THURSDAY, Feb. 3 (HealthDay News) — Under the new Affordable Care Act, the health reform package signed into law by President Barack Obama last March, millions of Americans whose income fluctuates during the year may lose health insurance for periods of time as their eligibility for different programs changes.

The authors of a new study appearing in the February issue of Health Affairs estimated that as many as 28 million U.S. adults might “churn” in and out of health insurance programs during the course of a year, sometimes losing coverage more than once.

“It’s a critical issue,” said Cathy Schoen, senior vice president of The Commonwealth Fund, who was not involved with the study. “You could get a raise or lose a week of work or gain a week, and move in and out of coverage.”

…

By taking a look at U.S. Census data from the last five years, Sommers and a colleague estimated that in the first six months, 35% of families with incomes below 200% of the poverty level will change eligibility while half (28 million) would have crossed the threshold at least once during the first year.

An estimated one-quarter of beneficiaries will likely have their coverage disrupted by crossing the income dividing line at least twice in one year, and 39% will over the span of two years, the authors added.

Within four years, up to 38% will have their coverage disrupted four times or more, they predicted.

…

“It would be easier to fine-tune if it was a continuous program,” Schoen said, and it would reduce costs.

Yes, Medicare for all really *would* be better, in that it would stand a snowball’s chance in hell of actually working.

But hey, good job, Balloon Juicers. Now not only have you helped turn us into an official corporatocracy, but millions of people will be constantly losing health coverage, which they probably won’t be able to afford to use anyway, every year.

It’s like the O-bots built a machine to kick people in the teeth, over and over again. Fantastic.

Five South Dakota lawmakers have introduced legislation that would require any adult 21 or older to buy a firearm “sufficient to provide for their ordinary self-defense.”

The bill, which would take effect Jan. 1, 2012, would give people six months to acquire a firearm after turning 21. The provision does not apply to people who are barred from owning a firearm.

Nor does the measure specify what type of firearm. Instead, residents would pick one “suitable to their temperament, physical capacity, and preference.”

The measure is known as an act “to provide for an individual mandate to adult citizens to provide for the self defense of themselves and others.”

That idiot John Cole thinks this is inherently ridiculous, but for all the wrong reasons; Atrios doesn’t think it makes sense either. But here’s the thing: of course it does, if you agree with the ‘logic’ of HCR.

Here’s how that ‘reasoning’ goes: everyone needs healthcare at some point in their lives, therefore it’s a necessary function. Instead of providing that necessary function via government, it is legal to FORCE your citizens to pay private companies up to 20% of their income, annually, who are then not actually required to provide any meaningful care, not even the care necessary to keep them alive.

True story.

So the gun-nut version of that logic is: everyone needs *security* at some point in their lives. Sensible people would want to provide this security through a public option, ie, government operated police and military forces. But HCR shows us that you can instead force citizens to pay unreliable private companies for their necessary functions instead.

A slightly better analogy would be to abolish all police forces in the state and then force everyone to hire Blackwater mercs to patrol the streets, but otherwise it’s a spot on comparison. Actually, I take that back; Blackwater is bound by contract laws, whereas insurance companies routinely violate their policies with impunity.

So you’d get a better deal from Blackwater. (and no, I won’t call them ‘Xe’ or whatever Artist-Formerly-Known-As name they’re using this week)

President Obama claims that he likes to take his time and check his facts before making public statements.

So why did he lie about Social Security to promote his tax giveaway to the wealthy?

President Barack Obama rewrote the history of the Social Security system during a Dec. 7 press conference, claiming that only widows and orphans originally benefited from the program.

…

But the president’s claim is not true. When President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act into law in 1935, benefits were not originally intended just for widows and orphans. From the SSA’s own historical page:

SSA: The two major provisions relating to the elderly were Title I- Grants to States for Old-Age Assistance, which supported state welfare programs for the aged, and Title II-Federal Old-Age Benefits. It was Title II that was the new social insurance program we now think of as Social Security. In the original Act benefits were to be paid only to the primary worker when he/she retired at age 65. Benefits were to be based on payroll tax contributions that the worker made during his/her working life. Taxes would first be collected in 1937 and monthly benefits would begin in 1942. (Under amendments passed in 1939, payments were advanced to 1940.)

