Chart: Obamacare Premiums by State

The Heritage Foundation has put together this chart comparing the state-by-state cost of health insurance premiums before and after Obamacare. Millennial residents in 46 states and the District of Columbia will see increases in their premiums—a whopping 252.5% increase for Virginians, from $165 per month to $581.55 per month). Only in five states will residents see a reduction in premiums: Colorado, New Jersey, New York, Ohio and Rhode Island. (View large image.)

Shutdown: Conservatives' Honorable Battle

"In the campaign to persuade America of their big lie — that the House Republicans shut down the govern — the White House and its media chorus appear to have won this round," writes Pat Buchanan. "This is an honorable battle lost, not a war. ... And if Republicans are paralyzed by polls produced by this three-week skirmish, they should reread the history of the party and the movement to which they profess to belong."

Recounting conservatives' long-term success following a similar internal party struggle in the early 1960s between the conservative Barry Goldwater camp and the liberal Nelson Rockefeller camp, Buchanan predicts that the "people who fought the battle of Obamacare will be proven right to have fought it, and America will come to see this."

House Voted 11 Times to Reopen Govt

For the record, Matt Vespa chronicles the 11 times the "House GOP voted to reopen the government but were blocked by Senate Democrats and the president" between September 20 and October 4, 2013.

Calculator for Obamacare Insurance Premiums

From NPR:

Nearly all Americans starting Jan. 1, 2014, or else they'll be liable for a tax penalty. If you've asked yourself, "How much will Obamacare cost me?"  We can help you find the answer.

A calculator produced by the Kaiser Family Foundation in collaboration with NPR allows shoppers to find out if they qualify for subsidized insurance coverage or Medicaid. Enter your ZIP code, income, age, family size and a few other factors into the calculator to get subsidy estimates and insurance premiums available for coverage sold on the marketplaces, or exchanges, once enrollment begins.

The calculator makes use of premium data from 46 states plus the District of Columbia. The remaining four states (Kentucky, Massachusetts, New York and Vermont) either set premiums using different formulas or haven't provided data yet.

Campus Discussion: Obamacare Likely to Fail

E-mail from a grad student on Obamacare class discussions:

We had a class discussion about why Obamacare is likely to fail. The professor is a major lib but he is not enthusiastic about Obamacare one bit. That is mostly due to the fact he would rather have a more radical “efficient” single-payer system but nonetheless he rarely has any nice things to say about it.

One valid point he made is how essential getting young people on board with Obamacare is to its success. If they can’t get the young people on board to pay the higher prices and subsidize the healthcare costs of the older population, the whole plan will be an epic failure.

His point was that even if they get the websites up and working by the January deadline, Obamacare may be dead on arrival because young people (at least for the foreseeable future) would rather pay the penalty fee than buy the insurance, most of which is outrageously priced. If young people “couldn’t afford to be insured” before O-care, how can they be expected to afford it now? Especially since employers are by-and-large cutting employee hours because of crippling costs to insure them all…

Anyhow, there is an interesting article that talks about this on Human Events: http://www.humanevents.com/2013/10/08/healthy-young-key-to-obamacare-arent-buying-it/

This is a “sleeping giant” that hasn’t gotten as much attention because of the shutdown but is sure to explode at some point.

Another looming problem that is creeping out of the woodwork is the fact that they are unable to calculate subsidy eligibility. There are some “calculators” floating around on the internet to estimate the cost but the govt. itself can’t tell you how much subsidy you qualify for until the deadline actually gets here. HUGE problem considering this was one of the big pitches of Obamacare…the poorest people who would qualify hypothetically for those subsidies to purchase healthcare coverage won’t even know how much it will actually cost them until the bill comes.

So I guess the big point is, even if they succeed in getting a one-year delay on the individual mandate, it is likely that Obamacare will implode on its own.  This is obviously both good and bad – depends on the extent of the damage to the economy by that point, also depends on what the proposed “next step” is…. far left may use it as an argument for a “more efficient single-payer system” (like my professor). I am not sure how well that would succeed, though stranger things have happened…

Hayward: Students Blame Obama for Shutdown!?!

University of Colorado students were asked, Who do you blame for the shutdown?  Their answers, captured in a 2:30 video posted by Steven Hayward at powerlineblog.com, are very entertaining! 

