database access to some mental health records by giving it an exemption from existing privacy law and “clarify” that people involuntarily committed to both inpatient and outpatient institutions could be prohibited from purchasing guns.

The proposed rules are the latest set of executive actions in the wake of the December 2012 school massacre at Newtown, Conn. Last January, President Barack Obama announced 23 executive actions and called for a host of legislation that included universal background checks for gun purchases and a new ban on assault weapon sales.

Federal agencies have provided 1.2 million records identifying people not allowed to buy guns because of mental illness because of Obama’s 2013 executive orders, the White House said Friday.
The White House said the proposed rules are meant to strengthen the background check system, yet background check requirements do not apply to the millions of gun transactions that take place outside of licensed dealers — at gun shows or online, for instance. The Senate last April rejected an expanded, but not universal, background checks bill. The House held no gun control votes.
The proposed rules will not go into effect until after a 60-day comment period that begins next Tuesday , followed by a period during which the agencies will review the comments and issue first an interim and then a final rule.
Before the Newtown massacre, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius wrote that the health care privacy law known as HIPAA does not prevent state court and justice systems from sharing mental health information with the National Instant Criminal Background Check System. States could, Sebelius wrote in an Aug. 2012 letter to Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), compel agencies that are covered by HIPAA to share information with the federal background check database.
(QUIZ: Do you know Kathleen Sebelius?)
The proposed new HHS rule would allow HIPAA-covered agencies “an express permission to submit to the background check system the limited information necessary to help keep guns out of potentially dangerous hands,” the White House said.
The DOJ rule adding a gun purchase prohibition for those involuntary committed to mental health outpatient facilities would have prevented the shooter in the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre from legally buying a weapon because he had been ordered by a judge to seek outpatient mental health treatment.
The proposals follow the executive actions Vice President Joe Biden announced in August that banned the re-importation of military weapons sold in other countries and forbade certain felons from evading background checks.
While Obama and Biden announced the first batch of executive actions together during a White House gun control event and Biden unveiled the August set during the swearing-in ceremony of B. Todd Jones, the director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, Friday’s news came via an e-mailed statement from the White House.
Biden did offer his support for the rules via Twitter.
“Today, we are taking steps to further strengthen the federal background check system. It’s time Congress joins us in this effort,” Biden tweeted.

Obamacare's Biggest Lies

Betsy McCaughey - 2013 was the year of Obamacare whoppers. But the nastiest truth about the health law is still to be exposed — the tightening hold the federal government will have over your doctor, even if you’re paying with private insurance. President Barack Obama said, “You’re not going to have anybody getting in between you and your doctor in your decision-making.” It was a lie from day one, just like the president’s other sales pitches.Obama’s often-repeated claim that “if you like your health care plan, you can keep it” is the obvious whopper of 2013. Over six million people have had their plans canceled already.
Then, on Dec. 20, the president brushed aside reporters’ questions about the latest changes to Obamacare by brazenly claiming “the basic structure of the law is working.” That’s a lie, too.
Premiums for Obamacare plans are 41 percent higher, on average, than what consumers paid in the individual market last year, with deductibles as high as double, and for all that, you generally won’t be able to use academic hospitals, top-tier cancer hospitals and the doctors who practice at these institutions.

But the truth is still to come out about the biggest whopper. Section 1311(h)(1) (B) of the health law gives the secretary of health and human services — a presidential appointee — blanket authority to dictate how doctors treat patients, and not just patients in government programs like Medicare and Medicaid, but also patients with private plans they pay for themselves.
On Dec. 2, 2013, in the Federal Register, it was disclosed that the rules are in the process of being written. Starting in 2015, insurance companies will be barred from doing business with doctors who fail to comply. Supposedly the rules are in the name of “quality,” but this could mean everything in medicine.
“The powers given to the secretary are so broad he or she could literally dictate how all physicians nationwide practice medicine,” warns Rep. Phil Gingrey, R – Ga., who is himself a physician. Gingrey is sponsoring a bill to repeal Section 1311(h)(1) (B). He explains that otherwise, the HHS secretary, a Washington bureaucrat with no medical training, could bar doctors from doing routine mammogram screenings until female patients turn 50, for example. The government will be calling the shots on what care patients get.
The rules have not yet been announced, but the president’s key health adviser at the time the Affordable Care Act was written, Ezekiel Emanuel, who continues to speak on behalf of Obamacare, discussed early on what government intervention was needed. Emanuel said doctors take the Hippocratic Oath too seriously “as an imperative to do everything for the patient regardless of the cost or effects on others.” As long as doctors are in charge, cost control would not be possible. “Vague promises of savings from cutting waste, enhancing prevention and wellness, installing electronic medical records and improving quality of care are merely ‘lipstick’ cost control, more for show and public relations than for true change.” Emanuel advocates for top-down federal rules to allocate resources based on what he calls “social justice.”
Donald Berwick, the Obama nominee to run the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, also insists that the federal government must step in between doctors and their patients to curb and redistribute the use of medical resources. Berwick says resources should be allocated based on “important subgroups.” These groups, rather than the individual patient in the doctor’s office, should be the “unit of concern,” according to him. Obama’s advisers would have these considerations override your doctors focusing on your needs.
Right now, states license and discipline doctors. And this is plenty of oversight. In 2006, when the U.S. attorney general tried to interfere in how Oregon doctors used controlled substances to treat patients, the U.S. Supreme Court in Gonzales v. Oregon struck down the federal intrusion. The justices warned it would amount to a “radical shift of authority from the states to the federal government to define general standards of medical practice in every locality.”
This is what Obamacare does. It puts the federal government between you and your doctor, with an eye toward limiting your care — just what the president promised would not happen.
Betsy McCaughey is a former lieutenant governor of New York and the author of “Beating Obamacare.” She reads the law so you don’t have to. Visit

