Seven million will lose insurance under Obama health law

President Obama's health care law will push 7 million people out of their job-based insurance coverage — nearly twice the previous estimate, according to the latest estimates from the Congressional Budget Office released Tuesday.
CBO said that this year's tax cuts have changed the incentives for businesses and made it less attractive to pay for insurance, meaning fewer will decide to do so. Instead, they'll choose to pay a penalty to the government, totaling $13 billion in higher fees over the next decade.
But the non-partisan agency also expects fewer people to have to pay individual penalties to the IRS than it earlier projects, because of a better method for calculating incomes that found more people will be exempt.
Overall, the new health provisions are expected to cost the government $1.165 trillion over the next decade — the same as last year's projection.
With other spending cuts and tax increases called for in the health law, though, CBO still says Mr. Obama's signature achievement will reduce budget deficits in the short term.


During the health care debate Mr. Obama had said individuals would be able to keep their plans.

Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/inside-politics/2013/feb/5/obama-health-law-will-cost-7-million/#ixzz2K3ShWarH

Don't liars just piss you off to no end!

Latest from CBO: The Budget and Economic Outlook: Fiscal Years 2013 to 2023

Economic growth will remain slow this year, CBO anticipates, as gradual improvement in many of the forces that drive the economy is offset by the effects of budgetary changes that are scheduled to occur under current law. After this year, economic growth will speed up, CBO projects, causing the unemployment rate to decline and inflation and interest rates to eventually rise from their current low levels. Nevertheless, the unemployment rate is expected to remain above 7½ percent through next year; if that happens, 2014 will be the sixth consecutive year with unemployment exceeding 7½ percent of the labor force—the longest such period in the past 70 years.

If the current laws that govern federal taxes and spending do not change, the budget deficit will shrink this year to $845 billion, or 5.3 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), its smallest size since 2008. In CBO’s baseline projections, deficits continue to shrink over the next few years, falling to 2.4 percent of GDP by 2015. Deficits are projected to increase later in the coming decade, however, because of the pressures of an aging population, rising health care costs, an expansion of federal subsidies for health insurance, and growing interest payments on federal debt. As a result, federal debt held by the public is projected to remain historically high relative to the size of the economy for the next decade. By 2023, if current laws remain in place, debt will equal 77 percent of GDP and be on an upward path, CBO projects (see figure below).

http://www.cbo.gov/publication/43907

Such high and rising debt would have serious negative consequences: When interest rates rose to more normal levels, federal spending on interest payments would increase substantially. Moreover, because federal borrowing reduces national saving, the capital stock would be smaller and total wages would be lower than they would be if the debt was reduced. In addition, lawmakers would have less flexibility than they might ordinarily to use tax and spending policies to respond to unexpected challenges. Finally, such a large debt would increase the risk of a fiscal crisis, during which investors would lose so much confidence in the government’s ability to manage its budget that the government would be unable to borrow at affordable rates.

Under Current Law, Federal Debt Will Stay at Historically High Levels Relative to GDP

The federal budget deficit, which shrank as a percentage of GDP for the third year in a row in 2012, will fall again in 2013, if current laws remain the same. At an estimated $845 billion, the 2013 imbalance would be the first deficit in five years below $1 trillion; and at 5.3 percent of GDP, it would be only about half as large, relative to the size of the economy, as the deficit was in 2009. Nevertheless, if the laws that govern taxes and spending do not change, federal debt held by the public will reach 76 percent of GDP by the end of this fiscal year, the largest percentage since 1950.

Twinsdad comment:

Read the data, my comments will not be as powerful as the facts laid out in this report.

We're F'd.. thanks Team O...

The Athenians

“In the end, more than freedom, they wanted security. They wanted a comfortable life, and they lost it all – security, comfort, and freedom. When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society but for society to give to them, when the freedom they wished for most was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free and was never free again.”

― Edward Gibbon

Obama Admin delays Keystone Pipeline decision

Why? What are they going to do? Stage an oil spill in a "sensitive" area?

Menedez, much more to follow.

2002 Email Links Sen. Bob Menendez to Young Prostitutes

 

Unless somebody has a time machine, this could become major trouble for Democrat Bob Menendez.
In a little-noticed email published online Wednesday by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), a young Dominican woman wrote nine months ago that she slept with 59-year-old New Jersey Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez at a series of sex parties organized by Dr. Salomon Melgen, a longtime Menendez campaign donor.

