Obama Care: Jan 13, 2013

Sunday, January 13, 2013

Fiscal Cliff Deal Cancels CLASS

Those hunting for a bit of good news in the fiscal cliff deal can look to a provision repealing a long-term care program attached to ObamaCare.

When the health law first passed, it included a $70 billion entitlement known as the CLASS Act. The Community Living Assistance Service and Supports Act was supposed to be a self-sustaining program that provided cash benefits intended to help finance long-term care. It was an optional program that workers could buy into at regulated rates that weren't allowed to take health history into account. The program was even supposed to reduce the deficit: It accounted for about half of ObamaCare's scored deficit reduction.

But after the law passed, further analyses warned that instead of a self-financing, deficit reducing benefit program, CLASS would instead be a fiscal disaster, unable to self-finance and resulting in a long-term increase in the deficit and sky-high premiums for many beneficiaries, according to researchers at Boston College. Eventually, even the Obama administration had to admit that it wouldn't work. “While the law outlined a framework for the CLASS Act,” Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told members of Congress in February, 2011, “we determined pretty quickly that it would not meet the requirement that the act be self-sustaining and not rely on taxpayer assistance.”

And so the administration closed the program. But it stayed on the books, which meant that, at least in theory, it could someday be revived.

No more: The fiscal cliff deal that passed in the House on Tuesday struck CLASS from the books for good. Which means that unless Congress passes new legislation, the program isn't coming back. Given its dormant status, CLASS wasn't likely to do much damage. But there were those who seemed interested in reviving the program — and attempting to "fix" its problems by making buy-in mandatory. Repeal takes that possibility off the table.

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Statement by the Press Secretary on H.R. 8

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For Immediate Release January 03, 2013 Statement by the Press Secretary on H.R. 8

On Wednesday, January 2, 2013, the President signed into law:

H.R. 8, the "American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012," which makes permanent the temporary rates on taxable income at or below $400,000 for individual filers and $450,000 for married individuals filing jointly; permanently indexes the Alternative Minimum Tax exemption amount to the Consumer Price Index; extends emergency unemployment compensation benefits and Federal funding for extended benefits for unemployed workers for one year; continues current law Medicare payment rates for physicians' services furnished through December 31, 2013; extends farm bill policies and programs through September 30, 2013; and provides a postponement of the Budget Control Act's sequester for two months.

Blog posts on this issue January 04, 2013 6:12 PM ESTJoin President Obama in a National Day of Service

The Presidential Inaugural Committee announces a National Day of Service on January 19, 2013

January 04, 2013 6:05 PM ESTJoin President Obama in a National Day of Service

The Presidential Inaugural Committee announces a National Day of Service on January 19, 2013

January 04, 2013 2:55 PM EST2012: A Year in Photos

Each January, Pete Souza, Chief Official White House Photographer and Director of the White House Photography Office selects his favorite images from the past twelve months, and now, we're sharing them with you.

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Conservative Group Pushes For Delay Of ‘ObamaCare’ Regulations

By Megan R. Wilson - 01/03/13 10:51 AM ET

A conservative nonprofit group is putting pressure on the Obama administration to delay major regulations from the healthcare reform law.

The Minnesota-based Citizens Council for Health Freedom says the administration is trying to “rush ‘ObamaCare’ ” by providing just 30 days for comment on major pieces of the program.

The group has asked supporters to write the Health and Human Services Department and demand that the rule-making process be slowed down.

"The Obama administration has given you just 30 days over the holidays to read more than 700 pages of proposed ObamaCare regulations which unless you act will become law. They want to rush ObamaCare into implementation. You can help slow it until repeal," the organization wrote.

The group’s efforts have resulted in a flood of comments on four proposals that outline rules for the healthcare exchanges and partnering with state plans, among others. Of the more than 1,500 total comments the administration has received, a large portion include the language suggested by Citizens Council for Health Freedom asking for a 60-day extension.

Other comments submitted to the administration echo the call for a slower implementation.

"It's the Christmas rush and you think that I have time to read a 700-page document? Please extend the deadline by two months!" wrote Joanne Smith from Minnesota.

