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NSA headquarters at Fort Meade, Maryland © AFP/File Saul Loeb

AFP

WASHINGTON (AFP) – An appeals court Monday reinstated a lawsuit challenging a law giving the US government broad authority in electronic wiretapping and monitoring of overseas calls and emails in probing suspected terrorism.

The US Court of Appeals in New York said the suit by civil liberties activists can proceed, reversing a lower court decision dismissing the case.

The suit, filed by a coalition of groups including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, had been dismissed by a judge who said they had not established legal standing by showing their own communications had been monitored.

But the three-judge appeals panel said the plaintiffs “have established that they reasonably fear being monitored under the allegedly unconstitutional (law), and that they have undertaken costly measures to avoid it.”

As a result, the plaintiffs “have established that they suffered present injuries in fact… stemming from a reasonable fear of future harmful government conduct.”

The appeals court sent the measure back to a lower court to review the merits of the case.

The American Civil Liberties Union, one of the plaintiffs, hailed the action, saying that “Americans shouldn’t have to accept as a fact of life that the government may be monitoring their international emails and phone calls and they can do nothing about it.”

The plaintiffs also include media organizations and attorney David Nevin, who represents the accused 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

The case stems from a law approved by Congress in 2008 expanding legal authority for electronic wiretaps by spy agencies, giving then-president George W. Bush a victory in his anti-terror strategy.

The measure includes retroactive immunity for telecommunications firms which aided warrantless government surveillance operations following the September 11 attacks in 2001 — a key demand of the White House.

The bill sparked fierce debate between civil liberties advocates who argue it eroded checks on the power of government and intelligence officials who feared the row was compromising their power to thwart terror attacks.

After the September 11, 2001 attacks, Bush authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on calls and emails between the United States and abroad in cases that federal agents deemed may have a terror link.

The wiretaps went ahead without the permission of a special court set up to watch over government wiretapping operations inside the United States, provided for under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) of 1978.

The program, revealed in 2005, caused public outcry and opponents argued that US privacy guarantees meant the intelligence agencies should seek court warrants from the FISA court to conduct such spying inside the country.

© AFP — Published at Activist Post with license

Declan McCullagh
CNET

The Obama administration said today that it’s moving ahead with a plan for broad adoption of Internet IDs despite concerns about identity centralization, and hopes to fund pilot projects next year.

At an event hosted by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington, D.C., administration officials downplayed privacy and civil liberties concerns about their proposal, which they said would be led by the private sector and not be required for Americans who use the Internet.

There’s “no reliable way to verify identity online” at the moment, Commerce Secretary Gary Locke said, citing the rising tide of security threats including malware and identity theft that have grown increasingly prevalent over the last few years. “Passwords just won’t cut it here.”

A 55-page document (PDF) released by the White House today adds a few more details to the proposal, which still remains mostly hazy and inchoate.

Paul Craig Roberts
Activist Post

In the guest section there is a new contribution by Dr. Robert S. Dotson. He points out that Obamneycare is two versions of the same thing. A person has to be gullible and uninformed to believe the claims of Obama and Romney that their replacements for Medicare will save money and improve care. What the schemes do is convert public monies into private profits.

The exploding costs described by Dr. Dotson and the rising profits for private corporations are paid for by reducing health care. For example, Betsy McCaughey, former lieutenant governor of New York, writing in Investors Business Daily ( http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials-perspective/101212-629190-obamacare-medicarecuts-danger-to-senior-citizens.htm?p=full ) reports that “On Oct. 1, the Obama administration started awarding bonus points to hospitals that spend the least on elderly patients.” The result will be fewer knee and hip replacements, angioplasty, bypass surgery, and cataract operations. These procedures transformed aging by allowing the elderly, who formerly languished in wheelchairs and nursing homes, to lead active lives.

Obamacare rolls back the clock. “By cutting $716 billion from future Medicare funding over the next decade and rewarding the hospitals that spend the least on seniors, the Obama health law will make these procedures hard to get and less safe.” Doctors will be paid less to treat a senior on Medicare than to treat someone on Medicaid, a poverty program that is not financed by the payroll tax. McCaughry reports that doctors will be paid only one-third as much for treating Medicare patients as for treating a patient with subsidized private insurance and that Obamacare means that hospitals will have $247 billion less over the next decade to care for the same number of seniors.

According to McCaughey, prior to Obama raiding Medicare in order to subsidize the price of health policies sold by private insurance companies, Medicare was already paying hospitals only 91 cents for every dollar of care provide. The way Obamacare saves money is by cutting back care for the elderly and shortening their lives. As I pointed out in my last article, Obamacare is a death panel.

This doesn’t mean that Romneycare is any better. Conservatives like to pretend that the private sector is always more efficient and less corrupt than the public sector, and that replacing Medicare with vouchers toward the purchase price of a private insurance company will lower costs and improve care.

As Romney’s scheme has not appeared in federal legislation, we don’t know all the ways the interest groups would game the voucher system. However, the voucher system would add to costs by adding another level of profits. Unless the private insurance companies are to become administrators for the government and be protected from Wall Street organized takeovers for not earning high enough profits, the policies sold by the insurance companies will have profit in them.

Also, conservatives make a great deal to do about Medicare being unfunded, but what is there to fund Obamneycare except the payroll tax that funds Medicare? Obamneycare depends on the government handing out subsidies or vouchers for the purchase of private insurance policies. Neither scheme is any more funded than Medicare.

Some conservatives seem to think that because private policies are involved that health care becomes funded. What Obamneycare does is to steal from Medicare in order to finance Medicaid and private insurance policies. Both plans raise costs, reduce care for the elderly, and divert tax dollars away from health care to private profits.

Let’s examine the erroneous conservative belief that if health care is provided privately, without any government subsidies, it is funded, whereas Medicare is not funded. To pay the premium on a private policy, a person has to have an income. The premiums are thus funded by the earned income stream. If the person loses his or her job, or becomes incapacitated and cannot work, the person cannot pay the premium and the policy can no longer be funded. If the person is elderly and lacks sufficient retirement income to pay the high cost of private health insurance for the elderly, the person’s health care is no longer funded.

