What happened to all of the doom and gloom economic threads?
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mercury14
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They
are paying people
to get MORE
people on
FOOD STAMPS
the more on the DOLE
the MORE
DUMz win
ELECTIONS
ITS THE PLAN
In Florida, a food-stamp recruiter deals with wrenching choices
By Eli Saslow, Published: April 23
FORT PIERCE, Fla. — A good recruiter needs to be liked, so Dillie Nerios filled gift bags with dog toys for the dog people and cat food for the cat people. She packed crates of cookies, croissants, vegetables and fresh fruit. She curled her hair and painted her nails fluorescent pink. “A happy, it’s-all-good look,” she said, checking her reflection in the rearview mirror. Then she drove along the Florida coast to sign people up for food stamps.
Her destination on a recent morning was a 55-and-over community in central Florida, where single-wide trailers surround a parched golf course. On the drive, Nerios, 56, reviewed techniques she had learned for connecting with some of Florida’s most desperate senior citizens during two years on the job. Touch a shoulder. Hold eye contact. Listen for as long as it takes. “Some seniors haven’t had anyone to talk to in some time,” one of the state-issued training manuals reads. “Make each person feel like the only one who matters.”
In fact, it is Nerios’s job to enroll at least 150 seniors for food stamps each month, a quota she usually exceeds. Alleviate hunger, lessen poverty: These are the primary goals of her work. But the job also has a second and more controversial purpose for cash-strapped Florida, where increasing food-stamp enrollment has become a means of economic growth, bringing almost $6 billion each year into the state. The money helps to sustain communities, grocery stores and food producers. It also adds to rising federal entitlement spending and the U.S. debt.
Nerios prefers to think of her job in more simple terms: “Help is available,” she tells hundreds of seniors each week. “You deserve it. So, yes or no?”
In Florida and everywhere else, the answer in 2013 is almost always yes. A record 47 million Americans now rely on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), also known as food stamps, available for people with annual incomes below about $15,000. The program grew during the economic collapse because 10 million more Americans dropped into poverty. It has continued to expand four years into the recovery because state governments and their partner organizations have become active promoters, creating official “SNAP outreach plans” and hiring hundreds of recruiters like Nerios.
A decade ago, only about half of eligible Americans chose to sign up for food stamps. Now that number is 75 percent.
Rhode Island hosts SNAP-themed bingo games for the elderly. Alabama hands out fliers that read: “Be a patriot. Bring your food stamp money home.” Three states in the Midwest throw food-stamp parties where new recipients sign up en masse.
On the Treasure Coast of Florida, the official outreach plan is mostly just Nerios, who works for a local food bank that is funded in part by the state. She roams four counties of sandbars and barrier islands in her Ford Escape, with an audio Bible in the CD player and a windshield sticker that reads “Faith, Hope and Love.” She distributes hundreds of fliers each week, giving out her personal cellphone number and helping seniors submit SNAP applications on her laptop.
On this particular morning, Nerios pulled into the Spanish Lakes retirement community near Port St. Lucie, Fla., and set up a display table in front of the senior center. She advertised her visit weeks in advance, but she can never predict how many people will come. Some events draw hundreds; others only a dozen. Her hope was to attract a crowd with giveaways of pet toys and hundreds of pounds of food, which she stacked high on the table. “What person in need doesn’t want food that’s immediate and free?” she said.
She watched as a few golf carts and motorized scooters drove toward her on a road lined with palm trees, passing Spanish Lakes signs that read “We Love Living Here!” and “Great Lifestyle!” The first seniors grabbed giveaway boxes and went home to tell their friends, who told more friends, until a line of 40 people had formed at Nerios’s table.
A husband and wife, just done with nine holes of golf, clubs still on their cart.
An 84-year-old woman on her bicycle, teetering away with one hand on the handlebars and a case of applesauce under her other arm.
A Korean War veteran on oxygen who mostly wanted to talk, so Nerios listened: 32 years in the military, a sergeant major, Germany, Iron Curtain, medals and awards. “A hell of a life,” the veteran said. “So if I signed up, what would I tell my wife?”
“Tell her you’re an American and this is your benefit,” Nerios said, pulling him away from the crowd, so he could write the 26th name of the day on her SNAP sign-up sheet.
She distributed food and SNAP brochures for three hours. “Take what you need,” she said, again and again, until the fruit started to sweat and the vegetables wilted in the late-morning heat. Just as she prepared to leave, a car pulled into the senior center and a man with a gray mustache and a tattered T-shirt opened the driver-side door. He had seen the giveaway boxes earlier in the morning but waited to return until the crowd thinned. He had just moved to Spanish Lakes. He had never taken giveaways. He looked at the boxes but stayed near his car.
“Sir, can I help?” Nerios asked. She brought over some food. She gave him her business card and a few brochures about SNAP.
“I don’t want to be another person depending on the government,” he said.
“How about being another person getting the help you deserve?” she said.
***
Did he deserve it, though? Lonnie Briglia, 60, drove back to his Spanish Lakes mobile home with the recruiter’s pamphlets and thought about that. He wasn’t so sure.
Wasn’t it his fault that he had flushed 40 years of savings into a bad investment, buying a fleet of delivery trucks just as the economy crashed? Wasn’t it his fault that he and his wife, Celeste, had missed mortgage payments on the house where they raised five kids, forcing the bank to foreclose in 2012? Wasn’t it his fault the only place they could afford was an abandoned mobile home in Spanish Lakes, bought for the entirety of their savings, $750 in cash?
“We made horrible mistakes,” he said. “We dug the hole. We should dig ourselves out.”
Now he walked into their mobile home and set the SNAP brochures on the kitchen table. They had moved in three months before, and it had taken all of that time for them to make the place livable. They patched holes in the ceiling. They fixed the plumbing and rewired the electricity. They gave away most of their belongings to the kids — “like we died and executed the will,” he said. They decorated the walls of the mobile home with memories of a different life: photos of Lonnie in his old New Jersey police officer uniform, or in Germany for a manufacturing job that paid $25 an hour, or on vacation in their old pop-up camper.
A few weeks after they moved in, some of their 11 grandchildren had come over to visit. One of them, a 9-year-old girl, had looked around the mobile home and then turned to her grandparents on the verge of tears: “Grampy, this place is junky,” she had said. He had smiled and told her that it was okay, because Spanish Lakes had a community pool, and now he could go swimming whenever he liked.
Only later, alone with Celeste, had he said what he really thought: “A damn sky dive. That’s our life. How does anyone fall this far, this fast?”
And now SNAP brochures were next to him on the table — one more step down, he thought, reading over the bold type on the brochure. “Applying is easy.” “Eat right!” “Every $5 in SNAP generates $9.20 for the local economy.”
He sat in a sweltering home with no air conditioning and a refrigerator bought on layaway, which was mostly empty except for the “experienced” vegetables they sometimes bought at a discount grocery store to cook down and freeze for later. He had known a handful of people who depended on the government: former co-workers who exaggerated injuries to get temporary disability; homeless people in the Fort Pierce park where he had taken the kids each week when they were young to hand out homemade peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches, even though he suspected some of those homeless were drug addicts who spent their Social Security payments on crack.
“Makers and takers,” Lonnie had told the kids then, explaining that the world divided into two categories. The Briglias were makers.
Now three of those kids worked in law enforcement and two were in management. One of them, the oldest, was on his way to visit Spanish Lakes, driving down at this very moment from Valdosta, Ga., with his wife and two kids. Lonnie placed the SNAP brochures in a drawer and turned on a fan to cool the mobile home.
