Obamacare Glitch Could Make Coverage Unaffordable For Low-Wage Workers

HuffPo: It’s called the Affordable Care Act, but President Barack Obama’s health care law may turn out to be unaffordable for many low-wage workers, including employees at big chain restaurants, retail stores and hotels. That might seem strange since the law requires medium-sized and large employers to offer “affordable” coverage or face fines.

But what’s reasonable? Because of a wrinkle in the law, companies can meet their legal obligations by offering policies that would be too expensive for many low-wage workers.  For the employee, it’s like a mirage – attractive but out of reach.

The company can get off the hook, say corporate consultants and policy experts, but the employee could still face a federal requirement to get health insurance.

Many are expected to remain uninsured, possibly risking fines. That’s due to another provision: the law says workers with an offer of “affordable” workplace coverage aren’t entitled to new tax credits for private insurance, which could be a better deal for those on the lower rungs of the middle class.

Some supporters of the law are disappointed. It smacks of today’s Catch-22 insurance rules. “Some people may not gain the benefit of affordable employer coverage,” acknowledged Ron Pollack, president of Families USA, a liberal advocacy group leading efforts to get uninsured people signed up for coverage next year.

“It is an imperfection in the new law,” Pollack added. “The new law is a big step in the right direction, but it is not perfect, and it will require future improvements.”

Andy Stern, former president of the Service Employees International Union, the 2-million-member service-sector labor union, called the provision “an avoidance opportunity” for big business. SEIU provided grass-roots support during Obama’s long struggle to push the bill through Congress.

The law is complicated, but essentially companies with 50 or more full-time workers are required to offer coverage that meets certain basic standards and costs no more than 9.5 percent of an employee’s income. Failure to do so means fines for the employer. (Full-time work is defined as 30 or more hours a week, on average.)

But do the math from the worker’s side: For an employee making $21,000 a year, 9.5 percent of their income could mean premiums as high as $1,995 and the insurance would still be considered affordable.

Even a premium of $1,000 – close to the current average for employee-only coverage – could be unaffordable for someone stretching earnings in the low $20,000′s.

With such a small income, “there is just not any left over for health insurance,” said Shannon Demaree, head of actuarial services for the Lockton Benefit Group.  “What the government is requiring employers to do isn’t really something their low-paid employees want.”

Based in Kansas City, Mo., Lockton is an insurance broker and benefits consultant that caters to many medium-sized businesses affected by the health care law. Actuaries like Demaree specialize in cost estimates.

Another thing to keep in mind: premiums wouldn’t be the only expense for employees. For a basic plan, they could also face an annual deductible amounting to $3,000 or so, before insurance starts paying.

“If you make $20,000, are you really going to buy that?” asked Tracy Watts, health care reform leader at Mercer, a major benefits consulting firm.

And low-wage workers making more than about $15,900 won’t be eligible for the law’s Medicaid expansion, shutting down another possibility for getting covered.

It’s not exactly the picture the administration has painted. The president portrays his health care law as economic relief for struggling workers.

“Let’s make sure that everybody who is out there working hard and doing the right thing, that they’re not going to go bankrupt because they get sick, that they’re going to have health care they can count on,” Obama said in a Chicago appearance last summer during the presidential campaign. “And we got that done.”

White House senior communications advisor Tara McGuinness downplayed concerns. “There has been a lot of conjecture about what people might do or could do, but this hasn’t actually happened yet,” she said. “The gap between sky-is-falling predictions about the health law and what is happening is very wide.”

The administration believes “most businesses want to do right by their employees and will continue to use tax breaks to provide quality coverage to their workers,” she added. Health insurance is tax deductible for employers, and the health law provides additional tax breaks to help small businesses.

Virtually all major employers currently offer health insurance, although skimpy policies offered to many low-wage workers may not meet the requirements of the new law. Companies affected have been reluctant to telegraph how they plan to comply.

“It clearly isn’t going to be a morale-boosting moment when you redo your health plan to discourage participation,” said Stern, the former labor leader, now a senior fellow at Columbia University. “It’s not something most want to advertise until they are sure it’s the right decision.”

The National Retail Federation’s top health care expert said there’s no “grand scheme to avoid responsibility” among employers. “That is a little too Machiavellian,” said Neil Trautwein. Nonetheless, he acknowledged it’s “a possible outcome” that low-wage workers could find coverage unaffordable because of the wrinkle in the law.

It might have turned out differently, added Trautwein, if Democrats had followed traditional congressional practice and taken the House and Senate versions of the bill to a conference committee. They could have worked out such quirks. But leaders determined that path was fraught with political peril after Democrats lost their 60-vote Senate majority in 2010.

“I can’t help but thinking, they would have figured out a few more of these corners that don’t meet,” Trautwein said.

If you haven’t already, I suggest reading the Obamacare Survival Guide. I’m about half way through the book. Warning though – this book should be classified as a horror novel.

DCG

Sign of the times: Wal-Mart hiring only temps; bank lay-offs like 2009

Here’s more evidence that the media-hyped “economic recovery” is a chimera.

In a Feb. 12 e-mail to other executives, Wal-Mart’s vice president of finance and logistics Jerry Murray wrote that “February MTD (month to date) sales are a total disaster. The worst start to a month I have seen in my 7 years with the company.”

Now, Reuters is reporting that Wal-Mart’s woes are persisting. In recent months, Wal-Mart Stores Inc has been hiring only temporary workers at many of its U.S. stores, the first time the world’s largest retailer has done so outside of the holiday shopping season.

A Reuters survey of 52 stores run by Wal-Mart in the past month, including one in every U.S. state, showed that 27 were hiring only temps, 20 were hiring a combination of regular full, part-time and temp jobs, and 5 were not hiring at all. The survey was based on interviews with managers, sales staff and human resource department employees at the stores.