Medicare is funded by the same earned income stream that funds private insurance policies. Instead of paying a premium to a private company, the worker pays a payroll tax that funds his health care regardless of his employment or level of retirement income.

Conservatives claim that under Medicare, the young have to pay for the elderly. However, the young become old in turn, so the intergenerational aspect is simply a part of the human life cycle. It is the same with private medical coverage. The healthy (usually the young) pay for the sick (usually the elderly). Private insurance has an actuarial basis. Actuaries calculate premiums and risk so that the total premiums can accommodate the claims of the percentage of policyholders who become ill. The notion is false that a person with a private policy is paying for his own health care unlike a person on Medicare.

A favorite “cost-saving” scheme is to raise the retirement age for Medicare. As Dave Lindorff points out in CounterPunch (printed edition, Oct. 1-15, 2012), 90% of the cost of the Medicare program each year goes to pay for the care of the oldest 10 percent of Medicare patients. Those aged 65-70 are the most fit and cost the least. Moving the retirement age up doesn’t save any real money. It just violates the contract and takes away the coverage for which people paid during their working life.

Obamneycare takes decisions out of the hands of patients and health care providers. It reduces care for the elderly. It imposes intrusive controls and data collecting and reporting. As care providers witness care withheld and the elderly confined to wheelchairs and nursing homes and early graves, health care providers will have to become as hardened as workers in slaughter houses, or the system will implode.

Already 59% of US doctors say that they prefer a single-payer national health care system to the corporate form of medicine that has turned them into wage slaves who have to ration the time they spend with patients and the amount of care that they prescribe.

If Obama’s subsidies and Romney’s vouchers are not indexed to medical inflation, Obamneycare will provide diminishing care as the years go by. As jobs offshoring has stripped the country of middle class job growth, the incomes earned by waitresses, bartenders, hospital orderlies, and Walmart’s part-time workers will not cover shelter, food, transportation, and health care.

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When Obama sold out his supporters to the insurance companies, Obama supporters lined up with the pretense that diverting Medicare money to private profits was an improvement over the current system. Obama supporters have now invested so much emotional capital in Obama’s assault on Medicare that they pretend there is some meaningful difference between Obamacare’s government subsidized private insurance
policies and Romneycare’s government subsidized private medical insurance vouchers.

While the two sides yell and scream at one another, the concrete hardens around the new common policy of shorter lives for the elderly and more profits for private corporations.

Although no one in either party can define the US mission in the seven countries in which the US is conducting military aggression, wars of choice that according to Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes have already cost US taxpayers $6 trillion in out of pocket and already incurred future costs, there is no discussion of halting the wars and diverting armaments industry profits to the health care of the US population.

Thus, we are left with Dr. Dotson’s conclusion that Americans are governed for the benefit of corporate profits. Americans’ lives, health, incomes, careers, prospects, none of this matters. Only corporate profits.

This article first appeared at Paul Craig Roberts’ new website Institute For Political Economy. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His Internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. Paul Craig Roberts is 100% independent and DONATIONS are much appreciated.

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Mark M. Jaycox and Seth Schoen
EFF

According to the New York Times, President Obama is “on the verge of backing” a proposal by the FBI to introduce legislation dramatically expanding the reach of the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, or CALEA. CALEA forces telephone companies to provide backdoors to the government so that it can spy on users after obtaining court approval, and was expanded in 2006 to reach Internet technologies like VoIP.

The new proposal reportedly allows the FBI to listen in on any conversation online, regardless of the technology used, by mandating engineers build “backdoors” into communications software. We urge EFF supporters to tell the administration now to stop this proposal, provisionally called CALEA II.

The rumored proposal is a tremendous blow to security and privacy and is based on the FBI’s complaint that it is “Going Dark,” or unable to listen in on Internet users’ communications. But the FBI has offered few concrete examples and no significant numbers of situations where it has been stymied by communications technology like encryption. To the contrary, with the growth of digital communications, the FBI has an unprecedented level of access to our communications and personal data; access which it regularly uses. In an age where the government claims to want to beef up Internet security, any backdoors into our communications makes our infrastructure weaker.

Backdoors also take away developers’ right to innovate and users’ right to protect their privacy and First Amendment-protected anonymity of speech with the technologies of their choice. The FBI’s dream of an Internet where it can listen to anything, even with a court order, is wrong and inconsistent with our values. One should be able to have a private conversation online, just as one can have a private conversation in person.

The White House is currently debating whether or not to introduce the bill. Here’s why it shouldn’t:

Any requested expansion of FBI surveillance authority has to consider the overall ability of law enforcement to investigate crimes. What the FBI doesn’t mention when pushing new backdoors into our communications is that now, due to the shift to digital communications, law enforcement has an unprecedented level of access to, and knowledge of, the public’s communications, relationships, transactions, whereabouts, and movements. Law enforcement now can gain 24/7 monitoring of most people’s movements using cell phone location data. But that’s just the beginning. A glance at the Wall Street Journal’s multi-year What They Know project shows some of the treasure troves of data that are being maintained about all of us. By accessing these databases and by using new electronic surveillance technologies law enforcement already has visibility into almost every aspect of our online and offline lives—capabilities beyond the wildest dreams of police officers just a few decades ago.

Indeed, former White House Chief Counselor for Privacy Peter Swire and Kenesa Ahmad argued persuasively in 2011 that, overall, “today [is] a golden age for surveillance“—regardless of whether law enforcement is assured of automatic access to each and every kind of communication, and regardless of whether individuals sometimes succeed in using privacy technologies to protect themselves against some kinds of surveillance.

First, there’s information obtained from cell phones. In July 2012, the New York Times reportedthat federal, state, and local law enforcement officials had requested all kinds of cell phone data—including mappings of suspects’ locations—a staggering 1.3 million times in the previous year. Cell phone companies can create what amounts to detailed maps of our locations and turn them over to law enforcement. Even without asking for cell phone providers’ direct assistance, law enforcement has considerable ability to use mobile devices to track us. Federal and state law enforcement have made extensive use of IMSI catchers (also popularly called “stingrays,” after the brand name of one such device). These devices can act as a fake cell phone tower, observing all devices in a certain area to find a cell phone’s location in real-time, and perhaps even intercept phone calls and texts.

