Tag Archives: AFFORDABLE CARE ACT

Mark Caserta: Democrats continue to stand on Obamacare lies

12 May

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Mark Caserta: Free State Patriot editor

May, 12, 2017

 

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In March 2010, President Barack Hussein Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law. Following its passage, Obama boldly declared to all Americans, “We did not fear our future, we shaped it.”

In retrospect, that may have been the only true statement Obama would ever make about his failing signature health care bill. He certainly didn’t fear what it would do to our country, and he and his liberal accomplices certainly controlled its shape.

It’s obvious Democrats didn’t have a clue what was in the bill or what impact it would have on nearly 20 percent of our nation’s economy. It was, after all, then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi who said, “We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it,” when she spoke to the National Association of Counties in March 2010.

But controlling a nation’s health care system would be the ultimate mechanism of oversight over its people. And Obama and the Democrats were willing to say anything to make it happen.

To date, I’ve never fielded a serious rebuttal from any liberal regarding the bald-faced lies the Obama administration leveraged in throwing this political curve ball right past the American people. Yet, as old health care wounds are being reopened, it’s time to revisit the true “genesis” of this disastrous initiative.

“If you like your health care plan, you can keep it,” became the battle cry for the Obama administration as they traversed the nation selling their snake oil and liniment. It was such an egregious lie that PolitiFact dubbed it the “Lie of the Year” in 2013.

When one ponders the exorbitant number of lies politicians bestow upon Americans in a single year, this recognition illuminates the magnitude of the falsehood.

“If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor,” was another liberal lie designed to mislead trusting Americans into believing the Democrats were planning on providing Americans viable health care options.

Imagine misleading a senior citizen into believing they couldn’t possibly lose a doctor with whom they had established a longtime relationship. But that’s exactly what Obama and his minions did to pass Obamacare – without a single Republican vote.

And the empty promise that premiums, on average, would decline by $2,500 per year under Obamacare was laughable. The exact opposite has happened.

And the most incredible part of this tragedy is that liberal Democrats act as if none of this chicanery ever transpired! Do they really believe Americans are that stupid?

Thank goodness, the House of Representatives voted last week to dismantle the pillars of Obamacare and begin the process of replacing this broken health care system. The bill is on its way to the Senate, where its conservative components will be debated and strengthened.

Rest assured, Republicans will compromise on a finished product and the edicts of Obamacare will be reduced to a Democrat eulogy depicting the death of Obamacare.

So, when liberal Democrats attempt to “frighten” you about GOP health care, remember how they lied to you before.

And how they continue to stand by those lies.

Mark Caserta is a conservative blogger, a Cabell County resident and a regular contributor to The Herald-Dispatch editorial page.

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Mark Caserta: Obamacare repeal and replace simply delayed

1 Apr

 

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Mark Caserta:  Free State Patriot editor

Mar 31, 2017

 

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Last week’s charade in the House of Representatives confirmed the level of ineptitude on Capitol Hill. For the GOP to have had eight years to reach consensus on a viable healthcare alternative to Obamacare and to be so unprepared is embarrassing.

But “let not your heart be troubled.” Obamacare will eventually be eliminated and replaced with a sustainable healthcare bill that will be affordable for all Americans.

However, what we saw legislatively last week was exactly what we “didn’t” see during the Obama administration – legitimate legislative debate on the content of a proposed healthcare initiative.

Remember, in 2010, when former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi spoke at a legislative conference and said, “We have to pass the bill,” speaking of the Affordable Care Act, “so that you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of the controversy.”

Well, it turns out the intended lack of transparency shrouded the multitude of liberal lies about Obama’s signature healthcare law and facilitated its passage.

The GOP establishment, while debilitatingly dimwitted along the way, debated, argued and disagreed on provisions of the American Healthcare Act and ultimately couldn’t agree on the initial piece of legislation. I’m truly encouraged that true conservatives ultimately blocked a potentially flawed bill.

Finally, Americans receive some representation.

But that’s not what you’ll hear from liberal Democrats or the mainstream media. And frankly, the Democrat’s lack of genuine concern for the uninsured is very telling. Obamacare is in a death spiral and liberals seemingly couldn’t care less what happens to the average American, as long as they “win one for Obama.”

