posted 08-05-2012 01:16 PM                  

You asked about his achievements so here you go:

1. Passed Health Care Reform: After five presidents over a century failed to create universal health insurance, signed the Affordable Care Act (2010). It will cover 32 million uninsured Americans beginning in 2014 and mandates a suite of experimental measures to cut health care cost growth, the number one cause of America’s long-term fiscal problems.

2. Passed the Stimulus: Signed $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in 2009 to spur economic growth amid greatest recession since the Great Depression. Weeks after stimulus went into effect, unemployment claims began to subside. Twelve months later, the private sector began producing more jobs than it was losing, and it has continued to do so for twenty-three straight months, creating a total of nearly 3.7 million new private-sector jobs.

3. Passed Wall Street Reform: Signed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (2010) to re-regulate the financial sector after its practices caused the Great Recession. The new law tightens capital requirements on large banks and other financial institutions, requires derivatives to be sold on clearinghouses and exchanges, mandates that large banks provide “living wills” to avoid chaotic bankruptcies, limits their ability to trade with customers’ money for their own profit, and creates the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (now headed by Richard Cordray) to crack down on abusive lending products and companies.

4. Ended the War in Iraq: Ordered all U.S. military forces out of the country. Last troops left on December 18, 2011.

5. Began Drawdown of War in Afghanistan: From a peak of 101,000 troops in June 2011, U.S. forces are now down to 91,000, with 23,000 slated to leave by the end of summer 2012. According to Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, the combat mission there will be over by next year.

6. Eliminated Osama bin laden: In 2011, ordered special forces raid of secret compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, in which the terrorist leader was killed and a trove of al-Qaeda documents was discovered.

7. Turned Around U.S. Auto Industry: In 2009, injected $62 billion in federal money (on top of $13.4 billion in loans from the Bush administration) into ailing GM and Chrysler in return for equity stakes and agreements for massive restructuring. Since bottoming out in 2009, the auto industry has added more than 100,000 jobs. In 2011, the Big Three automakers all gained market share for the first time in two decades. The government expects to lose $16 billion of its investment, less if the price of the GM stock it still owns increases.

8. Recapitalized Banks: In the midst of financial crisis, approved controversial Treasury Department plan to lure private capital into the country’s largest banks via “stress tests” of their balance sheets and a public-private fund to buy their “toxic” assets. Got banks back on their feet at essentially zero cost to the government.

9. Repealed “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”: Ended 1990s-era restriction and formalized new policy allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military for the first time.

10. Toppled Moammar Gaddafi: In March 2011, joined a coalition of European and Arab governments in military action, including air power and naval blockade, against Gaddafi regime to defend Libyan civilians and support rebel troops. Gaddafi’s forty-two-year rule ended when the dictator was overthrown and killed by rebels on October 20, 2011. No American lives were lost.

11. Told Mubarak to Go: On February 1, 2011, publicly called on Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to accept reform or step down, thus weakening the dictator’s position and putting America on the right side of the Arab Spring. Mubarak ended thirty-year rule when overthrown on February 11.

12. Reversed Bush Torture Policies: Two days after taking office, nullified Bush-era rulings that had allowed detainees in U.S. custody to undergo certain “enhanced” interrogation techniques considered inhumane under the Geneva Conventions. Also released the secret Bush legal rulings supporting the use of these techniques.

13. Improved America’s Image Abroad: With new policies, diplomacy, and rhetoric, reversed a sharp decline in world opinion toward the U.S. (and the corresponding loss of “soft power”) during the Bush years. From 2008 to 2011, favorable opinion toward the United States rose in ten of fifteen countries surveyed by the Pew Global Attitudes Project, with an average increase of 26 percent.

14. Kicked Banks Out of Federal Student Loan Program, Expanded Pell Grant Spending: As part of the 2010 health care reform bill, signed measure ending the wasteful decades-old practice of subsidizing banks to provide college loans. Starting July 2010 all students began getting their federal student loans directly from the federal government. Treasury will save $67 billion over ten years, $36 billion of which will go to expanding Pell Grants to lower-income students.

15. Created Race to the Top: With funds from stimulus, started $4.35 billion program of competitive grants to encourage and reward states for education reform.

16. Boosted Fuel Efficiency Standards: Released new fuel efficiency standards in 2011 that will nearly double the fuel economy for cars and trucks by 2025.

17. Coordinated International Response to Financial Crisis: To keep world economy out of recession in 2009 and 2010, helped secure from G-20 nations more than $500 billion for the IMF to provide lines of credit and other support to emerging market countries, which kept them liquid and avoided crises with their currencies.

18. Passed Mini Stimuli: To help families hurt by the recession and spur the economy as stimulus spending declined, signed series of measures (July 22, 2010; December 17, 2010; December 23, 2011) to extend unemployment insurance and cut payroll taxes.

19. Began Asia “Pivot”: In 2011, reoriented American military and diplomatic priorities and focus from the Middle East and Europe to the Asian-Pacific region. Executed multipronged strategy of positively engaging China while reasserting U.S. leadership in the region by increasing American military presence and crafting new commercial, diplomatic, and military alliances with neighboring countries made uncomfortable by recent Chinese behavior.