Laws compelling companies to divulge user information accompany these techniques. For instance, National Security Letters, served on communications service providers like phone companies and ISPs, allow the FBI to secretly demand stored data about ordinary Americans’ private communications and Internet activity without any meaningful oversight or prior judicial review. And Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act allows for secret court orders to collect “tangible things” that could be relevant to a government investigation. The list of possible “tangible things” the government can obtain is seemingly limitless, and could include everything from driver’s license records to Internet browsing patterns. The FBI has even broken into individuals’ computers to collect data from inside the computers themselves. More backdoors aren’t needed.

Expanding CALEA is not only a tremendous risk for our online security; it’s a slap in the face of Internet users who want to protect themselves online by choosing privacy-protecting software to shield their communications. Ordinary individuals, businesses, and journalists want and often need state-of-the art software to protect their communications in an era of pervasive spying by commercial rivals, criminals, and governments around the world. The government’s rhetoric takes us back to the early 1990s when US law enforcement spoke openly of banning secure encryption software to keep it out of the public’s hands. EFF and others had to fight—including in the Federal courts—to establish the principle that publishing and using encryption tools is an essential matter of individual freedom and protected by the First Amendment.

Once those “crypto wars” were over, the US government seemed to accept the right of Americans to secure communications and abandon the idea of forcing innovators to dumb down these technologies. We turned our concerns to foreign governments, several of whom were trying to ban communications tools for being “too private.” (For instance, the Associated Press reported five countries threatened to ban BlackBerry services in 2010 because the services protected user privacy too well.) Americans, including the US State Department, began supporting the development and distribution of secure communications tools to foreign rights activists who need them. Now this battle may be coming home.

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Even with these tools, most Americans can protect only a tiny fraction of the trail of data we leave behind electronically as we live our lives. But we still have the right to choose them and try our best to keep our private communications private.

CALEA Must Not Come Back

The government should place any proposal to expand CALEA on hold. There is little evidence the FBI is actually “going dark,” especially when balanced with all the new information they have access to about our communications. And backdoors make everyone weaker. In a time when “cybersecurity” is supposed to be a top priority in Washington, the FBI is pushing a scheme that directly undermines everyone’s online security and interferes with both innovation and the freedom of users to choose the technologies that best protect them. Tell the White House now to stop the proposal in its tracks.

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Stephen Lendman

Dees Illustration

Activist Post

October 1 begins a new era of healthcare market rules. On the one hand, insurers no longer can refuse consumers for preconditions.

On the other, lots of rude awakenings await. They include bare bones plans. New health insurance exchanges (HIX) are state, federal, or jointly-provided options.

They’re marketplaces for consumers to compare and choose plans. They determine who’s eligible for federal subsidies.

They offer a confusing array of plans. They’re privately run. Many will leave consumers paying around 40% of costs out-of-pocket. They’ll do so after spending thousands of dollars on premiums.

On October 1, open enrollment begins for individuals, families and small businesses. It continues until March 31, 2014.

Coverage begins January 1. Enrolling post-3/31 is permitted only in case of job loss, birth, marriage or divorce.

Consumers earning under 400% of official poverty qualify for federally subsidized private health insurance. Privately run companies provide it.

Beginning in 2014, the IRS will enforce 47 new tax provisions. Doing so promises to be nightmarish. Giving the agency power over healthcare is scandalous. Enormous harm is likely.

Health insurance marketplace is the official term for exchanges. They’re also called HIXs, ObamaCare Exchanges, Health Benefits Exchanges, Health Care Exchanges, Health Insurance Marketplaces, and Affordable Insurance Exchanges.

States can set up their own plans. They can do it various ways. They can build their own exchange. They can partner with one or more other states.

They can operate jointly with Washington. They can let federal authorities create and run their exchange. They must be fully operational by January 1, 2014.

States creating their own exchange qualify for full federal funding. Those doing so can choose which providers can offer coverage.

The Department of Health and Human Services runs the federal exchange. In jointly-run ones, providers meeting minimum federal and state requirements can compete for customers.

Over the past generation, coverage eroded markedly. Obama’s Affordable Care Act (ACA) makes underinsurance the new normal.

Potential consequences are financially and medically grave. ACA will reduced uninsured numbers from 50 to 30 million. Insurance afforded is full of holes. It’s confusing. It rips off consumers for profit.

Costs vary by state and the negotiating power of exchanges. Prescription drug coverage isn’t all inclusive. Some medications aren’t covered.

Americans deserve better. Universal single-payer coverage alone provides it. Growing millions of Americans face life or debt.

Above 400% of poverty, subsidies disappear. Premiums escalate. Deductibles and co-pays add thousands more. Growing millions can’t afford it.

ACA rations care. It’s a boon for predatory providers. It enriches insurers, drug companies and large hospital chains. It does nothing to control costs. They’re spiraling out of control.

States can institute co-pays for the poorest of the poor on Medicaid. Healthcare should be a universal right. ACA denies it.

Everyone must be covered. Anyone not is penalized. Millions unable to afford employer coverage are ineligible for federal aid.

Uninsured middle-income consumers eligible for subsidized coverage may use healthcare exchanges. Safety net programs are for low income households.

ACA stipulates that coverage can’t cost more than 9.5% of family income. Recipients it considers able to buy insurance are ineligible for subsidies.

Affordability is in the eye of the beholder. Family coverage is nearly threefold higher than for individuals.

If employers don’t provide it, recipients are out of luck. They’re forced to choose from among unacceptable exchange options.

ACA scams consumers. It makes America’s dysfunctional system worse. It sacrifices healthcare for profits. It does so irresponsibly.

In March 2012, Consumer Reports (CR) provided a guide to bare bones plans. It headlined “Junk health insurance. Stingy plans may be worse than none at all.”