So, here’s what we can expect moving forward.

Successfully rewriting one-fifth of the economy will take time, but I assure you the House will eventually have the votes needed to pass a viable healthcare bill, probably in 2017. They don’t want to be unemployed the next election cycle. Subsequently, it will move on to the Senate, where it could be further amended.

But Republican Senators lack the 60 votes needed to pass any sort of healthcare legislation, no matter how good it is. They must resort to a process known as “reconciliation,” which requires only a majority vote and negates a Democrat filibuster. This is the legislative procedure Democrats used to pass portions of Obamacare.

An additional hurdle the GOP must clear is the “Byrd Rule,” named after our beloved Robert C. Byrd. As part of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974, the Byrd Rule states that reconciliation can only be used on legislation that impacts the federal deficit.

Now, clearly this is budgetary in nature, but if it rises to the level of debate in the Senate that I expect, the presiding officer of the Senate, the vice president of the United States, has the final word on what’s permissible on reconciliation and what’s not.

So, despite liberal Democrats presenting this as an Obamacare victory, it necessarily delayed the inevitable.

As part of making America great again, Donald Trump will ensure every American has access to affordable healthcare.

Just as he promised.

Mark Caserta is a conservative blogger, a Cabell County resident and a regular contributor to The Herald-Dispatch editorial page.

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Mark Caserta: Democrats’ chickens have come home to roost

13 Jan

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Mark Caserta: Free State Patriot editor

  • 1.13.2017

Like it or not, President Obama’s signature healthcare plan is living on borrowed time.

Obamacare will be repealed and replaced by the Trump administration, honorable members of the GOP and possibly as many as 10 Senatorial members of the Democrat Party up for re-election in 2018.

Expectedly, progressive pundits are already “building a wall” around any such Republican initiative. Some have unofficially labeled any GOP plan as “Trumpcare,” even though the official Republican plan isn’t yet on the table.

I’ve even heard House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and others attempt to pervert Trump’s campaign phrase, “Make America great again” into “Make America sick again.”

Liberals are so creative.

Frankly, the name “Obamacare” had nothing to do with the healthcare plan’s implosion. President Obama actually became quite fond of the moniker and often said so during his presidency. I believe he envisioned the name enshrined in his presidential legacy.

And so, it will, but more like an eulogy than a legacy.

Obamacare failed because it was a poorly planned initiative based on an unsustainable foundation of political deceit of the American people. And it’s preparing to go down as one of the single largest, most embarrassing failures of any presidential administration.

And remember, Democrats alone are to blame for this “repeal and replace” mandate voters have given President-elect Trump and the GOP-led 115th Congress. While the 2016 presidential election was clearly a referendum on Obama’s multiple failed policies, his healthcare plan was right at the top of the list for consideration.

And as far as “making America sick again,” Americans couldn’t be any sicker than they are now of the deception and economic foolhardiness the Obama administration employed in attempting to fundamentally change our country to align with the president’s apparent rancorous view of the United States.

For perspective, let’s “metamorphically” go where no liberal has gone before and reminisce how Democrats passed Obamacare.

During Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign, he repeatedly (eight times per a 2010 New York Post column by Clemente Lisi) promised that health care negotiations “will be on C-SPAN” and “the public will be part of the conversation and will see the choices being made.”

Never happened.

In March 2010, then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said of the Affordable Care Act, “But we have to pass the bill, so you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of controversy.”

 Voters surely paid for this sort of dereliction of duty.

In 2013, Obama gave us the “PolitiFact ‘Lie of the Year'” when he made his healthcare promise to Americans, “If you like your healthcare plan, you can keep it.”

And maybe the “crme de la crme” denoting the progressive path of prevarication enabling passage of Obamacare happened when, in 2014, the so-called “architect” of the federal healthcare law said the “lack of transparency” and the “stupidity of the American voter” helped Congress approve Obamacare.

The disregard Democrats have shown for the American people is flabbergasting!

Allow me to borrow a familiar idiom.

“Democrat’s chickens have come home to roost.”

Mark Caserta is a conservative blogger, a Cabell County resident and a regular contributor to The Herald-Dispatch editorial page.

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Doug Smith: Obama, “Elections have consequences.” Now, it’s up to the GOP to provide one for Obamacare!