*cue sad trumpets*

In fact, Obama has it precisely backward; Social Security advanced its most critical, longest-lasting and core benefits FIRST, then expanded to cover widows and orphans, not the other way around.

This is important because it counteracts the core of his ‘point’; in Obama’s world, Good Moderate Centrist Ideas Advance Incrementally. There’s no goal that you can’t advance in tiny bits and pieces to make compromises and everyone feel all warm and fuzzy.

The real world doesn’t work that way; sometimes a compromise is worse than no policy at all, like with his ‘health care reform’, which delivers the citizens into serfdom to line Wellpoint’s pockets.

It’s true that Social Security advanced over time, but that’s because its core, critical, initial function was solidly designed and wildly popular. You can build, but you need to build on success, on a solid foundation, a well-executed central portion of your plan. Obama doesn’t believe that because it means there’s not always room to bargain with his friends across the aisle, so he twists the facts about the single most immensely successful Progressive program of all time to fit his pet political theories.

Think it’s a casual slip-up? Well, if it is, then he’s about as incurious and ill-educated as our last Commander in Chief, because he’s been peddling this revisionist history (also known as a ‘lie’) despite being called on it, for months:

This isn’t the first time the president has made the error when discussing Social Security’s origins. The conservative Media Research Center’s Newsbusters.org found the president made a similar claim during an interview with Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart back in October of this year.

When the hacks at Newsbusters are better scholars of Progressive history than you are, you have a serious problem.

In context:

Another day, another suggestion to primary Obama in 2012. It’s almost like 1980 never happened.

I simply can not express in words strong enough that it would be an absolute disaster for the Democratic party if they actively attempt to primary a sitting President. You think the liberal blogs are at each other’s throats now? My word.

Why don’t we start with primarying all the blue dogs and all the intransigent Democratic Senators? That would seem to make more sense, and it might bring about a touch of party discipline. But to primary Obama? Disaster. It really should be unthinkable.

Actually, what *should* be unthinkable is supporting, let alone voting for, a man who seeks the power to murder American citizens without due process, deny prisoners of war their fundamental rights, aid, abet, cover up and continue torture around the globe, collude with giant multinationals to destroy our oceans, hand our civil liberties over to the insurance lobby for next-to-nothing in return while actively working to worsen the economy while it’s still in freefall with almost comically bad ‘Free’ trade deals.

THAT should be unthinkable. Instead, the mere thought of challenging our Imperial Majesty, High Lord of Stress Positions and Master of Bagram, Royal Consort to British Petroleum is held to be anathema. Yikes.

Truly, Obama supporters have crossed the Moral Event Horizon.

1) BP, which the Administration actively conspired with in order to shield the American public from the truth about the damage they caused, is now trying to weasel out of the fines they owe for the mess they made. Gee, maybe lying to the voters to convince them it was all ok wasn’t such a good idea, huh, O-bots? Now when you have to fight BP in court to try and make them pay out, they can just point to your own statements about how most of the oil magically disappeared.

Only, it didn’t, of course. Instead, as the scientists tried to say when the Obama administration was spinning its Pollyanna nonsense about the oil being ‘gone’, it has settled to the bottom, forming a massive kill zone where nothing will live for decades.

And thanks to the various Administration organs stamping approval on it, we’re fishing on top of that oily mess and feeding the poisonous result to the public.

2) Not content to poison our food, the Administration is actively conspiring with the financial sector to take our jobs, money and homes too. Having successfully fended off the notion of a foreclosure moratorium, Obama’s predatory lending program HAMP continues to destroy countless lives, the Fed (run of course by Obama’s personal rubber stamp Ben Bernanke) is looking to strip out a key protection consumers have against predatory mortgage lending, while Obama flacks for a free trade deal with South Korea that will devastate what’s left of the unions and cost an estimated 159,000 American jobs and tries to institute a pay freeze on what’s left of the federal public sector to score cheap political points.

