President Obama Announces More Key Administration Posts

The White House

Office of the Press Secretary

WASHINGTON, DC – Today, President Barack Obama announced his intent to nominate the following individuals to key Administration posts:

• Cynthia L. Attwood – Member, Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission
• Stuart F. Delery – Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division, Department of Justice
• Fred P. Hochberg – President, Export-Import Bank of the United States 
• Allison M. Macfarlane – Member, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and upon appointment to be designated Chair
• Patricia M. Wald – Member, Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board

President Obama said, “These men and women have demonstrated knowledge and dedication throughout their careers. I am grateful they have chosen to take on these important roles, and I look forward to working with them in the months and years to come.”

President Obama announced his intent to nominate the following individuals to key Administration posts:

Cynthia L. Attwood, Nominee for Member, Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission
Cynthia L. Attwood is a Member of the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission, a position she was appointed to in February 2010.  Prior to this, Ms. Attwood held several senior roles at the U.S. Department of Labor from 1979 to 2001, including Appellate Judge on the Administrative Review Board, Associate Solicitor for Occupational Safety and Health in the Office of the Solicitor, and Associate Solicitor for Mine Safety and Health in the Office of the Solicitor.  Ms. Attwood spent the early years of her legal career as an appellate attorney in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice.  She was awarded the Presidential Rank Award of Meritorious Executive for outstanding service in the Senior Executive Service in 1992.  Ms. Attwood received a B.A. from Oakland University and a J.D. from the University of Minnesota.

Stuart F. Delery, Nominee for Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division, Department of Justice
Stuart F. Delery is currently the Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division at the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) where he has served since 2009.  His previous positions at DOJ include Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division, Senior Counselor to the Attorney General, Associate Deputy Attorney General, and Chief of Staff and Counselor to the Deputy Attorney General.  Before joining DOJ, Mr. Delery was a partner in the Washington, D.C. office of the law firm WilmerHale, where he was a member of the Litigation Department, the Appellate and Supreme Court Litigation Practice Group, and a Vice Chair of the firm’s Securities Department.  Mr. Delery clerked for Justices Sandra Day O’Connor and Byron R. White of the U.S. Supreme Court, and Chief Judge Gereld B. Tjoflat of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.  He received a B.A. from the University of Virginia and a J.D. from Yale Law School.

Fred P. Hochberg, Nominee for President, Export-Import Bank of the United States
Fred P. Hochberg is President of the Export-Import Bank of the United States, a position he has held since May 2009.  From 2004 to 2008, Mr. Hochberg was Dean of Milano, The New School for Management and Urban Policy in New York.  From 1998 to 2001, he served as Deputy Administrator, and then as Acting Administrator of the Small Business Administration (SBA).  Prior to SBA, Mr. Hochberg was President and Chief Operating Officer of the Lillian Vernon Corporation.  He is a past board member of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the Citizens Budget Commission, the Foundation for International Community Assistance, and the New York State Financial Control Board.  Mr. Hochberg received his B.A. from New York University and an M.B.A from Columbia University.

Dr. Allison M. Macfarlane, Nominee for Commissioner, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and upon appointment to be designated Chair
Dr. Allison M. Macfarlane is Chair and Commissioner of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, a position she has held since July 2012.  Previously, she served as an associate professor of Environmental Science and Policy at George Mason University (GMU) from 2006 to 2012.  Dr. Macfarlane worked as a research associate at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) from 2004 to 2006 after previously serving from 2000 to 2003.  From 2003 to 2004, she was an associate professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology.  She was also a fellow at Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs from 1998 to 2000, and a fellow at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation from 1997 to 1998.  Dr. Macfarlane began her teaching career in the Department of Geography and Earth Systems Science at GMU.  She also served as a member of the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future from January 2010 to January 2012.  Dr. Macfarlane received a B.Sc. from the University of Rochester and a Ph.D. in Geology from MIT.