27 Nov

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Doug Smith:  Author, historian, patriot and lead contributor to FSP.

 

What a chuckle!

Have you listened to the pundits, press, Democrats, and most especially Obama offering sage advice to Trump and the (GOP majority) Congress on how tough it might be to repeal Obamacare?  And what a political price they might pay for doing so? And how they cannot just repeal it, they MUST have a viable replacement.

Well, just for fun, while I am busy laughing at the pundits, press, Democrats, and Obama, all of whom were so wrong about all of 2016 s politics, let’s examine those claims.

 

  1. In 2008, the Democrat Majority Congress pushed bills through without any input from the GOP at all. When it came down to it, and even with their majorities, the death of Ted Kennedy left the final vote to overcome a filibuster, Massachusetts, (Massachusetts!) elected Scott Brown, a Republican to succeed a Kennedy in Mass., solely on his promise to be the vote that killed Obamacare.
  2. When it became obvious the majority of Americans did not want the bill passed after that loss, the Democrats resorted to a fast one: approving a Senate version not yet reconciled with the House, and therefore not constitutionally sound, as all bills involving spending must originate in the House. No matter, in order to get something the Senate had voted for, Harry Reid took a non-related bill, and cut and pasted the entire text of the bill into it, even though that had never been approved by both houses, and sent it to Obama.  Obama, desperate to pass anything, signed it.
  3. Think the loss of the “Kennedy” seat was bad? Since the passage of Obamacare, the Democrats have lost 13 Senate seats (and control of the Senate), 69 House seats (and control of the House) 12 Governors, 900 state legislative seats (leaving them with only 5 states under Democrat control.) Indeed, in my own state of WV, we have a GOP controlled legislature for the 1st time in 80 years, and in my neighboring state of KY, the GOP controls all three for the first time since Harding (R) was President.
  4. Obamacare, despite some who are fans because they benefitted from it, has remained overwhelmingly the most unpopular law in US history; never enjoying majority support. Most Democrats refuse to run for office on its merits, and Republicans do well running on a promise to repeal it. (More on that below.)
  5. Obamacare mandates by law that everyone sign up, but cannot even yet, after 6 years, meet its enrollment goals.
  6. Has broken promise after promise, keep your Doctor, keep your plan, lower your premiums,
  7. Obamacare has cost jobs and hurt business competitiveness in the most anemic “recovery” in US history. Medical device manufacturers were hit with an extra tax just to help pay for it, which cost jobs. Employers who saw the trip points which would make them participate avoided expansion and did not hire people they otherwise would have.  Many saw their jobs become part time because the alternative to 39 hour employees was to go broke and have no employees.
  8. Now, as to the Grand Old Party, after 6 years of promise after promise to “repeal it, root and branch, “followed time after time by caving when they had the leverage, the passing “sure to be vetoed” bills which were rendered meaningless, and without risk, they saw the result in 2015 in the person of Donald Trump. (Ted Cruz could be included in that revolt against the status quo and the lies and broken promises of the GOP leadership with respect to Obama, but Trump won, so he makes the point)

 

So, let me see. The political cost of supporting Obama and Obamacare has been a decimated Democrat party, reduced to a powerlessness not seen since the Roaring Twenties.

The political cost of waffling on fighting Obamacare has been the Tea Party, anti-establishment insurrection within the GOP.  Ask John Boehner and Eric Cantor if that mattered.

The cost to Donald Trump of opposing Obama s agenda, including Obamacare, which he promised to repeal, was being elected President.

All things considered, if I am President Trump and the GOP, I must say, along with Brer Rabbit, “Throw me in that briar patch!”

Repeal it! On day one, and pay the cost. The record of the last 6 years suggests that “price” will be veto proof majorities in both houses of Congress in 2019.

As for the ridiculous claim that because the Democrats unilaterally, and against the will of the electorate, forced through Obamacare, it is incumbent on the GOP to come up with an alternative plan before they can repeal it, nonsense!

As Dr. Ben Carson noted “”Everything that these programs were supposed to fix has gotten worse,”.  If a vandal breaks your window, you don’t have to get a replacement window before you patch the hole with plastic or plywood or whatever you have at hand.