Wal-Mart spokesman David Tovar said that the new hiring policy is to ensure “we are staffed appropriately,” when the stores are busiest and is not a cost-cutting move. Temporary workers are paid the same starting pay as other workers, but using temps enables the company to have adequate staff on busy weeknights and weekends without having to hire additional full-time staff.

Tovar admitted that before 2013, only 1-2% of the company’s U.S. workforce were temps (or what Wal-Mart internally calls “flexible associates”). Now, the percentage of temps has risen to about .

Walmart U.S. Chief Executive Bill Simon also confirmed that the company is hiring more temp workers: “Their hours flex by the needs of the business from time to time.”

The hiring strategy could save Wal-Mart money by trimming labor costs at a time when its margins remain under pressure. Many consumers are still struggling given a high jobless rate and lack of income growth, leaving retailers of everyday goods with little pricing power, according to other company CEOs and benefits experts. Competition from dollar stores, other big box discount chains and grocery stores is also intense.

It also could set an example for some other companies as they look for ways to cushion themselves from a potential rise in healthcare costs next year as a result of Obamacare, according industry experts and retail executives. Denying that the temp-hiring move was related to Obamacare, Tovar nevertheless acknowledged that it could take a year or more for temporary workers to receive health care benefits.

Wal-Mart’s U.S. staffing has remained relatively flat even as more stores have opened in recent years. At the end of fiscal 2013, Wal-Mart had “more than 1.3 million” workers in the United States, the majority of them at 4,005 Walmart U.S. stores, compared with “approximately 1.4 million” workers in the United States at the end of fiscal 2009, the majority of them at 3,656 Walmart U.S. stores, according to the company’s annual filings for both years.

The temporary workers are often being hired on 180-day contracts, according to the survey of Wal-Mart stores. Temp workers typically have a completion date after which they have to reapply for work, but part-time employees work fewer hours than full-time workers indefinitely.

“Full-time people are getting slimmer and slimmer,” said a supervisor at a store in North Carolina, who asked not to be named, as did other store-level employees who were interviewed for this story, because she is not authorized to talk to the media. She said that the five new employees hired this year at the store are all temps and hours of existing employees are being cut.

A store manager in Alaska, who asked not to be identified, also said that “Everybody who comes through the door I hire as a temporary associate. It’s a company direction at the present time.”

Mary Pat Tifft, a member of the Organization United for Respect at Walmart, or OUR Walmart, a group of current and former Walmart employees campaigning for better wages, hours and benefits, said, “Long-term associates are particularly distraught by this short-term hiring as many are looking for more hours and full-time work. OUR Walmart does not define itself as a union but it does require its members to pay $5 monthly dues and is part of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union.

Labor market experts said that the relatively high U.S. unemployment rate, which was an official 7.6% in May, and the large number of people not counted because they have left the labor force at least temporarily, does give companies like Wal-Mart the conditions to attract temp workers. National Retail Federation’s healthcare lobbyist Neil Trautwein said that hiring temps is “one strategy” that retailers could use to mitigate the potential rise in healthcare costs due to the Obamacare.

Wal-Mart already has begun to change the healthcare plans it provides workers. Last November, it said that newly hired part-time employees would have to work a minimum of 30 hours a week, up from 24 hours previously, before they can qualify for health coverage. Its U.S. employees also faced an 8-36% increase in premiums in 2013, prompting some workers to forego insurance. The majority of eligible employees at Wal-Mart sign up for the company’s health insurance.

Under Obamacare, large companies like Wal-Mart must next year offer healthcare to 95% of employees who work more than 30 hours a week or pay a penalty of $2,000 per worker for the entire workforce. When the work hours are so variable that the employer is not certain whether an employee qualifies, they can elect to determine eligibility by measuring hours during a period of up to 12 months, a strategy used by Wal-Mart. As a result, Wal-Mart’s temp workers may have to wait a year – provided they are still employed at the company – to find out if they are eligible. By that time, however, the temp may have been fired, which means some temps never get health coverage.

UPDATE:

Financial institutions are firing staff at almost the same rate in 2013 as they did in 2009 (source):

~Eowyn

Congressman’s stunning 1-minute indictment of Obama

This congressman is a breath of fresh air! I transcribed his 1-minute speech, containing six indictments against the POS:

Mr. Speaker,

The President’s Justice Department sold weapons to narco-terrorists south of our border who killed one of our finest.

The President’s State Department lied about Benghazi with false information provided by the White House.

The President’s attorney general authorized spying on a Fox News journalist and his family for reporting on a North Korean nuclear test.

The President’s Justice Department confiscated phone records of the Associated Press because they reported on a thwarted terrorist attack.

The President’s Treasury Department uses the IRS to target political opposition.

The President’s Health and Human Services secretary pressures the insurance companies she is supposed to regulate to promote Obamacare, which is the same law she uses to force citizens to pay for abortion-inducing drugs against their religious liberties.

Mr. Speaker. The President’s dishonesty, incompetence, vengefulness and lack of moral compass leave many to suggest that he is not fit to lead. The only problem is his vice president is equally unfit and even more embarrassing.

Rep. James “Jim” Bridenstine (R) is the newly-elected (in 2012) representative for Oklahoma’s 1st congressional district in Tulsa.

A  Navy pilot and combat veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, 37-year-old Bridenstine lives with his wife Michelle and their three children Walker (6), Sarah (4), and Grant (9 mos.) in Tulsa, OK.

Bridenstine graduated from Rice University with degrees in economics, business and psychology. After college, he joined the Navy and became a pilot, flying combat missions off the USS Abraham Lincoln in Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan, Operation Southern Watch in Iraq, and Operation Shock and Awe in Iraq. Later, he transitioned to the F-18 Hornet fighter at the Naval Strike and Air Warfare Center, the parent command to TOPGUN, where he flew “Red Air” and was also an instructor.