3) Not only has Obama’s health care ‘reform’ failed to date, research suggests that even with highly, err, hopeful projections it will utterly fail to contain costs, and premiums will soar over the next decade to even more unaffordable levels:

Even with optimistic projections, the new health care law would still see premiums growing faster than income, and we’d still have by far the most costly health care on earth. This means, even assuming health care reform works well, which I highly doubt, the ever-growing cost of our health care premiums will force it to remain a critical political issue for years. It has not be fully dealt with.

So, to recap: our so-called Democratic administration is serving us poisoned food from oily waters while helping the banks steal our homes and then it turns around and ships our jobs overseas and cuts the pay on anyone still good-natured enough to try and serve their country at the Federal level.

Heckuva job, Hopey McChange.

The alternative is that he’s a blithering idiot.

Let’s look at the facts. Midterm elections are typically dominated by base turnout. In non-presidential years, most people tune out and the number who go to the polls is way, way below a majority of eligible voters. Thus, the election hinges upon, and is dominated by, those highly motivated individuals who turn out to elections regardless of the public mood. This leads to a long-held strategy of focusing, in such years, on the ideological base of your party, putting resources toward getting out their vote and dealing with their issues.

Obama, the DNC and his old personal organization OFA had other ideas this time around though. Their plan was to focus not on the reliable base voters but on the fringe voters who had turned out, often for the first time in their lives, to vote for Obama in 2008:

ABC News’ David Chalian reports: Democrats will be facing a restive and disgruntled electorate in six months as they attempt to hang on to their House and Senate majorities on Capitol Hill, but that isn’t stopping Barack Obama’s DNC and his hand-picked party chairman from keeping their ultimate goal, the president’s 2012 reelection effort, in sight as they roll out the party’s 2010 battle plan.

…

Many Democrats on Capitol Hill have privately expressed concern about this strategy because it is not centered on turning out the tried-and-true midterm election voters the party will need at the polls in November to significantly mitigate the anticipated large number of losses in key congressional races around the country.

Chairman Kaine claimed that the campaigns are already positioned to reach those voters and that the DNC will assist in that effort, but that is not where the committee sees itself adding most value. The previously announced $50 million investment in the midterm races will be greatly focused on cultivating these first-time voters from 2008 who are more likely to be engaged in the next presidential election with Barack Obama’s name expected to be on the ballot than they are to be in this year’s midterm contests.

In a nutshell, the Obama faction wanted to spend precious resources in a tight election year not on voters likely to turn out, but on maintaining Obama’s relationship with sunshine voters who he’ll need in 2012.

If that strikes you as dangerous and narcissistic, you’re not the only one, and as the election loomed many establishment Dems got panicky:

The White House strategy is focused on an unprecedented effort to turn out the voters who cast their first ballots for Obama in 2008. The Democratic National Committee has pledged $30 million in voter turnout efforts this year, largely geared toward those first-time voters through Organizing for America, the outgrowth of Obama’s political operation.

…

Old school Democrats, mostly affiliated with the labor movement and congressional campaigns, aren’t buying it. They don’t believe the DNC understands what the midterm electorate will really look like.

“The notion that first-time presidential voters will come out in an off year is limited,” said one veteran Democratic strategist closely aligned with labor unions. In 2006, massive efforts to turn out the Democratic base, coupled with a political wave, swept Democrats into power. “If only the party and operatives were focused on getting that turnout in hand before going for extra icing,” this strategist said, “they’d have a far tastier cake.”

…

Democrats critical of the DNC’s strategy believe the committee is focused more on Obama’s 2012 re-election bid than on the party’s success in the midterms. From the White House perspective, that may be an understandable act of self-preservation, given how dismal the landscape looks for Democrats. But it’s not something Capitol Hill Democrats appreciate.

So who was right? It might not surprise you to learn it wasn’t the Obama faction:

Core Democratic groups stayed away in droves Tuesday, costing Democratic House candidates dearly at the polls.

Hispanics, African Americans, union members and young people were among the many core Democratic groups that turned out in large numbers in the 2008 elections, propelling Mr. Obama and Democratic House candidates to sizable victories. In 2010, turnout among these groups dropped off substantially, even below their previous midterm levels.

