Coincidence

On NCIS, there are rules that Jethro Leroy Gibbs follows and teaches his team as a method of being the best at what they do.

Rule #39: There is no such thing as coincidence.

Based on evidence presented to me today, I must concur.

On the Instapundit Blog today:

http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/

I QUESTION THE TIMING: A reader who works at Yale emails:

I found it interesting that this email came out today from Yale benefits:

Dear Colleagues:
We would like to make you aware of a significant federally mandated change which will impact Yale’s healthcare flexible spending account benefit. Effective January 1, 2013, as a provision of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the annual contribution limit will be capped at $2,500. Currently, the maximum amount of pre-tax dollars you can set aside in a healthcare flexible spending account is $12,000.

As a participant who contributed $2,500 or more in 2012, we encourage you to keep this in mind as you begin to plan for your 2013 out-of-pocket medical, dental and vision expenses. You will soon have an opportunity to re-enroll in the flexible spending account benefit plan during Annual Benefits Enrollment (December 3-17). As a reminder, you have until March 15, 2013 to incur expenses against your 2012 contributions, and until April 30, 2013 to submit claims those for reimbursement. We hope that this grace period is helpful for maximizing your flexible spending benefit for 2012.

If you have any further questions, please contact an Employee Services representative.
What interesting timing! I did know about this, as a former CPA/tax accountant, but how many did?

Today my husband came home and told me that his boss informed him today that a layoff is planned. Small aerospace/manufacturing plant.   We were worried before the election that if the direction didn’t change, we’d face an ugly economic future. It may already becoming true for our family.  

 I think a lot of stuff will be coming out over the next few weeks and months that was carefully kept off the radar before Election Day.

--------------------------------

Then today, I get this from a shipmate working out here in the AFGHN Sandbox:

Hi - Hope you're well

We just started open enrollment with my company; so I asked the benefits guy if I do nothing will all benefits remain the same-----a resounding yes was his answer. He did however advise me to go on the website to review the benefits to ensure all was OK.---so I did

All benefits were defaulted to the ones I have had for 3 yrs----good news; until the last page; that was the calculation page. My contribution for 3 years has been $106.00 per month; but the new contribution effective Jan. 2013 will be $293.00. 

 

That's almost a 200% increase.

So I e-mailed the benefits guy to verify this and of course his answer was "YES--WE'VE BEEN HIT WITH A HUGE RATE INCREASE'

A huge rate increase????????????????? can you say OBAMA-CARE

this is only the beginning

please share with your readers (and delete my name)

 

The idea that this all was "coincidence" is not only naive, but demonstrates a level of cluelessness that is scary.

This was part of the plan all along and people were dumb enough to vote for it.

Might be best to brush on these - we all might need them to deal with what will be coming:

"Then it's your problem.." - Doctors who are retiring see Obamacare as a losing strategy for healthcare

Obamacare will cost double what was forecast and it is highly likely that Obama and his cohorts in the Democratic Congress knew this when they jammed it through on the American people.

Throwing money at an issue is NOT a solution.

Here is a more informed POV. The Supreme Court needs to reverse this travesty. We have the best healthcare system in the world and subjecting to one person's political views is wrong. There is need for improvement but this will be the ruin of the superior care we all recieve.

ObamaCare Still a Disaster -- No Matter How the Supreme Court Decides
By Larry Elder

"I am a refugee," my anesthesiologist told me after I had awakened from my third surgery in 12 years — one to repair a muscle tear in my left shoulder and two for the same disc in my lower back. "I am part of the British 'brain drain' of the late '60s. Doctors could not make any money. So I left." Britain's loss, my gain. The same surgery 12 years ago required a two-day stay in a hospital. Last week, after a two-hour surgery, I left the same day as an outpatient.

But under ObamaCare, we can expect a loss of talent and a decline in quality of care. Thousands of us, the doctor explained, abandoned England to practice medicine in America. "So, how's this?" my doctor said. "I left the U.K. to get away from the government telling me how to practice, what to charge — and now we are getting the same thing. ObamaCare stinks, and the people will regret it. What happened to the docs there will happen here."

Great Britain began practicing socialized medicine through the taxpayer-funded National Health Services in 1948. And indeed, one of the first U.K. studies on the emigration of their native-born physicians, "British Doctors at Home and Abroad," published in 1964, noted that, beginning in the 1950s, their docs were leaving for "high-income" countries at an alarming rate: "Many of them stressed the wider field of work they could undertake in general practice abroad and criticized the limited role of the general practitioner in England." And nearly half a century later, Britain's "brain drain" continues.