“It might seem to be health insurance, if you don’t look too closely,” CR said. “The premiums are surprisingly affordable.”

“And so millions of unemployed people, service industry workers, and those taken in by fast-talking telemarketers sign up.”

“They may think they’re insured – until they have a medical problem and find out that their coverage is as skimpy as a hospital gown.”

Obama, administration officials, and congressional Democrat scam artists sold ACA as consumer-friendly. It bears repeating. Its a scheme to enrich providers. It does so at the expense of human health.

It rations care. HIX holders affected by expensive illness will find out the hard way.

Some plans are called mini-meds. Employers and large insurers offer them.

Lesser known companies offer health discount cards and fixed benefit indemnity plans. They’re so inadequate, “regulators don’t consider them to be health insurance at all,” said CR.

Consumers don’t realize they’ve been had. Some of these companies “operate one step ahead of the law.”

These type plans and others like them were supposed to disappear after ACA passed.

It says healthcare plans can no longer cap essential annual or lifetime benefits.

In fall 2010, McDonald’s threatened to drop its mini-med plan. It won’t offer adequate coverage. Other low-wage employers operate the same way.

The Obama administration granted temporary waivers. They let mini-meds continue until 2014. Major ACA provisions begin phasing in on January 1. They continue doing so until 2020.

CR warned about “insurance that isn’t.” These type schemes include fixed benefit indemnity plans.

They reimburse a set amount. It’s inadequate. Medical discount cards offer what their name applies. They do so for a set monthly fee. After January 1, they may not qualify as coverage.

Unsuspecting consumers buy them. They don’t understand the risk. They don’t cover serious illness expenses. They’re worthless when people most need help.

According to American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network’s senior policy director Stephen Finan:

It’s amazing how quickly these companies appear and disappear. They’re small operations that are one step ahead of the sheriff.

More confusing are plans combining indemnity and discounts. Iowa Policy Project senior research consultant Colin Gordon said they do it “to parrot the coverage of conventional health insurance.”

Kaiser Family Foundation senior fellow Karen Pollitz advises: “Don’t buy fixed benefit plans. You’ll still be uninsured but out a bunch of money.”

CR says “avoid pitfalls when buying (health) insurance on your own.”

“Don’t shop from a search engine. If you Google ‘affordable health insurance,’ you’ll see sites that promise instant quotes.”

Avoid them. It’s impossible to know which ones are legitimate. A telemarketer will likely call. They offer “junk,” says CR.

According to Georgetown University Professor Mila Kofman:

“Few licensed health insurance companies market to consumers in this way, and even fewer sell directly to consumers.”

“Don’t respond to flyers on telephone poles, faxes, robo-calls, or late-night infomercials,” says CR.

“Look up real plans at Healthcare.gov.” It’s a federal web site. It lists legitimately licensed healthcare plans. Contact them directly.

“Consult an independent broker.” According to Montana’s commissioner of securities and insurance:

They handle various reputable provider plans. They “know which products are real and which ones are scams.”

“Check with your state insurance department.” Most have web sites. They include information on state-licensed healthcare plans.

CR’s health insurance buying guide offers valuable advice.

Beginning October 1, consumers face a bewildering array of confusing/deceptive information and choices.

Navigating through them isn’t simple. According to CR:

Which health insurance plan is right for you depends on many factors, most notably your age, whether you are employed, and whether your employer offers you insurance or you have to buy on your own.

Check CR’s “health insurance rankings.” Use them for help in choosing a plan that’s “right for you based on where you live, your circumstances, and the kind of coverage you think you need.”

Understanding health insurance isn’t easy. ACA made doing so more complicated.

CR explains how to choose wisely. Its most recent information is dated August 2013. It covers three important questions to ask:

(1) “What does the plan cover?” Some may exclude benefits consumers most need.

Dees Illustration

Elizabeth Lee Vliet, M.D.
Casey Research

Obamacare’s health exchanges opened on October 1. Hopefully you weren’t one of the unlucky guinea pigs who attempted to sign up with a system so crummy that even the Washington Post is calling it a disaster.

Given that the impact of Obamacare will only grow from here on out, Casey Research asked acclaimed Obamacare expert Dr. Lee Vliet what we should expect as the calendar turns to 2014.

Importantly, Dr. Vliet is independent in every sense of the word. Not only is she an independent physician, she’s also a registered political Independent, and has no ties to pharmaceutical, insurance, political, or any other interests. Like any good doctor, she is professionally concerned with one thing and one thing only: her patients. You’ll find her criticisms of Obamacare quite harsh, but only because she’s disturbed about the impact it will have on her patients.

Dr Vliet: It’s been clear to anyone paying attention that the October “rollout” of Obamacare has been a turbulent, confusing disaster. Sloppy IT systems and technological failures combined to cripple Obamacare’s sign-up systems. Security flaws put Americans at risk for identity theft.

In an almost comical understatement, President Obama summarized these massive failures as “a few glitches.” I think that Luke Chung, IT expert and president of database solutions firm FMS, explained the situation much more accurately:

Chung went on to call it a “technological disaster.”

Think about what this ineptitude means in the bigger debate about Obamacare. The administration spent 3½ years and $698 million of taxpayers’ money to develop this software. They’ve known since earlier this year that the system wasn’t ready to support the rollout of the exchanges. Yet they proceeded anyway, apparently unconcerned about their faulty software costing Americans millions of hours of frustration and lost productivity.

These same bureaucrats continue to assume more and more control of our medical care. What does their incompetence say about how they will handle making life-or-death medical care decisions?
Like a parasite taking over its host, Obamacare will commandeer almost 20% of our economy, crowding out private options. With 2014 fast approaching, what should we expect in its next phase?

Here’s my list Top Ten list for 2014:

1. The expansion of Medicaid, with increased cost burden for taxpayers.

Medicaid is a combined state-federal program initially designed to help the neediest among us. But it has burgeoned to cover medical costs for about one in every five people. Today, Medicaid pays for two of every five babies born in the United States, and three of every five people in long-term care facilities in the US.