20. Increased Support for Veterans: With so many soldiers coming home from Iraq and Iran with serious physical and mental health problems, yet facing long waits for services, increased 2010 Department of Veterans Affairs budget by 16 percent and 2011 budget by 10 percent. Also signed new GI bill offering $78 billion in tuition assistance over a decade, and provided multiple tax credits to encourage businesses to hire veterans.

21. Tightened Sanctions on Iran: In effort to deter Iran’s nuclear program, signed Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability, and Divestment Act (2010) to punish firms and individuals who aid Iran’s petroleum sector. In late 2011 and early 2012, coordinated with other major Western powers to impose sanctions aimed at Iran’s banks and with Japan, South Korea, and China to shift their oil purchases away from Iran.
22. Created Conditions to Begin Closing Dirtiest Power Plants: New EPA restrictions on mercury and toxic pollution, issued in December 2011, likely to lead to the closing of between sixty-eight and 231 of the nation’s oldest and dirtiest coal-fired power plants. Estimated cost to utilities: at least $11 billion by 2016. Estimated health benefits: $59 billion to $140 billion. Will also significantly reduce carbon emissions and, with other regulations, comprises what’s been called Obama’s “stealth climate policy.”

23. Passed Credit Card Reforms: Signed the Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility, and Disclosure Act (2009), which prohibits credit card companies from raising rates without advance notification, mandates a grace period on interest rate increases, and strictly limits overdraft and other fees.

24. Eliminated Catch-22 in Pay Equality Laws: Signed Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act in 2009, giving women who are paid less than men for the same work the right to sue their employers after they find out about the discrimination, even if that discrimination happened years ago. Under previous law, as interpreted by the Supreme Court in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., the statute of limitations on such suits ran out 180 days after the alleged discrimination occurred, even if the victims never knew about it.

25. Protected Two Liberal Seats on the U.S. Supreme Court: Nominated and obtained confirmation for Sonia Sotomayor, the first Hispanic and third woman to serve, in 2009; and Elena Kagan, the fourth woman to serve, in 2010. They replaced David Souter and John Paul Stevens, respectively.

26. Improved Food Safety System: In 2011, signed FDA Food Safety Modernization Act, which boosts the Food and Drug Administration’s budget by $1.4 billion and expands its regulatory responsibilities to include increasing number of food inspections, issuing direct food recalls, and reviewing the current food safety practices of countries importing products into America.

27. Achieved New START Treaty: Signed with Russia (2010) and won ratification in Congress (2011) of treaty that limits each country to 1,550 strategic warheads (down from 2,200) and 700 launchers (down from more than 1,400), and reestablished and strengthened a monitoring and transparency program that had lapsed in 2009, through which each country can monitor the other.

28. Expanded National Service: Signed Serve America Act in 2009, which authorized a tripling of the size of AmeriCorps. Program grew 13 percent to 85,000 members across the country by 2012, when new House GOP majority refused to appropriate more funds for further expansion.

29. Expanded Wilderness and Watershed Protection: Signed Omnibus Public Lands Management Act (2009), which designated more than 2 million acres as wilderness, created thousands of miles of recreational and historic trails, and protected more than 1,000 miles of rivers.

30. Gave the FDA Power to Regulate Tobacco: Signed the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act (2009). Nine years in the making and long resisted by the tobacco industry, the law mandates that tobacco manufacturers disclose all ingredients, obtain FDA approval for new tobacco products, and expand the size and prominence of cigarette warning labels, and bans the sale of misleadingly labeled “light” cigarette brands and tobacco sponsorship of entertainment events.

31. Pushed Federal Agencies to Be Green Leaders: Issued executive order in 2009 requiring all federal agencies to make plans to soften their environmental impacts by 2020. Goals include 30 percent reduction in fleet gasoline use, 26 percent boost in water efficiency, and sustainability requirements for 95 percent of all federal contracts. Because federal government is the country’s single biggest purchaser of goods and services, likely to have ripple effects throughout the economy for years to come.

32. Passed Fair Sentencing Act: Signed 2010 legislation that reduces sentencing disparity between crack versus powder cocaine possessionfrom100 to1 to 18 to1.

33. Trimmed and Reoriented Missile Defense: Cut the Reagan-era “Star Wars” missile defense budget, saving $1.4 billion in 2010, and canceled plans to station antiballistic missile systems in Poland and the Czech Republic in favor of sea-based defense plan focused on Iran and North Korea.

34. Began Post-Post-9/11 Military Builddown: After winning agreement from congressional Republicans and Democrats in summer 2011 budget deal to reduce projected defense spending by $450 billion, proposed new DoD budget this year with cuts of that size and a new national defense strategy that would shrink ground forces from 570,000 to 490,000 over the next ten years while increasing programs in intelligence gathering and cyberwarfare.