Judge Patricia M. Wald, Nominee for Member, Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board
Judge Patricia M. Wald is a Member of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, a position she has held since August 2012.  She served for 20 years on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia from 1979 to 1999, including five years as Chief Judge.  Prior to joining the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District Court of Columbia, Judge Wald was the Assistant Attorney General for Legislative Affairs at the Department of Justice.  Judge Wald has served in a variety of capacities including Judge on the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and Member on the President's Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the U.S. Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction.  She also previously worked as an attorney at the Mental Health Law Project, the Center for Law and Social Policy, the Office of Criminal Justice at the Department of Justice, and co-director of the Ford Foundation Drug Abuse Research Project.  Judge Wald is a member of the American Law Institute and the American Philosophical Society, and a former Chair of the Open Society Institute's Justice Initiative Board.  She served as a Member of the Council of the Administrative Conference of the United States from 2010 to 2012.  Judge Wald received a B.A. from the Connecticut College for Women and a J.D. from Yale Law School.

First Lady Michelle Obama (and First Dog Bo) celebrate an early Easter with military families

The general becomes the first African-American in the post.

In the latest installment of the audio series "Being Biden," the Vice President takes you to St. Peter's Basilica, just after the Inauguration Mass of Pope Francis.

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WATCH: 12-Year-Old Urges Rhode Island To Grant His Parents Equality

Thursday evening, the Rhode Island Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on marriage equality legislation that lasted a staggering 12 hours — until 4:57 AM Friday morning — allowing every single individual who wanted to testify for or against the bill to do so. One of the most compelling testimonies came from 12-year-old Matthew Lannon, who explained about why his two moms and two dads deserve marriage:

LANNON: Both my moms and my dads have been together for 14 years. When I think about what marriage means to me, I think it’s about two people that love each other. My parents certainly fit that description. Although they can’t legally marry, their commitments are very very real. My parents have stayed together through sickness and health, through thick and thin, through good times and bad…

So even though I’m only 12, I have some ideas of what’s important to me. I want to be someone who knows no discrimination. I want to become a man who doesn’t judge someone by the color of their skin, their gender, or who they love. I want to use the gift I was given to help make the world a better place.

In closing, here’s what I believe. If there’s one thing you don’t mess with in life, it’s love. My parents and all the other gay and lesbian people here just want to be happy, just like you. All they want is to be treated fairly. But unlike most of you, they have to come again here year after year and explain over and over why their love is equal to yours. This year, you have the opportunity to change that. I say: choose love.

Watch it (via Providence Journal):

The New Civil Rights Movement has more analysis of the long night of testimony. This is the first time marriage equality has been considered in the Senate, having previously been blocked by Senate President Teresa Paiva Weed (D). The committee did not vote before convening this morning.

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Study: Premiums Could Rise Average Of 40 Percent Under ObamaCare

Health insurance premiums could rise by as much as 40 percent as a result of President Obama's healthcare law, according to a new study.

The survey of premiums in six states found that premiums could increase most significantly for young, healthy men. 

Premiums will rise for people who currently purchase bare-bones plans with high deductibles and meager coverage. They'll be forced to upgrade to policies that must offer at least a certain level of coverage.

Democrats say many of the meager policies on the market today give people a false sense of security — they think they have health insurance, but their policies don't actually cover the services they're most likely to need, even in an emergency.

Republicans argue that forcing consumers to purchase different plans violates President Obama's pledge that people who like their healthcare coverage can keep it. The changes impose higher costs on those who can least afford it, critics say.

Most people who see their premiums rise will get help from the federal government to help cover the additional costs, according to Thursday's survey, which was conducted by the Milliman consulting firm on behalf of Center Forward.

The healthcare law establishes new insurance exchanges in each state. The exchanges are primarily for people who buy coverage on their own, rather than purchasing insurance through an employer. 

People in the individual market currently tend to choose policies that don't offer much coverage and carry high out-of-pocket costs for the services they do cover, according to Milliman's research. 