His son arrived, and they went out to dinner. Lonnie tried to pay with a credit card, but his son wouldn’t let him. Then, before leaving for Valdosta, the son gave his parents an air conditioner, bought for $400. Lonnie started to protest.
“Please,” his son said. “You need it. It’s okay to take a little help.”
***
The offer of more help came early the next morning. Nerios reached Lonnie on his cellphone to check on his interest in SNAP.
“Can I help sign you up?” she asked.
“I’m still not sure,” he said. “We have a lot of frozen vegetables in the freezer.”
“Don’t wait until you’re out,” she said.
She was on her way to another outreach event, but she told Lonnie she had plenty of time to talk. She had always preferred working with what her colleagues called the Silent Generation, even though seniors were historically the least likely to enroll in SNAP. Only about 38 percent of eligible seniors choose to participate in the program, half the rate of the general population. In Florida, that means about 300,000 people over 60 are not getting their benefits, and at least $381 million in available federal money isn’t coming into the state. To help enroll more seniors, the government has published an outreach guide that blends compassion with sales techniques, generating some protests in Congress. The guide teaches recruiters how to “overcome the word ‘no,’ ” suggesting answers for likely hesitations.
Welfare stigma: “You worked hard and the taxes you paid helped create SNAP.”
Embarrassment: “Everyone needs help now and then.”
Sense of failure: “Lots of people, young and old, are having financial difficulties.”
Nerios prefers a subtler touch. “It’s about patience, empathy,” she said. While she makes a middle-class salary and had never been on food stamps herself, she knows the emotional exhaustion that comes at the end of each month, after a few hundred conversations about money that didn’t exist. Nowhere had the SNAP program grown as it has in Florida, where enrollment had risen from 1.45 million people in 2008 to 3.35 million last year. And no place in Florida had been reshaped by the recession quite like the Treasure Coast, where middle-class retirees lost their savings in the housing collapse, forcing them to live on less than they expected for longer than they expected. Sometimes, Nerios believes it is more important to protect a client’s sense of self-worth than to meet her quota.
“I’m not going to push you,” she told Lonnie now. “This is your decision.”
“I have high blood pressure, so it’s true that diet is important to us,” he said, which sounded to her like a man arguing with himself.
“I can meet with you today, or tomorrow, or anytime you’d like,” she said.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I’m really sorry.”
“You don’t have to be,” she said. “Please, just think about it.”
***
She hung up the phone and began setting up her giveaway table at another event.
He hung up the phone and drove a few miles down the highway to his wife’s small knitting store. They had stayed married 41 years because they made decisions together. She was an optimist and he was a realist; they leveled each other out. During the failures of the past three years, they had developed a code language that allowed them to acknowledge their misery without really talking about it.
“How you doing?” he asked.
“Just peachy,” she said, which meant to him that in fact she was exhausted, depressed, barely hanging on.
She opened the knitting store three years earlier, but it turned out her only customers were retirees on fixed incomes, seniors with little money to spend who just wanted an air-conditioned place to spend the day. So Celeste started giving them secondhand yarn and inviting customers to knit with her for charity in the shop. Together they had made 176 hats and scarves for poor families in the last year. The store, meanwhile, had barely made its overhead. Lonnie wanted her to close it, but it was the last place where she could pretend her life had turned out as she’d hoped, knitting to classical music at a wooden table in the center of the store.
Now Lonnie joined her at that table and started to tell her about his week: how he had been driving by the community center and seen boxes of food; how he had decided to take some, grabbing tomatoes and onions that looked fresher than anything they’d had in weeks; how a woman had touched his shoulder and offered to help, leaving him with brochures and a business card.
He pulled the card from his pocket and showed it to Celeste. She leaned in to read the small print. “SNAP Outreach,” it read.
“I think we qualify,” Lonnie said.
There was a pause.
“Might be a good idea,” Celeste said.
“It’s hard to accept,” he said.
Another pause.
“We have to take help when we need it,” she said.
Celeste looked down at her knitting, and Lonnie sat with her in the quiet shop and thought about what happened when he opened a barbershop a few years earlier, as another effort of last resort. His dad, an Italian immigrant, had been a barber in New Jersey, and Lonnie decided to try it for himself after a dozen manufacturing job applications went unanswered in 2010. He enrolled in a local beauty school, graduated with a few dozen teenaged girls, took over the lease for a shop in Port St. Lucie and named it Man Cave. He had gone to work with his scissors and his clippers every day, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Saturdays and Sundays, standing on the curb and waving a handmade sign to advertise haircuts for $5. He had done a total of 11 cuts in three months. But what tore him up inside had nothing to do with the lonely echo of his feet on the linoleum floor or the empty cash register or the weeks that went by without a single customer. No, what convinced him to close the shop — the memory that stuck with him even now — were the weeks when old friends had come in to get their hair cut twice. He couldn’t stand the idea of being pitied. He hated that his problems had become a burden to anyone else.
He wondered: Sixty years old now, and who was he? A maker? A taker?
“I’m not ready to sign up for this yet,” he said.
“Soon we might have to,” she said.
He tucked Nerios’s business card into his back pocket.
“I know,” he said. “I’m keeping it.”
© The Washington Post Company
are paying people
to get MORE
people on
FOOD STAMPS
the more on the DOLE
the MORE
DUMz win
ELECTIONS
ITS THE PLAN
In Florida, a food-stamp recruiter deals with wrenching choices
By Eli Saslow, Published: April 23
FORT PIERCE, Fla. — A good recruiter needs to be liked, so Dillie Nerios filled gift bags with dog toys for the dog people and cat food for the cat people. She packed crates of cookies, croissants, vegetables and fresh fruit. She curled her hair and painted her nails fluorescent pink. “A happy, it’s-all-good look,” she said, checking her reflection in the rearview mirror. Then she drove along the Florida coast to sign people up for food stamps.
Her destination on a recent morning was a 55-and-over community in central Florida, where single-wide trailers surround a parched golf course. On the drive, Nerios, 56, reviewed techniques she had learned for connecting with some of Florida’s most desperate senior citizens during two years on the job. Touch a shoulder. Hold eye contact. Listen for as long as it takes. “Some seniors haven’t had anyone to talk to in some time,” one of the state-issued training manuals reads. “Make each person feel like the only one who matters.”
In fact, it is Nerios’s job to enroll at least 150 seniors for food stamps each month, a quota she usually exceeds. Alleviate hunger, lessen poverty: These are the primary goals of her work. But the job also has a second and more controversial purpose for cash-strapped Florida, where increasing food-stamp enrollment has become a means of economic growth, bringing almost $6 billion each year into the state. The money helps to sustain communities, grocery stores and food producers. It also adds to rising federal entitlement spending and the U.S. debt.
Nerios prefers to think of her job in more simple terms: “Help is available,” she tells hundreds of seniors each week. “You deserve it. So, yes or no?”
In Florida and everywhere else, the answer in 2013 is almost always yes. A record 47 million Americans now rely on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), also known as food stamps, available for people with annual incomes below about $15,000. The program grew during the economic collapse because 10 million more Americans dropped into poverty. It has continued to expand four years into the recovery because state governments and their partner organizations have become active promoters, creating official “SNAP outreach plans” and hiring hundreds of recruiters like Nerios.
A decade ago, only about half of eligible Americans chose to sign up for food stamps. Now that number is 75 percent.