35. Let Space Shuttle Die and Killed Planned Moon Mission: Allowed the expensive ($1 billion per launch), badly designed, dangerous shuttle program to make its final launch on July 8, 2011. Cut off funding for even more bloated and problem-plagued Bush-era Constellation program to build moon base in favor of support for private-sector low-earth orbit ventures, research on new rocket technologies for long-distance manned flight missions, and unmanned space exploration, including the largest interplanetary rover ever launched, which will investigate Mars’s potential to support life.

36. Invested Heavily in Renewable Technology: As part of the 2009 stimulus, invested $90 billion, more than any previous administration, in research on smart grids, energy efficiency, electric cars, renewable electricity generation, cleaner coal, and biofuels.

37. Crafting Next-Generation School Tests: Devoted $330 million in stimulus money to pay two consortia of states and universities to create competing versions of new K-12 student performance tests based on latest psychometric research. New tests could transform the learning environment in vast majority of public school classrooms beginning in 2014.

38. Cracked Down on Bad For-Profit Colleges: In effort to fight predatory practices of some for-profit colleges, Department of Education issued “gainful employment” regulations in 2011 cutting off commercially focused schools from federal student aid funding if more than 35 percent of former students aren’t paying off their loans and/or if the average former student spends more than 12 percent of his or her total earnings servicing student loans.

39. Improved School Nutrition: In coordination with Michelle Obama, signed Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act in 2010 mandating $4.5 billion spending boost and higher nutritional and health standards for school lunches. New rules based on the law, released in January, double the amount of fruits and vegetables and require only whole grains in food served to students.

40. Expanded Hate Crimes Protections: Signed Hate Crimes Prevention Act (2009), which expands existing hate crime protections to include crimes based on a victim’s sexual orientation, gender, or disability, in addition to race, color, religion, or national origin.

41. Avoided Scandal: As of November 2011, served longer than any president in decades without a scandal, as measured by the appearance of the word “scandal” (or lack thereof) on the front page of the Washington Post.

42. Brokered Agreement for Speedy Compensation to Victims of Gulf Oil Spill: Though lacking statutory power to compel British Petroleum to act, used moral authority of his office to convince oil company to agree in 2010 to a $20 billion fund to compensate victims of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico; $6.5 billion already paid out without lawsuits. By comparison, it took nearly two decades for plaintiffs in the Exxon Valdez Alaska oil spill case to receive $1.3 billion.

43. Created Recovery.gov: Web site run by independent board of inspectors general looking for fraud and abuse in stimulus spending, provides public with detailed information on every contract funded by $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Thanks partly to this transparency, board has uncovered very little fraud, and Web site has become national model: “The stimulus has done more to promote transparency at almost all levels of government than any piece of legislation in recent memory,” reports Governing magazine.

44. Pushed Broadband Coverage: Proposed and obtained in 2011 Federal Communications Commission approval for a shift of $8 billion in subsidies away from landlines and toward broadband Internet for lower-income rural families.

45. Expanded Health Coverage for Children: Signed 2009 Children’s Health Insurance Authorization Act, which allows the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) to cover health care for 4 million more children, paid for by a tax increase on tobacco products.

46. Recognized the Dangers of Carbon Dioxide: In 2009, EPA declared carbon dioxide a pollutant, allowing the agency to regulate its production.

47. Expanded Stem Cell Research: In 2009, eliminated the Bush-era restrictions on embryonic stem cell research, which shows promise in treating spinal injuries, among many other areas.

48. Provided Payment to Wronged Minority Farmers: In 2009, signed Claims Resolution Act, which provided $4.6 billion in funding for a legal settlement with black and Native American farmers who the government cheated out of loans and natural resource royalties in years past.

49. Helped South Sudan Declare Independence: Helped South Sudan Declare Independence: Appointed two envoys to Sudan and personally attended a special UN meeting on the area. Through U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice, helped negotiate a peaceful split in 2011.

50. Killed the F-22: In 2009, ended further purchases of Lockheed Martin single-seat, twin-engine, fighter aircraft, which cost $358 million apiece. Though the military had 187 built, the plane has never flown a single combat mission. Eliminating it saved $4 billion.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/march_april_2012/features/obamas_top_50_accomplishments035755.php?page=1

posted 08-05-2012 06:13 PM                  

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posted 08-05-2012 06:16 PM                  

quote:

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Originally posted by bjprowler:
Ripped off General Motors bond holders and virtually [B]gave a major portion of the ownership of the restructured company to the unions in exchange for their support......[/B]

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Don't forget the dealers who were put out of business.

posted 08-05-2012 06:25 PM                  

I'm logging off, this is just too doggone easy.
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posted 08-05-2012 09:35 PM                  

You guys are great!

___________________________________________________________
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vvv GOLD MEDAL WINNER vvv

posted 08-06-2012 08:21 AM                  

#2) Yes passed the stimulus and bilked Americans out of 1 trillion $'s and we got nothing in return (as a whole) Remember there is no such thing as shovel ready jobs.

#3) Wall st. reform until they exploit the loop holes in it or until the gov once again makes wall st and the banks do business with people that are not qualified to take loans to begin with.

#4) As I recall it took him a couple of years longer then he promissed to get our troops out, but then he got us involved elsewhere.

#5) So troops increased under his watch and now he wants credit for removing 10K, I'll wait to see when they are all out thank you.