The firm analyzed the individual markets in six states with varying degrees of regulation already in place. In New Jersey, where insurance is already highly regulated, the healthcare law won't lead to much of a premium hike at all — in fact, consumers could see their costs fall by as much as 25 percent.

But in states that don't already restrict meager insurance policies, the healthcare law could have a bigger impact. In Florida and Ohio, premiums for one of the cheapest individual policies allowed under ObamaCare could cost upwards of 50 percent more than the more bare-bones plans available now.

Across the six states studied, 40 to 60 percent of people on the individual market will be eligible for subsidies to help offset the cost of insurance, Milliman found.

The law provides subsidies, based on income, to help cover premiums, as well as separate subsidies to defray out-of-pocket costs. Even if underlying premiums rise, many people will see their own costs fall because of the help they'll get from subsidies, Milliman said.

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FDA proposes tightening rules for heart defibrillators

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U.S. Senate may back symbolic repeal of medical device tax

WASHINGTON, March 21 (Reuters) - Opponents of a 2.3 percent tax on medical device companies will likely win passage this week in the U.S. Senate of a largely symbolic resolution calling for repeal of the tax, with some Democrats likely to join all Republicans.

The tax helps to fund President Barack Obama's 2010 healthcare law. It applies to a range of medical products - from bedpans to expensive heart devices - many manufactured in the home states of the senators backing the repeal.

The resolution calling for repeal will be symbolic because it will come in the form of a non-binding amendment to a non-binding budget measure drafted by Senate Democrats. The resolution would not actually repeal the tax.

Full repeal of the tax may be difficult to achieve, given its $30 billion price tag and the opposition of key Senate Democrats, including Majority Leader Harry Reid.

"The industry has a fighting chance of getting the tax moderated or eliminated as part of a much larger tax reform bill, where the device levy becomes a rounding error," said Paul Heldman, a policy analyst at Potomac Research Group. "But major tax reform in this Congress is a long shot."

Nine Senate Democrats are signed up to back the symbolic amendment. More than a dozen Senate Democrats wrote to Reid last year seeking to delay the tax.

Reid does not support repeal. Nor does Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, who helped usher Obama's healthcare bill into law. The medical device tax is among several new industry levies in the healthcare overhaul law, which aims to provide health insurance for millions of Americans who lack it.

The law is being implemented. It was declared constitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court last year.

The medical device tax, which went into effect this year, is projected to raise about $30 billion over a decade. That government revenue would be lost if the tax were repealed.

Democratic Senators from Minnesota, Indiana and Pennsylvania, where some big medical technology companies are based, are among those who have been pushing for a repeal.

Industry officials and lawmakers against the tax say it will hurt innovation and job creation.

(Reporting by Kim Dixon; Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh and Jan Paschal)

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Medical device maker Cytori Therapeutics loses approval fight

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President Obama Signs Connecticut Disaster Declaration

The White House

Office of the Press Secretary

The President today declared a major disaster exists in the State of Connecticut and ordered Federal aid to supplement state and local recovery efforts in the area affected by a severe winter storm and snowstorm during the period of February 8-11, 2013.

Federal funding is available to state and eligible local governments and certain private nonprofit organizations on a cost-sharing basis for emergency work and the repair or replacement of facilities damaged by the severe winter storm and snowstorm in Fairfield, Hartford, Litchfield, Middlesex, New Haven, New London, Tolland, and Windham Counties and the Mashantucket Pequot and Mohegan Tribal Nations located within New London County.

In addition, Federal funding is available to state and eligible local governments on a cost-sharing basis for snow assistance for a continuous 48-hour period during or proximate to the incident period in Fairfield, Litchfield, Middlesex, New London, Tolland, and Windham Counties and the Mashantucket Pequot and Mohegan Tribal Nations located within New London County.  This assistance will be provided for a 72-hour period in Hartford and New Haven Counties.