After leaving active duty, Bridenstine earned an MBA from Cornell University and returned to Tulsa to be the Executive Director of the Tulsa Air and Space Museum & Planetarium. He was recently promoted to the rank of Lieutenant Commander in the U.S. Navy Reserve where he flies the E-2C Hawkeye, a surveillance and operations command aircraft, in Central and South America in support of America’s war on drugs.

He is a Southern Baptist, an Eagle Scout, the current State of Oklahoma record holder in swimming, and the recipient of several military awards, including the Air Medal. (Sources: here and here)

Please support the good people in America, especially those in political office where they are subject to temptation and corruption. Please let Jim Bridenstine know you appreciate what he’s doing.

Here’s his contact info:

216 Cannon House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
Phone: 202-225-2211
To send an email, click here or go to https://bridenstine.house.gov/contact/email-me

Click here to sign a petition urging Congress to impeach the POS.

H/t Patriot Action Network

~Eowyn

President Lucifer Appoints Church Lady to Enforce ObamaCare!

Also read: FALSE FLAG ALERT!!!

Who appointed the Church Lady over the IRS ObamaCare Enforcement division? Hmmmmmmmmmmmm…

Could it be SATAN?!!!

ABC:
IRS Official in Charge During Tea Party Targeting Now Runs Health Care Office

WASHINGTON EXAMINER:
UPDATED: IRS tax exemption/Obamacare exec got $103,390 in bonuses

BREITBART:
IRS Official in Charge During Political Persecution of Conservatives Now Running ObamaCare Office

FOXNEWS:
Outgoing IRS Commissioner Faces Hearing Amid ‘Stunning’ Revelation

6 in 10 employers plan to make fat employees pay more for their healthcare

If you’re overweight, here’s another reason to lose the weight.

Until now, large companies have employed incentives, such as a wellness program of company gym and healthy food in the company cafeteria, to encourage their employees to be health conscious and so reduce the company’s healthcare costs.

But with ever-rising healthcare costs that are exacerbated by Obamacare, employers are moving from the carrot to the stick. More and more, companies are turning to a “fat penalty” or “fat tax” to get overweight employees to shoulder more of their healthcare expenses.

In an article for subscribers only, the Wall St. Journal (via ZeroHedge) reports that corporate spending on health care is expected to reach an average of $12,136 per employee this year, according to a study by the consultant firm Towers Watson.

Typically, however, 20% of a company’s workforce drives 80% of health-care costs, and roughly 70% of health-care costs are related to chronic conditions brought on by lifestyle choices, such as overeating or sedentary behavior.

In addition to higher healthcare costs, obese or overweight workers also cost their employers in lost productivity. A 2011 Gallup survey estimated obese or overweight full-time U.S. workers miss an additional 450 million days of work each year, compared with healthy workers, resulting in more than $153 billion in lost productivity.

So companies are doing something about it, since the carrot approach hasn’t really worked.

A recent study of 800 mid- to large-size firms by human-resources consultancy Aon Hewitt found that as many as 6 in 10 employers say they plan to impose penalties in the next few years on employees who don’t take action to improve their health. According to another study, by the National Business Group on Health and Towers Watson, the share of employers who plan to impose penalties is likely to double to 36% in 2014.

Workers will be penalized for a range of conditions, including thick waistlines, high cholesterol and high blood pressure — all proxies for obesity about which companies can’t say outright. Companies are also demanding that employees share personal-health information, such as body-mass index, weight and blood-sugar level, or face higher premiums or deductibles.

Current law permits companies to use health-related rewards or penalties as long as the amount doesn’t exceed 20% of the cost of the employee’s health coverage.

Employee-rights advocates say the penalties are akin to “legal discrimination.” While companies are calling them wellness incentives, the penalties are essentially salary cuts by a different name, says Lew Maltby, president of Princeton, N.J.-based National Workrights Institute, a nonprofit advocacy group for employee rights in the workplace. “It means millions of people are getting their pay cut for no legitimate reason.”

But corporate leaders say they can’t lower health-care costs without changing workers’ habits, and they cite the findings of behavioral economists showing that people respond more effectively to potential losses, such as penalties, than expected gains, such as rewards.

An example is Honeywell International Inc. that recently introduced a $1,000 penalty—deducted from health-savings accounts—for workers who elect to get certain procedures such as knee and hip replacement and back surgery without seeking more input. The company had offered $500 for participating in a program that provides access to data and additional opinions for workers considering surgery, but less than 20% of the staff joined up. Since it flipped the incentive to a penalty, the company says, enrollment has been above 90%.

***

What do you think, FOTM reader? Sound off in our poll!

~Eowyn

Washington State Senators Support Requiring Insurers to Cover Abortion

As Dave reported on March 24th, a bill passed the Washington State House by a vote of 53-43, in favor of the mandatory coverage of abortion under Obamacare. On Monday, it was revealed that many senators support this measure. Here’s an update:

25 state senators express support for abortion insurance bill

KOMO News: A majority of Washington state Senators have signed a letter supporting a measure requiring insurers to cover abortion, but the bill’s fate remains uncertain.

The letter — dated March 5 but made public Monday — was signed by 25 of 49 state Senators and presented at a packed Senate Health Care Committee hearing where the bill was debated. After the hearing, frustrated supporters, who had long demanded a hearing on the measure, said they expected it would not pass out of the Republican-controlled panel.

“It was just for show,” said Sen. Karen Keiser of Kent, one of three Democrats on the seven-member panel. “It was simply a way to provoke a circus in the sense of having a lot of people show up and wave their ideological persuasions in front of us.”

The hearing attracted more than 250 people from both sides of the abortion issue, with many of those wearing rival buttons and ribbons and dressed in dueling color schemes left to watch the proceedings on a screen in a nearby room.

Committee Chairwoman Randi Becker, R-Eatonville, declined to answer questions on the bill’s status immediately following the hearing and did not respond to subsequent phone calls seeking comment. If it does not advance from her panel by Wednesday, special measures would be required for it to get to the floor for a vote.