Medical advances require research and development. And as much as government spends on health care and medical research, the private sector spends much more. But ObamaCare places a tax on medical equipment manufacturers, to raise $20 billion for the federal coffers when it goes into full effect in 2013. As a result, some medical device manufacturers are already closing up shop or downsizing to reflect lower profits under ObamaCare. Some canceled plans for new U.S. plants, looking to other parts of the world. Many manufacturers have already announced significant layoffs, and most also look to other alternatives, including cutting research and development, and passing along the tax's costs to the patients.

In addition to the excise tax on medical device manufacturers, ObamaCare imposes many more taxes, including the following: an individual mandate excise tax for adults who don't purchase "qualifying" health insurance; an employer mandate tax for those companies who don't offer health coverage; and a surtax on investment income — making the rate as high as 43.4 percent on gross income from interest, annuities, royalties, net rents and passive income for families making more than $250,000. Given this, will we see the same private-sector investments in the health care field, as ObamaCare imposes ever more regulations designed at increasing "accessibility" and "controlling costs"?

What about costs?

Obama promised that ObamaCare would "bend the cost curve" down. The Congressional Budget Office just released new figures on the 10-year cost of ObamaCare. Starting in 2010, government began taxing for ObamaCare to build up revenues. So for the first four years, ObamaCare takes in tax money but does not start spending in any significant amount until 2014. This was a tactic designed to make ObamaCare seem more "affordable."

But even with this gimmick, the CBO just doubled its original projections for the cost of ObamaCare. Now, the CBO pegs the cost to taxpayers at $1.76 trillion over the next decade. And, critics point out, this price tag is only for the cost of insurance subsidies, Medicaid and CHIP (Children's Health Insurance Program). It doesn't include implementation or other costs, which will likely send the taxpayers' bill soaring past $2 trillion.

Obama said his plan would save American families $2,500 a year on their insurance premiums. The new CBO report says premiums will rise 10 to 13 percent, and that up to 20 million people could lose their employer-provided health insurance every year from 2019 to 2022, a sharp revisal of its previous estimate of up to 3 million.

Oh, it all seems so lovely on paper, doesn't it?

Sen. Obama said that if he were "starting from scratch," he'd have a single-payer system. This is what they have in Canada. But when a high-ranking member of the Canadian government — and proponent of the Canadian health care system — needed surgery, he did not stay home. After having his 2010 heart surgery performed in Miami, Canadian Premier Danny Williams told reporters: "This was my heart, my choice, and my health. I did not sign away my right to get the best possible health care for myself when I entered politics."

Consider what the then-incoming president of the Canadian Medical Association said about their single-payer health care system: "(Our) system is imploding." Consider what the outgoing president said: "Competition should be welcomed, not feared."

My doctor remains cheerful. "I retire in a few years," he said. "Then it's your problem."

Larry Elder is a best-selling author and radio talk-show host.

www.LarryElder.com.

LIAR LIAR - Obama’s health care law will cost DOUBLE what he promised

Fool me once, shame on you.

Fool me twice, shame on me.

Looks like the FOOL in the Oval Office is trying to run fast & loose with the numbers on his signature disaster for our country, Obamacare.

In the history of our great country, there have been times where a government program improved something that the free market operates. This is not one of those times. The law will ensure compliance by enlisting the help of the IRS. REALLY ? How's that " Hopey/Changey" sound now ?

If the idiots in Washington DC can't get the basics right on what makes up good government, what makes you think we want them in charge of our healthcare ?

CBO boosts its Obamacare Medicaid cost estimate
by Philip Klein Senior Editorial Writer - National Examiner

I’ve already noted in a separate post that new Congressional Budget Office projections show President Obama’s health care law will cost $1.76 trillion over 10 years, rather than the $940 billion originally advertised. But there are lots of other moving parts in the CBO’s updated estimates that are worth deeper elaboration.

The big picture takeaway is that due mostly to weaker economic projections, the CBO now projects that more people will be obtaining insurance through Medicaid than it estimated a year ago at a greater cost to the government, but fewer people will be getting insurance through their employers or the health care law’s new subsidized insurance exchanges. Overall spending will be higher than estimated a year ago, but increased revenue from penalties and taxes will more than offset this. Also interesting: CBO now expects two million fewer people to be covered as a result of the health care law than previously projected.