Federal funding is also available on a cost-sharing basis for hazard mitigation measures for all counties and Tribes within the state.

W. Craig Fugate, Administrator, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Department of Homeland Security, named Albert Lewis as the Federal Coordinating Officer for federal recovery operations in the affected area. 

FEMA said additional designations may be made at a later date if requested by the state and warranted by the results of further damage assessments.

First Lady Michelle Obama (and First Dog Bo) celebrate an early Easter with military families

The general becomes the first African-American in the post.

In the latest installment of the audio series "Being Biden," the Vice President takes you to St. Peter's Basilica, just after the Inauguration Mass of Pope Francis.

view all related blog posts

View the original article here

U.S. Senate may back symbolic repeal of medical device tax

WASHINGTON, March 21 (Reuters) - Opponents of a 2.3 percent tax on medical device companies will likely win passage this week in the U.S. Senate of a largely symbolic resolution calling for repeal of the tax, with some Democrats likely to join all Republicans.

The tax helps to fund President Barack Obama's 2010 healthcare law. It applies to a range of medical products - from bedpans to expensive heart devices - many manufactured in the home states of the senators backing the repeal.

The resolution calling for repeal will be symbolic because it will come in the form of a non-binding amendment to a non-binding budget measure drafted by Senate Democrats. The resolution would not actually repeal the tax.

Full repeal of the tax may be difficult to achieve, given its $30 billion price tag and the opposition of key Senate Democrats, including Majority Leader Harry Reid.

"The industry has a fighting chance of getting the tax moderated or eliminated as part of a much larger tax reform bill, where the device levy becomes a rounding error," said Paul Heldman, a policy analyst at Potomac Research Group. "But major tax reform in this Congress is a long shot."

Nine Senate Democrats are signed up to back the symbolic amendment. More than a dozen Senate Democrats wrote to Reid last year seeking to delay the tax.

Reid does not support repeal. Nor does Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, who helped usher Obama's healthcare bill into law. The medical device tax is among several new industry levies in the healthcare overhaul law, which aims to provide health insurance for millions of Americans who lack it.

The law is being implemented. It was declared constitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court last year.

The medical device tax, which went into effect this year, is projected to raise about $30 billion over a decade. That government revenue would be lost if the tax were repealed.

Democratic Senators from Minnesota, Indiana and Pennsylvania, where some big medical technology companies are based, are among those who have been pushing for a repeal.

Industry officials and lawmakers against the tax say it will hurt innovation and job creation.

(Reporting by Kim Dixon; Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh and Jan Paschal)

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President Obama to Honor MLS Cup Champion Los Angeles Galaxy and Stanley Cup Champion Los Angeles Kings at The White House

The White House

Office of the Press Secretary

Teams to Host a Let’s Move! Clinic on the South Lawn Following the Ceremony for children from Atlanta, Boston, Cleveland, Columbus, Detroit, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C.

WASHINGTON – On Tuesday, March 26, President Obama will welcome the Stanley Cup champion Los Angeles Kings and the Major League Soccer champion LA Galaxy to the White House to honor their 2012 championship seasons in a ceremony at the White House.  This visit will also continue the tradition begun by President Obama of honoring sports teams for their efforts to give back to communities as part of their trip to Washington.

After the ceremony, the teams will host a Let’s Move! clinic on the South Lawn of the White House for youth sport participants from across the country.  The clinic is supported by MLS WORKS, MLS’s community outreach initiative that promotes the importance of living a healthy lifestyle, and the Kings Care Foundation, the club’s community outreach initiative that is focused on providing and enhancing educational, recreational, and health-related programs for the youth of Los Angeles. The children participating in the clinic come from the U.S. Soccer Foundation’s Soccer for Success program in Philadelphia, America SCORES programs in Atlanta, Boston, Cleveland and Washington, D.C. and NHL’s Hockey is for Everyone programs in Washington, D.C., Columbus, Detroit and Philadelphia.