The bill, which supporters call the Reproductive Parity Act, was passed by the House by a 53-43 vote in February, with mostly Democrats in favor and Republicans opposed. Gov. Jay Inslee, a Democrat and a bill supporter, has urged the Senate to vote on it.

The bill would make Washington the first state to require insurers that cover maternity care — which they all most do — to also pay for abortions. Similar legislation has been introduced each session in the New York State Assembly for over a decade but has never received a public hearing.

In testimony before Becker’s committee, those supporting the measure said it would ensure continued abortion coverage in the state once federal health care reforms taking effect next year trigger bureaucratic hurdles for insurers paying for the procedure.

The bill would ensure that a woman’s decision about whether to get an abortion “is left with her, her family, her health-care provider and her God,” said Elaine Rose, CEO of Planned Parenthood Votes Northwest, addressing the committee. “Not with government, not with her insurance plan, and with all due respect, not with any of you.”

Opponents countered that abortion insurance coverage is already widespread in the state and that the bill is unnecessary. They also said the measure threatens the religious freedoms of businesses and individuals who oppose abortion rights and do not want to subsidize the cost of the procedure for others.

“You all have the second amendment right to bear arms, to own a gun,” said Peggy O’Ban, spokeswoman for Human Life of Washington. “But does that mean I have to buy it for you?”

Shortly after the hearing, Sen. Mike Padden, R-Spokane Valley, told bill opponents gathered in the hearing room that momentum was on their side, but encouraged them to keep applying pressure on lawmakers to prevent it from receiving a vote in the full Senate.

The only one with no voice

The decision about whether to get an abortion “is left with her, her family, her health-care provider and her God”? If you want to keep it so private, why not pay for it yourself?

That statement also doesn’t sit very well with me, considering a Planned Parenthood representative used the same argument when it came to infanticide. I’m sick of my taxes paying for the murder of innocent children.

DCG

Will Chief Justice John Roberts be blackmailed (again) to rule in favor of same-sex marriage?

Today is the second day of the Supreme Court’s (SCOTUS) deliberations on the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act and, by implication, of same-sex marriage.

I woke up to a network TV reporter intoning that SCOTUS’s decision will hang on two justices: Anthony Kennedy and John Roberts.

God help us.

Recall that Chief Justice John Roberts was the critical vote that accounted for SCOTUS’s ruling in favor of Obamacare last June, by upholding the most controversial part of the “health care” law — individual mandate. SCOTUS’s “reasoning” was that the Individual Mandate is a tax, and it is within Congress’ power to tax (and spend).

Roberts’ vote on the side of the leftist justices came as a rude surprise to Conservatives. By all accounts, Obamacare was set to be defeated. Five of the conservative justices had even prepared a majority opinion against Obamacare, until one of them — John Roberts — at the 11th hour,  changed his mind, and switched his vote. The formerly majority opinion had to be quickly re-written as a minority dissent.

Roberts’ 11th-hour abrupt switch confounded everyone. Why would an alleged “strict constructionist” who ought to favor limiting governmental power in favor of individual choice, turn into the fifth and deciding vote for Obamacare, which is already changing the United States as we’ve known it. And at the last minute?

L to r: John, Jack, Jane, Josie Roberts, Oct. 3, 2005. Do those kids look Latin American to you?

A HuffPo article in 2012 claimed that “a source close to the Roberts family, who requested anonymity in order to discuss judicial deliberations, told The Huffington Post that the justice’s wife, Jane, exercises a ‘heavy influence’ over her husband.” Jane Sullivan Roberts is described by Lisa McElroy, author of the biography John Roberts: Chief Justice, as “a very intelligent and high-powered lawyer in her own right.”

Below is an account of what could have led John Roberts to switch betray. (Note: The essay is quite long and should be relegated to the realm of unconfirmed rumors.) Briefly, the contention is that Roberts was blackmailed to switch his vote because he and his wife had illegally adopted two infants from Ireland. The Roberts children are now 12 to 13 years old.

According to a 2009 article in Irish America, John and Jane Roberts are part-owners of a little cottage in Knocklong County Limerick, Ireland, not far from Jane’s mother’s home place in Charleville on the Limerick/Cork border. John Roberts is also of Irish stock, as well as Welsh and Czech.

Since both John and Jane Roberts are practicing Catholics, and the Catholic Church is most decidedly against same-sex marriage (notwithstanding the heretical stance of “liberal” nuns and priests), if Roberts casts his lot in favor of same-sex marriage, it will lend credence to the blackmail rumor.

The following (long) article was first posted on LibertyCaucus.net, and then republished by other sites. (Warning: If you go to the LibertyCaucus.net link, you’ll get a red “Dangerous Site” message from McAfee.)

~Eowyn

Roberts swearing in the POS a second time in 2009

http://www.libertycaucus.net/forum/index.php?topic=113.0

How Roberts Was Blackmailed To Support ObamaCare

Many of us have questioned what caused Roberts  to switch his vote on ObamaCare at the last minute, as reported by CBS, and doing so,  so late that the Conservative Justices were forced to rewrite their majority opinion to be minority dissent. These facts may answer that question.

In 2000 Justice Roberts and his wife Jane adopted two children. Initially it was apparent that the adoptions were “from a Latin American country”, but over time it has become apparent that the adopted children were not Latin American, but were Irish.  Why this matters will become evident.

In 2005 the NY Times began investigating Roberts life as a matter of his nomination to the Supreme Court by George Bush.  The Times was shortly accused of trying to unseal the adoption papers and intending to violate  the anonymity of the adoption process… however there is more to the story.