Rhode Island hosts SNAP-themed bingo games for the elderly. Alabama hands out fliers that read: “Be a patriot. Bring your food stamp money home.” Three states in the Midwest throw food-stamp parties where new recipients sign up en masse.
On the Treasure Coast of Florida, the official outreach plan is mostly just Nerios, who works for a local food bank that is funded in part by the state. She roams four counties of sandbars and barrier islands in her Ford Escape, with an audio Bible in the CD player and a windshield sticker that reads “Faith, Hope and Love.” She distributes hundreds of fliers each week, giving out her personal cellphone number and helping seniors submit SNAP applications on her laptop.
On this particular morning, Nerios pulled into the Spanish Lakes retirement community near Port St. Lucie, Fla., and set up a display table in front of the senior center. She advertised her visit weeks in advance, but she can never predict how many people will come. Some events draw hundreds; others only a dozen. Her hope was to attract a crowd with giveaways of pet toys and hundreds of pounds of food, which she stacked high on the table. “What person in need doesn’t want food that’s immediate and free?” she said.
She watched as a few golf carts and motorized scooters drove toward her on a road lined with palm trees, passing Spanish Lakes signs that read “We Love Living Here!” and “Great Lifestyle!” The first seniors grabbed giveaway boxes and went home to tell their friends, who told more friends, until a line of 40 people had formed at Nerios’s table.
A husband and wife, just done with nine holes of golf, clubs still on their cart.
An 84-year-old woman on her bicycle, teetering away with one hand on the handlebars and a case of applesauce under her other arm.
A Korean War veteran on oxygen who mostly wanted to talk, so Nerios listened: 32 years in the military, a sergeant major, Germany, Iron Curtain, medals and awards. “A hell of a life,” the veteran said. “So if I signed up, what would I tell my wife?”
“Tell her you’re an American and this is your benefit,” Nerios said, pulling him away from the crowd, so he could write the 26th name of the day on her SNAP sign-up sheet.
She distributed food and SNAP brochures for three hours. “Take what you need,” she said, again and again, until the fruit started to sweat and the vegetables wilted in the late-morning heat. Just as she prepared to leave, a car pulled into the senior center and a man with a gray mustache and a tattered T-shirt opened the driver-side door. He had seen the giveaway boxes earlier in the morning but waited to return until the crowd thinned. He had just moved to Spanish Lakes. He had never taken giveaways. He looked at the boxes but stayed near his car.
“Sir, can I help?” Nerios asked. She brought over some food. She gave him her business card and a few brochures about SNAP.
“I don’t want to be another person depending on the government,” he said.
“How about being another person getting the help you deserve?” she said.
***
Did he deserve it, though? Lonnie Briglia, 60, drove back to his Spanish Lakes mobile home with the recruiter’s pamphlets and thought about that. He wasn’t so sure.
Wasn’t it his fault that he had flushed 40 years of savings into a bad investment, buying a fleet of delivery trucks just as the economy crashed? Wasn’t it his fault that he and his wife, Celeste, had missed mortgage payments on the house where they raised five kids, forcing the bank to foreclose in 2012? Wasn’t it his fault the only place they could afford was an abandoned mobile home in Spanish Lakes, bought for the entirety of their savings, $750 in cash?
“We made horrible mistakes,” he said. “We dug the hole. We should dig ourselves out.”
Now he walked into their mobile home and set the SNAP brochures on the kitchen table. They had moved in three months before, and it had taken all of that time for them to make the place livable. They patched holes in the ceiling. They fixed the plumbing and rewired the electricity. They gave away most of their belongings to the kids — “like we died and executed the will,” he said. They decorated the walls of the mobile home with memories of a different life: photos of Lonnie in his old New Jersey police officer uniform, or in Germany for a manufacturing job that paid $25 an hour, or on vacation in their old pop-up camper.
A few weeks after they moved in, some of their 11 grandchildren had come over to visit. One of them, a 9-year-old girl, had looked around the mobile home and then turned to her grandparents on the verge of tears: “Grampy, this place is junky,” she had said. He had smiled and told her that it was okay, because Spanish Lakes had a community pool, and now he could go swimming whenever he liked.
Only later, alone with Celeste, had he said what he really thought: “A damn sky dive. That’s our life. How does anyone fall this far, this fast?”
And now SNAP brochures were next to him on the table — one more step down, he thought, reading over the bold type on the brochure. “Applying is easy.” “Eat right!” “Every $5 in SNAP generates $9.20 for the local economy.”
He sat in a sweltering home with no air conditioning and a refrigerator bought on layaway, which was mostly empty except for the “experienced” vegetables they sometimes bought at a discount grocery store to cook down and freeze for later. He had known a handful of people who depended on the government: former co-workers who exaggerated injuries to get temporary disability; homeless people in the Fort Pierce park where he had taken the kids each week when they were young to hand out homemade peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches, even though he suspected some of those homeless were drug addicts who spent their Social Security payments on crack.
“Makers and takers,” Lonnie had told the kids then, explaining that the world divided into two categories. The Briglias were makers.
Now three of those kids worked in law enforcement and two were in management. One of them, the oldest, was on his way to visit Spanish Lakes, driving down at this very moment from Valdosta, Ga., with his wife and two kids. Lonnie placed the SNAP brochures in a drawer and turned on a fan to cool the mobile home.
His son arrived, and they went out to dinner. Lonnie tried to pay with a credit card, but his son wouldn’t let him. Then, before leaving for Valdosta, the son gave his parents an air conditioner, bought for $400. Lonnie started to protest.
“Please,” his son said. “You need it. It’s okay to take a little help.”
***
The offer of more help came early the next morning. Nerios reached Lonnie on his cellphone to check on his interest in SNAP.
“Can I help sign you up?” she asked.
“I’m still not sure,” he said. “We have a lot of frozen vegetables in the freezer.”
“Don’t wait until you’re out,” she said.
She was on her way to another outreach event, but she told Lonnie she had plenty of time to talk. She had always preferred working with what her colleagues called the Silent Generation, even though seniors were historically the least likely to enroll in SNAP. Only about 38 percent of eligible seniors choose to participate in the program, half the rate of the general population. In Florida, that means about 300,000 people over 60 are not getting their benefits, and at least $381 million in available federal money isn’t coming into the state. To help enroll more seniors, the government has published an outreach guide that blends compassion with sales techniques, generating some protests in Congress. The guide teaches recruiters how to “overcome the word ‘no,’ ” suggesting answers for likely hesitations.
Welfare stigma: “You worked hard and the taxes you paid helped create SNAP.”
Embarrassment: “Everyone needs help now and then.”
Sense of failure: “Lots of people, young and old, are having financial difficulties.”
Nerios prefers a subtler touch. “It’s about patience, empathy,” she said. While she makes a middle-class salary and had never been on food stamps herself, she knows the emotional exhaustion that comes at the end of each month, after a few hundred conversations about money that didn’t exist. Nowhere had the SNAP program grown as it has in Florida, where enrollment had risen from 1.45 million people in 2008 to 3.35 million last year. And no place in Florida had been reshaped by the recession quite like the Treasure Coast, where middle-class retirees lost their savings in the housing collapse, forcing them to live on less than they expected for longer than they expected. Sometimes, Nerios believes it is more important to protect a client’s sense of self-worth than to meet her quota.
“I’m not going to push you,” she told Lonnie now. “This is your decision.”