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Obamacare will add another 20 million new Medicaid dependents. According to the Kasier Family Foundation, that Medicaid expansion will add an average of 13% to state budgets in costs for 2014 alone.

Even though Medicaid was designed to help the poor, studies have consistently shown that Medicaid recipients receive worse medical care than people without any health insurance at all! Medicaid patients have longer waits to see a doctor, fewer specialists to choose from, and poorer medical outcomes overall. A particularly morbid piece of evidence is that on average, Medicaid patients die sooner after surgery than people who have no medical insurance.

Essentially, Obamacare is forcing 20 million more Americans into second-class medical care with Medicaid.

2. “Sticker shock” as the reality of higher health insurance premiums hits home.

The majority of Americans, especially those who are young and healthy and therefore have paid low premiums in the past, are seeing their health insurance premiums rise between 50% and 150%. Further, employers are cutting full-time workers back to part-time by reducing employees’ hours per week from 40 to 29 or less, to avoid having to provide those employees with expensive, Obamacare-compliant coverage.

The “Affordable Care Act” has become anything but affordable for most people.

3. Large and small employers are cutting health insurance benefits.

Obamacare expands the requirements for what all health insurance policies must cover. So it’s no mystery why premiums have risen: Americans now must pay for a host of features, whether they want to or not. For example, in my office, the women employees are all menopausal. Yet Obamacare requires our small-business health insurance policy to cover pregnancy and maternity care! That means our policy costs more.

These higher premiums force employers to pass on the costs to employees (in the form of higher co-pays and deductibles) and/or customers (in the form of higher product costs). 2014 will bring even higher premiums for most individuals and businesses.

To deal with this onslaught of rising costs, businesses have a series of bad options: fire or lay off workers, cut health insurance benefits for everyone in the company, or reduce full-time employees to part-time so they don’t qualify for health insurance benefits, as I mentioned above.

Unfortunately, some businesses will be forced into the worst option of all: going out of business.

4. The employer-based health insurance policies that remain will have higher out-of-pocket costs for employees.

Because businesses must pay more to purchase Obamacare-compliant plans, they will require employees to pay higher co-pays and deductibles before coverage begins.

5. Fewer types of health insurance policies can be offered under Obamacare.

Many small-business plans and existing physician networks are being terminated due to the expanded coverage requirements under Obamacare. We just received notice that our own small-business plan is being terminated.

Candidate and then President Obama promised, “You can keep your insurance plan.” Nope.

6. Many people cannot keep their doctors.

Candidate Obama promised, “If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.” But many patients who like their doctors are being forced to find new ones due to changes in physician networks, as well as doctors leaving insurance plans to start fee-for-service or “concierge” practices.

Sadly, when a patient is pushed out of a long-standing relationship with a physician who understands their medical history, medical outcomes often deteriorate. This is especially true for special-needs patients, who often fall between the cracks when doctors are pressured to see 40 or 50 patients a day in five-minute visits.

7. Further destruction of Medicare.

In 2014, Medicare patients will discover several unwanted changes:

• 
  higher premiums for their supplemental policies


• fewer types of Medicare supplement policies available


• more cutbacks in Medicare-covered services


• longer delays to see doctors, because many doctors are closing their doors to Medicare patients due to the cuts in reimbursements


• fewer cancer care specialists taking Medicare patients


• higher costs for hospital-based cancer treatments, as private offices with lower costs are closed due to reimbursement cutbacks


• fewer hospital-based surgeries being approved because as of October 2012, Obamacare rules incentivize hospitals (i.e., paid more by Medicare) to do fewer surgeries and procedures.


• Medicare patients who sign the Advance Beneficiary Notice (ABN) agreeing to pay for services Medicare does not cover will find that they now have higher out-of-pocket costs to pay for these non-covered services.


• Patients over 80 are already finding reduced approvals for certain procedures and medicines. Expect to see more of this age-based rationing as the Medicare cuts increase over the next decade.

8. Loss of ownership of your medical records.

Your doctors, hospitals, and other health professionals are being pressured to adopt electronic medical record systems and send patient information to the federal government’s medical database by 2015. If they don’t comply, they’ll be penalized with reduced payments for services.

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This means the government will own your personal, private information, and you have no say in the matter. I consider this a complete loss of your privacy, as well as a violation of the Constitution’s 5th Amendment “Takings” clause.

9. More waivers and exemptions for the political elites and Democrat cronies.

The Obama Administration and its political appointee, HHS Secretary Sibelius, have granted over 1,000 waivers and special exemptions to various Democrat donors, political allies, unions, and others. Obama’s politically connected friends are the only Americans who won’t suffer under Obamacare’s onerous regulations, ballooning costs, and 20 new taxes.

10. On January 1, 2014, the Individual Mandate to purchase Obamacare-compliant health insurance goes into effect.

“Mandate” may sound benign, but it carries the force of law. Those who do not comply face another Obamacare tax (as the Supreme Court defined it), though called a “penalty” by Democrats when they forced the healthcare law through Congress on a partisan vote.

At the end of the day, Obamacare shifts a bigger burden onto taxpayers and increases the number of people on the dole. In other words, it pushes the US in the exact opposite direction it needs to go to solve its massive debt problems.

The most serious problems of Obamacare, however, will be felt at the individual level. You’re going to wait longer to see a doctor, you’re going to pay more for fewer treatment options, and healthcare quality will deteriorate as doctors and hospitals go out of business.

Obamacare seeks to replace the adaptability and efficiency of our free markets with heavy-handed government control and micromanaging by bureaucrats who don’t have a clue about what really helps patients. We need the opposite: patient-centered, free-market reforms.

Such programs have been successfully implemented in states like Indiana and businesses like Whole Foods and Safeway. They used health savings accounts and other incentives to empower consumers to make their own medical spending decisions.

It’s possible to reform and improve the broken payment system while keeping our excellent medical care and innovative atmosphere that relieves suffering and improves quality of life. Unfortunately, Obamacare is pushing our country in the wrong direction.