Voters under the age of 30 comprised 18 percent of the electorate in 2008 and nearly 13 percent in 2006 but only made up 11 percent of the electorate in 2010. The share of voters from union households dropped from 23 percent in 2006 and 21 percent in 2008 to 17 percent in 2010. African Americans made up 13 percent of the electorate in 2008 but fell to 10 percent in 2010. Such apathy likely cost the Democrats House seats as voters in each of these groups cast ballots for Democratic House candidates by at least 15 point margins.

The strategy, as you can see, was a dismal failure, and it helped contribute to the slaughter the Dems faced in the House this week. So at first glance, Obama would seem to be a truly terrible tactician.

Or… would he?

It all depends on who he needs to advance his agenda. What is that agenda?

Over the last two years, President Obama’s administration has been handing out huge sacks of cash to large corporate interests in the health care and automotive sectors, while refusing to reign in the financial sector robber barons who brought about the recession. In order to do this he needed a certain coalition consisting of pro-Detroit, pro-bankster, pro-health lobby Democrats to pass his legislation.

Said coalition is utterly in ruin now, of course, but he doesn’t need them anymore, as he now has other plans.

First, ‘Free Trade’:

In addition to education, another area where you can see the President and the Republicans in Congress agreeing is on the issue of trade. One of the first international figures Obama talked to on Election Day was the President of South Korea, and he assured him that the US was working on passing a free trade agreement between the two countries.

Obama and a few Republicans may agree, but I’d be hard-pressed to find any Democrats to join them, including the Blue Dogs. For all his obvious faults, Heath Shuler is a fair trader. So was the majority of the 111th House of Representatives, as evidenced by the vote on the Chinese currency bill, which had the support of 99 Republicans, most of whom remain in the House. A new report from Public Citizen shows that 205 Democratic and Republican candidates used fair trade and anti-outsourcing messaging in their election campaigns. Only 37 candidates campaigned as pro-NAFTA free traders, and half of them lost.

Gee, it’s a shame that so many Democrats who would have been potential impediments to this big free trade pact are suddenly out of the picture, isn’t it?

Nice priorities there too, negotiating a free trade pact on the day your hand-picked electoral strategy destroys your own political party.

What else is on the schedule? Gutting Social Security comes to mind:

With Republicans in no mood to launch a legislative attack on Social Security, there was nobody for Obama to make one of his grand comprises with. So, in February of this year, he issued an executive order creating his own anti-entitlement missile, the panel that quickly became known as the “cat food” commission, harkening back to the pre-Social Security days when many of the elderly where reduced to eating cat food.

Obama’s trick was to conjure up a political demand for the gutting of entitlements when no serious movement in that direction existed in the Congress. The commission route allowed him to concoct a majority right-wing constituency in a bottle, so to speak, by weighting the membership with pro-corporate players.

No one doubts that the panel is rigged to recommend cuts that Democrats (and a few Republicans) would be prepared to fight tooth and nail if proposed by the GOP. Blood would flow in the halls of the House and Senate, and in the end the assailants would likely lose. But by packaging the poison in a commission, Obama is allowed to behave as if the entitlement debate has oozed from the ether, demanding to be made manifest.

The only thing I’d add to that excellent synopsis is that, after the election, Congress now has a slew of crazy, fire-breathing anti-entitlement Republicans and Tea Party maniacs to back his play and aid the triangulation.

In review: over the last two years, Obama’s agenda has been tilted toward handing out giant sacks of cash to large corporate interests traditionally aligned with Democratic pols (autos and healthcare) or neutral to them (finance). Republicans could be expected to oppose said efforts on simple zero-sum game grounds, and so he required a Dem coalition to pass his bailouts.

Now he wants to move on to handing huge sacks of cash to traditionally Republican interests (free traders) while gutting entitlements, which Dems would at least half-heartedly oppose (and who successfully blocked the 2005 gutting of Social Security).

Isn’t it convenient, therefore, that OFA and the DNC implemented a ludicrously stupid election plan that contributed to massive Democratic losses, changing the constitutency of the House to one that just happens to align more closely to his desired policy goals?

As I said above: President Obama, Tim Kaine and the like are either blithering idiots… or they’re actively working against the Democratic Party, seeing it as an obstacle to future plans.

