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Sunday, August 23, 2009 - 5:34amSanction this postReply
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Barack Obama says "you can keep your existing health insurance" under ObamaCare. However, what H.R. 3200 says about it appears to turn Obama's claim into a huge fraud. How long can one keep it -- a few months or maybe only one day? The following is from H.R. 3200.
SEC. 102. PROTECTING THE CHOICE TO KEEP CURRENT COVERAGE.
      (a) Grandfathered Health Insurance Coverage Defined- Subject to the succeeding provisions of this section, for purposes of establishing acceptable coverage under this division, the term `grandfathered health insurance coverage' means individual health insurance coverage that is offered and in force and effect before the first day of Y1 if the following conditions are met:
            (1) LIMITATION ON NEW ENROLLMENT-
                  (A) IN GENERAL- Except as provided in this paragraph, the individual health insurance issuer offering such coverage does not enroll any individual in such coverage if the first effective date of coverage is on or after the first day of Y1.
                  (B) DEPENDENT COVERAGE PERMITTED- Subparagraph (A) shall not affect the subsequent enrollment of a dependent of an individual who is covered as of such first day.
            (2) LIMITATION ON CHANGES IN TERMS OR CONDITIONS- Subject to paragraph (3) and except as required by law, the issuer does not change any of its terms or conditions, including benefits and cost-sharing, from those in effect as of the day before the first day of Y1.
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/F?c111:1:./temp/~c1114AyTum:e22987
What does the above mean?
1. It says "individual health insurance". Does that mean group coverage, such as provided by an employer, is not grandfathered?
2. If John Doe has coverage under policy X and then Joe Blow enrolls under policy X, does John Doe's coverage lose its grandfathered status?
3. What does "terms and conditions" encompass? It seems to me that if the issuer changes policy X in any way, then John Doe's coverage loses its grandfathered status. What if the change is merely trivial? What if the change was due to a government mandate? Does it include increasing premiums, which happens most of the time annually?

(Edited by Merlin Jetton on 8/23, 9:20am)


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Sunday, August 23, 2009 - 12:47pmSanction this postReply
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Hi Merlin,

I thought Obama meant he wouldn't force you to switch plans *if* you could keep the existing plan you are on. Keeping the plan you are on depends upon whether you can afford it and whether it continues to be offered by the insurer.

It's misleading because the bill section (at least if read in isolation) limits what counts as an existing plan and further limits which insurers are even able to offer it.

Jordan

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Sunday, August 23, 2009 - 1:07pmSanction this postReply
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Jordan,

Obama's wording and his intent were to say that people could keep there existing plans IF they WANTED to. The thrust of the statements were to reassure people who did not want to change plans. If you look at his language you will see that the only stated conditional was the peoples choice, their desire.

While all the time he knows that they are going to be forced into a government plan - one way or another - over time. That is dishonest to an extreme.

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Sunday, August 23, 2009 - 3:29pmSanction this postReply
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This post isn't about keeping your coverage, but it is about misinformation about ObamaCare from Obama's own mouth. This dude is really disingenuous!

The following is BO talking in a video.
None of the bills that have been voted on in Congress and none of the proposals coming out of the White House propose giving coverage to illegal immigrants. None of them. That has never been on the table. Nobody has discussed it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qm4uLCFrP0&feature=related
H.R. 3200 SEC. 202 here addresses and defines "Exchange-eligible individuals." It says "all individuals are eligible to obtain coverage." Doesn't "all individuals" mean no exceptions, i.e. include illegal immigrants? Also, nowhere in this section does it say illegal immigrants are NOT eligible. Indeed, H.R. 3200 does not say "illegal immigrants" anywhere.

Then there is the following from Michelle Malkin.
Big Nanny Democrats want to ration health care for everyone in America – except those who break our immigration laws. Last week, the House Ways and Means Committee defeated an amendment that would have prevented illegal aliens from using the so-called “public health insurance option.” Every Democrat on the panel voted against the measure.
http://michellemalkin.com/2009/07/22/obamacare-for-illegal-aliens/
Update: H.R.3200, Section 242 is about premium credits (subsidies) to individuals getting coverage via the government's health insurance exchange. It says an "affordable credit eligible individual" means an individual who is lawfully present in  in the United States. So it appears illegal immigrants would not be eligible for direct subsidies. Of course, they would get an indirect subsidy to the extent the insurance exchange runs deficits.
(Edited by Merlin Jetton on 8/23, 6:51pm)


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Sunday, August 23, 2009 - 9:27pmSanction this postReply
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Hi Steve,

I was paraphrasing what I gathered from his interview with Diane Sawyer when she pressed him on this point. I took it as misleading, not dissembling. Either way, I agree his intent was to insure people.