Dr. Vliet writes as an independent practicing physician with medical practices in Tucson and Dallas focused on issues of endocrine aging in men and women from puberty to late life. Dr. Vliet is a registered political Independent, and is also medically independent of all health insurance contracts since 1986. Her allegiance is to and for patients. Dr. Vliet is the 2007 Voice of Women Honoree by the Arizona Foundation for Women for her pioneering work on the overlooked hormone connections in women’s health, and she is the author of six consumer books on health topics. She has appeared on nationally syndicated radio and TV shows discussing the healthcare law as well as a variety of health topics for women and men.

Dr. Vliet was one of the speakers at the just-concluded 2013 Casey Research Summit. (Click here to pre-order the complete Summit Audio Collection and save $100 off the normal price. This discount offer ends tomorrow.)

Dr. Vliet’s medical websites are www.herplace.com and www.InternationalHealthStrategiesLtd.com. Follow Dr. Vliet on twitter @healthandcents

Stefan Molyneux
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Talk about trying to put lipstick on a pig.  Hilarious.

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[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRwS4KoF62g]

Stephen Lendman
Activist Post

Obama promised web site problems fixed by November 30. Another promise made. Another broken. Another lie followed.

Obama advisor Jeffrey Zients heads web site repair efforts. Load times are faster, he said. “The site is now stable and operating at its intended capacity, with greatly improved performance.”

Health and Human Services (HHS) claims 50,000 people can access the site simultaneously. “(M)ore that 800,000 consumer(s)” can do so daily, it added.

Zients and HHS stopped short of indicating how many people successfully enrolled since November 30.

Doing so involves completing all required steps necessary. It includes successfully transmitting accurate information to insurers. If impressive numbers did so, administration officials would highlight them. Failure to do so suggests things aren’t going as smoothly as touted.

On November 30, The New York Times headlined “Inside the Race to Rescue a Health Care Site, and Obama,” saying:

The website, which the administration promised would ‘function smoothly’ for most people by Nov. 30, remains a work in progress.

It is more stable, with many more people able to use it simultaneously than just two weeks ago.

But it still suffers sporadic crashes, and large parts of the vital ‘back end’ that processes enrollment data and transactions with insurers remain unbuilt.

More hardware upgrades and software fixes are needed. Administration declared success falls way short of reality.

Last week, Obama attended one of many closed-door fund-raisers. He touted Obamacare. He promised he’ll “fight for another three years” to make it a reality.

The Times said he didn’t mention Healthcare.gov. He’s embarrassed to do so. Consumers trying to access it since November 30 report mixed results.

Things work better than before. They remain far short of what’s needed. They’re inconsistent. Insurers call it maddening. They’re getting duplicate files or none at all.

America’s Health Insurance Plans spokesman Robert Zirkelbach said “(h)ealth plans can’t process enrollments they don’t receive.”

Henry Chao is Healthcare.gov’s chief digital architect. On November 19, he said fixing it remains a work in progress. Up to 40% of it remains flawed.

Much work remains to be done on “back office systems, accounting systems, and payment systems,” he explained. Things are a good ways from being resolved.

An anonymous insurance executive said:

Somehow people are getting lost in the process. If they go to a doctor or a hospital and we have no record of them, that will be very upsetting to consumers.

Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey spokesman Thomas Rubino complained about receiving “some but not a lot” of Healthcare.gov enrollments.

Numerous problems remain unresolved. Some consumers are erroneously called ineligible for subsidies. Insurers aren’t sure what premium amounts to charge.

Government computers blocked enrollments of people eligible for subsidies. They failed to retrieve eligibility information.

Normalized functioning wasn’t achieved as promised. It’s unclear when unresolved problems will be fixed.

On December 1, The Times headlined “Insurers Claim Health Website Is Still Flawed.”

So-called back end systems are supposed to provide them with consumer information. Site problems aren’t resolved. They’re not getting it.

America’s Health Insurance Plans president Karen Ignagni said:

Until the enrollment process is working from end to end, many consumers will not be able to enroll in coverage.

The Times called issues “vexing and complex. Some insurers say they have been deluged with phone calls from people who believe they have signed up for a particular health plan, only to find that the company has no record of the enrollment.”

Others say information they received about new enrollees was inaccurate or incomplete.

Insurers say government subsidy information wasn’t provided. It’s needed to price coverage accurately.

At best, Healthcare.gov is less disastrous than two months ago. Access for most consumers was virtually impossible then.

The Commonwealth Fund (CF) calls itself “a private foundation working toward a high performance health system.”

Obama officials hope for seven million or more enrollees through Healthcare.gov and state marketplaces by March 31.

In late November, CF said only 3% of targeted numbers was achieved. Things remain slow-going.

Kaiser Family Foundation survey information showed 38% of uninsured consumers knew “nothing at all about health insurance marketplaces.”

On December 1, the Wall Street Journal headlined “Insurers Seek to Bypass Health Site,” saying:

They’re trying to avoid “balky technology despite the Obama administration’s claim Sunday that it had made ‘dramatic progress’ in fixing” troublesome problems.

They admitted a major obstacle remains unresolved. The system can’t “verify users’ identities and accurately transmit enrollment data to insurers.”

What good is enrolling without follow-through. It’s a long way from being achieved.

Connecticut chief information officer James Wadleigh said he may decouple from federal infrastructure. He wants Connecticut to be self-reliant. His counterparts in other states are monitoring his efforts.

To assure January 1 coverage, millions of uninsured consumers as well as others losing coverage at yearend must enroll by December 23.

Thirty-six states rely exclusively on Healthcare.gov to do so. “(F)ixes aimed at making (it) look and work better don’t address and may exacerbate problems deeper in the system,” said the Journal.

Officials signaled Sunday that work was only just starting to address some of the identity-verification issues as well as enrollment data.

Separately, Journal editors headlined “ObamaCare Mission Accomplished,” saying:

Sunday administration comments were “short on basic information.” Eight pages of charts and unverifiable claims substituted.