Background information on youth sports programs participating:

MLS WORKS
MLS WORKS is Major League Soccer's community outreach initiative dedicated to addressing important social issues and serves as a platform for both League and club philanthropic programs. MLS WORKS seeks to establish Major League Soccer as a leader for improving the lives of people through sport.

LA Galaxy Foundation 
The LA Galaxy Foundation is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization committed to helping children through educational, health and soccer based initiatives and programs.  LA Galaxy Foundation will continue to support organizations and activities dedicated to encouraging, educating and empowering the children in our community.

Kings Care Foundation
The Kings Care Foundation is the award-winning, non-profit children’s charity of the Los Angeles Kings. Formed in 1996, the Kings Care Foundation is dedicated to providing children in the Greater Los Angeles area with educational and recreational opportunities and has donated nearly $8 million in monetary and in-kind donations. The Kings Care Foundation is proud to support the local community by making a direct impact on the lives of nearly one million children
throughout Southern California each year.

Soccer for Success
The U.S. Soccer Foundation, the major charitable arm of soccer in the United States, runs the national after-school program Soccer for Success.  Soccer for Success provides children in urban underserved areas with structured physical activity, nutrition education and mentorship, for 90 minutes a day, three times per week for 24 weeks per year, at no cost to their families. Soccer for Success ensures that children in under-resourced communities have easy and affordable access to a  high quality out-of-school program that supports their physical and personal development. The children participating in the event are from a Better Tomorrows community in Philadelphia, where the U.S. Soccer Foundation partners with the JT Dorsey Foundation to implement the program.

America SCORES
America SCORES provides innovative afterschool and summer programming which combine soccer, poetry and spoken word, and service-learning every day for over 24 weeks each year. America SCORES participants receive ten times more exercise than the national average and lower their BMI by 2% by the end of each season. Using soccer as a tool to encourage fitness, sportsmanship, and leadership, America SCORES inspires the life-long appreciation of sports and health-enhancing behaviors like choosing to eat more fruit and vegetables, participating in organized sports and spending less time watching television and playing video games. Each year, America SCORES serves 8,000 students at 150 schools through fourteen affiliates located in major urban centers across the United States.

NHL’s Hockey is for Everyone
Hockey is for Everyone™ (HIFE) is the National Hockey League's official youth development program. HIFE provides support and unique programing to non-profit youth hockey organizations across North America that are committed to offering children of all backgrounds opportunities to play hockey. The HIFE initiative leverages the sport of hockey as a catalyst to help children learn essential life skills, education and the core values of hockey: commitment, perseverance, and teamwork.

First Lady Michelle Obama (and First Dog Bo) celebrate an early Easter with military families

The general becomes the first African-American in the post.

In the latest installment of the audio series "Being Biden," the Vice President takes you to St. Peter's Basilica, just after the Inauguration Mass of Pope Francis.

view all related blog posts

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Rate Shock: In California, Obamacare to Increase Individual Health Insurance Premiums by 64-146%

Angela Braly, then-CEO of WellPoint, testified before Congress about allegations that its California unit, Anthem Blue Cross, was raising premiums on some customers by more than 30 percent. Last week, California announced that the Affordable Care Act would increase non-group insurance premiums by as much as 146 percent. (Image courtesy U.S. House of Representatives)

One of the most serious flaws with Obamacare is that its blizzard of regulations and mandates drives up the cost of insurance for people who buy it on their own. This problem will be especially acute when the law’s main provisions kick in on January 1, 2014, leading many to worry about health insurance “rate shock.”

Last week, the state of California claimed that its version of Obamacare’s health insurance exchange would actually reduce premiums. “These rates are way below the worst-case gloom-and-doom scenarios we have heard,” boasted Peter Lee, executive director of the California exchange.

But the data that Lee released tells a different story: Obamacare, in fact, will increase individual-market premiums in California by as much as 146 percent.