“That Senator also likes the youngest and newest girls,” the woman wrote on April 21, 2002, according to an English translation provided to The Daily Caller by a native Spanish speaker.

By the way, the scandal could spread. It turns out that Dr. Melgen, who is being investigated for Medicare fraud, has big-name friends besides Menendez.
Among the politicians whom Melgen has befriended, and for whom he has hosted private fundraisers at his 5,000-square-foot home: former U.S. Sens. Christopher Dodd and Bob Graham, late Florida Gov. Lawton Chiles — who also was a patient of Melgen’s — former President Bill Clinton, and Leonel Fernández, former president of the Dominican Republic.
Goodman noted that Bill and Hillary Clinton vacationed at the doctor’s home in Casa de Campo in the Dominican Republic,

7.9%

http://www.ijreview.com/2013/02/33927-33927/

BREAKING: January Jobs Report Released Day After Obama Shuts Down Jobs Council

 

January saw an addition of 157,000 jobs while the unemployment edged higher to 7.9 percent (from 7.8 percent last month). As CNBC put it, this news is “unlikely to alter the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy or instill confidence that the recovery is gaining steam.”

• Total unemployed – 12.3 million (12.2 million last month)
• Black unemployment – 13.8 percent (14.0 last month)
• Adult Female unemployment – 7.3 percent (unchanged)
• Adult Male unemployment – 7.3 percent (7.2 last month)
• Civilian labor force participation rate – 63.6 percent (unchanged)
   
• The U-6 unemployment rate, a much more encompassing figure than the U-3 rate (7.9 percent), that accounts for underemployed persons and discouraged workers remained unchanged at 14.4 percent. Just as a reminder, the U-6 rate stood at 14.2 percent as of January 2009, when the president took office.

ObamaCare Shocker

(CNSNews.com) – In a final regulation issued Wednesday, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) assumed that under Obamacare the cheapest health insurance plan available in 2016 for a family will cost $20,000 for the year. ------- Nice, designed from day one to push the health care system in to a single payer system. That will mean MASSIVE rationing. Can't wait to hear the Obamacare supporters say WAIT, this isn't working out like we thought it would. Yeah, you will be covered for everything... Everything on the officially approved list. Need a flu shot, stitches, pills, crutches? no problem. Need a CAT Scan, an MRI, reconstructive surgery, cataract surgery, Chemo? then you have a big problem. And there won't be any charities in the future to provide these things, why should there be medical charities when ObamaCare is supposed to cover everyone?

Union leaders say many of the Obamacare's requirements will drive up the costs for their health-care plans and make unionized workers less competitive.

From WSJ:

Union leaders say many of the law's requirements will drive up the costs for their health-care plans and make unionized workers less competitive. Among other things, the law eliminates the caps on medical benefits and prescription drugs used as cost-containment measures in many health-care plans. It also allows children to stay on their parents' plans until they turn 26.

To offset that, the nation's largest labor groups want their lower-paid members to be able to get federal insurance subsidies while remaining on their plans. In the law, these subsidies were designed only for low-income workers without employer coverage as a way to help them buy private insurance.

Top officers at the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, the AFL-CIO and other large labor groups plan to keep pressing the Obama administration to expand the federal subsidies to these jointly run plans, warning that unionized employers may otherwise drop coverage.

So now that even the unions have understood that Obamacare is one big tax, maybe it is time to reevaluate its arrival at a time when the already strapped US consumer sees taxes rising, and has their savings extinguished.

Wonder why employers are going part time like lemmings over a cliff?

Insurers will no longer be able to deny coverage to people with pre-existing conditions. Most individuals will be taxed if they don't carry insurance, and employers with at least 50 workers will face a fine if they don't provide it.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-01-31/labor-unions-finally-read-obamacare-fine-print-realize-costs-set-spike-turn-sour-oba

Twinsdad comments... this is the way of the king we have in Washington.  The plan is simple, keep the rabble at bay and make the high middle class pay for everything, the upper class can afford ANY tax they have to pay.. This is also the racial part of the blog where I say something stupid, like Obama is a racist and has planned all his life ways to get back at the whites in this country and now he and Rev. Wrong are getting their collective revenge.