I see no evidence that Obama wishes to force people, eventually, into the government plan. That's too far-reaching. He could just as easily be wishing for compulsory insurance (like car insurance is now) or single (government) payor insurance but with competition among insurers (sort of like Holland is now). I see those latter two as for more likely than the former, though evidence is also currently lacking to support those.

If there is any such evidence, it won't get out anytime soon. Give it 10 years, then some memo will leak that calls the current plan a half-way house to single-payor, compulsory, and competitive insurance model.

Jordan

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Sunday, August 23, 2009 - 9:58pmSanction this postReply
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I don't know about you, Jordan. Maybe you're one of those guys that need a piano to fall on them before they get it.

He said he wanted single payer with his own mouth before he was elected - in a speech to SEIU. His health czar is in favor of single payer. He meets once a week with the head of SEIU who wants single payer and helped to design it. It isn't an accident that the bills would bring out single payer - not honest competition which isn't a possibility. The language of HR 3200 makes it clear how difficult it would be to ever sustain private insurance under that bill. Small business would find it cheaper to pay the tax for not supplying a group plan and that throws their employees onto the public plan. All of his political cohorts are fierce advocates of the public plan. It is the most important part of the far left's agenda.

People keep talking about how intelligent Obama is... until they pretend that he somehow isn't smart enough to know that the stimulus bill wouldn't work, that the cash for clunkers makes sense, or that the health care bill wouldn't kill private insurance.

We have just witnessed a form of national hypnosis on a historic level. Supporters and opponents have convinced themselves that this man isn't what he really is. It is all there unless someone doesn't want to see it. It has been all along.

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Sunday, August 23, 2009 - 10:00pmSanction this postReply
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I see no evidence that Hitler wishes to force Jews, eventually, into concentration camps. That's too far-reaching. He could just as easily be wishing for compulsory discrimination (like Czarist Russia was then) or single (mandatory) segregated ghettos but with the ability to emigrate, minus one's property (sort of like Syria is now). I see those latter two as for more likely than the former, though evidence is also currently lacking to support those.


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Sunday, August 23, 2009 - 10:20pmSanction this postReply
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How very LaRouche-ite of you, Ted, with an example too incomparable to address.

Steve, I hadn't heard about the SEIU speech or agenda - links? Maybe my prediction will come true sooner? Gotta change the batteries on my crystal ball.

Jordan

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Post 8

Sunday, August 23, 2009 - 10:47pmSanction this postReply
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Of course the analogy is imperfect, but are you telling me that you don't even get it?

I find it strange that you are either unaware of Obama's very own words, or don't believe him.

OBAMA: I see no reason why the United States of America, the wealthiest country in the history of the world, spending 14 percent of its gross national product on health care, cannot provide basic health insurance to everybody. And that's what Jim is talking about when he says everybody in, nobody out. A single-payer health care plan, a universal health care plan. That's what I’d like to see.

OBAMA: "I don't think we're going to be able to eliminate employer coverage immediately. There's going to be potentially some transition process."

OBAMA: We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we've set. We've got to have a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded.

REP. RAHM EMANUEL, D-ILL.: Citizenship is not an entitlement program. It comes with responsibilities.... Everybody -- somewhere between the ages 18 and 25 -- will serve three months of basic training and understanding in a kind of civil defense. That universal sense of service -- somewhere between the ages of 18 and 25 -- will give Americans, once again, a sense of what they are to be American and their contribution to a country and a common experience.

And you look at World War II -- that was a draft, this is not a draft, this is universal service. It was not an accident that we started our big march towards civil rights and expanding post-World War II, because the country came through an experience together.

OBAMA: It's not that I want to punish your success. I just want to make sure that everybody who is behind you, that they've got a chance at success, too.... I think when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody.

OBAMA: I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students, the foreign students, the Chicanos, the Marxist professors and structural feminists and punk rock performance poets.

OBAMA: The Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth and sort of more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society. And to that extent as radical as I think people tried to characterize the Warren court, it wasn't that radical. It didn't break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers and the Constitution, at least as it's been interpreted. And the Warren court interpreted it in the same way that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties, says what the states can't do to you, says what the federal government can't do to you. But it doesn't say what the federal government or the state government must do on your behalf. And that hasn't shifted, and one of the, I think the tragedies of the civil rights movement was because the civil rights movement became so court focused, I think that there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change, and in some ways we still suffer from that."

