Thread: Obama outlines health care plan for all

seems to me that if they can be exempt then the rest of us should also be exempt. Why the special treatment only for a select few? Do they give large contributions? Do they have some power that we don't know about?
I agree Obamacare is undermining the stability of the entire USA.

Obamacare Suffers Massive Defeat in Federal Court


BREAKING: Obamacare suffered a massive defeat today in massive court, needing to rely on glasses in order to see what an in-door flame’s color was. This is still a developing story, so please check back often as we update continuously.

Earlier today, the DC circuit federal appeals court in DC made public their decision that essentially “deleted” the IRS for at least 5,000,000 people.

The ruling was simple: Obamacare is accidentally missing some essential language that made it legally binding in state where the state decided to not build its own exchange.

As the Washington Times reported, http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/...#ixzz38D2Q8ALl

“Americans are not entitled to Obamacare’s government subsidies if they live in a state that relied on the federal government to set up its insurance marketplace under the law, according to a federal appeals court ruling Tuesday.”

In other words, in states where the state didn’t build an exchange, and the Obamacare federal exchanges are needed, Obamacare was just ruled ineligible for federal subsidies… meaning Obamacare is unworkable.

In the simplest of terms, Obamacare’s subsidies weren’t really written for states that didn’t build their own exchange. I guess maybe they should have read it before they passed it.

You can read the ruling for yourself here. http://www.cadc.uscourts.gov/internet/opinions.nsf/10125254D91F8BAC85257D1D004E6176/$file/14-5018-1503850.pdf

This is the biggest victory against Obamacare since even the Hobby Lobby ruling, and we’re NOT yet done. It’s possible all of Hobby Lobby could be taken down in a later Supreme Court ruling this year.

http://conservativetribune.com/obamacare-loses-again/

Appeals courts differ on Obamacare; Supreme Court case likely
By Joe Johns, Bill Mears and Tom Cohen, CNN
updated 4:13 PM EDT, Tue July 22, 2014

http://<br /> <a href="http://www.c...ruling.cnn</a>

Washington (CNN) -- It was a tale of two rulings -- the best of times and the worst of times for Obamacare in the federal appeals courts.

First, a three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit court of appeals ruled Tuesday against a key component of the law -- the federal subsidies for millions of people who signed up for health coverage.

The 2-1 decision created a legal path for a possible Supreme Court case that could essentially gut the 2010 Affordable Care Act, which passed with zero GOP votes.

A few hours later, all three judges on a 4th Circuit panel in Virginia decided the opposite by declaring the subsidies legal and proper.

Opposing rulings

The opposing rulings increased the chances for the issue to reach the nation's highest court, and demonstrated the deep political divisions over the law despised by conservatives intent on undermining it.

Both judges in the majority of the 2-1 D.C. Circuit ruling were appointed by Republican presidents, while all three in the unanimous 4th Circuit panel were appointed by Democratic presidents.

Republicans immediately hailed the D.C. panel's ruling against the subsidies as evidence of what they called fatal flaws in the health care law.

"This is yet more evidence that Obamacare is not working -- and cannot work -- for the American people," said GOP Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, who faces a conservative primary challenger questioning his right-wing credentials.

At the White House, spokesman Josh Earnest expressed confidence in the administration's legal position, saying Congress clearly intended for all Americans to have access to tax credits if needed so they could afford health insurance.

The issue: subsidies

The legal argument involves a provision in the health care law that says people who obtained coverage through state-run exchanges can get federal subsidies such as tax credits. It doesn't specifically say that those signing up on the federal exchange also are eligible.

Opponents of the law contend that lack of specificity renders illegal the subsidies for anyone who enrolled through the federal exchange.

Only 14 states and the District of Columbia set up their own exchanges, meaning that the 4.7 million who signed up for subsidized health coverage through HealthCare.gov could be affected.

"It will kill Obamacare," Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah said of an eventual Supreme Court ruling against the subsidies. "It would make it very difficult for Obamacare to continue because the cost of health care is going to go sky high for those who are not in the state exchange."

For now, the law remains unchanged and the subsidized policies are unaffected until the legal case plays out, Earnest told reporters. The Justice Department said the government would appeal the D.C. panel's decision.

Partisan divide

The easiest fix -- changing the law to specify that it allows subsidies for coverage purchased through the federal government as well as state exchanges -- would mean reopening the debate in Congress.

Unlike last time, when Democrats held majorities in both the House and Senate, Republicans now control the House and are expected to make gains in the November election, perhaps taking over the Senate too.

That means Obama and Democrats have no chance of getting Congress to approve any remedial change in the law.

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, one of the leading crusaders against the health care act, argued Tuesday that the federal subsidies amounted to assuming funding powers the Constitution granted Congress.