And Steve Kintgen of Minnesota commented, "This is quite unrealistic and in bad taste and quite contrary to 'We the People' not to have a adequate [sic] chance outside of Advent and the Christmas season to be able to read and digest all this information."

Co-founded by registered nurse Twila Brase in 1998, the Citizens Council for Health Freedom aims to reduce "dependency on government healthcare programs," according to its website.

Brase said the short-time frame given to comment on the regulations was "unfair."

"My hope is that they actually extend the deadline. … It's really important for the public to know what's in there," she told The Hill. "We don't look at it as a law that will remain in place. So for our purposes, it's important to slow the process down."

Brase said more than 70 percent of the comments on two of the regulatory proposals called for a longer review process.

The regulatory proposals from the healthcare law are available for comment on Regulations.gov. The agencies rolling out the programs, the Department of Health and Human Services and the Office of Personnel Management, provided 30-day comment deadlines for the proposed regulations that ended on Dec. 26, Dec. 31 and Jan. 4.

The agencies are required to respond to the comments before any of the proposed regulations become final.

— This story was updated at 11:51 a.m.

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Hillary Clinton Discharged From Hospital

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How Jadeveon Clowney’s Smashing Hit Demonstrates Football’s ‘Existential Crisis’

At this point, you’ve probably seen the demolishing hit South Carolina defensive end Jadeveon Clowney, one of college football’s best players, laid on Michigan running back Vincent Smith in the Outback Bowl on New Year’s Day. Clowney, who would be a top five pick in the NFL Draft this year if only an arbitrary age limit didn’t force him to remain in college for another season, burst off the line and laid waste to Davis almost immediately, causing Davis to fumble and sending his helmet 10 yards backward in the process:

That hit, in short, is absolute football perfection, a combination of size, speed, strength, and total athletic dominance that, when brought together in one perfect moment, leads to the type of play that leaves fans, coaches, teammates, opponents, and announcers alike stunned beyond comprehension. It was clean, it was smart, it was beautiful. The two seconds between the snap of the ball and Clowney’s devastation were football at its absolute purest, as Dave Kindred pointed out at Sports On Earth:

I have no use for football’s jack-‘em-up fetish. I loathe the mentality that cheers a blindside block on a helpless defender whose eyes are locked on a kick returner. I have seen cheap shots and I have seen Darryl Stingley in a wheelchair. But what Jadeveon Clowney did to Vincent Smith was none of that. The old Michigan State coach, Duffy Daugherty, once said, “Football’s not a contact sport, it’s a collision sport.” By that definition, Clowney’s tackle was as pure a demonstration of the game’s truest nature as we’re likely to see.

The very fact that the hit was a “pure demonstration” football’s “truest nature,” though, illustrates exactly what is so scary about the future of football: we’ve spent the last year focused on the threat concussions pose to the future of the game, but the real threat may be the game itself, the risk routine hits even less powerful than Clowney’s pose to the brains of the young men who step on the field each weekend. That, as Bloomberg’s Jonathan Mahler argued last month, “Football doesn’t have a concussion problem. It has an existential one.”

Clowney’s hit didn’t cause a concussion, and so it seems just a routine part of the game. But focusing on concussions as the major source of brain injuries in football, as Mahler argued, makes us think the problem can be fixed relatively easily. It makes it seem as if improving how we monitor concussions when they happen and eliminating head-to-head hits will reduce the amount of concussions and thus mitigate the risk of long-term brain trauma for the athletes who take the field. But recent research shows that it doesn’t necessarily take a career full of concussions to lead to the long-term cognitive problems many football players experience after retirement. Rather, chronic traumatic encepholopathy, dementia, depression, and other serious cognitive damage can result from the constant repetition of seemingly minor hits to the head — the kind that happen hundreds of times every game from the NFL level down to youth football.

“Calling the head-injury crisis a concussion crisis made it sound as if it stemmed from how the game is played, not from the game itself,” Mahler continued. It doesn’t take a concussion to damage the brain. It doesn’t even take a hit as devastating as Clowney’s. The routine plays, the beautiful plays, the most purely football plays — they all could be causing brain damage too. That’s a reality nobody wants to acknowledge, because if football’s problem is indeed existential, if the game doesn’t have a crisis but is the crisis, the future of football is in more peril than anyone thinks.