Can't wait for the FBI to come knocking...

1/31/13 A day that may live in "Infamy" as Syria Threatens "Surprise" Response To Israel Air Raid; Iran And Russia Pile In

In the aftermath of yesterday's surprising attack by Israel on Syrian soil, an act which any prior justification notwithstanding is a clear act of war sovereign aggression, it was only a matter of time before Syria responded, at least diplomatically at first. And as we also noted yesterday that "Iran has previously warned that any attack on Syria is the same as an attack on Iran" it was safe to assume that Iran would have a thing or two to say in response as well. Earlier today they did just that, with Syria warning that a "surprise" response to the Israel attack is forthcoming, while the "Iranian deputy foreign minister Hossein Amir Abdullahian said the attack "demonstrates the shared goals of terrorists and the Zionist regime... It is necessary for the sides which take tough stances on Syria to now take serious steps and decisive stances against this aggression by Tel Aviv and uphold criteria for security in the region." Finally yesterday we wondered "how Russia and/or China which have made clear that Syria is a strategic geopolitical center for both in the past will react", and today we know: "Russia, which has blocked Western efforts to put pressure on Syria at the United Nations, said that any Israeli air strike would amount to unacceptable military interference." So far nothing from China, which has in the past let Russia be its proxy on Syrian matters.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-01-31/syria-threatens-surprise-response-israel-air-raid-iran-and-russia-pile

Russia, which has previously made it very clear it will not tolerate US intervention in what it considers it own backyard, was quick at passing judgment:

"If this information is confirmed, we are dealing with unprovoked attacks on targets on the territory of a sovereign country, which blatantly violates the U.N. Charter and is unacceptable, no matter the motives," Russia's foreign ministry said.

Finally, Iran:

An aide to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Saturday Iran would consider any attack on Syria as an attack on itself.

Yet the local Syrians, like most, are very skeptical this war of words will escalate into anything more:

In battle-torn Damascus, residents doubted Syria would fight back. One mother of five said she had heard retaliation would come later. "They always say that. They'll retaliate, but later, not now. Always later," she said, and laughed.

"The last thing we need now is Israeli fighter jets to add to our daily routine. As if we don't have enough noise and firing keeping us awake at night."

Then again, provoking a Syrian retaliation has been the plan all along. Which is why moments ago, just to keep Plan B afloat, Reuters blasted that:

• WHITE HOUSE SAYS IRAN'S INSTALLATION OF ADVANCED URANIUM ENRICHMENT CENTRIFUGES WOULD BE PROVOCATIVE STEP IN VIOLATION OF U.N. RESOLUTIONS

Cue more photoshopped pictures of WMDs.

Twinsdad comment...
It was smart of Israel to start heat with Syria, since Obama shot down their plan for direct Iranian strikes. Syria has been giving arms to Lebanon for years, why act like this is something new and the BS about chemical weapons. Obama must be pissed that the Jews and not listening to him and going round about way to start an Iranian war. Be careful what you ask for. the whole middle east is going hot very soon.

U.S. GDP Contracts for First Time Since 2009

http://www.foxbusiness.com/economy/2013/01/30/us-gdp-contracts-for-first-time-since-200/
Gross domestic product fell at a 0.1 percent annual rate after growing at a 3.1 percent clip in the third quarter, the Commerce Department said on Wednesday.
That was the worst performance since the second quarter of 2009, when the recession ended, and showed the economy entering the new year with no momentum.
 Economists say a growth pace in excess of 3 percent would be needed over a sustained period to significantly lower high unemployment. The economy has struggled to hold above a 2 percent growth pace.
For the whole of 2012 the economy grew 2.2 percent.

http://www.bea.gov/newsreleases/national/gdp/gdpnewsrelease.htm
Real exports of goods and services decreased 5.7 percent in the fourth quarter, in contrast to an increase of 1.9 percent in the third. Real imports of goods and services decreased 3.2 percent, compared with a decrease of 0.6 percent.
The acceleration in real GDP in 2012 primarily reflected a deceleration in imports, upturns in residential fixed investment and in private inventory investment, and smaller decreases in state and local government spending and in federal government spending that were partly offset by decelerations in PCE, exports, and nonresidential fixed investment.