Earnest, however, said Congress intended "to ensure that every eligible American who applied for tax credits to make their health insurance more affordable would have access to those tax credits, whether or not the marketplace was operated by federal officials or state officials."

Ambiguity

The opposing rulings Tuesday pivoted over the meaning of the word "ambiguous."

In Richmond, the 4th Circuit judges labeled the Affordable Care Act ambiguous on whether subsidies should be allowed for consumers getting insurance on federal exchanges.

When a law is ambiguous, courts give deference to a federal agency's interpretation of the law, which in this case is the Internal Revenue Service rule allowing the subsidies.

The D.C. Circuit decision concluded that Obamacare was unambiguous in restricting subsidies to insurance purchased on exchanges "established by the state," rather than the federal exchange.

In his dissent, though, appellate Judge Harry Edwards -- a Democratic appointee -- argued that labeling the phrase "established by the state" as unambiguous "strains fruitlessly to show plain meaning when there is none to be found."

http://www.cnn.com/2014/07/22/politi...ing/index.html

Obamacare Rationing Czar Ezekiel Emmanuel: We Should Die at 75
by Wesley J. Smith | Washington, DC 9/18/14 6:08 PM

Ezekiel Emmanuel is one of the nation’s premier Obamacarians. He has the president’s ear. He is for health care rationing. And now, he wants us to die at 75.

He doesn’t put it quite like that, writing in the first person. But make no mistake: That is his essential message. From, “Why I Hope to Die at 75,” in The Atlantic: http://www.theatlantic.com/features/...-at-75/379329/

Here is a simple truth that many of us seem to resist: living too long is also a loss. It renders many of us, if not disabled, then faltering and declining, a state that may not be worse than death but is nonetheless deprived.

It robs us of our creativity and ability to contribute to work, society, the world. It transforms how people experience us, relate to us, and, most important, remember us. We are no longer remembered as vibrant and engaged but as feeble, ineffectual, even pathetic.

By the time I reach 75, I will have lived a complete life. I will have loved and been loved. My children will be grown and in the midst of their own rich lives. I will have seen my grandchildren born and beginning their lives. I will have pursued my life’s projects and made whatever contributions, important or not, I am going to make. And hopefully, I will not have too many mental and physical limitations. Dying at 75 will not be a tragedy. Indeed, I plan to have my memorial service before I die. And I don’t want any crying or wailing, but a warm gathering filled with fun reminiscences, stories of my awkwardness, and celebrations of a good life.

This is the quality of life ethic in action. It is an expression of the increasing bigotry we are witnessing against the aged. It is egotistical in that the only thing that matters is what Emmanuel wants without regard to the impact it might have on others. It is fearful of difficulty. It denies the equal dignity and importance of elderly human life. It embraces the idea of elderly people as burdens and disdains the value others may derive when caring for their elderly loved ones. It more than implies that living with limitations isn’t worth living.

Emmanuel is free to think what he wants, of course. But the article is important because it expresses the value system upon which Obamacare and other healthcare public policies will be predicated if the Ezekiel Emmanuels get their way.

In other words, it won’t be so much about choosing not to receive expensive care after 75, but being unable to get it even if that is what you want.

http://www.lifenews.com/2014/09/18/o...uld-die-at-75/

Why I Hope to Die at 75 :
An argument that society and families—and you—will be better off if nature takes its course swiftly and promptly
By Ezekiel J. Emanuel September 17, 2014

Seventy-five.

That’s how long I want to live: 75 years.

This preference drives my daughters crazy. It drives my brothers crazy. My loving friends think I am crazy. They think that I can’t mean what I say; that I haven’t thought clearly about this, because there is so much in the world to see and do. To convince me of my errors, they enumerate the myriad people I know who are over 75 and doing quite well. They are certain that as I get closer to 75, I will push the desired age back to 80, then 85, maybe even 90.

I am sure of my position. Doubtless, death is a loss. It deprives us of experiences and milestones, of time spent with our spouse and children. In short, it deprives us of all the things we value.

But here is a simple truth that many of us seem to resist: living too long is also a loss. It renders many of us, if not disabled, then faltering and declining, a state that may not be worse than death but is nonetheless deprived. It robs us of our creativity and ability to contribute to work, society, the world. It transforms how people experience us, relate to us, and, most important, remember us. We are no longer remembered as vibrant and engaged but as feeble, ineffectual, even pathetic.