Drudge did an article in 2005
http://patterico.com/2005/08/04/drudge-says-new-york-times-is-investigating-robertss-adoption-records/

The NEW YORK TIMES is looking into the adoption records of the children of Supreme Court Nominee John G. Roberts, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.The TIMES has investigative reporter Glen Justice hot on the case to investigate the status of adoption records of Judge Roberts’ two young children, Josie age 5 and Jack age 4, a top source reveals.Judge Roberts and his wife Jane adopted the children when they each were infants.

Both children were adopted from Latin America.

A TIMES insider claims the look into the adoption papers are part of the paper’s “standard background check.”

Bill Borders, NYT senior editor, explains: “Our reporters made initial inquiries about the adoptions, as they did about many other aspects of his background. They did so with great care, understanding the sensitivity of the issue.”

Were the Children Adopted from Ireland?

This is not clear … — the Associated Press reports that they were “adopted from Latin America.” This seems a bit puzzling, in light of the Time magazine report indicating that the children were born in Ireland. Also, their blonde hair and fair skin do not seem conventionally Latin American.¹

TIME had a “web exclusive” on the Roberts’s (7/24/05) and quoted a family friend as stating the kids were “born in Ireland 4 1/2 months apart.”

How were the Children Adopted?

According to The New York Times, based on information from Mrs. Roberts’s sister, Mary Torre, the children were adopted through a private adoption.

As explained by Families for Private Adoption, “[p]rivate (or independent) adoption is a legal method of building a family through adoption without using an adoption agency for placement. In private adoption, the birth parents relinquish their parental rights directly to the adoptive parents, instead of to an agency.”²

But was Robert’s adoption utilizing “a legal method”?

Apparently the process of adopting Jack involved some stress for John Roberts. According to Dan Klaidman of Newsweek, during the contested 2000 election, Roberts “spent a few days in Florida advising lawyers [for George W. Bush] on their legal strategy,” but “he did not play a central role,” because ” at the time, Roberts was preoccupied with the adoption of his son.”

It is now quite evident that the two Children were from Ireland.  Even wikipedia references these adoptions at the time of Roberts’ confirmation, and indicates that the children were of Irish birth.

However Irish law 1) prohibits the adoption of Children to non-residents, and 2) also does not permit private adoptions, but rather has all adoptions go through a public agency.

This would explain the children’s origin from a “Latin American country”, so as to circumvent Irish law.

Evidently Roberts arranged for this adoption through some sort of trafficking agency, that got the children out of Ireland and into that Latin American country, from which they were adopted, thereby circumventing two Irish laws — entirely illegal, but perhaps quasi-legitimized by the birth mothers (two) transporting the children out of Ireland.

Undoubtedly Roberts and his wife spent a great deal of money for this illegal process, circumventing Irish laws and arranging for the transit of two Irish children from separate birth-mothers to a foreign nation.  Come 2012, those two children have been with the Roberts’ for roughly 10 years, since they were adopted as “infants”.

Some might feel an impulse dismiss this information, mistakenly believing Roberts and his wife were doing a good thing for a children needing a home.

That would be an inaccurate belief.  As recognized, such an inter-country adoption would only come about at great cost, and those who utilize this method are creating a for-profit black market in adoptive children, trafficking across international borders, and doing so from mothers who have not yet given up  their children except for that profit.  Such actions are creating a very unsavory profit-for-children human trafficking market that even necessitates immediate contact with new birth mothers in dire circumstances to offer financial gain. The entire arrangement is thoroughly predatory, turning children into only financial commodity,  and even providing motivation for their birth mothers to give them up! That’s an important ethical recognition.

Roberts is not deserving of any sort of respect here, and is only the latest example of people in position believing themselves above the law, beyond scrutiny and exempt from repercussion.

It all now makes sense.

The circumstances of these two adoptions explain not only why this would be overlooked by an overall sympathetic media, but also why a sitting Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court would not want this information to become public fodder well into his tenure.  Its release and public discussion would discredit Roberts as an impartial judge of the law, and undoubtedly  lead to his impeachment.

This also explains why Roberts would have a means to be blackmailed, and why that leverage would still exist even after the institution of ObamaCare.

… And it has led to flipping the swing-vote on ObamaCare, which fundamentally changed the relationship between citizen and government, making us de facto property of the state, with our relative worth in care and maintenance able to be determined by the government.  Essentially it was a coup without firing a shot, much less needing even an Amendment to the Constitution.

And it is consistent with Obama’s Chicago-style politics, that has previously involved opening other sealed <divorce> records in order to win election.

Will Dems Pay for Passing Obamacare in 2014?

Disaster for Dems

ObamaCare & the 2014 vote

• By BETSY MCCAUGHEY
• Last Updated: 12:09 AM, March 25, 2013
• Posted: 10:42 PM, March 24, 2013

Betsy McCaughey

Democrats hope to retake the House of Representatives in next year’s elections. They won’t — and they’ll have themselves to blame, because 2014 is when ObamaCare kicks in.

With a vengeance.

The authors of the Obama health law postponed the pain until after the 2012 election. Some popular provisions went into effect immediately, such as allowing children to stay on their parent’s plan until age 26. And the White House granted 1,472 waivers to various companies and unions, exempting them from insurance reforms so they wouldn’t drop coverage for employees and members before the presidential contest.

AFP/Getty Images

Kiss of death: ObamaCare’s disastrous impact means Nancy Pelosi, here being greeted by the president last year, won’t be speaker again soon.

Yet a majority of voters on Election Day still opposed the health law (though, obviously, it wasn’t the deciding issue in the presidential race). And opinion will only sour more as the law takes full force starting in January.

People in their 20s and 30s will be clobbered — their health-insurance premiums will double (or more), insurers report. Nineteen percent of the president’s 2012 voters came from this age group. The biggest problem: The Obama law forces insurers to charge young, healthy people more to cover the cost of insuring the middle-aged and those with pre-existing conditions.