The next few months should be interesting. My bet: Obama triangulates against Social Security, using his personally crafted Catfood Commission to justify gutting the signature New Deal program and legacy of actual progressivism. He’ll also ram this South Korean free trade deal through, further damaging both the Democratic Party and the Unions it relies on to survive.

Ian Welsh is right; it’s long past time to work toward primarying Obama in 2012.

This story from the NYT would warm my black heart if I thought for a nanosecond that those half-wits in the Administration would learn anything about making deals with jackals from it:

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department sued Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan on Monday, asserting that the company, the state’s dominant health insurer, had violated antitrust laws and secured a huge competitive advantage by forcing hospitals to charge higher prices to Blue Cross’s rivals.

…

In the Michigan case, the Obama administration said that Blue Cross and Blue Shield had contracts with many hospitals that stifled competition, resulting in higher health insurance premiums for consumers and employers.

…

The lawsuit took direct aim at contract clauses stipulating that no insurance companies could obtain better rates from the providers than Blue Cross. Some of these contract provisions, known as “most favored nation” clauses, require hospitals to charge other insurers a specified percentage more than they charge Blue Cross — in some cases, 30 to 40 percent more, the lawsuit said.

Christine A. Varney, the assistant attorney general in charge of the antitrust division of the Justice Department, said these requirements were “pernicious.”

Yes indeed, after betraying the American people and signing a corporatist takeover bill that taxes you to line the pockets of big insurers if you can’t afford their lousy product, the Obama administration is waking up to the fact that they are in bed with some of the most evil people on the planet, running a system of mass murder that would make most brutal third world despots green with envy.

It was so important for Obama to protect an industry that kills 45,000 Americans a year. Yes sir.

If there is, by some shockingly remote chance, a hell, Obama’s personal punishment should be to suffer an agonizing disease for all eternity while forced to fill out paperwork to desperately beg for medical treatment that his HMO refuses to provide. Perhaps due to cost? Who can say.

After a bit of rambling on how health-care and health insurance aren’t the same thing (no shit, Sherlock), and a bit of history on how ERs are supposedly forced to cover the uninsured (a practice that works far better in theory than in reality, as hospitals deny urgent care all the damn time), Kay over at BJ rolls out with this chestnut:

You don’t have to buy health insurance. You don’t have to pay a private insurer. What you do have to do is contribute to the costs of covering the pool called “the uninsured” because if you don’t purchase the subsidized policy and instead pay the tax penalty, you’ll be uninsured. And it costs to provide emergency care to “the uninsured”. A lot. And the federal government reimburses part of that cost.

This is fantastic logic! When a law extends penalties enforced by the executive branch, it’s not really saying you *can’t* do something, or that you shouldn’t, it’s just, you know, trying to recoup costs. Let’s extend the reasoning:

You don’t *have* to avoid beating your neighbor to death with a ball-peen hammer; you just have to contribute to the costs of burying them by working the rest of your life making license plates.

Oh wait; that’s fucking stupid sophistry, isn’t it? The law’s primary purpose is clearly to deter murder, just like the primary purpose of the Individual Mandate is *clearly* to coerce people into paying for insurance. Handy hint, Kay: that’s why it goes up from 1 to 2.5% of income. It doesn’t do that because ER costs are anticipated to go up 150% in two years.

But, riddle me this, Kay: if the penalty for the Individual Mandate was really to cover emergency room care, as you claim, then surely it would, in fact, be collected into a separate fund and dispersed to hospitals as needed to reimburse said care, or else set aside specifically to reimburse the costs of ER care in some other fashion, perhaps pooled with other money that goes to that purpose and so forth.

So, is it? Is the Individual Mandate in fact used to raise money for ER care?

Show me the section of the bill where that occurs. I’m intensely curious to know how fining people who don’t want to spend up to 20% of their income annually on insurance they can’t afford to use ends up paying for ER beds under this legislation, because I just can’t find the section. Please, illuminate me on the funding mechanism you’ve outlined here; specific citations to relevant portions of the law would be helpful.

Please do that, or stop making shit up.

Update: The law Kay cites that forces hospitals to cover (limited) ER care regardless of insurance? The Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act? It doesn’t provide any funding to hospitals for covering said care. Rather, it uses a big stick, that you have to do so to participate in Medicare.

