Obamacare Fines Can Seize Money From Your Bank Account

A man who attempted to sign up for Obamacare online was told that a fine of over $4,000 dollars a year for refusing to take out mandatory health insurance could be taken directly from his bank account, and that his drivers license would be suspended and a federal tax lien placed against his home, according to an entry on the HealthCare.gov Facebook page.

Image: Obama signs the Affordable Care Act.

If true, the implementation of Obamacare is going to be a whole lot more draconian than Americans have been led to believe.

Will Sheehan claims that when he tried to sign up for Obamacare and then register to opt out, he received an ominous warning. Sheehan’s full Facebook post reads;

“I actually made it through this morning at 8:00 A.M. I have a preexisting condition (Type 1 Diabetes) and my income base was 45K-55K annually I chose tier 2 “Silver Plan” and my monthly premiums came out to $597.00 with $13,988 yearly deductible!!! There is NO POSSIBLE way that I can afford this so I “opt-out” and chose to continue along with no insurance.

I received an email tonight at 5:00 P.M. informing me that my fine would be $4,037 and could be attached to my yearly income tax return. Then you make it to the “REPERCUSSIONS PORTION” for “non-payment” of yearly fine. First, your drivers license will be suspended until paid, and if you go 24 consecutive months with “Non-Payment” and you happen to be a home owner, you will have a federal tax lien placed on your home. You can agree to give your bank information so that they can easy “Automatically withdraw” your “penalties” weekly, bi-weekly or monthly! This by no means is “Free” or even “Affordable.”

Sheehan went on to point out that the site makes you input all your personal information before giving you an indication of the costs, meaning a database of the “uninsured” is being built. He added that he could not afford to pay the premium so would have to break the law and pay the fine, leaving him with no health care coverage.

The federal government has consistently denied that any fines pertaining to Obamacare non-compliance could be seized from bank accounts, despite reports last year that the IRS had hired 16,500 new agents to harass citizens who attempt to evade the new law.

“There’s no criminal sanctions for not paying this, and there’s no ability to levy a bank account or do seizures,” then-IRS commissioner Douglas Shulman said in April 2010.

In addition, Americans who refuse to pay for mandatory health insurance “shall not be subject to any criminal prosecution,” according to the law itself.

Section 1501(g)(2) of the Affordable Care Act also states that the IRS cannot “file notice of lien with respect to any property of a taxpayer by reason of any failure to pay the penalty imposed by this section.”

Either Sheehan’s claim that he received this notice is a lie, or the feds have been dishonest with the American people all along, and the revolt against Obamacare is about to take “don’t tread on me” to a whole new level.

Obamacare: Massive Fraud And Corruption

October 1, 2013
A non-profit organization sued by the federal government last year for fraud was awarded a $2.1 million federal contract this year to enroll Americans into Obamacare, confirming our prediction last week that widespread fraud will explode under the health law.

Credit: intenteffect via Flickr

The New York Post reported today that an Obamacare grant recipient, Seedco, was sued by the federal government in 2012 for lying on government reports in order to receive additional bonus money.
As reported by the New York Times last year, Seedco received more than $8 million in federal grants for operating job placement centers.
According to federal prosecutors, Seedco falsely reported that it had successfully matched jobseekers with jobs by basing their claims on the positions jobseekers already had.
“By reporting thousands of fake job placements, Seedco collected ‘performance payments’ totaling perhaps as much as $1.6 million over five years,” reported Michael Powell with the New York Times.
The lawsuit did not stop the federal government from awarding Seedco another multi-million dollar contract, this time as a coordinator for the Obamacare Navigator program.
The Navigator program provides millions of dollars to organizations such as Seedco to hire “navigators” who will advise Americans on their Obamacare health “options” based on the sensitive information provided, such as social security numbers, income levels, employment history and home addresses.
In an article we broke last week, the very nature of the Navigator program will attract identity thieves who can literally go door-to-door to ask Americans for their personal information under the guise of Obamacare enrollment.
“These navigators will have our consumers throughout the country’s most personal and private information: tax return information, Social Security information,” Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi said in an interview with Fox. “And our biggest fear, of course, is identity theft.”
She also added that even those with prior identity theft convictions can still become navigators.
Bondi’s fears are well-founded considering that an organization sued for fraud is now coordinating Obamacare navigators who have immense opportunities to steal identities.