Lee’s claims that there won’t be rate shock in California were repeated uncritically in some quarters. “Despite the political naysayers,” writes my Forbes colleague Rick Ungar, “the healthcare exchange concept appears to be working very well indeed in states like California.” A bit more analysis would have prevented Rick from falling for California’s sleight-of-hand.

Here’s what happened. Last week, Covered California—the name for the state’s Obamacare-compatible insurance exchange—released the rates that Californians will have to pay to enroll in the exchange. “The rates submitted to Covered California for the 2014 individual market,” the state said in a press release, “ranged from two percent above to 29 percent below the 2013 average premium for small employer plans in California’s most populous regions.”

That’s the sentence that led to all of the triumphant commentary from the left. “This is a home run for consumers in every region of California,” exulted Peter Lee.

Except that Lee was making a misleading comparison. He was comparing apples—the plans that Californians buy today for themselves in a robust individual market—and oranges—the highly regulated plans that small employers purchase for their workers as a group. The difference is critical.

Obamacare to double individual-market premiums

If you’re a 25 year old male non-smoker, buying insurance for yourself, the cheapest plan on Obamacare’s exchanges is the catastrophic plan, which costs an average of $184 a month. (That’s the median monthly premium across California’s 19 insurance rating regions.)

The next cheapest plan, the “bronze” comprehensive plan, costs $205 a month. But in 2013, on eHealthInsurance.com (NASDAQ:EHTH), the average cost of the five cheapest plans was only $92. In other words, for the average 25-year-old male non-smoking Californian, Obamacare will drive premiums up by between 100 and 123 percent.

Under Obamacare, only people under the age of 30 can participate in the slightly cheaper catastrophic plan. So if you’re 40, your cheapest option is the bronze plan. In California, the median price of a bronze plan for a 40-year-old male non-smoker will be $261. But on eHealthInsurance, the average cost of the five cheapest plans was $121. That is, Obamacare will increase individual-market premiums by an average of 116 percent.

For both 25-year-olds and 40-year-olds, then, Californians under Obamacare who buy insurance for themselves will see their insurance premiums double.

Impact highest in Bay Area, Orange County, and San Diego

In the map below, I illustrate the regional variations in Obamacare’s rate hikes. For each of the state’s 19 insurance regions, I compared the median price of the bronze plans offered on the exchange to the median price of the five cheapest plans on eHealthInsurance.com for the most populous zip code in that region. (eHealth offers more than 50 plans in the typical California zip code; focusing on the five cheapest is the fairest comparator to the exchanges, which typically offered three to six plans in each insurance rating region.)

As you can see, Obamacare’s impact on 40-year-olds is steepest in the San Francisco Bay area, especially in the counties north of San Francisco, like Marin, Napa, and Sonoma. Also hard-hit are Orange and San Diego counties.

According to Covered California, 13 carriers are participating in the state’s exchange, including Anthem Blue Cross (NYSE:WLP), Health Net (NYSE:HNT), Molina (NYSE:MOH), and Kaiser Permanente. So far, UnitedHealthCare (NYSE:UNH) and Aetna (NYSE:AET) have stayed out.

Spinning a public-relations disaster

It’s great that Covered California released this early the rates that insurers plan to charge on the exchange, as it gives us an early window into how the exchanges will work in a state that has an unusually competitive and inexpensive individual market for health insurance. But that’s the irony. The full rate report is subtitled “Making the Individual Market in California Affordable.” But Obamacare has actually doubled individual-market premiums in the Golden State.

How did Lee and his colleagues explain the sleight-of-hand they used to make it seem like they were bringing prices down, instead of up? “It is difficult to make a direct comparison of these rates to existing premiums in the commercial individual market,” Covered California explained in last week’s press release, “because in 2014, there will be new standard benefit designs under the Affordable Care Act.” That’s a polite way of saying that Obamacare’s mandates and regulations will drive up the cost of premiums in the individual market for health insurance.