So, in other words, Kay’s entire argument is full of shit, since the Federal government does not pay for uncompensated ER care today. There is absolutely no mechanism in place to do so, and therefore the Individual Mandate penalty must serve some other purpose.

I wonder what that could be.

Slight quibble. Yes, the Dems retain the Senate under Moss’ scenario, going down to 52-54 seats, enough to block by majority vote anything patently offensive. *But* that’s including wastes of human skin like Joseph Lieberman, Ben Nelson, Kent Conrad and Max Baucus.

Now, will these tools get in line behind some theocratic Republican pipe dream? Probably not, except with abortion, as many of said wastes of skin are also vicious panty-sniffing misogynists. Will they side with Republicans to pass overtly corporatist bills which our corporatist President can then sign with lightning speed?

Absolutely. So the idea that the bulk of the Republican agenda will be stymied by a narrowly Democratic Senate just doesn’t fly. In reality what you can expect is that the Corporatist wings of the Republican and Democratic parties will, in everything but name, merge into one unholy amoeba of suck, and pass bill after bill to take us further down the road to serfdom, which President Obama, as the duly appointed rubber stamp of the gentry won’t hesitate to enact into law.

In spite of all this, I approve wholeheartedly of the plan to punish dems in the fall election; I will participate in doing so myself by voting against Russ ‘Where are my Principles Now?” Feingold and Tammy ‘Who Said Healthcare was my Signature Issue?” Baldwin, because, as letsgetitdone says summarizing my post on game theory and the 2010 elections, the only way to induce cooperative behavior in a treacherous potential ally is with a big stick and a sharp whack now and then.

Heh. I am a tiny bit amused by the idea that the iterated prisoner’s dilemma is experimental, though; the actual experiments and theory were conducted before I was born, and I’m getting *old*. That aside, he’s right; unlike the standard iterated prisoner’s dilemma, where the costs/benefits of winning and losing don’t vary from round to round, in the real world they do. This is a non-Presidential election, and the costs to Dems of losing power are far higher than the costs to us of gaining temporary Republican overlords, at least in comparison to a Presidential election year.

I mean, rain or shine, Democrats can cash campaign checks, so it matters to them that they stay in power; if they don’t, who’s going to pay them to sell out their voters?

Thusly the precipitous and inevitable, yet no less satisfying (in a dramatic sense at least) collapse of Obama’s much-touted, worse-than-the-status-quo ‘health care reform’ is coming to pass with hilarious speed.

First up are a select few of the landmine clauses and surprises hidden in the bill (principally designed by former Wellpoint VP Liz Fowler), which have gone off on schedule, like a perverse anti-Democrat election advent calendar over the last several months. In no particular order:

1: The HCR bill is revealed to place a crushing paperwork burden on small businesses to raise a paltry sum in taxes. If a business spends 600 bucks at any one vendor over a year, they have to file a 1099 for them. This will affect my small business, which is laughably small, but it will absolutely cripple many small businesses across the nation. You will literally be required to get the tax information out of each individual Starbucks franchise if you take clients there on a regular basis. It’s that bad. Because you can’t be sure how much you’ll spend at a given vendor in a year, you will have to track absolutely every single purchase by tax information, no matter how trivial, forever.

Want to buy a pack of gum, a couple cases of coke? Get that supermarket checkout clerk to haul out the store’s tax info. I’m sure it’s on file, right?

By the way? The Senate failed to fix that portion of Fowler’s grand edifice. That’s still in the bill. Remember it.

2: The stopgap high risk pools for insurance victims, err, uninsured Americans, have proven to be almost completely unaffordable and useless. This one only comes as a surprise to gob-smackingly stupid morons in the happy-clappy liberal contingent, but it’s worth pointing out.

Predictably, with insurance costs far too high, there are almost no takers… outside of PA, which apparently decided to go its own way and set one premium for all takers of 283 dollars a month. True, socialist community rating.

Bonus feature: in plans run by the Feds directly, there’s a 2500 dollar prescription drug deductible. Ouch. Hope grandma doesn’t need that pain medicine.