Democracts In Chicago Happy Only 413 Murdered American This Year

Good news from Chicago: The catastrophic murder rate in the Democratic-controlled city was slightly less catastrophic in 2013 than in 2012.
Only 413 Americans were shot, stabbed or bludgeoned to death in the city, where all 50 aldermen are Democrats. Most of the victims in the blue-voting city were African-Americans or Hispanic, and very few were white.
Still, the city’s Democratic leaders cautiously cheered the deaths of the 413 Americans, more than one victim per day, which included one young woman who marched in President Barack Obama’s 2013 inauguration parade.
“We continue to make significant progress in reducing crime rates to historic levels, and gains are being made in all communities across Chicago,” said a statement from Democratic Mayor Rahm Emanuel.
The 413 murders are “good news for our children and families… [and] we will continue working until everyone enjoys the same sense of safety,” said Emmanuel, who worked as Obama’s first chief of staff.
“We’ve seen a major decrease here,” said the Rev. Michael Pfleger, a radical, Democrat-affiliated priest in the Auburn Gresham neighborhood, and a former community organizer who worked with Barack Obama in the 1990s. However, Chicagoans must be “very careful that now people don’t kind of lull themselves into a sleep,” he said, according to the Chicago Sun Times.
The toll of 413 dead is down from the 2012 score of 503 dead. Chicago has a population of 2.7 million and has only had Democratic mayors since 1931. By comparison, New York, with more than 8 million, suffered only 333 murders year-to-date as of Sunday. The Big Apple elected Republican Rudy Giuliani in 1993. Giuliani’s successor Michael Bloomberg was also a Republican who went Independent in 2007.
The 2012 slaughter prompted social media users to label Obama’s adopted hometown as “Chiraq,” “Shot-Town” and “Killinois.”

Is The NSA Spying Digital Troops Within Our Homes

Washington’s Blog
January 1, 2014
We have extensively documented that the U.S. government is trampling virtually every single Constitutional right set forth in the Bill of Rights.
One of the few rights which we thought the government still respects is the the 3rd Amendment, which prohibits the government forcing people to house troops:

No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.

But security expert Jacob Appelbaum notes that the NSA may be digitally violating the 3rd Amendment.
By way of background, this week Appelbaum was the main force behind an expose in Spiegel – and gave a must-watch talk – on the NSA’s systemic offensive programs to commandeer computers and computer systems, phone connections and phone systems, and communications networks of all types.
Appelbaum shows that the NSA has literally taken over our computer and our phones, physically intercepting laptop shipments and installing bugware before themselves shipping the laptop on to the consumer, installing special hardware that overcomes all privacy attempts, including “air gaps” (i.e. keep a computer unplugged from the Internet). Appelbaum also notes that spyware can suck up a lot of system resources on a computer or smartphone.
And he says this is the digital equivalent of soldiers being stationed in our houses against our will:
The parallel might not be as far-fetched as it may seem at first …
The NSA itself says that it’s in the middle of a massive cyber war. As such, malware, physical spying devices and offensive internet workarounds are literally the main troops in the NSA’s offensive cyber army.
Quartering meant that Colonial Americans had:
- No control over when the British troops came and went
- No say in what resources they consumed
- And no privacy even in their own castles
Similarly, mass NSA spying means that modern day Americans have:
- No control over when military presence comes or goes from our computer and phones (NSA is part of the Department of Defense)
- No say in what resources the spies suck up (remember, Applebaum says that spying can use a lot of resources and harm performance)
- And no privacy even in the deepest inner sanctuary of our electronic home base
Colonial Americans lost the quiet use and enjoyment of their homes. Modern Americans are losing the quiet use and enjoyment of our digital homes because the NSA is stationing digital “troops” inside our computers and phones.
Just as the Colonists’ homes were no longer theirs … our computers and phones are no longer ours.

40,000 New Laws Across America

CNN - It may have been the least productive year for Congress in history, at least in terms of passing laws – fewer than 60 of which made it through the House and Senate and were signed by President Barack Obama.
Across the country, however, state lawmakers were busy getting more than 40,000 bills passed, ones that tackle everything from drones to food stamp benefits.

In Illinois for example, teenagers will no longer get to use tanning beds without a doctor's note. If you live in Delaware, visit the shark fin buffet while you can, a new law will make it illegal to own, sale, or distribute the controversial delicacy. And in California, new laws take effect that will let students take part in school sports, or use bathrooms based on their gender identity, regardless of the gender noted in their birth certificates.
Legendary attorney, Harvard law professor, and author of "Taking the Stand" Alan Dershowitz joins "The Lead" to discuss some of the other fascinating – and controversial – new laws of 2014.