I’m down in the Sacramento Valley as I write this post, at my wife’s house in Ghetto Centrale. Today is to be the warmest day of the week, perhaps into the 80s. It’s certainly filled with blue skies outside as contrasted to the miraculous and wondrous thunderstorm I encountered up at my cabin Tuesday night of last week.
Category Archives: Uncategorized
One Funny, One Not:
NOVEMBER:
Obama Lies — Then Adjusts, Then Adjusts:
No one can forget promises made regarding ObakaKare. Here is a video reminder:
Concurrently, Demorats and Leftists pushed for complete Single Payer (government-paid) healthcare plans. Some hedged their bets; most made their interests publicly known.
First, Mr Obama lies: you can keep what you wish when you wish. A massive lie.
Then: no you can’t. ObakaKare will sooner or later mandate your adherence to Der Plan.
Recently — but wait; there are now exceptions:
McDonald’s, 29 other firms get health care coverage waivers
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By Drew Armstrong, Bloomberg Business NewsNearly a million workers won’t get a consumer protection in the U.S. health reform law meant to cap insurance costs because the government exempted their employers.Thirty companies and organizations, including McDonald’s (MCD) and Jack in the Box (JACK), won’t be required to raise the minimum annual benefit included in low-cost health plans, which are often used to cover part-time or low-wage employees.
The Department of Health and Human Services, which provided a list of exemptions, said it granted waivers in late September so workers with such plans wouldn’t lose coverage from employers who might choose instead to drop health insurance altogether.
Without waivers, companies would have had to provide a minimum of $750,000 in coverage next year, increasing to $1.25 million in 2012, $2 million in 2013 and unlimited in 2014.
WHAT’S CHANGING: Provisions of the new health lawHEALTH CARE: New website compares coverage prices“The big political issue here is the president promised no one would lose the coverage they’ve got,” says Robert Laszewski, chief executive officer of consulting company Health Policy and Strategy Associates. “Here we are a month before the election, and these companies represent 1 million people who would lose the coverage they’ve got.”
The United Agricultural Benefit Trust, the California-based cooperative that offers coverage to farm workers, was allowed to exempt 17,347 people. San Diego-based Jack in the Box’s waiver is for 1,130 workers, while McDonald’s asked to excuse 115,000.
The plans will be exempt from rules intended to keep people from having to pay for all their care once they reach a preset coverage cap. McDonald’s, which offers the programs as a way to cover part-time employees, told the Obama administration it might re-evaluate the plans unless it got a waiver.
McDonald’s and Jack in the Box didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
So what is it?
Mandates or exemptions?
Guess you can suss that out for yourself.
BZ
Obama: Worst On Race Relations
Whenever I make a post about race, I can assume it will be a post that acquires a minimal smattering of comments. A few, perhaps; three or four.
Because I submit that the bulk of Americans are predominantly uncomfortable about race. I further submit: this goes to guilt.
Rasmussen Reports indicate:
Voters Are Much Less Optimistic About Black-White RelationsWednesday, October 06, 2010Perceptions about the state of black-white relations in America have fallen dramatically since the summer of 2009. But voters are still more optimistic about that relationship than they are about relations between whites and Hispanics and between blacks and Hispanics.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just 36% of voters now say relations between blacks and whites are getting better. That’s down from 62% in July of last year at the height of the controversy involving a black Harvard professor and a white policeman. That number had fallen only slightly to 55% in April of this year.
Twenty-seven percent (27%) now say black-white relations are getting worse, up 10 points from July 2009, while 33% think they’re staying about the same. (To see survey question wording, click here.)
African-Americans are much more pessimistic than whites. Thirty-nine percent (39%) of whites think black-white race relations are getting better, but just 13% of blacks agree.
Confidence in the nation’s course among African-Americans soared after Barack Obama’s election. But then several prominent Democrats, perhaps most notably former President Jimmy Carter, suggested that opposition to the president’s health care plan was motivated in part by racism. Only 12% of all voters agreed in September of last year, but among blacks, 27% felt that way and 48% were undecided.
Facts are what they are.
Polls are what they are.
BZ