Information provided runs counter to what’s explained above. Major problems remain unresolved. “HHS gave up on the federal exchanges for small business(es).” They delayed them for a year.

White House declared success is more political than real. It claims Healthcare.gov works right for consumers more than 90% of the time. Excluded are maintenance shut down periods.

“HHS won’t say how often that is or for how long,” said Journal editors. In other words, Healthcare.gov works most often except when it doesn’t.

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On a Sunday conference call, HHS wouldn’t say how much progress was achieved on unresolved technical problems. Much relates to transmitting correct information to insurers.

Mission accomplished is another unfulfilled Obama pledge. It remains to be seen how long vexing unresolved problems remain.

Most troublesome is Obamacare sticker shock. So-called affordable care provides unaffordable coverage. A previous article discussed it.

Millions of households have to pay 40% or more out-of-pocket. It’s for co-pays and deductibles. It’s on top of costly premiums.

Coverage for 50-year-olds making $46,100 is $10,585. Co-pays and deductibles add up to another $6,250.

Healthcare in America is double its cost in other developed countries. It’s increasingly less affordable. Little is done to constrain annual price hikes.

Obamacare isn’t universal. Millions will remain uninsured. Millions more will be underinsured. They’re one major illness away from personal bankruptcy. It’s by far the major cause.

Obamacare scams more than protects. It leaves America’s most disadvantaged in no-man’s land. Web site fixes ignore what’s most troublesome.

Healthcare is a human right. Coverage should be universal. It should continue from birth to death. Everyone in, no one left out should be official policy.

America is the only developed country without some kind of universal coverage. It’s double the cost in other industrialized countries. It’s increasingly unaffordable.

It delivers less bang for the buck than abroad. It’s a scam. Web site problems mask what’s really troublesome.

Enrollees will eventually discover they’ve been had. Most are one expensive illness away from trouble.

Lack of proper coverage when most needed exposes a failed system. Unaffordable coverage reveals one of the all-time greatest scams.

Commodifying a human right created this mess. Corporate healthcare providers won’t resolve it.

Physicians for a National Health Program president Dr. Andrew Coates asked: “Can we call (America) a modern democracy if it fails to meet the health needs of its population?”

The only solution is reversing longstanding policy. Doing so requires overwhelming consumer pressure. At issue is sustained commitment for nothing less.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. His new book is titled How Wall Street Fleeces America: Privatized Banking, Government Collusion and Class War. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening. http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/

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Nobody is signing up for Obamacare, so application processors are getting paid billions to do nothing.

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By ReasonTV

As Jonathan Gruber could tell you, the only way to sell “stupid” American voters on Obamacare was to keep us confused about what the law actually does.

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Paul Craig Roberts, Contributor
Activist Post

In the article below, Dr. Dotson provides more information about Obamacare. The program is not what its supporters or its critics imagine. In my opinion, with Republicans blocking a single-payer national health system, the Obama White House went to the insurance lobby and said, “give us a health care bill that you can get Congress to pass.” The result is a complex system of taxes, penalties, and government subsidized private health insurance policies with a layer of profits added to the costs of new levels of bureaucracy.

Nomi Prins reports that the claim is laughable that Obamacare will lower costs by creating competitive insurance premiums, because of consolidations and mergers of insurance companies in preparation for the “insurance exchanges.” Wall Street is already making money off the mergers. What Obamacare really does is to allow concentration and control of health care by large corporations that will sacrifice health care to private profits. http://nomiprins.squarespace.com/thoughts/2012/11/10/real-danger-of-obamacare-insurance-company-takeover-of-healt.html

Dr. Dotson believes that Obamacare will result in Medicare being blended into some type of corporatist insurance product bringing higher costs and fewer benefits to patients. It will be a “health system” that funnels federal revenues into insurance company profits instead of into health care.

The unexpected consequences of Obamacare are likely to require endless amendments to the legislation. The complexity will result in mistakes by doctors and hospitals that will be prosecuted as crimes. Health care for patients and adequate payment to health care providers will become back burner concerns.

Once Obamacare is up and running, the private and bureaucratic interests that benefit from the monstrosity will protect it regardless of its failure. It would have been so much better, so much cheaper, and so much simpler to have created a single-payer national health service like every other developed country. Instead, “superpower americans” are to be deprived of good and inexpensive health care for the sole sake of corporate profits.

Obamacare – The Tax Man Cometh ~ Robert S. Dotson, M.D.

I think you should send us the biggest transport plane you have, and take this thing to the Arctic or somewhere and drop it where it will never thaw. – Lieutenant Dave in the Sci-Fi Classic, The Blob

With the confusion accompanying the passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA, aka Obamacare) and its on-going implementation, it has not been easy to discern its real meaning for those covered by it. Presidential and Vice-Presidential candidates alike have kicked the disinformation machines into high gear. In what follows I will try to identify some of its ramifications.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) have continued to periodically release estimates of the costs of PPACA.

Their most recent cost estimates for current provisions in the legislation (July 2012) indicate that the insurance coverage provisions of Obamacare will have a net cost of $1.168 trillion from 2012-2022.

Government projections usually underestimate costs. We were told that the war in Iraq would be essentially self-financing and that the banks only needed a few hundred billion to protect them from collapse.

Many thousands of billions of dollars have been shoveled at both to date and the end is not in sight.

The CBO says that the new health care law raises taxes by more than $1 trillion. The individual mandate (which the CBO refers to as a “penalty tax”) will produce $55 billion in “penalty payments for uninsured individuals”. The “additional hospital insurance tax” is the largest tax increase in Obamacare and is projected to bring in $318 billion in new revenues. Supposedly, this tax mainly hits “high-income taxpayers” (individuals making over $125,000/year and households over $250,000/year). Other money comes from: “associated effects of coverage provisions on tax revenues” ($216 billion); “reinsurance and risk adjustment collections” ($184 billion); fees on certain manufacturers and insurers ($165 billion); “penalty payments by employers” ($106 billion); “other revenue provisions” ($87 billion); and, an excise tax (40%!) on high-premium insurance plans ($111 billion).