“I have high blood pressure, so it’s true that diet is important to us,” he said, which sounded to her like a man arguing with himself.
“I can meet with you today, or tomorrow, or anytime you’d like,” she said.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I’m really sorry.”
“You don’t have to be,” she said. “Please, just think about it.”
***
She hung up the phone and began setting up her giveaway table at another event.
He hung up the phone and drove a few miles down the highway to his wife’s small knitting store. They had stayed married 41 years because they made decisions together. She was an optimist and he was a realist; they leveled each other out. During the failures of the past three years, they had developed a code language that allowed them to acknowledge their misery without really talking about it.
“How you doing?” he asked.
“Just peachy,” she said, which meant to him that in fact she was exhausted, depressed, barely hanging on.
She opened the knitting store three years earlier, but it turned out her only customers were retirees on fixed incomes, seniors with little money to spend who just wanted an air-conditioned place to spend the day. So Celeste started giving them secondhand yarn and inviting customers to knit with her for charity in the shop. Together they had made 176 hats and scarves for poor families in the last year. The store, meanwhile, had barely made its overhead. Lonnie wanted her to close it, but it was the last place where she could pretend her life had turned out as she’d hoped, knitting to classical music at a wooden table in the center of the store.
Now Lonnie joined her at that table and started to tell her about his week: how he had been driving by the community center and seen boxes of food; how he had decided to take some, grabbing tomatoes and onions that looked fresher than anything they’d had in weeks; how a woman had touched his shoulder and offered to help, leaving him with brochures and a business card.
He pulled the card from his pocket and showed it to Celeste. She leaned in to read the small print. “SNAP Outreach,” it read.
“I think we qualify,” Lonnie said.
There was a pause.
“Might be a good idea,” Celeste said.
“It’s hard to accept,” he said.
Another pause.
“We have to take help when we need it,” she said.
Celeste looked down at her knitting, and Lonnie sat with her in the quiet shop and thought about what happened when he opened a barbershop a few years earlier, as another effort of last resort. His dad, an Italian immigrant, had been a barber in New Jersey, and Lonnie decided to try it for himself after a dozen manufacturing job applications went unanswered in 2010. He enrolled in a local beauty school, graduated with a few dozen teenaged girls, took over the lease for a shop in Port St. Lucie and named it Man Cave. He had gone to work with his scissors and his clippers every day, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Saturdays and Sundays, standing on the curb and waving a handmade sign to advertise haircuts for $5. He had done a total of 11 cuts in three months. But what tore him up inside had nothing to do with the lonely echo of his feet on the linoleum floor or the empty cash register or the weeks that went by without a single customer. No, what convinced him to close the shop — the memory that stuck with him even now — were the weeks when old friends had come in to get their hair cut twice. He couldn’t stand the idea of being pitied. He hated that his problems had become a burden to anyone else.
He wondered: Sixty years old now, and who was he? A maker? A taker?
“I’m not ready to sign up for this yet,” he said.
“Soon we might have to,” she said.
He tucked Nerios’s business card into his back pocket.
“I know,” he said. “I’m keeping it.”
© The Washington Post Company
Busybody
We are ALL BUSYBODY!
- Joined
- Jan 23, 2011
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Obamacare Gets a Makeover, and You’re Paying for It
By Reince Priebus
In the three years since President Obama signed Obamacare into law, Democrats have failed to convince the majority of Americans that the law was actually a good idea. As its full implementation date draws near, the Obama administration is desperate to change that. So they’ve awarded a $14 million contract to a major public-relations firm to run a massive ad campaign touting its purported benefits.
Who’s paying for this? Taxpayers, of course. It was bad enough that President Obama raised taxes to fund a new entitlement. Now the American people are footing the bill for our government to convince us that Obamacare — and its 20,000 pages of regulations — wasn’t a mistake.
It’s going to be a tough sell. Even some Democrats are realizing that navigating this bureaucratic monstrosity will be nearly impossible for patients and small businesses, with or without a PR blitz.
Senator Max Baucus, a Democrat from Montana who voted for Obamacare, told Health and Human Services secretary Kathleen Sebelius recently that the implementation of the law is a looming disaster. “I just see a huge train wreck coming down,” he told her.
The best of today’s mad men won’t be able to make this “train wreck” look pretty, though. Americans will witness firsthand the dangerous side effects of Obamacare: higher costs, limited care, smaller paychecks, and a weaker economy.
Democrats promised none of this would happen. But slowly, they’re admitting otherwise. Secretary Sebelius has conceded that health care will get more expensive. Under Obamacare, individuals buying insurance on their own will see costs go up, and younger customers especially “could see their rates increase,” she says.
Health economist Jon Gruber, who helped craft Obamacare, says “a slice of the younger population” will see the most substantial increase. He adds, “after the application of tax subsidies, 59 percent of the individual market will experience an average premium increase of 31 percent.”
The nonpartisan Society of Actuaries also recently ran the numbers on Obamacare. They found that medical claims costs will jump 32 percent in the individual insurance market in the first few years the law is in place.
In short, the “Affordable Care Act” isn’t so affordable after all.
All this is on top of the increased costs families have already endured under President Obama’s first four years in office: The average cost of family health-care premiums rose by over $3,000 to $15,645 since 2009.
The pain of high healthcare costs isn’t going away with Obamacare. In fact, it will only get worse. Yet instead of trying to fix the problem, Democrats want Americans to forget about the problem altogether. That’s why they’re spending millions to give the law a glitzy makeover.
Three years ago, Nancy Pelosi famously declared, “We have to pass [Obamacare] so that you can find out what is in it.” And that’s why Democrats face an uphill PR battle: Americans found out what’s in it.
— Reince Priebus is chairman of the Republican National Committee.
By Reince Priebus
In the three years since President Obama signed Obamacare into law, Democrats have failed to convince the majority of Americans that the law was actually a good idea. As its full implementation date draws near, the Obama administration is desperate to change that. So they’ve awarded a $14 million contract to a major public-relations firm to run a massive ad campaign touting its purported benefits.
Who’s paying for this? Taxpayers, of course. It was bad enough that President Obama raised taxes to fund a new entitlement. Now the American people are footing the bill for our government to convince us that Obamacare — and its 20,000 pages of regulations — wasn’t a mistake.
It’s going to be a tough sell. Even some Democrats are realizing that navigating this bureaucratic monstrosity will be nearly impossible for patients and small businesses, with or without a PR blitz.
Senator Max Baucus, a Democrat from Montana who voted for Obamacare, told Health and Human Services secretary Kathleen Sebelius recently that the implementation of the law is a looming disaster. “I just see a huge train wreck coming down,” he told her.
The best of today’s mad men won’t be able to make this “train wreck” look pretty, though. Americans will witness firsthand the dangerous side effects of Obamacare: higher costs, limited care, smaller paychecks, and a weaker economy.
Democrats promised none of this would happen. But slowly, they’re admitting otherwise. Secretary Sebelius has conceded that health care will get more expensive. Under Obamacare, individuals buying insurance on their own will see costs go up, and younger customers especially “could see their rates increase,” she says.
Health economist Jon Gruber, who helped craft Obamacare, says “a slice of the younger population” will see the most substantial increase. He adds, “after the application of tax subsidies, 59 percent of the individual market will experience an average premium increase of 31 percent.”
The nonpartisan Society of Actuaries also recently ran the numbers on Obamacare. They found that medical claims costs will jump 32 percent in the individual insurance market in the first few years the law is in place.