Middle-aged folks will benefit somewhat from overcharging the young, but the law’s mandatory benefits package and its billions in new taxes on insurers will drive up costs enough that overall premiums for a family of five will start at $20,000 (before subsidies, if any). Oh — and that doesn’t count the penalty for each smoker, roughly $3,000 a head.

(Subsidies may help some people cover sky-high premiums, though not the smoking penalty — but the letter of the law makes those subsidies unavailable in many states. The federal courts will eventually decide the issue.)

Many workers in industries such as retail, hospitality and home care will lose on-the-job health coverage, forecasts the ADP Research Institute — and many will also be demoted to part-time status because of ObamaCare.

Why? The president’s health law mandates that all employers with 50 or more full-time workers provide its “essential benefit package” if they offer insurance — and that package costs about twice what these industries now offer. Many employers will drop coverage, and pay the (smaller) fine; others will try to avoid that 50-employee limit by using more people part-time.

Even the government’s actuaries admit fewer people will get coverage at work after the employer mandate goes into effect than if the law had not passed.

You will find the rest of the article at this link.

I am praying Betsy McCaughey is right, as it appears the current congress cannot bring itself to even throw a speed bump in front of Obama’s health care plan from Hell. Okay, it really is not Obama’s plan, as it was written many moons ago and has been sitting in a rusty file cabinet ever since, but he will be forever associated with it.

There is just one teeny, tiny problem, though, as filling out an Obamacare application will include an opportunity to register to vote.

That could end up being a double edged sword given the low-information electorate we now have in this country.

And do not even get me started on the potential for voter fraud.

-Dave

Washington State Senate to Vote on Abortion Insurance Mandate

Washington state weighs first-in-the-nation abortion insurance mandate

Published March 24, 2013  / Associated Press

In 1970, Washington became the first — and remains the only — state in the country to legalize elective abortions by a popular vote.

A generation later, and 40 years removed from the landmark United States Supreme Court Roe v. Wade ruling that extended abortion access nationwide, Washington is once again poised to stand out.

With 21 states having adopted bans or severe restrictions on insurance companies from paying for abortions, Washington is alone in seriously considering legislation mandating the opposite.

The Reproductive Parity Act, as supporters call it, would require insurers in Washington state who cover maternity care — which all insurers must do — to also pay for abortions.

The bill passed the state House earlier this month by a vote of 53-43, though it faces an uncertain future in the Senate. A similar bill in the New York state Assembly has been introduced each session for over a decade but has never received a public hearing.

“This is a core value for Washingtonians,” said Melanie Smith, a lobbyist for NARAL Pro-Choice Washington. “We should protect it while we still have it and not leave access to basic health care up to an insurance company.”

The proximate cause of Washington state’s measure is the federal Affordable Care Act. Thanks to language placed in it to assuage anti-abortion congressional Democrats, insurers selling their plans on the state exchanges taking effect next year will have to segregate the premiums they collect for abortion coverage.

You will find the rest of the story here.

Monster

I hope this idiocy fails to pass, but given that it is Washington state, I have a sick feeling that it will.

I also cannot ignore the irony that Obamacare is going to pay for the murder of unborn children that will not even get a chance at productive lives, yet refuse care for the elderly, most of which have led productive lives and contributed much to this nation, simply because it is considered to be too expensive.

We have now reached the point where government bureaucrats, who have had no medical training outside of applying a band-aid and popping pills, will be deciding who among us lives or dies.

This is not really America anymore, and I cannot help but wonder just when our plug is going to be pulled for good.

-Dave

(H/t: Drudge)

Killing Us Softly – Part 7

Here is the last segment, Part 7, of Kelleigh Nelson’s outstanding series of articles on ObamaCare and the Death Culture inherent in the godless Brave New World of Agenda 21 and Sustainable Development. If you value the sanctity of life from conception to natural death, this series will have you in tears. Please share on Facebook and other social media. It could save lives!

FOTM is grateful for Kelleigh’s permission to re-publish this important series. Here are the preceding segments:

• “Killing Us Softly – Part 6,” Mar. 11, 2013
• “Killing Us Sofly – Part 5,” Feb. 16, 2013
• “Killing Us Softly – Part 4,” Feb. 14, 2013
• “Killing Us Softly – Part 3,” Feb. 8, 2013.
• “Killing Us Softly – Part 2,” Feb. 1, 2013.
• “Killing Us Softly – Part 1,” Jan. 29, 2013.

~Eowyn

KILLING US SOFTLY

Part 7

by Kelleigh Nelson

H.G. Wells in Anticipations (1901), described the coming “world state” where there would be “the merciful obliteration of “weak and silly and pointless” people.

In Robert Hugh Benson’s, Lord of the World (1907), he said there would be Ministers of Euthanasia (like Jack Kevorkian) in 1998 under American Socialism.  (a few years later, but I believe we’re there)

Policymakers

Ezekiel Emanuel, MD, who our President appointed Health Advisor, promotes the “Complete Lives System” that is being implemented to ration care. (Dr. Emanuel makes a clear choice: “When implemented, the “complete lives system” produces a priority curve on which individuals aged roughly 15 and 40 years get the most substantial chance, whereas the youngest and oldest people get changes that are attenuated.”)

Donald Berwick, who our President appointed administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, is a strong proponent of “Comparative Effectiveness Research” which will also be used to ration care. (In the United Kingdom, rather than focusing on the individual needs of patients, the National Health Service (NHS) uses comparative and cost-effectiveness information to limit options as a budgetary tool.)  There is little doubt the same will happen in the US.

Under the new law, “Accountable Care Organizations” are set up which will force very aggressive rationing practices by medical groups. (The health-care law calls for paying providers for the services they use and for rewarding them for any savings, initially in the Medicare program.)

Cass Sunstein, who our President appointed “Regulatory Czar,” (and who thankfully resigned) states that unless you specifically record your wish not to donate organs, doctors should be able to harvest your organs (should you be declared “brain dead”) for donation on the basis of “presumed consent,” even if you never actually give consent. He also has stated that an economic crisis can be “used to usher socialism into the United States.”