The Dems and Obama were in such a hurry to achieve their decades long dream of controlling healthcare that they rammed the most flawed bill in history through to law. There may have been gaps in the greatest healthcare system in the world in 2008, and improvements that could be made. But the Premier of Newfoundland, Canada, (with socialized medicine) did not fly to Cuba (with socialized medicine that Obama touts as an example) to get heart surgery.

As Premier Danny Williams said ““I did not sign away my right to get the best possible health care for myself when I entered politics.”  So, he flew to Mt. Sinai in Miami, to be treated on his own dime, by an American cardiac surgeon.

Well, he said a mouthful, didn’t he?

Obama and crew broke it, big time. We don’t have to go back and fix what was wrong then before we clean up the mess that they made.

Repeal the turkey.

Then take an unrushed, and less secretive and coerced look at what improvements can be made. Then watch things get better as markets take over; employment improves, and work on fixing what is broken, not scrapping everything in a system 90% excellent in a vain quest for that final 10%.

But, just as it was rammed down our throats, forget the filibuster, unless you have Joe Manchin and a bevy of Dems who are not anxious to be the next to fall on the Obama/Clinton sword.

They rammed it through on budget reconciliation, with a simple majority, and told us to like it, it was law. They told us we would like it once we knew what was in it.

They were wrong. We know it. And we don’t like it. It has been a huge budget buster.

So, reconcile it out of existence, and tell them to learn to like it.

Or tell them elections have consequences, we won, deal with it.

 

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Mark Caserta: Consider impact of Obamacare when voting

7 May

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Mark Caserta: Free State Patriot Editor

  • May 6, 2016

As many of us are busy “revving our mental motors” to pick the most qualified 2016 presidential candidate, it’s time to revisit the impact of the largest form of socialist redistribution ever to be thrust upon the American people, as well as who supports keeping it.

 

Let’s begin with broken promises of Obamacare.

 

Remember when Barack Obama repeatedly told Americans, “If you like your healthcare plan, you’ll be able to keep your healthcare plan – period”?

In what Politifact called “The Lie of the Year,” Obama began perpetrating this canard upon the American people as early as 2009 to facilitate passage of his signature healthcare law. Millions of Americans have since lost their policies and have been forced to purchase another plan at an increased cost.

 

But for liberals, the end justifies the means.

 

During the 2008 campaign and healthcare reform debate in 2009, Obama repeatedly promised that under his administration, the typical American family would see their health insurance premiums decrease by up to $2,500 per year.

 

The reality is most Americans will see their premiums increase. According to multiple sources, including CNN Money, Obamacare premiums will increase an average of 7.5 percent for the benchmark silver insurance plan next year in the 37 states using the federal exchange, based on Department of Health and Human Services estimations.

 

Also during his 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama told Americans of his proposed healthcare plan, “I can make a firm pledge. Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes.”

 

Isn’t it amazing Obama’s lies don’t matter to liberals?

 

As the Supreme Court ultimately ruled, the Obamacare Individual mandate is in itself a “tax” requiring individual workers to purchase health insurance even if they don’t want it! This mandate is critical for Obamacare’s viability as it must “take” from younger, healthier enrollees and “give” to clients with higher rates of claims.

 

But Obamacare’s impact is far-reaching.

 

The 40-hour work week is rapidly disappearing as businesses re-tool, re-staff and reschedule to stay under the Obamacare radar.

 

As part of the employer mandate, beginning in 2015, employers with 50 or more “full-time equivalent” employees were required to provide health insurance coverage for employees averaging 30 hours per week over the course of a month.

 

This job-killing mandate has discouraged employers from hiring above the 50-employee level and from scheduling employees 30 hours. As a result, employers are forced to demand more production from existing staff while many retail and service employees are having to work a second or third job simply to survive.

Remarkably, the government touts these as “jobs created” in their progressive world of Obamanomics.

 

But the thousands of families trying to make ends meet know the difference.

 

Now, Hillary Clinton wants to expand Obamacare if she’s elected president.

 

How will furthering this health debacle impact our nation long term?

 

I suggest you consider that question when you go to the polls.

Mark Caserta is a conservative blogger, a Cabell County resident and a regular contributor to The Herald-Dispatch editorial page.

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