OBAMACARE DEBACLE - Update 3/17/2014

[bsteadman]

March Madness: White House Pushes ObamaCare Through NCAA Tournament

Breitbart Sports
Daniel J. Flynn
3/16/2014

Excerpt:

The NCAA basketball tournament is wildly popular. ObamaCare isn’t. So to boost interest in the latter the White House will hitch its star to the former. Can we get a Supreme Court ruling on the separation of sport and state, please?

The basketball-ObamaCare promotional assault starts Monday when the White House releases its “16 Sweetest Reasons to Get Covered,” a play on the tournament’s Sweet 16 round. A video, featuring the president and two as-yet unnamed college coaches, will accompany the “16 Sweetest Reasons…” On Wednesday, the president commandeers ESPN to unveil his bracket and unleash a pitch for viewers to sign up for health insurance through the government exchanges.

Last year, the president’s bracket attracted nearly 300,000 views on WhiteHouse.gov. Though Barack Obama’s bracket winner Indiana fell to Syracuse in the Sweet 16, the Basketballer-in-Chief’s predictions became one of the more popular entries on the White House website. The administration’s communications team hopes this year’s views for the presidential bracket translate into ObamaCare sign-ups, thus the full-court, Billy Donovan-style pressure defense.

If sports serve as your escape, Big Brother plans on finding you over the next two weeks. LeBron James, who has enjoyed considerable success selling Big Macs and Sprites, penitentially appears in a television commercial pitching health care. The spot will run on TNT, ABC, ESPN, and other networks broadcasting basketball.

“Hi, I’m LeBron James,” the two-time NBA champion announces in the ad infinitum-running ad. “I know how important it is to take care of yourself, your friends, and your family. That’s why I wanted to tell you about the health insurance marketplace at healthcare.gov. You can go there to find an affordable health plan as part of the health-care law. The deadline to enroll is March 31. So sign up now.”

That “sign up now” hard sell stems from the administration’s difficulties in convincing enough Americans to enroll in the president’s signature policy before the final buzzer sounds. The Congressional Budget Office estimates the program needs 7 million sign-ups to attain solvency. The Department of Health and Human Services reports just 4.2 million enrollees. The bureaucracy refuses to say how many of those sign-ups have paid up. The lack of enthusiasm among young, healthy people, crucial to subsidizing the costs of older, sicker people, helps explain the push involving collegiate basketball and the president’s recent appearance on Funny or Die’s Between Two Ferns with Zach Galifianakis.

It is crunch time, and the administration’s prospects for boosting 18- to 34-year-old enrollees from the current 25 percent to the desired 40 percent appear as promising as Weber State’s chances of beating Arizona. But like any self-respecting 16 seed, the administration will give it the college try.
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View the complete article at:

http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-S...CAA-Tournament

[bsteadman]

The War on Julie Boonstra

. . . and other Obamacare cancer victims

National Review Online
Henry Payne
3/15/2014

Excerpt:

Michigan is a crucial piece on the 2014 U.S. Senate chessboard, and Republicans have a good shot at gaining retiring Democrat Carl Levin’s open seat, given Democratic nominee Gary Peters’s unpopular House vote for the Affordable Care Act. Yet Peters has hope. The president’s unilateral delays in Obamacare mandates have eased planned layoffs by local governments and businesses. Moderate GOP governor Rick Snyder supports the ACA’s Medicaid expansion. And the state’s liberal news media have largely ignored the estimated 225,000-plus canceled individual policies and the job losses at medical-device maker Stryker.

But Julie Boonstra won’t be ignored. So she must be destroyed.

The Dexter, Mich., leukemia victim lost her coverage last fall and now stars in a devastating ad fingering Obamacare — and Peters — for her resulting distress. In an extraordinary media counterstrike, Boonstra, a schoolteacher, has come under assault from Democrats and their media allies decrying her as a liar and an ignoramus for failing to embrace her new, Obamacare-approved plan.

As with outspoken female Obamacare cancer victims in other states, the intent is to intimidate critics from coming forward. Senator Harry Reid’s outrageous Senate-floor claim that all Obamacare horror stories “are untrue” is the mantra of the Democrats’ scorched-earth campaign to elect Peters and preserve a Democratic Senate.

Boonstra’s ad, backed by Americans for Prosperity, says her policy was “canceled because of Obamacare” and that she fears her “out-of-pocket costs are so high they are unaffordable.” Health-care experts like the Manhattan Institute’s Yevgeniy Feyman say Boonstra “has legitimate concerns.”

“It comes down to uncertainty,” Feyman says. “Cancer treatment is a very personal decision. Her new treatment may not take into account out-of-pocket costs. If her drugs are off the formulary, then [an ACA-mandated cost cap on out-of-pocket drug costs] doesn’t apply.”

“If I do not receive my medication, I will die,” worries Boonstra, who was invited to the State of the Union address as the guest of Representative Tim Walberg (R., Mich.). “I believed the president when he said I could keep my health-insurance plan. I feel lied to. Congressman Peters, your decision to vote for Obamacare jeopardized my health.”

Peters and the media have come out swinging, claiming Boonstra is a right-wing Koch-brothers tool (the Kochs donate to AFP). Like their fellow Democrats in office, newsrooms have long been sympathetic to universal health care.

“No doubt that was a difficult experience,” patronized Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler before knocking Boonstra’s lack of enthusiasm for a lower-premium, higher-out-of-pocket-cost Blue Cross plan that Democrats insist is more affordable.

Michigan’s media piled on. The Detroit Free Press trumpeted Kessler’s claim that Boonstra was a liar deserving “two Pinocchios.” “A Dexter woman’s claims in a political ad criticizing U.S. Rep. Gary Peters don’t add up,” echoed MLive.com (a consortium of Booth newspapers in the state), faulting Boonstra’s math skills.
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View the complete article at:

http://www.nationalreview.com/articl...ra-henry-payne

[bsteadman]

Pfeiffer Guarantees No Delay to Individual Mandate

National Review Online
Andrew Johnson
3/16/2014

Excerpt:

While several other elements of the health-care law have unilaterally been delayed, top White House adviser Dan Pfeiffer ruled out the possibility that President Obama would delay the individual mandate.

“That will not happen?” David Gregory pressed Pfeiffer on Meet the Press.

“That will not happen,” he asserted.

Pfeiffer’s guarantee comes days after the Wall Street Journal reported that the Obama administration quietly provided a two-year “hardship exemption” from the mandate for those who had their previous health-care plans canceled. The Department of Health and Human Services included that exemption in a separate announcement delaying another aspect of the law: one that would allow insurance providers to renew previously terminated plans after 2016.
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View the complete article at:

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner...andrew-johnson

[AMERICAN ADVOCATE]

" Airball "