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Eli Lilly Backs Rosy 2013 View Despite Patent Woes

Options Action 101 Web Extra: Is Eli Lilly's Rally Unhealthy? Is it time to get bearish on pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly? Scott Nations has a way for you to cash in if the stock takes ill.

Analysts expect earnings of $3.72 per share on $22.87 billion in revenue.

Lilly's revenue slipped last year after it lost patent protection for its all-time best selling drug, the antipsychotic Zyprexa. That exposed the drug to cheaper generic competition.

This year, Lilly loses patent protection for the antidepressant Cymbalta in December and for the insulin Humalog in May.

Cymbalta replaced Zyprexa as Lilly's top seller.

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Fiscal Deal Kills New Funding For Health Law’s Co-Ops

Going, going, gone.

The fiscal cliff deal, approved by Congress on New Year’s Day, eliminates most of the more than $1.4 billion in remaining funding from the federal health law for new nonprofit, customer-owned health plans designed to compete against the major for-profit insurers.

Photo by Aaron Sumner via Flickr

That means the Obama administration won’t be able to approve loans to any additional co-ops. In the past two years, the Department of Health and Human Services has awarded nearly $2 billion in loans to 24 proposed state co-ops. Those loans won’t be affected by the cut.

“We were blindsided by the elimination of funds,” said John Morrison, president of the National Alliance of State Health Cooperatives. “The health insurance industry is getting its way here by torpedoing co-ops in the 26 remaining states. This is not about budgets; it is about those health insurance giants killing competition at the expense of millions of Americans who will pay higher premiums because of it.”

But some House Republicans have said the co-ops were a way for the administration to reward its political friends. Sponsors of the co-op plans already underway include the Freelancers Union in New York, a farmers’ union in Colorado and the Connecticut State Medical Society.

Critics also have been skeptical the co-ops could compete with more established insurers, such as Aetna and UnitedHealthcare.

“Starting a new health plan is a risky proposition,” said Peter Kongstvedt, a McLean, Va.- based health care consultant. He said consumers already have sufficient choice of plans in most markets and won’t miss having the additional co-ops.

Proponents of the co-ops say such plans could offer lower premiums because they don’t have to generate profits for shareholders. Under the law, co-op plans must apply any surpluses to lowering rates or improving benefits or quality for their members. The co-ops are scheduled to open by next year.

In testimony before Congress last year, Morrison called skepticism about co-ops’ ability to compete ”naive,” noting, “The large carriers are saddled with stockholder demands for profit, large overheads, antiquated legacy processing systems and other inefficiencies.”

Initially, the health law allocated $6 billion to help co-ops start up and meet state insurance solvency requirements. In 2011, Congress reduced that funding to $3.4 billion as part of broader budget cuts.

More than two dozen applicants were applying for co-op funding when the money was eliminated, Morrison said. HHS officials did not return calls for comment.

The deal approved Tuesday leaves 10 percent of the remaining co-op funds to cover the administrative costs connected with the 24 plans already launched.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 2nd, 2013 at 4:37 pm.

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Flu Cases Spike

Highlight transcript below to create clipTranscript: Print | Email Go Click text to jump within videoFri 04 Jan 13 | 02:39 PM ET Reports of flu cases are rising. Robert Bazell, NBC News Chief Science Correspondent reports the flu is widespread in 41 U.S. states. How to trade it, with Barbara Ryan of Barbara Ryan Advisors.

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As 2013 Begins, Get Ready For An ObamaCare Tax Onslaught

(Photo credit: 401(K) 2012)

The third wave of ObamaCare taxes began on January 1, the latest blitz before the tsunami of changes from the health overhaul law hit in 2014. These new and higher taxes are being levied to partially pay for ObamaCare’s massive new subsidies for private health insurance and expansion of Medicaid.

The most controversial of the latest ObamaCare taxes is the Medical Device Tax that hits entrepreneurial firms making equipment such as heart valves and hip replacement parts. They face a 2.3% profit on gross sales – a tax they must pay even if they have no profit at all. Many firms say this tax – slated to collect $29 billion over 10 years – will soak up virtually all of their research budgets.