In short, the “Affordable Care Act” isn’t so affordable after all.
All this is on top of the increased costs families have already endured under President Obama’s first four years in office: The average cost of family health-care premiums rose by over $3,000 to $15,645 since 2009.
The pain of high healthcare costs isn’t going away with Obamacare. In fact, it will only get worse. Yet instead of trying to fix the problem, Democrats want Americans to forget about the problem altogether. That’s why they’re spending millions to give the law a glitzy makeover.
Three years ago, Nancy Pelosi famously declared, “We have to pass [Obamacare] so that you can find out what is in it.” And that’s why Democrats face an uphill PR battle: Americans found out what’s in it.
— Reince Priebus is chairman of the Republican National Committee.
koalabear
~Armed and Fuzzy~
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Welcome to the new recession
Despite the stock market's steadfast resistance to drop, and the Federal Reserve's cheap money, the real economy is succumbing to a new downturn.
http://money.msn.com/top-stocks/post.aspx?post=8bcf57e9-42d6-4ff3-818d-f52d257cd3c4
Despite the stock market's steadfast resistance to drop, and the Federal Reserve's cheap money, the real economy is succumbing to a new downturn.
http://money.msn.com/top-stocks/post.aspx?post=8bcf57e9-42d6-4ff3-818d-f52d257cd3c4
koalabear
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Busybody
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Lawmakers, aides may get Obamacare exemption
Representatives from John Boehner's and Harry Reid's office are involved in negotiations. | AP Photo
Close
By JOHN BRESNAHAN and JAKE SHERMAN | 4/24/13 9:49 PM EDT
Congressional leaders in both parties are engaged in high-level, confidential talks about exempting lawmakers and Capitol Hill aides from the insurance exchanges they are mandated to join as part of President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul, sources in both parties said.
The talks — which involve Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), the Obama administration and other top lawmakers — are extraordinarily sensitive, with both sides acutely aware of the potential for political fallout from giving carve-outs from the hugely controversial law to 535 lawmakers and thousands of their aides. Discussions have stretched out for months, sources said.
A source close to the talks says: “Everyone has to hold hands on this and jump, or nothing is going to get done.”
Yet if Capitol Hill leaders move forward with the plan, they risk being dubbed hypocrites by their political rivals and the American public. By removing themselves from a key Obamacare component, lawmakers and aides would be held to a different standard than the people who put them in office.
Democrats, in particular, would take a public hammering as the traditional boosters of Obamacare. Republicans would undoubtedly attempt to shred them over any attempt to escape coverage by it, unless Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) give Democrats cover by backing it.
There is concern in some quarters that the provision requiring lawmakers and staffers to join the exchanges, if it isn’t revised, could lead to a “brain drain” on Capitol Hill, as several sources close to the talks put it.
The problem stems from whether members and aides set to enter the exchanges would have their health insurance premiums subsidized by their employer — in this case, the federal government. If not, aides and lawmakers in both parties fear that staffers — especially low-paid junior aides — could be hit with thousands of dollars in new health care costs, prompting them to seek jobs elsewhere. Older, more senior staffers could also retire or jump to the private sector rather than face a big financial penalty.
Plus, lawmakers — especially those with long careers in public service and smaller bank accounts — are also concerned about the hit to their own wallets.
House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) is worried about the provision. The No. 2 House Democrat has personally raised the issue with Boehner and other party leaders, sources said.
“Mr. Hoyer is looking at this policy, like all other policies in the Affordable Care Act, to ensure they’re being implemented in a way that’s workable for everyone, including members and staff,” said Katie Grant, Hoyer’s communications director.
Several proposals have been submitted to the Office of Personnel Management, which will administer the benefits. One proposal exempts lawmakers and aides; the other exempts aides alone.
When asked about the high-level bipartisan talks, Michael Steel, a Boehner spokesman, said: “The speaker’s objective is to spare the entire country from the ravages of the president’s health care law. He is approached daily by American citizens, including members of Congress and staff, who want to be freed from its mandates. If the speaker has the opportunity to save anyone from Obamacare, he will.”
Reid’s office declined to comment about the bipartisan talks.
However, the idea of exempting lawmakers and aides from the exchanges has its detractors, including Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), a key Obamacare architect. Waxman thinks there is confusion about the content of the law. The Affordable Care Act, he said, mandates that the federal government will still subsidize and provide health plans obtained in the exchange. There will be no additional cost to lawmakers and Hill aides, he contends.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2013/04/obamacare-exemption-lawmakers-aides-90610.html#ixzz2RSjiNqiv
Representatives from John Boehner's and Harry Reid's office are involved in negotiations. | AP Photo
Close
By JOHN BRESNAHAN and JAKE SHERMAN | 4/24/13 9:49 PM EDT
Congressional leaders in both parties are engaged in high-level, confidential talks about exempting lawmakers and Capitol Hill aides from the insurance exchanges they are mandated to join as part of President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul, sources in both parties said.
The talks — which involve Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), the Obama administration and other top lawmakers — are extraordinarily sensitive, with both sides acutely aware of the potential for political fallout from giving carve-outs from the hugely controversial law to 535 lawmakers and thousands of their aides. Discussions have stretched out for months, sources said.
A source close to the talks says: “Everyone has to hold hands on this and jump, or nothing is going to get done.”
Yet if Capitol Hill leaders move forward with the plan, they risk being dubbed hypocrites by their political rivals and the American public. By removing themselves from a key Obamacare component, lawmakers and aides would be held to a different standard than the people who put them in office.
Democrats, in particular, would take a public hammering as the traditional boosters of Obamacare. Republicans would undoubtedly attempt to shred them over any attempt to escape coverage by it, unless Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) give Democrats cover by backing it.
There is concern in some quarters that the provision requiring lawmakers and staffers to join the exchanges, if it isn’t revised, could lead to a “brain drain” on Capitol Hill, as several sources close to the talks put it.
The problem stems from whether members and aides set to enter the exchanges would have their health insurance premiums subsidized by their employer — in this case, the federal government. If not, aides and lawmakers in both parties fear that staffers — especially low-paid junior aides — could be hit with thousands of dollars in new health care costs, prompting them to seek jobs elsewhere. Older, more senior staffers could also retire or jump to the private sector rather than face a big financial penalty.
Plus, lawmakers — especially those with long careers in public service and smaller bank accounts — are also concerned about the hit to their own wallets.
House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) is worried about the provision. The No. 2 House Democrat has personally raised the issue with Boehner and other party leaders, sources said.
“Mr. Hoyer is looking at this policy, like all other policies in the Affordable Care Act, to ensure they’re being implemented in a way that’s workable for everyone, including members and staff,” said Katie Grant, Hoyer’s communications director.
Several proposals have been submitted to the Office of Personnel Management, which will administer the benefits. One proposal exempts lawmakers and aides; the other exempts aides alone.
When asked about the high-level bipartisan talks, Michael Steel, a Boehner spokesman, said: “The speaker’s objective is to spare the entire country from the ravages of the president’s health care law. He is approached daily by American citizens, including members of Congress and staff, who want to be freed from its mandates. If the speaker has the opportunity to save anyone from Obamacare, he will.”
Reid’s office declined to comment about the bipartisan talks.
However, the idea of exempting lawmakers and aides from the exchanges has its detractors, including Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), a key Obamacare architect. Waxman thinks there is confusion about the content of the law. The Affordable Care Act, he said, mandates that the federal government will still subsidize and provide health plans obtained in the exchange. There will be no additional cost to lawmakers and Hill aides, he contends.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2013/04/obamacare-exemption-lawmakers-aides-90610.html#ixzz2RSjiNqiv
RobDownSouth
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A week later and repercussions are still being felt!