#6) Bin Laden taken out after changing his mind twice before, what was his reason for those changes of heart? Also we never saw a body, is he realy dead?

#7) Union workers helped GM go BK and those unions are still in place. 100K jobs, is that after the co.'s closed their doors and rehired all the same employees? How about the dealerships that had no choice but to close their doors and lose all their investments. How about those that owned GM stock and is now worthless? How about putting America deeper into debt then we have ever been?

#8) Banks were forced or conspired with the gov to make things like the housing boom/bust so they could bilk the American people as they now are, create a problem to solve a problem!

#9) Is that realy an accomplishment?

#10)Getting rid of any 3rd world leader like Castro or Chavez is easy as pie, I won't discuss political stratigy with political illiterates though, sometimes it's in our best interest to keep them in place.

posted 08-06-2012 09:15 AM                  

Existing federal laws already cover the poor, the elderly, and the roughly 60% of Americans who get their insurance through their employers. Those laws provide free or low-cost care to just about anyone who needs it, and ban practices like charging higher rates for people with preexisting conditions in employer-based plans. The law won’t help them much and could make them worse off, if you agree that the minimum standards for health insurance policies and broader access to subsidized healthcare by the poor will drive taxes and costs up instead of down.

And as Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito pointed out in arguments Tuesday, the typical 27-year-old could be much worse off under Obamacare: She consumes, on average, less than $900 a year in healthcare services but will be required to spend more than five times that much to buy an insurance policy with many bells and whistles, like low deductibles and pediatric care, that most young consumers don’t need.

“Isn’t it the case that what this mandate really doing is not requiring the people who are subject to it to pay for the services that they are going to consume?” Alito asked U.S. Solicitor General Donald Verrilli. ”It is requiring them to subsidize services that will be received by somebody else.”

The fact is Obamacare is designed to address a relatively small segment of the population which, according to the government’s own briefs in support of the law, runs up something like $43 billion in medical expenses that hospitals and providers recover by charging everybody else more. That unpaid tab, the government says, increases the average family insurance premium by $1,000 a year.

That’s it. The fundamental reason for healthcare reform, according to the government’s own brief, is to fix a problem that each year costs about as much as five nuclear submarines or a year’s worth of federal highway expenditures. There are lots of other costs that Obamacare is supposed to address, such as the economic drag of people staying in jobs simply because they need to maintain health coverage. And the law purports to control healthcare spending, although Congress’s record of annually voting to increase Medicare reimbursements in excess of a federal cost-control law suggests legislators are not very good at the politically unpopular job of cutting health expenditures.

But the fundamental market failure that Congress sought to fix was this cost-shifting from the uninsured to the privately insured.

So if nothing else, the Supreme Court arguments have demonstrated that one big problem with the debate over Obamacare is how people conflate “health insurance” with “health care.” The Census Dept. estimates there are 50 million uninsured in this country. No one knows how many Americans go without healthcare entirely because they can’t afford it, despite laws that require hospitals to provide care regardless of the ability to pay. The Kaiser Family Foundation estimates a quarter of the uninsured “go without needed care” for financial reasons, compared with 4% of the insured.
The conservative Cato Institute says the number of uninsured is too high, however, because 25% of the “uninsured” are eligible for Medicaid or the State Children’s Health Insurance Program for families below 200% of the poverty line. Cato says 64% of uninsured children are eligible for S-CHIP. Another 10 million uninsured aren’t citizens. And this paper by economists Kate Bundorf and Mark Pauly suggests between 25% and 75% of the uninsured have incomes high enough to afford health insurance but choose not to. Many are probably young and healthy and don’t perceive the need for it.

Existing state and federal laws cover virtually everybody else. The $43 billion cost cited by the administration, for example, doesn’t include the $30.2 billion that Medicaid pays hospitals under so-called “disproportionate share” programs designed to help out hospitals with a high percentage of low-income patients. The law providing for that money was passed back in 1985. It also doesn’t include the care provided to the truly poor under Medicaid — $366 billion in fiscal 2009, according to the Kaiser Foundation — or Medicare, which costs an estimated $525 billion a year. That program was passed back in 1965 and covers about 38 million retirees.

Another federal law, the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, covers all employer-based group health insurance plans. It bans many of the practices cited as reasons for the healthcare reform act, including charging higher premiums for people with preexisting conditions, or denying them access to the plan. Revisions to the law included provisions like COBRA, which require employers to offer health insurance to employees up to a year after they are laid off, and prohibits them from dropping dependent students who are forced to leave school for medical reasons. That’s another 149 million people, or at least half the population, covered by existing federal laws.

So who does the health reform directly address?
•Adult children: They get to stay on their parents’ policies until they are 26.
•Working poor: State health insurance pools will provide subsidized health insurance to workers whose employers don’t provide coverage. If they have group coverage, of course, ERISA already applies.
•Unemployed, uninsured people with assets: This might be the group with the most to lose if Obamacare is struck down. Unlike the truly poor, who can run up medical bills without being forced to pay them back, a 55-year-old with a paid-off house who comes down with cancer is likely to be financially wiped out by his medical bills.
•The privately insured: Assuming the administration’s math is right, they will recover part of the “hidden tax” from cost-shifting. But this is a big assumption; by expanding access to insurance and Medicaid, the law also brings millions of consumers further into the healthcare market, increasing demand for doctors and facilities and possibly driving up prices.