OBAMA: Under my plan of a cap-and-trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket, even, you know, regardless of what I say about whether coal is good or bad. Because I'm capping greenhouse gases, coal power plants, you know, natural gas, you name, whatever the plants were, whatever the industry was, they would have to retrofit their operations. That will cost money; they will pass that money on to consumers.

OBAMA: We can't drive our SUVs and, you know, eat as much as we want and keep our homes on, you know, 72 degrees at all times whether we're living in a desert or we're living in the tundra and then just expect that every other country's going to say, 'OK.'

MICHELLE OBAMA: Barack Obama will require you to work... Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed.

OBAMA: We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.

BECK: He said it as plain as it can possibly be said and almost no one took him at his word. The question is, do you now?

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Monday, August 24, 2009 - 4:14amSanction this postReply
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Jordan:  Steve, I hadn't heard about the SEIU speech or agenda - links? Maybe my prediction will come true sooner? Gotta change the batteries on my crystal ball.
I see two problesm here. An authentic crystal ball doesn't need batteries. Even an authentic crystal ball is not reliable when you use it. You don't have the correct name.  :-)




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Monday, August 24, 2009 - 11:22amSanction this postReply
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Hi Ted,

I get what you were goin' for. I just resist most comparisons to the Nazis. (I'll read the interview part of your post later.)

Hi Merlin,

Took me a moment to get that last part. Very funny.

Jordan



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Post 11

Sunday, November 10, 2013 - 1:19pmSanction this postReply
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Merlin,

It's obvious that you not only know that real crystal balls don't need batteries to run on, but that you also know how to effectively use one -- because you saw "the future" (i.e., "today") from back then.

Your powers of premonition are formidable.

Ed

p.s., Of course there is the problem of Steve and Ted also knowing exactly what the future would look like, but I'm willing to give you some props for obtaining/sharing insight/foresight on the matter.

:-)

(Edited by Ed Thompson on 11/10, 1:23pm)


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Thursday, November 14, 2013 - 10:36amSanction this postReply
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The latest correction:

"What I meant to say was, if you like your insurance, you can keep it for another 12 months until after the mid-term elections."

Insurance companies spent three years bending over to obey this law. Then this two-bit dictator jackass decides -- in mid November, 6 weeks after folks have run around trying to obey his fucking jackass signature legislation, that he is going to unilateraly declare his law is conveniently delayed for only 12 months== placing he requirement on insurance companies to now somehow roll back time and undue those letters issued on Oct 1.

WIth what? New letters? New rates? New deals?

I was expecting a fucking next December...what I didn't expect was a brand new fucking this December-- when my insurance co now cancels the deal they just offered me and jacks the rates up on my 'old' plan that is still in effect until Jan 1...

...all because this two bit dictator has his incompetent dictator fatfingers all over the health nsurance industry, spewing out dictates on a nearly daily basis.

We're getting to be 'that nation' at a record rate. That is becaise it is painless to sprint downhill...



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Post 13

Thursday, November 14, 2013 - 3:33pmSanction this postReply
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Bill Clinton: "I feel your pain."

Barack Obama: "I cause your pain."

Bill Clinton: "The Erah of Big Guvmint is Ovah"

Barack Obama(with warm up by Bush '43): "Fuck you, Bill, this party is just getting started."

Bill Clinton: Cut federal spending (primarily Reagan's defense build up post Cold War). Tried to lurch the nation left, but failed to pass Stimulus Plan, Nationalized Health Care, and BTU Tax, even thought they were all must haves in '92 campaign. Got spanked in '94, a relieved AMerica watched its economies roar while Congress spent six years harmlessly perseverating on the stains on CHubbers blue dress.

Barack Obama(with warm up by Bush 43): passed Stimulus Plan, presided over QE funny money spilling into inflated stock market prices, passed Nationalized Health Care, shut down 10% of coal fired plants, and drove America's economies to their knees...

Touts 'lowest rate of increase in medical costs in decades' for same reason we are shutting down 10% of coal fired plants: the economies are on their ass and he has helped to drive them to ground and keep them there for now going on six years...








Post 14

Saturday, November 16, 2013 - 7:26amSanction this postReply
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Fred,
Bill Clinton: "I feel your pain."

Barack Obama: "I cause your pain."

Bill Clinton: "The Erah of Big Guvmint is Ovah"
You forgot to add how the new slogan: that the era of smart government is here (now).

Ed


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