Colbert Report has fun with "spreadsheet error"
Busybody
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Fisker Exec Admits 0 Cars Made In U.S. Despite Nearly $200 Million in Taxpayer Loans
Bernhard Koehler, COO and co-founder of Fisker Automotive, admitted Wednesday zero cars have been made by the embattled company despite receiving nearly $200 million from the Department of Energy.
Direct questioning by Rep. Mark Meadows (R., N.C.) on the failure to make cars domestically, including the “Karma” which costs more than $100,000 to buy, came in the wake of reports that the Energy Department was warned as early as June of 2010 Fisker was failing to meet its goals but did not suspend the loan for another year.
White House spokesman Jay Carney was asked Wednesday about the electric car manufacturer’s failure and possible ramifications for future green energy projects by the Obama administration. Carney nevertheless maintained the government’s investments in alternative energy were “positive and necessary.”
Read more at http://iowntheworld.com/blog/#kHF8Wmv6sSlShbi7.99
Bernhard Koehler, COO and co-founder of Fisker Automotive, admitted Wednesday zero cars have been made by the embattled company despite receiving nearly $200 million from the Department of Energy.
Direct questioning by Rep. Mark Meadows (R., N.C.) on the failure to make cars domestically, including the “Karma” which costs more than $100,000 to buy, came in the wake of reports that the Energy Department was warned as early as June of 2010 Fisker was failing to meet its goals but did not suspend the loan for another year.
White House spokesman Jay Carney was asked Wednesday about the electric car manufacturer’s failure and possible ramifications for future green energy projects by the Obama administration. Carney nevertheless maintained the government’s investments in alternative energy were “positive and necessary.”
Read more at http://iowntheworld.com/blog/#kHF8Wmv6sSlShbi7.99
koalabear
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phrodeau
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phrodeau
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Oh, so all those speeches Obama made about wanting to compromise in order to avoid the sequester actually meant that he wanted to force the sequester to happen. Very logical.I see the Democrat Senate has decided it's interests are no longer the sane as Obama's. They have come up with a bill to allow the movement of funds to the FAA in order to put a stop to Obama's phony war on society.
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It’s Your ObamaCareFail of the Day
Rates in Maryland set to soar 150% next year as ObamaCare’s Happy Fun Provisions go into full effect:
Taking those factors into account, CareFirst premiums for individual plans could rise as high as 150 percent next year for healthy young men and decrease slightly for someone older and sicker, Burrell said.
One current popular CareFirst plan with a $2,700 deductible costs “less than $115 per month” for men under 30, said Mark Hammett, a broker at Kelly & Associates Insurance Group in Hunt Valley, Md. [Emphasis added]
That’s via Nick Gillespie who says the news comes from
health-care giant Kaiser of Obamacare’s likely impact on insurance costs in Maryland, “an important state to watch because it has embraced Obamacare’s insurance reforms, setting up its own marketplace.”
Blue means bluer than blue can be.
Rates in Maryland set to soar 150% next year as ObamaCare’s Happy Fun Provisions go into full effect:
Taking those factors into account, CareFirst premiums for individual plans could rise as high as 150 percent next year for healthy young men and decrease slightly for someone older and sicker, Burrell said.
One current popular CareFirst plan with a $2,700 deductible costs “less than $115 per month” for men under 30, said Mark Hammett, a broker at Kelly & Associates Insurance Group in Hunt Valley, Md. [Emphasis added]
That’s via Nick Gillespie who says the news comes from
health-care giant Kaiser of Obamacare’s likely impact on insurance costs in Maryland, “an important state to watch because it has embraced Obamacare’s insurance reforms, setting up its own marketplace.”
Blue means bluer than blue can be.
Busybody
We are ALL BUSYBODY!
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Nothing THEY said has been proved right
Everything WE said has been proved right
The worst
Is yet to come
Democrats’ Worst Fear For 2014: ObamaCare?
Posted April 26, 2013
DEMOCRATS ARE BEGINNING TO AGREE WITH THE PUNDITS THAT OBAMACARE IS SHAPING UP TO BE A “MAJOR PROBLEM” FOR THEM IN 2014
National Journal’s Josh Kraushaar: “@joekleinTIME Writes An Obituary Of Sorts On ObamaCare. This Shaping Up As Major Problem For Dems In 2014.” (Josh Kraushaar, Twitter Feed, 4/3/13)
Democrat Pollsters Are Voicing Their Concern That ObamaCare May “Hurt Democrats In 2014.” “In an informal poll of Democratic insiders, many of whom shepherded Democrats thorough the dismal 2010 elections, almost all voiced concern about the potential for the issue to hurt Democrats in 2014.” (Amy Walter, “Will Health Care Be Sleeper Issue Of 2014?” The Cook Political Report, 4/3/13)
Democrat Pollster: “It’s A Concern That Many Of Us Have Voiced.” “‘It is a concern that many of us have voiced,’ said a prominent Democratic pollster.” (Amy Walter, “Will Health Care Be Sleeper Issue Of 2014?” The Cook Political Report, 4/3/13)
Democrats Are Taking Their ObamaCare Concerns Straight To The White House
Democrats Expressed Their Displeasure Of How Obama “Was Carrying Out The Health Care Law” And That They May “Pay A Political Price” For ObamaCare. “Democratic senators, at a caucus meeting with White House officials, expressed concerns on Thursday about how the Obama administration was carrying out the health care law they adopted three years ago. Democrats in both houses of Congress said some members of their party were getting nervous that they could pay a political price if the rollout of the law was messy or if premiums went up significantly.” (Robert Pear, “Democratic Senators Tell White House Of Concerns About Health Care Law Rollout,” The New York Times, 4/26/13)
Democrats Are Now Being More Vocal In Their Criticism Of ObamaCare. “But they’re more willing to support certain changes to the law, such as repealing its medical device tax. And they’re more open to criticizing the implementation — particularly on an issue like choices for small businesses, which was a key part of the rhetorical push to pass healthcare reform in 2010.” (Sam Baker, “ObamaCare Takes Friendly Fire,” The Hill’s Health Watch, 4/12/13)
Facing Reelection In 2014, Senator Jeanne Sheehan (D-NH) Told The White House That Small Businesses In Her State Are Clueless In Complying With ObamaCare. “Senator Jeanne Shaheen, Democrat of New Hampshire, who is up for re-election next year, said, ‘We are hearing from a lot of small businesses in New Hampshire that do not know how to comply with the law.’” (Robert Pear, “Democratic Senators Tell White House Of Concerns About Health Care Law Rollout,” The New York Times, 4/26/13)
Senator Jeanne Sheehan (D-NH) Said That Restaurants In Her State Could Be Planning To Reduce Workers’ Hours In Order To Avoid ObamaCare’s Mandates. “In addition, Mrs. Shaheen said, ‘restaurants that employ people for about 30 hours a week are trying to figure out whether it would be in their interest to reduce the hours’ of those workers, so the restaurants could avoid the law’s requirement to offer health coverage to full-time employees.” (Robert Pear, “Democratic Senators Tell White House Of Concerns About Health Care Law Rollout,” The New York Times, 4/26/13)
Senator Ben Cardin (D-MD) Is Concerned About ObamaCare’s Impact On Health Care Premiums, As Health Insurers In Maryland Have Filed Rate Increases Averaging 25 Percent. “Senator Benjamin L. Cardin, Democrat of Maryland, said he told White House officials on Thursday that he was concerned about big rate increases being sought by the largest health insurer in his state. The company, CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield, has sought increases averaging 25 percent for individual insurance policies that will be sold in the state insurance exchange, and it is seeking increases of about 15 percent for small businesses. The company said the higher premiums reflected costs of complying with the new law.” (Robert Pear, “Democratic Senators Tell White House Of Concerns About Health Care Law Rollout,” The New York Times, 4/26/13)