Americans are holding on to the fairy tale that someone else will be paying these taxes – those rich pharmaceutical and insurance companies, for instance. In fact, all costs will be passed along to consumers/patients in the form of higher premiums and higher costs for drugs and medical devices. According to the Cato Institute, the top 1% of income earners can expect tax hikes of up to $52,000/year, but the bottom 99% will also feel the pain – and lack the discretionary income to absorb the taxes.

There are at least twenty new taxes included in PPACA. Seven of them will directly impact the people whose taxes Obama promised not to raise: those making less than $250,000 per household. Below is a summary of the new taxes on the middle class:

1. The Individual Mandate Tax – In 2014 this penalty will hit all Americans who are not covered by a private health insurance policy, Medicaid, Medicare, of other public insurance program. The penalty requires a couple to pay the higher of a base tax of $1,360/year, or 2.5% of adjusted growth income (AGI). In 2016 the cost of not being part of Obamacare is $695 for individuals and $2,085 for families.

2. The Medicine Cabinet Tax – This tax (begun in 2011) prohibits reimbursement of expenses for over-the-counter (OTC) medicines, with the exception of insulin, from an employee’s Health Saving Account (HSA), Flexible Spending Account (FSA), or Health Reimbursement Account (HRA). This impacts the shrinking middle class hard, since they earn enough to actually pay federal taxes, but not enough to make this a negligible restriction. This is also another backdoor attempt to block access to alternative medicines (vitamins and nutritional supplements).

3. The FSA Cap – This tax scheduled to begin in 2013 is potentially one of the most harmful to middle class people, as it imposes a cap of $2,500/year (it’s now unlimited) on the amount of pre-tax dollars that can be deposited in these accounts. Why so harmful? It is because funds in these accounts can be used for special needs education for special needs children. Tuition rates for such special education can readily exceed $14,000/year and the use of pre-tax dollars has helped many families over the years.

4. The Medical Itemized Deduction Hurdle – Presently, one must have medical itemized deductions of greater than 7.5% to deduct them on federal income taxes. Obamacare raises the bar to 10% of AGI beginning in 2013.

5. The HSA Withdrawal Tax – This tax increases the additional tax on early non-medical withdrawals from these types of accounts from 10% to 20% in 2013.

6. The Indoor Tanning Services Tax – Begun in 2010, this provision added a 10% excise tax on people using tanning salons. Some may consider this minor, but it is another attempt by the Ruling Elite to control the behavior of the peasants and, I believe, to put a road block to accessing beneficial light therapy for many people. Space does not permit exploring this much further here, but suffice it to say that there are many potential health benefits from the use of tanning beds when properly used. A variety of conditions, from depression (Seasonal Affective Disorder or SAD) and related mood disorders to psoriasis, are improved by the judicious use of tanning type beds. I can hear my Dermatology colleagues groaning now, but the over-reaction to increases in skin cancers by banning tanning beds and slathering often-toxic sunscreen on everyone has led to an even worse epidemic of Vitamin D deficiency, in my opinion. The latter problem, of course, can be directly linked to explosions in the numbers of Type II diabetics, cancers of many types, and respiratory infections (such as, influenza).

7. The Excise Tax on Comprehensive Health Insurance Plans or the “Cadillac” Health Insurance Plan Tax – So-called Cadillac plans are generally fully paid for by employers. This tax, delayed until 2018 to protect Obama’s union supporters, will impose a 40% excise tax on the recipients when fully enacted.

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There are at least 13 other significant taxes imposed on all businesses, employers, and “high income” individuals (>$125,000/year) and families (>$250,000/year) within PPACA. A summary of these other taxes and the history behind Obamneycare can be found at Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patient_Protection_and_Affordable_Care_Act.

It is worth taking time to review this entry, so that one can understand how invasive and costly this legislation really is.

For “low income” individuals and families, subsidies for insurance obtained from “insurance exchanges” will be provided for those between 100% and 400% of the Federal Poverty Level (FPL). For example, the 2016 FPL is projected to be $11,800/year for an individual and $24,000/year for a family of four. DHHS and CBO estimate that the average annual premium cost for a family of four without PPACA would be $11,328/year. With PPACA in place as presently enacted, the same family at 200% of FPL would be paying $2,778/year out of pocket and at 400% of FPL, $8,379/year. In participating states, Medicaid eligibility will be expanded to all individuals and families earning up to 133% of the FPL. The Wikipedia entry referenced above contains several tables that explain this in more detail.

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The Internal Revenue Service will be the implementer and enforcer of PPACA (up to 16,000 new agents). The Act will be partially paid for by taking $716 billion from Medicare and Medicaid; AARP claims that the money is taken from doctors and hospitals, but the lower payments to health care providers will reduce the services that Medicare patients receive.

The Congressional Budget Office reports that costs will rise for all Americans; and, more than 30 million will remain uninsured when Obamneycare is fully implemented. The CBO further predicts that the average family’s insurance premiums will rise at least $2500/year, in spite of candidate Obama’s repeated promises that they would go down that same amount. Be of good cheer, however, as all illegal immigrants will be exempt from the health insurance mandate and, yet, will remain eligible for emergency services under the 1986 Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA).

As a kid (and, I confess, as an adult) I always loved the 1950s science fiction thrillers. One of the classics from that era is The Blob (1958). Though silly in many ways, it remains metaphorically appropriate today. Starring a young Steve McQueen, the story revolves around an extraterrestrial bit of alien protoplasm that arrives on Earth via a meteorite. This goo proceeds to engulf every living thing that comes in contact with it until it fills the town’s cinema and engulfs the local diner. In this thriller, the Blob is finally defeated by freezing it with CO2 bottles and the U.S Air force airlifts the blob to the arctic. Problem solved – at least, until global warming kicks in.

In reflecting on Obamneycare over the past few months, I have been unable to discover any such easy solution for eliminating PPACA.

This article first appeared at Paul Craig Roberts’ new website Institute For Political Economy.  Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His Internet columns have attracted a worldwide following.