The Supreme Court arguments Tuesday ranged widely over many of these topics, surprising given they are more matters of policy than of law. This airing has been useful, however. Whether the court rejects or upholds the law with its decision expected in June, the same questions will be on the national agenda again in November, when voters decide whether Obamacare delivered the fix to the healthcare system they thought they wanted.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/danielfisher/2012/03/28/the-big-problem-wit h-obamacare-it-doesnt-help-many/

Obamacare by the Numbers

Alyene Senger

July 30, 2012 at 5:30 pm

(18)

Looking for some straight facts on Obamacare and its impact? Here are some of the most important numbers you need to know about President Obama’s health law:
•20 million. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that as many as 20 million Americans could no longer have their current employer-based health coverage by 2019; others predict it could be as high as 35 million.
•85 million. The Office of the Actuary at CMS estimates that, by 2020, Medicaid enrollment will increase from 54 million in 2010 to 85 million, pushing America closer to government-run health care.
•400 percent of the federal poverty level. Individuals earning over $44,680 a year and families earning over $92,200 a year are not eligible for any federal subsidies to help purchase coverage under Obamacare.
•$1 trillion. Based on an updated CBO score, Obamacare imposes 18 new taxes or penalties totaling over $1 trillion from 2013 to 2022 that will directly or indirectly impact families, including those earning below $250,000.
•8.1.2012. Starting August 1, Obamacare forces many employers, regardless of their religious or moral convictions, to offer abortion-inducing drugs, sterilization, and contraception.
•$1.683 trillion. Obamacare expects to spend over one-and-a-half trillion dollars between 2012 and 2022 on its coverage expansion provisions alone, according to the CBO.
•30 million. Updated CBO estimates show that despite spending over a trillion dollars, Obamacare will leave 30 million Americans uninsured in 2021.
•$716 billion. Although Medicare faces $37 trillion in unfunded obligations, Obamacare takes $716 billion out of Medicare to pay for non-Medicare coverage provisions, according to CBO’s latest update.
•15. The number of unelected officials that will be in charge of cutting Medicare payments for millions of seniors under the Independent Payment Advisory Board in Obamacare.
•50.8 percent. The majority of Americans continue to support repeal. The Real Clear Politics Average from March 10, 2012, to July 28, 2012, shows that voters support repeal by an 8-point margin.

http://blog.heritage.org/2012/07/30/obamacare-by-the-numbers/

The 12 Worst Features Of ObamaCare

By David Hogberg

Tue., March 22, 2011 12:04 AM ET

Tags: ObamaCare - Health Care - Waivers - Hospitals - Medicare

On the eve of the one-year anniversary of President Obama signing his health care bill into law, it's a good time to examine ObamaCare’s worst features.

Of course, any law is going to cause difficulties, but problems seem to be attracted to ObamaCare the way worms are to an apple orchard. And the bulk of the law has yet to come into force, including the individual mandate, health exchanges and massive taxpayer subsidies. This is a list of the ObamaCare’s 12 worst features, although it is hardly definitive. Feel free to suggest your own in the comments section.

1. 1099. Under ObamaCare, businesses have to send a 1099 tax form to every other business, contractor and so forth that they do $600 worth of commerce with, resulting in a huge amount of costly new paperwork. Previously, businesses only had to send a 1099 to an independent contractor for services rendered. This provision has proven so unpopular that President Obama said he’d sign a repeal. The House and Senate have passed bills repealing the measure but remain at odds over the details.

2. Surprises, Surprises. There doesn’t seem to be an end to the discoveries of provisions that almost no one knew were in ObamaCare until after it passed. The 1099 may have been the first. The most recent is the “Basic Health Plan,” what Greg Scandlen called “sort of a ‘public option’ in sheep’s clothing.” According to Scandlen, a BHP is a plan “states may implement to provide coverage for people between 133% and 200% of poverty and noncitizen legal immigrants who are not eligible for Medicaid ... . If a state opts for a BHP, those people will no longer be eligible for coverage under the Exchange.” One of the surprises first broken by IBD was that health plans that were supposed to be “grandfathered” under ObamaCare were only grandfathered if they didn’t make any big changes in the future. An administration document estimated that under the rules, about 51% of employers would have to relinquish their coverage by 2014. Unless of course, your plan is run by a union.

3. Waivers. Section 2711 waivers enable the health plans of businesses, labor unions and other groups to avoid having to comply with ObamaCare’s regulations, lest their members lose “the insurance they like.” The Department of Health and Human Services has granted 1,040 waivers in about six months. Naturally, a disproportionate share of those receiving waivers are unions, some of Obama’s biggest political allies.

And the waivers are a temporary reprieve as by 2014 all business, unions, etc., must comply with ObamaCare rules, something that will very likely result in lost jobs.