Super bonus: You have to have been without health insurance for six months, and have to prove you were denied, presumably in writing. Ahh, paperwork, Obama loves it so.

3: Although Obama is more than happy to sic the IRS on people who refuse to send their kids to school without shoes to pay Wellpoint, his flagship bill does allow you to opt-out of the individual mandate if you’re a lunatic in a religious cult. Read all about it here. Excerpt:

Since the health-care reform bill passed last month, Lansberry has become a hot commodity on the conservative talk-radio circuit where he sings the praises of health-care-sharing ministries (HCSMs), Christian nonprofit organizations through which members agree to cover each others? health-care costs. As president of the Alliance of Health Care Sharing Ministries, Lansberry, and his team of lobbyists, had persuaded Senate lawmakers to exempt alliance members from the individual mandate. That exemption, Lansberry said, made those ministries “an island of freedom amidst this terrible piece of reform legislation” and “the last pro-life option for Christians of faith.”

The exemption raises an array of concerns, including constitutional questions about the limits of such religious exemptions as well as about adequately protecting consumers without the type of regulatory oversight required of insurance companies. It is also emblematic of how elected officials cater to religious objections without fully examining their origins or consequences.

The exclusion from the individual mandate is “just another example of an exemption granted by a legislature that doesn?t bother to look under the rock,” says Marci Hamilton, a professor at Cardozo Law School and author of God Versus The Gavel: Religion and the Rule of Law. “It happens all the time. A religious group asks for an exemption, and busy legislators think, well, it?s religion, at least I?m doing some good for someone today. But they don?t ask the hard questions.”

Basically, this is sham-insurance, run by a snake-oil salesman. There’s no regulation and no guarantee they’ll ever pay for anything, and they’re allowed to ban treatment for things they consider sinful, like sex outside of marriage. Delightful.

4: Speaking of religion and the healthcare bill, the final Senate ‘compromise’ allows each and every state to religitate Roe v. Wade on a small scale, banning abortion coverage from the Exchanges entirely if they so wish.

Naturally, that’s already started:

New state legislation that would sharply restrict abortions in Pennsylvania was condemned on Friday by a statewide abortion rights group, Pennsylvanians for Choice.

A bill introduced by Sen. Don White, R-Indiana, would prohibit private health insurance plans sold in Pennsylvania’s state “exchange” — created under the new federal health care law — from offering abortions and require rape victims to report the crime within 72 hours in order to receive an abortion.

Yes Virginia, the Obamacare bill opens this battlefront up in every single state. Congratulations, Obama-bots: you’ve just bankrupted the entire pro-choice movement for a generation.

5: Tom Daschle confirms, on the record and for all time, that the Obama administration did in fact cut a secret deal with the hospital lobby to kill the Public Option, regardless of whatever level of support it had in Congress. So regardless of whether there were enough spineless, sellout, backstabber Dems already lined up to do so, Obama put the first knife in the Public Option’s back:

In his book, Daschle reveals that after the Senate Finance Committee and the White House convinced hospitals to accept $155 billion in payment reductions over ten years on July 8, the hospitals and Democrats operated under two “working assumptions.” “One was that the Senate would aim for health coverage of at least 94 percent of Americans,” Daschle writes. “The other was that it would contain no public health plan,” which would have reimbursed hospitals at a lower rate than private insurers.

Reality paging John Cole.. John Cole, to the reality phone….

6: The Obama administration loves, and I mean loves, to tout the provision requiring insurers to cover sick kids with pre-existing conditions. Err, sorry, I meant loved; the insurance lobby found a way around that one really fast. (Maybe Fowler sent them the Cliff’s Notes?)

At least six major companies — including Anthem, Aetna, Cigna and Humana — have said they will stop writing new policies for individual children not covered by their parents’ or other plans, insurance officials said.

They blamed health reform mandates taking effect Thursday requiring companies that write such policies as of that date to also cover sick children up to age 19.

Thus in order to avoid covering sick kids, they avoid covering any kids not on their parent’s plan to start with. Smooth.

So, contra Obama, you can’t just go get coverage for sick little Billy under his law.