By the time I reach 75, I will have lived a complete life. I will have loved and been loved. My children will be grown and in the midst of their own rich lives. I will have seen my grandchildren born and beginning their lives. I will have pursued my life’s projects and made whatever contributions, important or not, I am going to make. And hopefully, I will not have too many mental and physical limitations. Dying at 75 will not be a tragedy. Indeed, I plan to have my memorial service before I die. And I don’t want any crying or wailing, but a warm gathering filled with fun reminiscences, stories of my awkwardness, and celebrations of a good life. After I die, my survivors can have their own memorial service if they want—that is not my business.

Let me be clear about my wish. I’m neither asking for more time than is likely nor foreshortening my life. Today I am, as far as my physician and I know, very healthy, with no chronic illness. I just climbed Kilimanjaro with two of my nephews. So I am not talking about bargaining with God to live to 75 because I have a terminal illness. Nor am I talking about waking up one morning 18 years from now and ending my life through euthanasia or suicide. Since the 1990s, I have actively opposed legalizing euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide. People who want to die in one of these ways tend to suffer not from unremitting pain but from depression, hopelessness, and fear of losing their dignity and control. The people they leave behind inevitably feel they have somehow failed. The answer to these symptoms is not ending a life but getting help. I have long argued that we should focus on giving all terminally ill people a good, compassionate death—not euthanasia or assisted suicide for a tiny minority.

I am talking about how long I want to live and the kind and amount of health care I will consent to after 75. Americans seem to be obsessed with exercising, doing mental puzzles, consuming various juice and protein concoctions, sticking to strict diets, and popping vitamins and supplements, all in a valiant effort to cheat death and prolong life as long as possible. This has become so pervasive that it now defines a cultural type: what I call the American immortal.

I reject this aspiration. I think this manic desperation to endlessly extend life is misguided and potentially destructive. For many reasons, 75 is a pretty good age to aim to stop.

What are those reasons? Let’s begin with demography. We are growing old, and our older years are not of high quality. Since the mid-19th century, Americans have been living longer. In 1900, the life expectancy of an average American at birth was approximately 47 years. By 1930, it was 59.7; by 1960, 69.7; by 1990, 75.4. Today, a newborn can expect to live about 79 years. (On average, women live longer than men. In the United States, the gap is about five years. According to the National Vital Statistics Report, life expectancy for American males born in 2011 is 76.3, and for females it is 81.1.)

In the early part of the 20th century, life expectancy increased as vaccines, antibiotics, and better medical care saved more children from premature death and effectively treated infections. Once cured, people who had been sick largely returned to their normal, healthy lives without residual disabilities. Since 1960, however, increases in longevity have been achieved mainly by extending the lives of people over 60. Rather than saving more young people, we are stretching out old age.

The American immortal desperately wants to believe in the “compression of morbidity.” Developed in 1980 by James F. Fries, now a professor emeritus of medicine at Stanford, this theory postulates that as we extend our life spans into the 80s and 90s, we will be living healthier lives—more time before we have disabilities, and fewer disabilities overall. The claim is that with longer life, an ever smaller proportion of our lives will be spent in a state of decline.

Compression of morbidity is a quintessentially American idea. It tells us exactly what we want to believe: that we will live longer lives and then abruptly die with hardly any aches, pains, or physical deterioration—the morbidity traditionally associated with growing old. It promises a kind of fountain of youth until the ever-receding time of death. It is this dream—or fantasy—that drives the American immortal and has fueled interest and investment in regenerative medicine and replacement organs.

But as life has gotten longer, has it gotten healthier? Is 70 the new 50?


(( There is more ... much more .... ))

the government has no logic, especially now with the wanna be elderly slayers in command. SS and medicare are not entitlements, I agree with you on that, we have paid for it all our lives so we are owed this. My husband just retired and with an IRA (not much in it) and a little money in the bank we can't even get food stamps to help us. We can't get help with his medicare. I have to take Obamacare and it is overpriced piece of crap, I have to pay to have a huge deductible. It is basically major medical since it covers actually nothing until I pay the deductible. What a mess. I hope I don't live to see it get worse.

Walmart announced that due to high costs associated with ObamaCare, it is unable to offer health insurance to more than 30,000 part-time employees. Obama's government takeover of health care is failing the American people!

Health-care cancellation avalanche hits Colo. Democrats weeks before election
By Valerie Richardson - The Washington Times - Friday, October 17, 2014

DENVER—The Colorado Division of Insurance announced Friday a surge in health-care policy cancellations in the wake of Obamacare, just what Democratic candidates in high-profile races didn’t need less than three weeks before Election Day.

In a letter to state Senate Republicans, Colorado insurance commissioner Marguerite Salazar said that more than 22,000 Coloradans received cancellation notices in the last month, and that 192,942 Coloradans will lose their policies at the end of 2015.


Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/...#ixzz3GbXzIYjf