Government Shutdown Imminent As Democracts Reject "Obamacre" One Year Delay

Zero Hedge
September 28, 2013
It appears investors (CDS markets, VIX, T-Bills anxiety) were on to something as each side in the  looming government shutdown debate seems mired in their own belief that the other has more to lose. House Republicans are aiming to hold a vote today on a bill to extend government funding through December 15th and ensuring the military gets paid on any shutdown, but…
- HOUSE PLAN WOULD DELAY OBAMACARE ONE YEAR, LAWMAKER SAYS
And as the WSJ reports, Harry Reid has already stated that “we are going to accept nothing as it related to Obamacare,” before adjourning the Senate until Monday afternoon (narrowing the gap for a shutdown-avoidance vote). The shutdown-blame-game has begun as it seems the ball is back in the Senate’s court…
- HOUSE PROPOSAL WOULD FUND GOVERNMENT THROUGH DEC. 15
- HOUSE PLAN WOULD DELAY OBAMACARE ONE YEAR, LAWMAKER SAYS
- BOEHNER SAYS WILL BE `UP TO THE SENATE’ TO AVOID SHUTDOWN
Via WSJ,
The strategy keeps House Republicans on a collision course with Senate Democrats. “We are going to accept nothing as it relates to Obamacare,” Mr. Reid said after the Senate approved its spending plan.
Senate Majority Leader Mr. Reid on Friday added to the pressure on the House by adjourning the Senate until Monday afternoon, narrowing the window of time for any last-minute legislative volleys between the chambers.
“The president is now demanding that we increase the debt limit without engaging in any kind of bipartisan discussions about addressing our spending problem,” said Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R., Wash.), who gave the address on behalf of Republicans. “He wants to take the easy way out - exactly the kind of foolishness that got us here in the first place.”
If the House acts today and sends the measure to the Senate, fresh pressure will fall on Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) to call the Senate back in session quickly. Mr. Reid said Friday that the Senate would accept no changes or amendments to the funding bill it approved on Friday. He scheduled the Senate to return Monday afternoon, hard upon the Monday midnight deadline for Congress to come to agreement on a funding plan

NSA Tapped The Backbone Of The Internet Using AT&T

September 28, 2013
It’s widely known that the NSA has taps connected to the various telco networks, thanks in large part to AT&T employee Mark Klein who blew the whistle on AT&T’s secret NSA room in San Francisco. What was unclear was exactly what kind of access the NSA had. Various groups like the EFF and CDT have both been asking the administration to finally come clean, in the name of transparency, if they’re tapping backbone networks to snarf up internet communications like email. So far, the administration has declined to elaborate. Back in August, when the FISA courtdeclassified its ruling about NSA violations, the third footnote, though heavily redacted, did briefly discuss this “upstream” capability:
In short, “upstream” capabilities are tapping the backbone itself, via the willing assistance of the telcos (who still have remained mostly silent on all of this) as opposed to “downstream” collection, which requires going to the internet companies directly. The internet companies have been much more resistant to government attempts to get access to their accounts. And thus, it’s a big question as to what exactly the NSA can collect via its taps on the internet backbone, and the NSA and its defenders have tried to remain silent on this point, as you can see from the redactions above. However, as Kevin Bankston notes, during Thursday’s Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, Dianne Feinstein more or less admitted that they get emails via “upstream” collection methods. As you can see in the following clip, Feinstein interrupts a discussion to read a prepared “rebuttal” to a point being made, and in doing so clearly says that the NSA can get emails via upstream collections:

Upstream collection… occurs when NSA obtains internet communications, such as e-mails, from certain US companies that operate the Internet background, i.e., the companies that own and operate the domestic telecommunications lines over which internet traffic flows.

She clearly means “backbone” rather than “background.” She’s discussing this in an attempt to defend the NSA’s “accidental” collection of information it shouldn’t have had. But that point is not that important. Instead, the important point is that she’s now admitted what most people suspected, but which the administration has totally avoided admitting for many, many years since the revelations made by Mark Klein.
So, despite years of trying to deny that the NSA can collect email and other communications directly from the backbone (rather than from the internet companies themselves), Feinstein appears to have finally let the cat out of the bag, perhaps without realizing it.