How Much Will 'We the People' Take?

"The Preamble to the Constitution clearly identifies our country's sovereign: 'We the people'," writes Mark Meckler. "Yet in 2013 is the government 'for the people', or is it actively against us?" He cites many examples of how the federal government actively pursues agendas in direct defiance of voters' wishes, including NSA's domestic spying on innocent Americans. Then there's Obamacare:

The majority of Americans opposed Obamacare, the most sweeping piece of social legislation in decades, before its passage. Yet Washington passed it in the most partisan vote in 100 years. The voters now oppose it by an even larger margin, and yet even now the politicians refuse the most modest revisions. Efforts to amend, repeal, or defund Obamacare are labeled as “hostage taking,” “terrorism,” and the acts of “anarchists.”

Examples of the federal government defying the will of the people are legion today. Instead of acting at our behest and representing us, they repeatedly defy us, even on issues on which we are not even closely divided.

As an example, the latest Marist/McClatchy poll shows that 83 percent of those polled believe laws requiring voters to “show identification in order to vote” are a “good thing.” Only 13 percent see those laws as a “bad thing.” A full 72 percent of Democrats see voter ID as a “good thing.” In fact, 65 percent of those who see themselves as “very liberal” favor voter ID laws. And yet the Justice Department, under the direction of this administration, continues to work to thwart voter ID laws passed in state after state. The will of the people is not honored – even though the Supreme Court has clearly upheld the constitutionality of voter ID requirements.

It's not that Americans haven't figured it out. In a new Fox News poll conducted Oct 1-3, 2013, "almost all voters—88 percent—say 'the government is in charge of the people'. That includes 83 percent of Democrats, 88 percent of independents and 94 percent of Republicans. Only 8 percent feel 'the people are in charge of the government'."

The question, says Meckler, is, How much will we take?

Reynolds: Washington Isn't Working

"There are two Americas, all right," writes Glenn Reynolds in USA Today. "One America can launch rockets. The other America can't even launch a website."

There are two Americas, all right. There's one that works -- where new and creative things happen, where mistakes are corrected, and where excellence is rewarded. Then there's Washington, where everything is pretty much the opposite. That has been particularly evident over the past week or so. One America can launch rockets. The other America can't even launch a website.

In Washington, it's been stalemate, impasse, and theater -- the kind of place where a government shutdown leads park rangers to complain, "We've been told to make life as difficult for people as we can. It's disgusting." Well, yes. The politics don't work, the websites don't work -- even for the people who manage to log on -- and the government shutdown informs us that most of government is "non-essential." Instead of correcting mistakes or rewarding excellence, it's mostly finger-pointing, blame-shifting, and excuse-making.

Meanwhile, in the other America -- the one where people have their own money and ideas invested, and where they get the credit for their successes and pay the price for their failures -- things are going a lot better. Just a couple of examples:

Read his column.

Obamacare Follies (contd)

Welcome to the real world, Ms. Vinson and Mr. Waschura:

Cindy Vinson and Tom Waschura are big believers in the Affordable Care Act. They vote independent and are proud to say they helped elect and re-elect President Barack Obama.

Yet, like many other Bay Area residents who pay for their own medical insurance, they were floored last week when they opened their bills: Their policies were being replaced with pricier plans that conform to all the requirements of the new health care law.

[snip]

"I was laughing at Boehner — until the mail came today," Waschura said, referring to House Speaker John Boehner, who is leading the Republican charge to defund Obamacare.

"I really don't like the Republican tactics, but at least now I can understand why they are so pissed about this. When you take $10,000 out of my family's pocket each year, that's otherwise disposable income or retirement savings that will not be going into our local economy."

Both Vinson and Waschura have adjusted gross incomes greater than four times the federal poverty level — the cutoff for a tax credit. And while both said they anticipated their rates would go up, they didn't realize they would rise so much.

"Of course, I want people to have health care," Vinson said. "I just didn't realize I would be the one who was going to pay for it personally."

[Obamacare's Winners and Losers in Bay Area, San Jose Mercury News, 10/5/13]

Fox News' Neil Cavuto on this 'stinking' law:

Carter: When the Bleeding Heart Becomes the Iron Fist

From Dave Carter @ ricochet.com:

Welcome to liberal utopia, where barriers are not erected against terrorists or illegal aliens on our nation's borders, but rather against citizens, and where wheelchair-bound veterans enroute to honor their comrades face tighter security than terrorists enroute to murder a US Ambassador.  This is where up is down, wrong is right, illegality is celebrated as progress, and where Constitutionalism is derided as racist.  No longer relegated to the fever swamps of academic fancy, utopia has acquired real estate and made known its demands.

"Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual…" the First Lady warned us, and she wasn't just whistling Alinsky either.  Under King Barack's Reign of Error, your life is no longer your own, for you are now commanded to enter into private contracts by virtue of your simple existence on the planet.  Why?  Because our Sovereign and his fellow travelers are compassionate, of course. Their hearts bleed for you,…almost as much as your pocketbook will bleed for them.

[snip]

The federal government has shut down some 17 times previously, and at no time were these memorials closed. Is our Sovereign so besotted with power, has his impudent leftism so robbed him of reason that he fails to understand what is so obvious: That in barricading Americans from memorials and icons that stand as testimony to an exceptional culture founded precisely on liberty from oppressive government, he perfectly validates the arguments of the right?

Read the full article, "When the Bleeding Heart Becomes the Iron Fist."

Obama's Crackdown on Journalists

Citing an article by former Washington Post editor Leonard Downie, Michael Barone writes: "Journalists are being surveilled to a greater extent than before and are meeting sources secretly — a la Bob Woodward in the parking garage — rather than communicate by phone or e-mail."

The legal basis for this is the Espionage Act of 1917 ... passed during Woodrow Wilson's administration after the United States entered World War I. It is widely considered overbroad. Wilson used this statute and others to infringe more on civil liberties than any subsequent administration. Socialist party leader Eugene Debs was jailed for writings opposing the war; Wilson's Republican successor, former journalist Warren G. Harding, pardoned Debs and invited him to the White House. Now the Obama administration is using Wilson's legislation to crack down more on journalists than any other president since his Democratic predecessor of 100 years ago.

One would think a man purportedly as brilliant as Obama would avoid biting the hands that feed his fragile ego.

Obamacare Stories to Laugh About

Obamacare is becoming rather entertaining:

1. The much-touted Obamacare "first enrollee" was a fraud. Chad Henderson took Politico, the Washington Post, and the Huffington Post (among others) for a spin, then subsequently admitted he hasn't enrolled after all.
2. The Obamacare national hotline phone number 1-800-F**KYO
3. The official Obamacare Facebook page is "riddled with people expressing sticker shock over the government's high cost premiums."
4. An HHS-run website of the Substance Abuse & Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) "was apparently hacked as long as two months ago," and dozens of pages hawking retail merchandise have been uploaded to the SAMHSA site, ranging from NFL jerseys to Ugg shoes to Armani fragrances. Screenshots here.
5. Few of the Obamacare exchange websites are functioning as they are supposed to. Now we learn a Canadian tech firm -- "a darling of the Obama administration, which since 2009 has bestowed it with $1.4 billion in federal contracts, according to USAspending.gov" -- "is behind the glitch-ridden United States health care exchange site healthcare.gov." With all the bright tech minds in the U.S., the Obama Administration chose to outsource enrollment in his only legislative achievement!
6. By law, Congress and its staff are required to move from the federal employees health insurance system to the Obamacare exchanges on Dec 31. They howled about the cost differential (and some staffers threatened to quit), so the Obama administration arbitrarily granted them a special government subsidy to offset the high cost even though most of them earn far too much to qualify for a subsidy under the law. Now they learn the administration will only grant them a government subsidy if they purchase one of the "gold-tier" health plans with much higher premiums than the silver and bronze plans. It's delicious that Congress will have to live under at least one law that it foisted on the rest of the country!

Women Waiting Tables

From Bloomberg news, Women Waiting Tables Provides Most of Female Gains in U.S.:

Unemployment data appear to reflect big advances for women. The jobless rate in August for females 20 years and older was 6.3 percent, the lowest since December 2008, compared with 7.1 percent for men. As recently as January, the rate was 7.3 percent for both genders, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The downside is that the gains have been largely in lower-paying industries such as waitresses, in-home health care, food preparation and housekeeping. About 60 percent of the increase in employment for women from 2009 to 2012 was in jobs that pay less than $10.10 an hour, compared with 20 percent for men, according to a study by the National Women’s Law Center using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The story also reports:

• While students and recent graduates are taking low-wage jobs to get started, other women are turning them down. About 2 million married women have dropped out of the work force since 2008. 
• Females lost 444,000 public-sector jobs in the four years starting in June 2009, when the recession ended, compared with 290,000 for men.