The medical device industry employs more than 400,000 people in 12,000 factories across the country, often small, entrepreneurial firms with a small product line. Many say that to survive, they will have no choice but to relocate abroad – taking much-needed, high-tech jobs with them. These lost jobs will be more casualties of ObamaCare. And the tax means that medical devices will be more expensive, driving up health cost even further.

A new Surtax on Investment Income impacts individuals making more than $200,000 a year or couples with $250,000 or more. They must pay a new 3.8% levy on income from investments, possibly including profits from the sale of a home.

A new Medicare Tax adds to ObamaCare’s pain. These same high-earners must pay an additional .9% Medicare payroll tax on wages above $200,000 for individuals and $250,000 for couples. This means the current 2.9% Medicare payroll tax will be increased to a total of 3.8% — a big hit especially for the self-employed.

Together, these new Medicare taxes are expected to raise $318 billion to help fund ObamaCare.

The new Flexible Spending Account Tax limits the amount of money that workers can set aside tax-free for medical costs. ObamaCare sets the cap at $2,500 in order to collect another $13 billion from taxpayers. (Previously there was no cap; however some employers limited the amount worker could set aside.)

Those who find the accounts most valuable are those with the greatest health needs – parents of special needs children, people who have had organ transplants and who must take maintenance drugs, and others facing major medical expenses.

Beginning January 1, ObamaCare also tightens the screws on Itemized Medical Deductions. The law raises the threshold for allowed deductions from 7.5% of adjusted gross income to 10%, further burdening those with the largest medical expenses by limiting how much of these costs they can deduct on their taxes. Hit to these taxpayers: $19 billion.

Many more taxes are coming, including a “tax penalties” for individuals and businesses who don’t comply with ObamaCare’s mandate that they purchase government-approved health insurance. The Congressional Budget Office expects these penalties for non-compliance to bring in $160 billion in the first decade they are in effect.

ObamaCare’s $1 trillion in total tax increase hit everything from health insurers, drug companies, and tanning salons to Health Saving Accounts and – eventually – high-cost employer-based health insurance.

All of this will prove that the more people learn about what is actually in the health overhaul law, the more unpopular it will become.

The 2012 elections were not a referendum on ObamaCare: President Obama avoided talking about everything except the early candy that the law tosses out. And Gov. Mitt Romney was unable to persecute the law’s most unpopular provisions – the individual and employer mandates, Medicaid expansion, and health insurance Exchanges — because they all are part of the health reform law he passed in Massachusetts.

But the drip-drip-drip of the law’s taxes, mandates, and dislocations will continue, and 2013 likely will see a new attempt to delay, divert, defund, and dismantle the law.

More on Forbes:

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Law Enforcers Block Access To Exonerating DNA Evidence

In yet another case, DNA evidence has suggested the innocence of a man who has spent 11 years and counting in maximum security prison for a serious crime. Joseph Buffey, like some 10 percent of the hundreds of individuals exonerated by DNA testing, pleaded guilty in a rape and robbery case that DNA evidence links to another individual. Buffey was persuaded to take a plea by his lawyer, who said he wrongly assumed Buffey had committed the crime, and thought a defendant as young as 19 would get no more than a 10-year sentence. Buffey was sentenced to 70 years in prison.

But what’s most confounding about Buffey’s case is that it took 18 months of litigation by the nation’s top wrongful conviction lawyers to even secure the DNA testing. From the New York Times:

The Innocence Project lawyers got involved in this case after Mr. Buffey sent them a letter a few years ago. When they ran the test on the victim’s rape kit in the spring of 2011 and it showed that it was not Mr. Buffey’s DNA present at the crime scene, they asked to run the results through the West Virginia database of felons to see if another match existed. The judge approved, but the prosecutor refused, saying that the laboratory that had done the testing was not certified by the state. The judge then said he did not have the authority to order the state to violate its own rules.
The Innocence Project offered to run the test again through a certified lab. But the prosecutor turned down the request, saying there was “no good reason to do so” and adding, “the state does not believe such testing will or can prove the defendant’s innocence after his guilty plea.”
The judge ordered the test to go forward. The state again resisted but a month ago backed down.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of defendants are persuaded to take guilty pleas in a system increasingly designed to incentivize deals over trial. And most defendants don’t have the advantage of leading experts on wrongful conviction to litigate an appeal on their behalf. But even those like Duffey who do face immense obstacles to even access available DNA evidence. In a disheartening 2009 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that a defendant who was willing to pay for a DNA test at his own expense was not entitled to the test. Allowing William Osburne to prove his potential innocence, Chief Justice John G. Roberts said, risks “unnecessarily overthrowing the established system of criminal justice.”

The prosecutor in Buffey’s case expressed a similar attitude, saying that even DNA evidence linked to another individual and not Buffey “only tells us that someone else took part.” The victim’s testimony that there was only one attacker casts serious doubt on Romano’s assertion. But whether or not he is right should not have any bearing on a prosecutor’s willingness to provide the defendant, the judge and the jury with definitive, scientific information like DNA evidence.

In a system that study after study has shown is fraught with bias and error, DNA evidence should be a welcome bastion of accuracy. But because it is the government that investigates crimes, the prosecutors are the gatekeepers to evidence that should be equally available to both parties. And while some individual prosecutors are supportive of greater DNA access, law enforcers have an institutional interest in winning their cases. Only nine states have laws granting defense lawyers access to a national DNA database. As National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers President Steven Benjamin said, “Juries expect the defense to be able to prove that if your client didn’t do it, who did? Science doesn’t belong to the government, but they act like it does.”

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Catholic Legal Group: Illinois Constituents Will ‘Suffer’ From Marriage Equality

The Thomas More Law Center is the latest group to discourage Illinois lawmakers from supporting marriage equality. In addition to reiterating trite complaints about children having to learn same-sex families exist and religious hospitals having to serve gay patients, the Catholic legal group goes on to claim that any Illinois resident who isn’t free to discriminate against gay people will “suffer”:

The harms noted above do not begin to address the suffering of your constituents who must participate in and support same-sex unions: small bed & breakfast owners who would be forced to rent out their home for same-sex wedding weekends; solo photographers who would be forced to spend hours photographing and designing albums for same-sex wedding ceremonies that they believe to be sinful; family catering company owners being forced to prepare, feed, serve, and support same-sex wedding receptions, even though the family members oppose those receptions with every fiber of their being. In other states, such businesses have been fined and subject to injunctions, some even permanently shutting down to avoid legal penalty.
A “yes” vote will inflict these harms, all for the sake of giving the title “married” to some number of the fewer than 1% of Illinois households headed by same-sex couples.

It’s interesting how conservative groups are growing more blunt about their intent to discriminate. No interpretation is required to discern the present argument: people will suffer if they have to provide basic services to same-sex couples. This is a petulant attempt to preserve a superior status for heterosexuality while forcing same-sex families into the shadows. More importantly, the argument is irrelevant — it’s already illegal under the Illinois Human Rights Act to discriminate against anyone because of their sexual orientation when providing public services. This is just as true now with civil unions legal as it would be when marriage equality passes.

The group’s letter ends with a claim that marriage equality must be rejected “in the name of tolerance.” There is nothing about expressing a desire to deny services to a group of people that speaks to “tolerance.”

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Obama Care

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Sunday, January 13, 2013

Fiscal Cliff Deal Cancels CLASS

Statement by the Press Secretary on H.R. 8

Conservative Group Pushes For Delay Of ‘ObamaCare’ Regulations

Hillary Clinton Discharged From Hospital

How Jadeveon Clowney’s Smashing Hit Demonstrates Football’s ‘Existential Crisis’

Eli Lilly Backs Rosy 2013 View Despite Patent Woes

Fiscal Deal Kills New Funding For Health Law’s Co-Ops

Flu Cases Spike

As 2013 Begins, Get Ready For An ObamaCare Tax Onslaught

Law Enforcers Block Access To Exonerating DNA Evidence

Catholic Legal Group: Illinois Constituents Will ‘Suffer’ From Marriage Equality

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