Our President appointed John Holdren as “Science Czar.” Holdren is the co-author of the 1977 book, Ecoscience that promotes ideas like forced sterilizations and abortions to limit population growth, compelling single mothers to give up their children to others, putting chemicals in water supplies to prevent births, and a planetary world government that would implement these ideas for the good of the world.

Ezekiel Emanuel, MD, has stated, “services provided to individuals who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens are not basic and should not be guaranteed.”  These are the people in society who Emanuel considers “useless eaters.”  They are no longer productive, and therefore, these vulnerable citizens should die.

This is not surprising since Dr. Emanuel is a fellow at the Hastings Center … the same Hastings Center co-founded by the euthanasia proponent, Willard Gaylin, MD … the same Hastings Center whose other co-founder, Daniel Callahan, explained in 1983 that taking all food and fluid away from vulnerable patients was probably the only way to make sure certain patients actually die (without legalization of euthanasia in America). This is the same Hastings Center that has worked side-by-side with hospice industry leaders to transform hospice and palliative care into the practical laboratory where its utilitarian, pro-euthanasia ideas are implemented, practices we now know as stealth euthanasia and direct euthanasia. Link

The Project on Death in America, financed by billionaire George Soros and the Robert Woods Johnson Foundation poured more than $200 million over the last decade into end-of-life programs and research. Link

Robert Wood Johnson II built the family firm of Johnson & Johnson into the world’s largest health products maker. He died in 1968. He established the foundation at his death with 10,204,377 shares of the company’s stock. The Robert Woods Johnson Foundation has given the Hemlock/Partnership for Caring and Last Acts merger, now known as Last Acts Partnership, over $1 million. According to the foundation, a longtime supporter of Planned Parenthood and euthanasia, Last Acts was the launching pad for an $11.25 million grant to “elevate awareness” and “inspire improvements” on end of life health care. The Johnson Foundation stated, “The program works at a number of clinical sites to encourage doctors to introduce palliative care earlier in patients’ diagnoses and to change the culture of medical institutions, which often focus exclusively on cure.” In other words, promote euthanasia, but do it deceptively.

The Soros project plans to act as a resource center to encourage other donors to support death-and-dying causes.  Robert Woods Johnson Foundation is still making grants and supporting the work to change how Americans think about dying and how they die. They are funding the National Hospice & Palliative Care Organization’s “Caring Connections” program. The leaders at the top of the National Hospice & Palliative Care Organization (“NHPCO”) are the Euthanasia Society of America’s heirs and benefactors philosophically. The NHPCO is legally and corporately the final successor organization of the Euthanasia Society in the very strictest sense of the terms.

Soros and W.H.O.

The World Federation of Right To Die Societies (which “consists of 44 right to die organizations from 25 countries),  states that it “strongly believes the manner and time of dying should be left to the decision of the individual, … and that the voluntarily expressed will of individuals, … should be respected by all concerned as an expression of intrinsic human rights.”  The list includes many well-known pro-euthanasia organization names, Death With Dignity, Choice in Dying, Final Exit, etc.

Listed prominently in the successor organizations of the Euthanasia Society of America is none other than the familiar hospice organization, National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization!  Why shouldn’t it be?  The NHPCO commonly gives out living wills, and advance directives.  Link

The following article exposes George Soros’ Social Agenda for America. His puppet, Barack Obama, is doing his bidding with the passage of The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act!

From Capital Research Center’s article, “George Soros’ Social Agenda for America,”

Many of Soros’ policy interests appear quixotic.  Euthanasia, like drug use, has little public support, and Americans look at public policy proposals to make it lawful with reactions ranging from skepticism to revulsion. Soros, however, approaches the popular reaction as an opportunity for public education. His grant making in this area is a form of national tutoring that he no doubt expects will eventually have a long-term impact–reaching even to rulings of the U.S. Supreme Court.

In a November 1994 lecture at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center in New York City, Soros revealed one motive for his interest: “Voters in Oregon just approved a law that makes it the first state to lift the prohibition against physician-assisted suicide. As the son of a mother who was a member of the Hemlock Society … I cannot but approve.” Founded in 1980, the Hemlock Society is a nonprofit group that advocates the right of the terminally-ill to commit suicide and calls for passage of laws permitting physician-assisted suicide.

That year Soros began giving money to start the “Project on Death in America” (PDIA), whose purpose is “to understand and transform the culture and experience of dying and bereavement through funding initiatives in research, scholarship, the humanities, and the arts, and to foster innovations in the provision of care, public education, professional education, and public policy.”  OSI (Soros’ Open Society Institute) remains a strong supporter of PDIA; in 2000 the foundation contributed a three-year  $15 million grant to sustain its mission.

Soros’ goal is to transform American attitudes toward death by changing public attitudes about physician-assisted suicide.   His financial backing has helped drug legalization proponents gain a new respectability, and he aims to do the same for supporters of euthanasia. PDIA’s large annual budget—$5 million—has helped it achieve prominence. PDIA director Kathleen M. Foley has testified before Congress on physician-assisted suicide, and PDIA-linked physician Susan Block, MD, a psychiatrist with the Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, last year argued in the pages of the  New England Journal of Medicine that “physician-assisted death may be an acceptable option of last resort.”

At a conference funded by PDIA, Dr. Robert Twyncross of Oxford University, lectured  participants about America’s medical system. Twyncross lamented that U.S. medicine was “hell-bent on defying death”—as if that were wrong—and referred favorably to Britain’s socialist health system.