But rather than acknowledge that truth, the agency decided to ignore it completely, instead comparing Obamacare-based insurance to a completely different type of insurance product, that bears no relevance to the actual costs that actual Californians face when they shop for coverage today. Peter Lee calls it a “home run.” It’s more like hitting into a triple play.

Obama attacked insurers in 2010 for much smaller increases

That Obamacare more than doubles insurance premiums for many Californians is especially ironic, given the political posturing of the President and his administration in 2010. In February of that year, Anthem Blue Cross announced that some groups (but not the majority) would face premium increases of as much as 39 percent. The White House and its allies in the blogosphere, cynically, claimed that these increases were due to greedy profiteering by the insurers, instead of changes in the underlying costs of the insured population.

“These extraordinary increases are up to 15 times faster than inflation and threaten to make health care unaffordable for hundreds of thousands of Californians, many of whom are already struggling to make ends meet in a difficult economy,” said Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. “[Anthem’s] strong financial position makes these rate increases even more difficult to understand.” The then-Democratic Congress called hearings. Even California Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner, a Republican running for governor, decided to launch an investigation.

Soon after, WellPoint announced that, in fact, because of lower revenues and higher spending on patient care, the company earned 11 percent less in 2010 than it did in 2009. So much for greedy profiteering.

So, to summarize: Supporters of Obamacare justified passage of the law because one insurer in California raised rates on some people by as much as 39 percent. But Obamacare itself more than doubles the cost of insurance on the individual market. I can understand why Democrats in California would want to mislead the public on this point. But journalists have a professional responsibility to check out the facts for themselves.

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UPDATE 1: On Twitter, Jonathan Cohn of The New Republic argues that I’m being unkind to California (1) by not describing the mandates that Obamacare imposes on insurers in the individual market, and (2) not explaining that low-income people will be eligible for subsidies that protect them from much of the rate shock.

For an extensive discussion of Obamacare’s costly insurance mandates, such as its requirement that plans cover you whether you’re healthy or sick, read this post. For a discussion of how Obamacare’s insurance mandates dramatically increase the cost of insurance for younger workers, go here.

Jon is right that low-income individuals will be protected from these rate increases because of Obamacare’s subsidies, but if you’re not low-income, you face a double-whammy: higher taxes to pay for those subsidies, and higher indvidual-market insurance costs for yourself. A better approach would be to offer everyone access to low-cost consumer-driven health coverage.

UPDATE 2: A number of writers did call out California for the apples-to-oranges comparison last week, including David Freddoso, Philip Klein, and Lanhee Chen.

Lanhee, writing in Bloomberg View, does the useful exercise of showing that even for plans with the same generous benefit package that Obamacare requires, eHealthInsurance is significantly cheaper:

To put it simply: Covered California is trying to make consumers think they’re getting more for less when, in fact, they’re just getting the same while paying more.

Yet there are many plans on the individual market in California today that offer a structure and benefits that are almost identical to those that will be available on the state’s health insurance exchange next year. So, let’s make an actual apples-to-apples comparison for the hypothetical 25-year-old male living in San Francisco and making more than $46,000 a year. Today, he can buy a PPO plan from a major insurer with a $5,000 deductible, 30 percent coinsurance, a $10 co-pay for generic prescription drugs, and a $7,000 out-of-pocket maximum for $177 a month.

According to Covered California, a “Bronze” plan from the exchange with nearly the same benefits, including a slightly lower out-of-pocket maximum of $6,350, will cost him between $245 and $270 a month. That’s anywhere from 38 percent to 53 percent more than he’ll have to pay this year for comparable coverage! Sounds a lot different than the possible 29 percent “decrease” touted by Covered California in their faulty comparison.

While Covered California acknowledges that it’s tough to compare premiums pre- and post-Obamacare, at the very least, it could have made a legitimate comparison so consumers could fairly evaluate the impacts of Obamacare.