Naturally, they’re shocked, SHOCKED at this treachery:

But officials of the Obama administration said the move contradicted a letter from the leader of one of the insurance industry’s most important trade groups after the law’s adoption in March. Karen Ignagni, president of America’s Health Insurance Plans, expressed support for the law’s provisions concerning children with preexisting conditions and promised to “fully comply” with them.

“We expect [insurance companies] to honor that commitment. Insurers shouldn’t break their promise and turn their backs on some of our most vulnerable Americans,” said Jessica Santillo, a spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Human Services.

Cute, eh? They ARE complying and you know it, Jessica Santillo, aka ‘Dumb as a Sack of Hammers’ Santillo. It’s just that the law is utterly toothless and virtually enforceable… by design.. since Wellpoint’s VP designed it… you know what, I’m going to stop talking at you now, because you’re hopelessly stupid.

Twit.

7: Since the bill provides no meaningful cost controls on premiums (once the Exchanges are up, they can threaten to ban an insurer from an Exchange, which is akin to threatening Ed Gein with a 10% reduction in the local supply of middle aged women who look like his Mom), the insurance lobby is going to spend the next four years jacking up rates and soaking customers, while blaming the HCR bill for the cost increases to damage the Dem brand:

Sept. 19–Connecticut regulators in recent days approved increases of more than 20 percent on some health plans starting Oct. 1, including a series of rates requested by Anthem Blue Cross & Blue Shield, by far the largest health insurer in the state….The higher prices, however, are a glimpse of what may be in store later this year when insurers propose new rates for 2011.

The major difference between rising prices this year and years past is the cost of new benefits added to health plans starting Thursday as mandated by the sweeping reform approved by Congress in March.

Insurers say the cost of new benefits will increase prices more than 20 percent for certain plans.

Not that it’s just Connecticut; this is happening nationwide.

Aetna, one of the nation’s largest health insurers, said the extra benefits forced it to seek rate increases for new individual plans of 5.4% to 7.4% in California and 5.5% to 6.8% in Nevada after Sept. 23. Similar steps are planned across the country, according to Aetna.

Regence BlueCross BlueShield of Oregon said the cost of providing additional benefits under the health law will account on average for 3.4 percentage points of a 17.1% premium rise for a small-employer health plan. It asked regulators last month to approve the increase.

In Wisconsin and North Carolina, Celtic Insurance Co. says half of the 18% increase it is seeking comes from complying with health-law mandates.

Oh yes, and the Obama admin has no plans to, or actual ability to, stop it:

The White House says insurers are using the law as an excuse to raise rates and predicts that state regulators will block some of the large increases.

“I would have real deep concerns that the kinds of rate increases that you’re quoting… are justified,” said Nancy-Ann DeParle, the White House’s top health official. She said that for insurers, raising rates was “already their modus operandi before the bill” passed. “We believe consumers will see through this,” she said.

Previously the administration had calculated that the batch of changes taking effect this fall would raise premiums no more than 1% to 2%, on average

Wait for the punchline:

About half of all states have the power to deny rate increases. Ms. DeParle pointed out that the law awards states $250 million to bolster their scrutiny of insurance-rate proposals, saying that will eventually curb premiums for people.

“In Kansas, I don’t have a lot of authority to deny a rate increase, if it is justified,” said Kansas Insurance Commissioner Sandy Praeger. She recently approved a 4% increase by Mennonite Mutual Aid Association to pay for the new provisions in the health law.

The process of reviewing rate increases varies by state. For instance, Ms. Praeger said she can deny only rate increases that are unreasonable or discriminatory.

Zing! Only half of all states can review rates at all, and those that can are mostly rubber stamps!

Hahahah..hah… oh man he got you guys good, didn’t he?

Seriously. All you supporters of health care reform got played, and played HARD. Try to remember this searing, aching sensation of loss the next time a slickly repackaged corporatist Dem tries to sweet-talk you into backing their reform proposal.

You’ll do a lot less damage to the rest of us that way.

A pity they couldn’t learn sooner, because this time, it’s not just the happy-clappy liberals from HCAN and the Obama-worshipping blogs who are getting what they deserve for being unforgivably naive stooges; we all get to share share in their karmic reward.