In 2000, OSI also made grants to the Death with Dignity National Center ($100,000) and the Oregon Death with Dignity Legal Defense and Education Center ($75,000).  National Death with Dignity describes itself as “the premier educational organization dedicated to discussing physician aid in dying openly, seriously, and with intellectual rigor.” The Oregon group works to make the state the first to allow “terminally ill individuals meeting stringent safeguards to hasten their own deaths.” Founded in 1993, it would make it legal for ailing people to obtain lethal drug prescriptions.  Another Oregon-based group, the Compassion in Dying Federation of America (CDFA), has received OSI funding—$150,000 in 1998 and $125,000 in 1999. CDFA supports “aid-in-dying for terminally ill, mentally competent adults” and claims “assurance of  a humane death enhances the celebration of life.”

In 2001, PDIA made grants totaling $5,105,000 to groups concerned with what’s called “end of life” assistance for ailing people, such as palliative care for the terminally ill elderly. Other programs such as the PDIA “Social Work Leadership Development Awards” aim to increase the prestige of social workers committed to “end of life care” and help make them “mentors” and “role models” for a new generation of social workers.

The World Health Organization (W.H.O.) and George Soros are tightly intertwined.  Kathleen M. Foley, MD is the medical director of the International Palliative Care Initiative of Soros’s Open Society Foundations Public Health Program.  They are working to advance palliative care globally, but not the palliative care of those who respect life.  Instead, this is “palliative sedation,” as described in Part 5. The George Soros-funded group, together with Robert Woods Johnson Foundation, financed much of the extreme changes in end-of-life care through the 1990s and up to the present time.  The booklet, “The Solid Facts, Palliative Care,” edited by Elizabeth Davies and Irene Higginson, and distributed by W.H.O. ,was supported by the Floriani Foundation with collaboration of the Soros-funded Open Society Institute!  Other members of WHO’s palliative care leadership team include, among others, Joanne Lynn, MD.

Elizabeth Wickham, PhD, Executive Director of the Life Tree Organization, encourages us to look back to a June, 1997 NY Times story to get a better description of what Lynn believes about total sedation and withholding and withdrawing life sustaining treatment.  In the June, 1997 NY Times article, “Passive Euthanasia in Hospitals Is the Norm, Doctors Say,” Joanne Lynn stated, “When a patient is ready to die, I can stop nutrition and hydration. I can stop insulin and ventilation. I can sedate them.”   Dr. Lynn represents very mainstream medical thought in America today.

Dr. Lynn would have survived quite well with Dr. Mengele’s experiments in Auschwitz/Birkenau concentration camps.  She does not condemn medical killing via withholding food and hydration along with palliative sedation.  Lynn recently was a consultant to the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.  This should thrill us all that a woman who believes she has the right to murder her elderly and dying patients was a consultant to Medicare and Medicaid!  Doesn’t that give you a tingle up the leg!

Joanne Lynn has also been a senior researcher at the Rand Corporation.  Link  In my article, Mind Control and Smart Growth, I explained how smart growth facilitators’ attain their pre-determined outcome via their use of the evil Rand Corporation’s mind-control Delphi Technique. RAND developed the Delphi method in the 1950s for the U.S. Department of Defense. It was originally intended for use as a psychological weapon during the cold war.

The Hospice Holocaust

“Action T4″ was the name given to the euthanasia program used in Germany during Hitler’s reign of terror.  T4 is the abbreviation of the address in Berlin where it was concocted.  “Tiergartenstrabe 4. “The euthanasia decree was written on Hitler’s stationary, dated, September 1, 1939.  It stated, “Reich Leader Bouhler and Dr. Brandt are charged with the responsibility for expanding the authority of physicians, to be designated by name, to the end that patients considered incurable according to the best available human judgment of their state of health, can be granted a mercy death.”  Dr. Brandt was Hitler’s personal physician.

In order to garner support from the public in 1938, a poster was produced, showing a handicapped individual sitting in a chair with the words, “60,000 Reichmarks is what this person suffering from hereditary defects costs the people’s community during his lifetime.  Comrade, that is your money too.”

The same type of euthanasia program that took place under T4 is now taking place in homes across America, but it’s all happening under the radar.  Pastor Joey Faust witnessed his aunt being put to death by a morphine overdose administered by a hospice nurse.  He has decided to fight back.  He exposes this terrible “hidden” evil that has spread throughout America in a two part interview.

Conclusion

Nearly all of the information in this series has come from two books, “War Against the Weak,” by Edwin Black, and Ron Panzer’s, “Stealth Euthanasia: Health Care Tyranny in America.”  It is by far, the best expose of what is happening to our elderly and why.  I quoted from his documentation quite liberally in this series and am thankful for his efforts.  For help in locating a hospice, see Ron Panzer’s, Hospice Patients Alliance website.

The majority of Americans are asleep, and in 2015 when the final stages of Obama Care kick in, the baby boomers will wonder what happened to them.  It is unfortunate that most Americans have not fought the destruction of our once wonderful health care system.

The forces behind the United Nations Agenda 21/Smart Growth/Sustainability are hell bent on population reduction.  Their plan is to eliminate 85% of the world’s population.  We are murdering our babies in the womb at the rate of 2,000 a day.  In 40 years, 60 million American babies have died at the hands of abortion providers.  For 40 years we’ve also been killing our elderly with passive and open euthanasia.  It is obvious our elected representatives are in on the whole agenda.  In February, 2013, only 30 of the Republican representatives in the House voted to defund Obama Care.  The enemy is winning. 

These changes have been imposed upon us without the approval of most American citizens.  We are allowing the abandonment of sanctity-of-life values that formed the very foundation of American life and the greatness of our country.  So many of our values are disappearing at an exponential rate, faith in God, the traditional family, the value of work and opportunity to fulfill your dreams, and most importantly, the truth from the pulpits of America’s churches and synagogues.

There is, of course, only one hope that always stands true, and that is our faith in God.  Those of us who love our country, and see the daily destruction of this once great nation, need to be on our knees in repentance for our nation and pleading for His mercy.