Furchtgott-Roth: Obamacare's Marriage Penalty

"At one time, getting a job was not that much of a problem. Neither was getting married," writes economist Diana Furchtgott-Roth. "But the Affordable Care Act appears to create substantial disincentives both to hiring and marriage, potentially changing the fabric of American society in serious ways."

By now, most people know Obamacare is turning the U.S. into a part-time nation. Since moving from 49 to 50 full-time employees can cost a business $40,000 more a year, many businesses are opting to add part-time rather than full-time employees.

They may not yet know about the penalties against married people. Furchtgott-Roth explains:

Under the Act, if workers have affordable single-family coverage from an employer — coverage that by law workers are obligated to accept — their family members will not be eligible for premium subsidies on the exchanges. This can make the cost of insurance for some low- or middle-income families unaffordable. But if they divorce, they get the subsidy.

In a 2011 National Bureau of Economic Research working paper, Cornell University professor Richard Burkhauser, Indiana University professor Kosali Simon, and Cornell PhD candidate Sean Lyons showed that in 2014, when the law will take full effect, 13 million low-income Americans may be unable to get subsidized health insurance through new state health care exchanges because one family member has employer-provided coverage for that person only.

Perversely, the only way for other family members to get subsidized coverage would be for the spouses to get divorced. Then the spouse without coverage and the children could get coverage on the exchange.

This provision of the Act also discourages marriage. Say that Jeff, who receives health insurance from his employer, wants to marry Jenny, who is buying her subsidized health insurance from the state exchange. If they married, Jenny would no longer qualify for subsidized coverage.

Furthermore, since premium subsidies are on a sliding scale, two married people getting their coverage on the exchange would pay more than if they were single.

The author argues that Obamacare will produce significant long-term negative consequences:

The structure of the Affordable Care Act will increase the already widening gap between the rich and the poor. More divorces and fewer marriages at the lower end of the income scale result in more households headed by singles. Children in these families often have fewer advantages and lower educational performance, making it harder for them to get a well-paying job when they grow up.

There will be many glitches when the state exchanges open for business on Oct. 1. But the effects of the Act on job creation and marriage — two of the stepping stones to the American dream — are even more damaging.

Government Shutdown: CBS Poll

"CBS News' brand new national survey has four major take-aways" on the federal government shutdown, writes Guy Benson @ Townhall.com.

(1) Obamacare remains unpopular.  
(2) Government shutdown is even more unpopular, with 72 percent of the country opposed.
(3) Americans narrowly blame Republicans more than President Obama (44R/35O/17both), though the split is far less lopsided than it was in 1995 (2-to-1 blaming the GOP).
(4) The public overwhelmingly supports a compromise solution to resolve the impasse:

Most Americans want compromise. Majorities think the President and the Democrats in Congress (76 percent) and the Republicans in Congress (78 percent) should compromise in order to come to an agreement on the budget. But there are some party stalwarts who don't think compromise is the way to go. Thirty-eight percent of Republicans say members of their party in Congress should stick to their positions even if it means not coming to an agreement, while 36 percent of Democrats say that about their party.

James Taranto @ the Wall Street Journal asks, "Could Republicans be Winning?"

...we've been surprised this week at the Democrats' tactical maladroitness. As Josh Jordan quipped yesterday on Twitter: "Since the shutdown began, Obama and [Senate Majority Leader Harry] Reid have taken tough stands against the two most villainous groups: WWII veterans and kids with cancer."

[snip]

Even diehard partisans in the press are on the defensive. "Come On, No. Harry Reid Doesn't Hate Kids With Cancer," reads a headline on The Atlantic's website. When you feel compelled to answer a question like that, it's a sign you aren't winning the argument.

As Benson points out, government shutdowns are common occurrences in recent history.

Democrats controlled at least one house of Congress throughout Reagan's two terms, during which time there were eight separate shutdowns. Here's the liberal Wonkblog's timeline of the 17 shutdowns since the late 1970s.