4. More Waivers? State governments are now asking for waivers from ObamaCare’s medical-loss-ratio regulations. At present, Maine has received a waiver, Kentucky, Nevada and New Hampshire have applied, and 11 other states are preparing applications. An MLR is the share of health premiums spent on medical costs. A 75% ratio means that 75% of premiums are spent on medical care, leaving 25% for things like salaries, advertising, fraud prevention and profits. Starting in 2011, insurers serving the individual or small-group market — i.e., companies with 100 employees or less — must have MLRs of at least 80%. It seems that states are worried that the difficulty of complying with these regulations might drive insurance companies out of their individual and small markets. Maine applied for a waiver because officials there worried that MEGA Life and Health Insurance, which has 37% of the state’s individual market, “would withdraw from the market altogether if the federal requirement remained in place.”

5. Insurers Have Left The Child-Only Market. In June 2010, HHS informed insurers that they would have to sell a policy to anyone under age 19, regardless of pre-existing conditions. Insurers figured this would incentivize more and more parents to purchase insurance after their children fell ill. This would almost surely make child-only policies a losing business. Thus, insurers started abandoning the child-only market in droves. According to a survey conducted by the Republican staff on the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, 34 states have lost at least one insurer in the child-only market and 20 no longer have any insurers offering child-only policies.

6. Medicaid — Ouch! ObamaCare requires all states to expand their Medicaid program to 133% of the federal poverty level. Presently only eight states and Washington, D.C. make eligibility limits that generous. That expansion is expected to cost states at least an additional $118 billion through 2023. States are already reeling from budget shortfalls, with Medicaid usually being the biggest budget item. But the stimulus package passed in early 2009 added a new twist to Medicaid. It gave states money to shore up their Medicaid shortfalls, but in exchange the states could not cut back on Medicaid by reducing the eligibility level. That has left only two options: cutting back on benefits and reducing provider reimbursement rates. So far, states seem to be taking the former approach, with Arizona ending support for some organ transplants being the most notorious example.

7. Life After Death Panels. While Sarah Palin’s remark about a “death panel” was not technically accurate, it did highlight the fact that the original version of ObamaCare contained a provision allowing Medicare to pay for end-of-life counseling. In the ensuing media storm, the provision was removed. But that wasn’t the end of it. If reformers with a good idea can’t get it through the front door, they’ll eagerly try the back. Late last year the issue again erupted when HHS tried to slip the provision into 692 pages of new Medicare regulations. The provision was removed again, but controversy remains. HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius recently admitted she was the one that decided to exclude the provision for the “proposed” regulations and later slip them into the final rules. The House GOP is calling for an investigation.

8. Medicare’s Advantage Over Cuts. ObamaCare was supposed to cut about $200 billion from Medicare Advantage, the Medicare program that pays private insurers to provide Medicare benefits. There was just one little problem: the 11 million seniors with Medicare Advantage plans who could lose them if the cuts were enforced. As a result, the Obama administration suspended the cuts for 2011 and will actually increase the amount given to Medicare Advantage by 1.6% in 2012 (election year, anyone?). Which means that for the budget math to work, even deeper Medicare Advantage cuts will have to be made in the future. Assuming the budget math actually works to begin with.

9. Cost Estimates Not Correct. An analysis by Medicare chief actuary Richard Foster showed that ObamaCare would not reduce overall health care costs, but would increase them by about $311 billion through 2019. An analysis by former Congressional Budget Office head Douglas Holtz-Eakin found that if one takes into account factors that the CBO could not in its analysis (CBO is limited to analyzing just what is a bill), then ObamaCare could increase the deficit by $190 billion.

10. Who Needs Evidence? Two of the new health care financing “models” pushed by ObamaCare are medical homes and Accountable Care Organizations. Yet there is very little research showing the medical homes are a cost-effective way of delivering care (and some research that they aren’t.) As for ACOs, there doesn’t appear to be much research on them at all. So much for policymakers only enacting sweeping reforms backed up by evidence.

11. CLASS-less. ObamaCare included Community Living Assistance Services and Support Act, a measure that is supposed to help seniors pay for long-term care. On paper, the CLASS Act looks fiscally sustainable because it takes in premiums for a number of years before it starts paying out benefits. Which means it is not sustainable. Even Sebelius has admitted as much. But on short-term measures, the CBO has to score CLASS as reducing the deficit.

12. Physician-Owned Specialty Hospitals. A major source of innovation in health care, physician-owned specialty hospitals had long been a target of the Big Hospital Lobby — the American Hospital Association and the Federation of American Hospitals — which doesn’t like competition. ObamaCare effectively prevents new physician-owned specialty hospitals from opening and makes it near impossible for existing ones to

http://blogs.investors.com/capitalhill/index.php/home/35-politicsinvesting/2532-the-12-worst-features-of-obamacare

posted 08-06-2012 09:40 AM                  

By Paul Scicchitano

In a blow to the Obama administration, the Congressional
Even zero jobs growth in August doesn't seem to have disrupted President Obama's faith in the economic policies of his first three years, so one theme we'll be listening for in tonight's speech is how he explains the current moment. Why did his first jobs plan—the $825 billion stimulus—so quickly result in the need for another jobs plan?