Senate Health, Education, Labor, And Pensions Chairman Tom Harkin (D-IA) Is Upset With Obama For Taking Funds From ObamaCare’s Prevention Fund To Publicize The Law. “Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa and chairman of the appropriations subcommittee on health care, said he was extremely upset with Mr. Obama’s decision to take money from public health prevention programs and use it to publicize the new law, which creates insurance marketplaces in every state.” (Robert Pear, “Democratic Senators Tell White House Of Concerns About Health Care Law Rollout,” The New York Times, 4/26/13)
In An Act Of Defiance Over Obama Raiding ObamaCare’s Prevention Fund, Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) Is Blocking Confirmation Of Obama’s Nominee To Head The Centers For Medicare And Medicaid Services. “To express his displeasure, Mr. Harkin has blocked Senate action on Mr. Obama’s nominee to be administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Marilyn B. Tavenner. By putting a ‘hold’ on the nomination, aides said, Mr. Harkin hopes to draw the White House into negotiations on the future of the prevention fund, which he has championed.” (Robert Pear, “Democratic Senators Tell White House Of Concerns About Health Care Law Rollout,” The New York Times, 4/26/13)
Senator Mary Landrieu Has Voiced Her Concerns About The Delay Of The SHOP Exchange. “Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) told The New York Times the delay will ‘prolong and exacerbate health care costs that are crippling 29 million small businesses.’” (Sam Baker, “ObamaCare Takes Friendly Fire,” The Hill’s Health Watch, 4/12/13)
Democrat Senator Max Baucus (D-MT): “I Just See A Huge Train Wreck Coming Down.” MAX BAUCUS: “‘I just see a huge train wreck coming down, you and I have discussed this many times, and I don’t see any results yet.’” (Committee On Finance, U.S. Senate, Hearing, 4/17/13)
Democrat Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) Said ObamaCare Was “Probably The Most Complex Piece Of Legislation Ever Passed” And That “Up To This Point It Is Just Beyond Comprehension.” JAY ROCKEFELLER: “I believe that the Affordable Care Act is probably the most complex piece of legislation ever passed by the United States Congress. Tax reform obviously has been huge too, but up to this point it is just beyond comprehension.” (Committee On Finance, U.S. Senate, Hearing, 4/9/13)
“33 Senate Democrats” Voted For A Non-Binding Measure That Would Repeal ObamaCare’s Medical Device Tax. “Democrats are also complaining more openly about other implementation delays. And the substance of the law itself isn’t immune from bipartisan criticism — 33 Senate Democrats cast a non-binding vote last month to repeal the law’s tax on medical devices, saying it’s a threat to innovation that could raise costs for consumers.” (Sam Baker, “ObamaCare Takes Friendly Fire,” The Hill’s Health Watch, 4/12/13)
Everything WE said has been proved right
The worst
Is yet to come
Democrats’ Worst Fear For 2014: ObamaCare?
Posted April 26, 2013
DEMOCRATS ARE BEGINNING TO AGREE WITH THE PUNDITS THAT OBAMACARE IS SHAPING UP TO BE A “MAJOR PROBLEM” FOR THEM IN 2014
National Journal’s Josh Kraushaar: “@joekleinTIME Writes An Obituary Of Sorts On ObamaCare. This Shaping Up As Major Problem For Dems In 2014.” (Josh Kraushaar, Twitter Feed, 4/3/13)
Democrat Pollsters Are Voicing Their Concern That ObamaCare May “Hurt Democrats In 2014.” “In an informal poll of Democratic insiders, many of whom shepherded Democrats thorough the dismal 2010 elections, almost all voiced concern about the potential for the issue to hurt Democrats in 2014.” (Amy Walter, “Will Health Care Be Sleeper Issue Of 2014?” The Cook Political Report, 4/3/13)
Democrat Pollster: “It’s A Concern That Many Of Us Have Voiced.” “‘It is a concern that many of us have voiced,’ said a prominent Democratic pollster.” (Amy Walter, “Will Health Care Be Sleeper Issue Of 2014?” The Cook Political Report, 4/3/13)Democrats Are Taking Their ObamaCare Concerns Straight To The White House
Democrats Expressed Their Displeasure Of How Obama “Was Carrying Out The Health Care Law” And That They May “Pay A Political Price” For ObamaCare. “Democratic senators, at a caucus meeting with White House officials, expressed concerns on Thursday about how the Obama administration was carrying out the health care law they adopted three years ago. Democrats in both houses of Congress said some members of their party were getting nervous that they could pay a political price if the rollout of the law was messy or if premiums went up significantly.” (Robert Pear, “Democratic Senators Tell White House Of Concerns About Health Care Law Rollout,” The New York Times, 4/26/13)
Democrats Are Now Being More Vocal In Their Criticism Of ObamaCare. “But they’re more willing to support certain changes to the law, such as repealing its medical device tax. And they’re more open to criticizing the implementation — particularly on an issue like choices for small businesses, which was a key part of the rhetorical push to pass healthcare reform in 2010.” (Sam Baker, “ObamaCare Takes Friendly Fire,” The Hill’s Health Watch, 4/12/13)Facing Reelection In 2014, Senator Jeanne Sheehan (D-NH) Told The White House That Small Businesses In Her State Are Clueless In Complying With ObamaCare. “Senator Jeanne Shaheen, Democrat of New Hampshire, who is up for re-election next year, said, ‘We are hearing from a lot of small businesses in New Hampshire that do not know how to comply with the law.’” (Robert Pear, “Democratic Senators Tell White House Of Concerns About Health Care Law Rollout,” The New York Times, 4/26/13)
Senator Jeanne Sheehan (D-NH) Said That Restaurants In Her State Could Be Planning To Reduce Workers’ Hours In Order To Avoid ObamaCare’s Mandates. “In addition, Mrs. Shaheen said, ‘restaurants that employ people for about 30 hours a week are trying to figure out whether it would be in their interest to reduce the hours’ of those workers, so the restaurants could avoid the law’s requirement to offer health coverage to full-time employees.” (Robert Pear, “Democratic Senators Tell White House Of Concerns About Health Care Law Rollout,” The New York Times, 4/26/13)Senator Ben Cardin (D-MD) Is Concerned About ObamaCare’s Impact On Health Care Premiums, As Health Insurers In Maryland Have Filed Rate Increases Averaging 25 Percent. “Senator Benjamin L. Cardin, Democrat of Maryland, said he told White House officials on Thursday that he was concerned about big rate increases being sought by the largest health insurer in his state. The company, CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield, has sought increases averaging 25 percent for individual insurance policies that will be sold in the state insurance exchange, and it is seeking increases of about 15 percent for small businesses. The company said the higher premiums reflected costs of complying with the new law.” (Robert Pear, “Democratic Senators Tell White House Of Concerns About Health Care Law Rollout,” The New York Times, 4/26/13)
Senate Health, Education, Labor, And Pensions Chairman Tom Harkin (D-IA) Is Upset With Obama For Taking Funds From ObamaCare’s Prevention Fund To Publicize The Law. “Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa and chairman of the appropriations subcommittee on health care, said he was extremely upset with Mr. Obama’s decision to take money from public health prevention programs and use it to publicize the new law, which creates insurance marketplaces in every state.” (Robert Pear, “Democratic Senators Tell White House Of Concerns About Health Care Law Rollout,” The New York Times, 4/26/13)