What may not be so common is that government shutdowns may no longer be an automatic public relations win for liberals.

McAfee Founder: Obamacare is Hacker's Dream

"What idiot put this [Obamacare] system out there and did not create a central depository [for official application sites]?" asks John McAfee, founder of the McAfee Anti-Virus software, in the interview with Fox Business News's Neil Cavuto.

This isn't a problem that software can fix, he argues. Government officials never set up a single, government site with protected links to all subordinate Obamacare websites. It's a hacker's dream: the hacker can set up an official-looking fake Obamacare filing site and extract as much personal information from unwitting visitors as he needs to clean out their bank accounts and ruin their lives.

Watch the full interview here.

Government Shutdown - Thank Rabid Progressives

"Is this really a "Republican" shutdown? No," argues Matt Vespa. "Sen. Harry Reid [D-NV] and his execrable cadre of left-wingers are the ones truly holding the country hostage."

In at least four separate times, the House has passed a bill to fund the government.  Democrats have completely turned their backs on everything sent over by the House.  In doing so, they have also turned their backs on American families and workers.  How is that fairness and compromise?  Furthermore, 77% of Americans want to delay Obamacare’s individual mandate, including 65% of Democrats!

Vespa catalogues 34 separate news reports showing the extent of Democrat dissatisfaction over the new health care law, which is the root issue of the government shutdown. He concludes:

Harry Reid could’ve avoided this shutdown if he listened to his own ranks about Obamacare.

AEI Study: Yes IRS Did Blunt Tea Party Ground Game

In a new research paper, Andreas Madestam (from Stockholm University), Daniel Shoag and David Yanagizawa-Drott (both from the Harvard Kennedy School), and I set out to find out how much impact the Tea Party had on voter turnout in the 2010 election. ... We found that the effect was huge: the movement brought the Republican Party some 3-6 million additional votes in House races. That is an astonishing boost, given that all Republican House candidates combined received fewer than 45 million votes. It demonstrates conclusively how important the party's newly energized base was to its landslide victory in those elections, and how worried Democratic strategists must have been about the conservative movement's momentum.

The Tea Party movement's huge success was not the result of a few days of work by an elected official or two, but involved activists all over the country who spent the year and a half leading up to the midterm elections volunteering, organizing, donating, and rallying. Much of these grassroots activities were centered around 501(c)4s, which according to our research were an important component of the Tea Party movement and its rise.

The bottom line is that the Tea Party movement, when properly activated, can generate a huge number of votes—more votes in 2010, in fact, than the vote advantage Obama held over Romney in 2012. The data show that had the Tea Party groups continued to grow at the pace seen in 2009 and 2010, and had their effect on the 2012 vote been similar to that seen in 2010, they would have brought the Republican Party as many as 5 — 8.5 million votes compared to Obama's victory margin of 5 million. [emphasis added]

Read the rest of the article by American Enterprise Institute economist Stan Veuger at Real Clear Politics.

Obama's Legacy - Debt

Since President Obama entered office on January 20, 2009, U. S. government debt held by the public has risen 89.879% — or approximately 90% — according to the last Daily Treasury Statement for Fiscal 2013 released October 1. Terry Jeffrey at CNSNews.com writes:

At the close of business on Sept. 30, 2013—the last day of fiscal 2013—the Daily Treasury Statement said the U.S. government debt held by the public was $11,976,279,000,000.

The $11,976,279,000,000 in U.S. government debt held by the public on September 30, 2013 was $5,668,968,000,000 more than the $6,307,311,000,000 in debt held by the public on Obama's first inauguration day.

That's an increase of 89.879 percent—or approximately 90 percent.

The U.S. Treasury divides the U.S. government's debt into two general categories: debt held by the public and intragovernmental debt.

Debt held by the public consists primarily of U.S. Treasury securities—including bills, notes and bonds—that the Treasury sells on the open market to everybody from individual families and investors to government entities in the People's Republic of China.

Intragovernmental debt is money the Treasury has borrowed from the Social Security Trust Fund and other government sources to pay for current government expenses.

Under Obama, intragovernmental debt has increased only about 10 percent, starting at $4,319,566,000,000 on January 20, 2009 and increasing to $4,761,904,000,000 by the close of business on Sept. 30, 2013.

Federal government debt, it appears, will be the Obama Administration's most notable legacy.