For readers who want to know, an important account is offered in a pair of new Mercatus Center working papers by the George Mason economists Garett Jones and Daniel Rothschild, who did field research on what they call the supply side of the stimulus.

The Keynesian theory was that a burst of new government spending would take up some of the slack in aggregate consumer demand. This was justified in 2008, again in 2009, and is still defended now based not on real-world observation but on abstract macroeconomic models that depend on the assumptions of the authors. The Congressional Budget Office's quarterly studies—often cited to claim the stimulus created tens of thousands of new jobs—are based on such a model. By informative contrast, Messrs. Jones and Rothschild interviewed actual people who received stimulus dollars and asked how they spent the money.

..
In the first paper, the authors survey 85 different businesses, nonprofits and local governments across the country and conclude that "As is often the case when economic models are transferred from the blackboard to actual public policy, there was a gap between theory and practice."

One of the major patterns Messrs. Jones and Rothschild uncovered was that the top-down stimulus was poorly targeted. In one redolent example, a federal contractor said he was told to use smaller, nonstandard tiles that are harder and more expensive to install in order to increase the cost of the project. That way, the government could claim the money was moving out the door faster. The famous Milton Friedman line about government ordering people to dig with spoons to employ more people comes to mind.

In another case study, a budget shortfall forced a mid-size city to lay off 185 public workers—but the city received a $4 million stimulus grant to improve municipal energy efficiency. The manager of a construction company received funds for "the last thing on our list; and truthfully, the least useful thing." It happened to be a crane and a forklift.

The authors are careful to note that such anecdotes do not mean that all of the stimulus was a waste, and they did find some success stories. The problem is that all but the most reductionist Keynesians of the Paul Krugman school believe it matters what the government spends money on. A dollar that eventually will be taken out of the private economy through borrowing or higher taxes to fund pointlessly expensive projects—a la the tiny tiles—is not the way to nurture a recovery.

The second paper suggests that the stimulus did not "create or save" nearly as many jobs as the models indicate. On the basis of 1,300 interviews, Messrs. Jones and Rothschild estimate that merely 42.1% of the firms that received grants hired people who were unemployed. Instead, they poached workers from their competitors.

"This suggests just how hard it is for Keynesian job creation to work in a modern, expertise-based economy," they write. The stimulus "was implemented at a time when the Keynesian model had every chance of succeeding on its own terms. The high level of unemployment and the rapid deadline for spending created both the supply of workers and the demand for workers. If the job market results are so lackluster in this setting, economists should expect even weaker stimulative results during more modest recessions."

The lesson of such on-the-ground knowledge is that the stimulus was a lost opportunity. In practice it became a shotgun marriage between an economic theory justified by computer models and 40 years of liberal social priorities (clean energy, Medicaid expansions and the rest). This produced the 9.1% unemployment we now have.

The economy would have benefitted far more if the government had instead improved the incentives for people and businesses to invest, produce and grow. The President probably won't mention any of this, but it does explain why he has to give his latest speech.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904716604576544500632493510.html

posted 08-06-2012 09:49 AM                  

Washington, Jul 15, 2011 -

Report Card Issued to Mark First Year of Failures

When Democrats passed the Dodd-Frank Act a year ago, among the promises they made were that the 2,300-page bill and its 400 new rules would strengthen the economy, stabilize the housing market, end “too big to fail” and streamline the regulatory process.

Now that a year has passed, Republicans on the House Financial Services Committee today issued a report card, giving Dodd-Frank failing grades on living up to those promises.

The one area where Dodd-Frank was judged a “success” -- unfortunately, Republicans said -- was in growing the size and cost of government.

“The Dodd-Frank Act is a failure and a massive roadblock to our economic recovery,” said Chairman Spencer Bachus. “Its 400 regulatory mandates create an atmosphere of uncertainty in which innovators and job creators can’t put their ideas and capital to work.”

To back up the grades they gave Dodd-Frank, the Republicans issued a 28-page report detailing the Act’s failures and how it falls far short of the Democrats’ promises.

The report notes that the promised benefits of Dodd-Frank are largely speculative, “but the costs on the American economy have been quite real.”

“During a period of economic uncertainty and staggering debt and deficits, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) has estimated that, by this time next year, the budgetary cost for Dodd-Frank will exceed $1.25 billion, which has the effect of siphoning off resources that might otherwise have gone toward deficit reduction or private sector job creation,” the report states.

The Committee report says implementing Dodd-Frank requires adding more than 2,800 employees to government payrolls, but “there is no evidence that the Dodd-Frank Act has created any private sector jobs.”