In An Act Of Defiance Over Obama Raiding ObamaCare’s Prevention Fund, Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) Is Blocking Confirmation Of Obama’s Nominee To Head The Centers For Medicare And Medicaid Services. “To express his displeasure, Mr. Harkin has blocked Senate action on Mr. Obama’s nominee to be administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Marilyn B. Tavenner. By putting a ‘hold’ on the nomination, aides said, Mr. Harkin hopes to draw the White House into negotiations on the future of the prevention fund, which he has championed.” (Robert Pear, “Democratic Senators Tell White House Of Concerns About Health Care Law Rollout,” The New York Times, 4/26/13)Senator Mary Landrieu Has Voiced Her Concerns About The Delay Of The SHOP Exchange. “Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) told The New York Times the delay will ‘prolong and exacerbate health care costs that are crippling 29 million small businesses.’” (Sam Baker, “ObamaCare Takes Friendly Fire,” The Hill’s Health Watch, 4/12/13)
Democrat Senator Max Baucus (D-MT): “I Just See A Huge Train Wreck Coming Down.” MAX BAUCUS: “‘I just see a huge train wreck coming down, you and I have discussed this many times, and I don’t see any results yet.’” (Committee On Finance, U.S. Senate, Hearing, 4/17/13)
Democrat Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) Said ObamaCare Was “Probably The Most Complex Piece Of Legislation Ever Passed” And That “Up To This Point It Is Just Beyond Comprehension.” JAY ROCKEFELLER: “I believe that the Affordable Care Act is probably the most complex piece of legislation ever passed by the United States Congress. Tax reform obviously has been huge too, but up to this point it is just beyond comprehension.” (Committee On Finance, U.S. Senate, Hearing, 4/9/13)
“33 Senate Democrats” Voted For A Non-Binding Measure That Would Repeal ObamaCare’s Medical Device Tax. “Democrats are also complaining more openly about other implementation delays. And the substance of the law itself isn’t immune from bipartisan criticism — 33 Senate Democrats cast a non-binding vote last month to repeal the law’s tax on medical devices, saying it’s a threat to innovation that could raise costs for consumers.” (Sam Baker, “ObamaCare Takes Friendly Fire,” The Hill’s Health Watch, 4/12/13)
Busybody
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HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Shocker: No One Wants to Buy Student Loan-backed Securities. “Worried by reports of rising defaults, investors turned up their noses at a new $225 million bond issue by Sallie Mae, the federal agency that packages individual student loans into large securities. The loan company canceled the offering after two weeks on the market. . . . Are student loans turning into junk bonds? With something like $1 trillion of student loan debt outstanding, investor skittishness is not good news.”
The ONLY Bonds they were able to sell
Were bonds backed by
CUNT STUDIES
Cause CUNT STUDY peeps are getting great jobs and will be able to pay it all back
The ONLY Bonds they were able to sell
Were bonds backed by
CUNT STUDIES
Cause CUNT STUDY peeps are getting great jobs and will be able to pay it all back
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Obama Spends Twice As Much Time On Vacation/Golf As He Does On Economy
He must be doing it for the children…
Via Breitbart:
According to a new report by the nonpartisan Government Accountability Institute (GAI), President Barack Obama has spent over twice as many hours on vacation and golf (976 hours) as he has in economic meetings of any kind (474.4 hours).
The report, “Presidential Calendar: A Time-Based Analysis,” used the official White House calendar,Politico’s comprehensive presidential calendar, and media reports through March 31, 2013 to calculate its results.
GAI’s findings may actually understate Obama’s recreational hours.
Last year, Obama told CBS News that playing golf is “the only time that for six hours, I’m outside.” But instead of six hours, GAI counted a round of golf as taking just four hours. Likewise, for presidential vacation hours, researchers attributed just six hours of any day of vacation to leisure activity.
He must be doing it for the children…
Via Breitbart:
According to a new report by the nonpartisan Government Accountability Institute (GAI), President Barack Obama has spent over twice as many hours on vacation and golf (976 hours) as he has in economic meetings of any kind (474.4 hours).
The report, “Presidential Calendar: A Time-Based Analysis,” used the official White House calendar,Politico’s comprehensive presidential calendar, and media reports through March 31, 2013 to calculate its results.
GAI’s findings may actually understate Obama’s recreational hours.
Last year, Obama told CBS News that playing golf is “the only time that for six hours, I’m outside.” But instead of six hours, GAI counted a round of golf as taking just four hours. Likewise, for presidential vacation hours, researchers attributed just six hours of any day of vacation to leisure activity.
mercury14
Pragmatic Metaphysician
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I saw that. Now all the conservatives who used the study to justify their economic policy are saying they actually didn't need to justify it in the first place.
mercury14
Pragmatic Metaphysician
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Instead of having conservative propagandists read your articles for you, why not just read the article? That way you end up with facts instead of the same spin you've been parroting since 2009.
http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org/Sto...ryland-aca-premiums-carefirst-blue-cross.aspx
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mercury14
Pragmatic Metaphysician
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- Jul 8, 2009
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Key points:
- Some people may pay more, some will pay less. In states like Maryland some people will be eligible for the Medicaid reform and pay $0.
- The primary reasons some people are paying more is because the insurer now has to cover sick people, a mandate that enjoys wide popularity among Americans. Even the GOP supports it, they just want to blame the outcome of their own policy on the Dems.
- People who pay more are getting better insurance and will be in a much better financial position when a family member is ill or injured.
- The vast majority of people paying more will be eligible for a tax subsidy which will not only offset the increase but depending on income could easily mean they're paying less out-of-pocket than they're paying now. A family whose premium goes up 25% and then receives a 50% tax subsidy on the whole thing is going to pay less while also getting better insurance at the same time.
- The people losing out are wealthier people who are already getting insurance through their employer. They'll see a premium increase which is just extra money paid to cover sick coworkers that would otherwise be denied coverage. But even they still have the benefit of not having to face being dropped when sick or having their coverage denied so they're getting a better product for their money.
- Some people may pay more, some will pay less. In states like Maryland some people will be eligible for the Medicaid reform and pay $0.
- The primary reasons some people are paying more is because the insurer now has to cover sick people, a mandate that enjoys wide popularity among Americans. Even the GOP supports it, they just want to blame the outcome of their own policy on the Dems.
- People who pay more are getting better insurance and will be in a much better financial position when a family member is ill or injured.
- The vast majority of people paying more will be eligible for a tax subsidy which will not only offset the increase but depending on income could easily mean they're paying less out-of-pocket than they're paying now. A family whose premium goes up 25% and then receives a 50% tax subsidy on the whole thing is going to pay less while also getting better insurance at the same time.
- The people losing out are wealthier people who are already getting insurance through their employer. They'll see a premium increase which is just extra money paid to cover sick coworkers that would otherwise be denied coverage. But even they still have the benefit of not having to face being dropped when sick or having their coverage denied so they're getting a better product for their money.
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