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*FDA proposes tightening rules for heart defibrillators

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Remarks by the President at the Hall of Children, Yad Vashem

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Be Healthy, Be Active, Be You: April 1, 2013

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For Immediate Release March 22, 2013 Remarks by the President at the Hall of Children, Yad Vashem Yad Vashem
Jerusalem

10:22 A.M. IST
 
THE PRESIDENT:  “Unto them I will give my house and within my walls a memorial and a name…an everlasting name that shall not be cut off.”
 
President Peres, Prime Minister Netanyahu, Chairman Shalev, Rabbi Lau -- thank you for sharing this house, this memorial, with me today.  And thank you to the people of Israel for preserving the names of the millions taken from us, of blessed memory -- names that shall never be forgotten.
 
This is my second visit to this living memorial.  Since then, I’ve walked among the barbed wire and guard towers of Buchenwald.  Rabbi Lau told me of his time there, and we reminisced about our good friend, Elie Wiesel, and the memories that he shared with me.  I have stood in the old Warsaw ghetto, with survivors who would not go quietly.  But nothing equals the wrenching power of this sacred place, where the totality of the Shoah is told.  We could come here a thousand times, and each time our hearts would break.
 
For here we see the depravity to which man can sink; the barbarism that unfolds when we begin to see our fellow human beings as somehow less than us, less worthy of dignity and of life.  We see how evil can, for a moment in time, triumph when good people do nothing, and how silence abetted a crime unique in human history.
 
Here we see their faces and we hear their voices.  We look upon the objects of their lives -- the art that they created, the prayer books that they carried.  We see that even as they had hate etched into their arms, they were not numbers.  They were men and women and children -- so many children -- sent to their deaths because of who they were, how they prayed, or who they loved.
 
And yet, here, alongside man’s capacity for evil, we also are reminded of man’s capacity for good -- the rescuers, the Righteous Among the Nations who refused to be bystanders.  And in their noble acts of courage, we see how this place, this accounting of horror, is, in the end, a source of hope.

For here we learn that we are never powerless.  In our lives we always have choices.  To succumb to our worst instincts or to summon the better angels of our nature.  To be indifferent to suffering to wherever it may be, whoever it may be visited upon, or to display the empathy that is at the core of our humanity.  We have the choice to acquiesce to evil or make real our solemn vow -- “never again.”  We have the choice to ignore what happens to others, or to act on behalf of others and to continually examine in ourselves whatever dark places there may be that might lead to such actions or inactions.  This is our obligation -- not simply to bear witness, but to act.
 
For us, in our time, this means confronting bigotry and hatred in all of its forms, racism, especially anti-Semitism.  None of that has a place in the civilized world -- not in the classrooms of children; not in the corridors of power.  And let us never forget the link between the two.  For our sons and daughters are not born to hate, they are taught to hate.  So let us fill their young hearts with the same understanding and compassion that we hope others have for them.  
 
Here we hope.  Because after you walk through these halls, after you pass through the darkness, there is light -- a glorious view of the Jerusalem Forest, with the sun shining over the historic homeland of the Jewish people; a fulfillment of the prophecy: “you shall live again…upon your own soil.”  Here, on your ancient land, let it be said for all the world to hear:  The State of Israel does not exist because of the Holocaust.  But with the survival of a strong Jewish State of Israel, such a Holocaust will never happen again. 
 
Here we pray that we all can be better; that we can all grow, like the sapling near the Children’s Memorial -- a sapling from a chestnut tree that Anne Frank could see from her window.  The last time she described it in her diary, she wrote: “Our chestnut tree is in full bloom.  It’s covered with leaves and is even more beautiful than last year.”  That’s a reminder of who we can be.  But we have to work for it.  We have to work for it here in Israel.  We have to work for it in America.  We have to work for it around the world -- to tend the light and the brightness as opposed to our worst instincts.
 
So may God bless the memory of the millions.  May their souls be bound up in the bond of eternal life.  And may each spring bring a full bloom even more beautiful than the last. 
 
END
10:29 A.M. IST

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