Among the findings of the report:
•Overall budget cost of Dodd-Frank through FY 2012: $1,251,578,000
•Number of government positions created (projected for 2012): 2,849
•Annual labor hours required to comply with just the 10% of Dodd-Frank rules that have been issued so far: 2,260,631
•Number of Americans who will have to work all year, every year solely on complying with all of Dodd-Frank’s rules: Over 10,000
•The largest financial institutions in America remain “too big to fail”; in fact, they are even bigger now than they were before Dodd-Frank’s passage. In its section of the report on “too big to fail,” Republicans note that even Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner acknowledged the Dodd-Frank Act does not end “too big to fail.”
•By institutionalizing a government policy of “too big to fail,” Dodd-Frank further skews the competitive landscape in favor of large, complex financial institutions at the expense of smaller institutions and community banks.
•The Dodd-Frank Act failed to address the problems at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which helped spark the financial crisis in 2008, and hobbles the private mortgage market through onerous regulations. This will ensure “that housing will remain in limbo for some time to come, as investors, securitizers, and lenders try to navigate its cumbersome and unworkable rules.”

posted 08-06-2012 09:53 AM                  

You got to be holding two pair,,,and we don't know what your hole card is?

We are all ears,,,

posted 08-06-2012 09:59 AM                  

And in new signs of distress among the middle class, median household incomes fell last year to levels last seen in 1996.

posted 08-06-2012 11:31 AM                  

Amy Payne

June 13, 2012 at 9:02 am

(88)

President Obama told the United Auto Workers (UAW) in February not to listen to critics of the auto bailout who said union members “made out like bandits—that saving the auto industry was just about paying back the unions.” “Really?” Obama said. “I mean, even by the standards of this town [Washington], that’s a load of you-know-what.”

New research from Heritage labor economist James Sherk proves that it was, in fact, a load of truth.

The Treasury Department estimates that taxpayers will lose $23 billion on the auto bailout. Sherk and co-author Todd Zywicki find that none of these losses came from saving jobs, but instead went to prop up the compensation of some of the most highly paid workers in America. They write:

We estimate that the Administration redistributed $26.5 billion more to the UAW than it would have received had it been treated as it usually would in bankruptcy proceedings. Taxpayers lost between $20 billion and $23 billion on the auto programs. Thus, the entire loss to the taxpayers from the auto bailout comes from the funds diverted to the UAW.

The Obama campaign is touting the bailout in Michigan this week, crowing about saved-or-created jobs. What the bailout actually saved was the UAW’s heavily padded compensation packages; what it created was a massive taxpayer loss.

The UAW was a significant factor in the automakers’ decline: It had raised Detroit’s labor costs 50 percent to 80 percent above other automakers, such as Toyota and Nissan. In 2006, General Motors paid its unionized workers $70.51 an hour in wages and benefits. Chrysler paid $75.86 an hour. Added to mistakes by management, these labor costs were a major reason the automakers went bankrupt.

However, through the bailout, the Obama Administration insulated the UAW from most of the sacrifices unions usually make in a bankruptcy—at taxpayer expense.

GM and Chrysler owed billions to a trust fund they had created to provide UAW members with gold-plated retiree health benefits. In bankruptcy, these funds should have been paid proportional to other unsecured creditors. Instead, while the Administration paid other creditors only a fraction of what they were owed, it gave the UAW trust fund assets worth tens of billions—including partial ownership of both companies. The U.S. Treasury should have received these assets.

Bankruptcy law also enables reorganizing companies to improve their post-bankruptcy situation by renegotiating union contracts to competitive rates.

If the UAW had been treated normally under bankruptcy law, the automakers’ average labor costs would have fallen to the same levels as the foreign-based carmakers, approximately $47 an hour. While this is still 40 percent higher compensation than the average manufacturing worker, it would have reduced UAW members’ standard of living. And the Administration wouldn’t allow that. So while the UAW accepted huge pay cuts for new hires, the Administration kept the pay structure of existing UAW members at GM intact.

Even Stephen Rattner, President Obama’s “car czar,” has admitted that “We should have asked the UAW to do a bit more. We did not ask any UAW member to take a cut in their pay.”

As a result, even after the reorganization, GM still has higher labor costs ($56 an hour) than any of its foreign-based competitors.

The average American worker—whose taxes paid for the bailout—earns $30.15 an hour in wages and benefits. Few Americans have the ability, as UAW workers do, to retire in their mid-50s before they can collect Social Security. Fewer still receive retirement health benefits in addition to Medicare, as UAW workers do. Yet their tax dollars went to subsidize UAW pay and benefits.

Had the government treated the UAW in the manner required by bankruptcy law, taxpayers would have broken even. The program would have amounted to bankruptcy financing instead of an outright bailout. The Administration could have kept the automakers running without losing a dime.

Instead, more than $26 billion went out the door and into the UAW’s pockets. Let’s put that in perspective: The amount of the subsidy given directly to the UAW was bigger than the budget of the entire State Department. It was bigger than all U.S. foreign aid spending. It was 50 percent more than NASA’s budget.

None of that money kept factories running. Instead, it sustained the above-average compensation of members of an influential union, sparing them from most of the sacrifices typically made in bankruptcy—a bankruptcy they contributed to. President Obama engaged in special interest spending at its worst.

The Administration did not bail out GM and Chrysler. It bailed out the United Auto Workers.

http://blog.heritage.org/2012/06/13/morning-bell-auto-bailout-was-really-just-a-uaw-bailout/