It’s worth keeping in mind that what the CBO did today was update its forecasts for the cost of expanding insurance coverage under the health care law. That represents, by far, the bulk of the spending in the legislation, but it doesn’t constitute a full rescoring of the law or a revised deficit estimate. That would have to include estimates for all the taxes, Medicare cuts and other spending in the law. Also, the $1.76 trillion cited above is for the years 2013 through 2022, but if we want to compare changes to last year’s estimates, we have to use the comparable years of 2012 through 2021. (Estimates for 2022 only became available today.)

The CBO now projects that from 2012 through 2021 the federal government will spend $168 billion more on Medicaid than it expected last year, $97 billion less on subsidies for people to purchase insurance on government-run exchanges and $20 billion less on tax credits to small employers. That works out to a $51 billion increase in the gross cost of expanding coverage from what the CBO estimated a year ago. However, the CBO also expects the federal government to collect more revenue from penalties on individuals and employers, as well as other taxes. These revenue increases will more than offset the spending increases, according to the CBO, so it now expects the cost of Obamacare during those years to be $48 billion lower.

It’s also worth noting that we were told time and again during the health care debate that the law didn’t represent a government takeover of health care. But by 2022, according to the CBO, 3 million fewer people will have health insurance through their employer, while 17 million Americans will be added to Medicaid and 22 million will be getting coverage through government-run exchanges.

ObamaCare - If you believe that a new entitlement saves money, you'll believe anything...

This article from the Wall Street Journal pretty much sums it up.....



REVIEW & OUTLOOK
JANUARY 8, 2011
ObamaCare's Reality Deficit

If you believe that a new entitlement saves money, you'll believe anything..

Of all the claims deployed in favor of ObamaCare, and there are many, the most preposterous is that a new open-ended entitlement will somehow reduce the budget deficit. Insure 32 million more people, and save money too! The even more remarkable spectacle is that Washington seems to be taking this claim seriously in advance of the House's repeal vote next week. Some things in politics you just can't make up.

Terminating trillions of dollars in future spending will "heap mountains of debt onto our children and grandchildren" and "do very serious violence to the national debt and deficit," Nancy Pelosi said at her farewell press conference as Speaker. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius chimed in that "we can't afford repeal," as if ObamaCare's full 10-year cost of $2.6 trillion once all the spending kicks in is a taxpayer bargain.

The basis for such claims, to the extent a serious one exists, is the Congressional Budget Office's analysis this week of the repeal bill, which projects it will "cost" the government $230 billion through 2021. Because CBO figures ObamaCare will reduce the deficit by the same amount, repealing it will supposedly do the opposite. The White House promptly released a statement saying repeal would "explode the deficit."

Meanwhile, other Democrats have taken up arms about House procedure. The GOP adopted a budget rule that says repeal doesn't have to be "paid for," and the press corps is treating this exemption as a scandal against Washington decency.

In a memo, the inimitable Pete Stark spied a GOP plot "to shove through a massive bill"—the repeal measure is all of two pages—while Henry Waxman and other outgoing committee chairmen shook with outrage about "an offense to good government."

Republicans ran on "transparency in government and more fiscal responsibility," they wrote recently, and now here they are bringing "major legislation to the floor without any public hearings and without paying the trillion dollar cost of repeal. . . . The contrast between the approach the Republican leadership is proposing and the open process the Democrats followed last Congress is stark."

It sure is. Ten months ago, Democrats used a partisan majority to narrowly defeat bipartisan opposition and pass a national health-care program that a majority of the public opposed and continues to oppose today. Gallup reported yesterday that Americans favor repeal, 46% to 40%. Among the worst Democratic abuses was gaming the CBO's budget conventions to make it seem as if ObamaCare "saves" money.

The accounting gimmicks are legion, but we'll pick out a few: It uses 10 years of taxes to fund six years of subsidies. Social Security and Medicare revenues are double-counted to the tune of $398 billion. A new program funding long-term care frontloads taxes but backloads spending, gradually going broke by design. The law pretends that Congress will spend less on Medicare than it really will, in particular through an automatic 25% cut to physician payments that Democrats have already voted not to allow for this year.

The CBO budget gnomes are required to "score" what's on paper in front of them, no matter how unrealistic, and that's the method its Congressional masters prefer. The political class makes believe that CBO's forecasts are carved into stone tablets through divine revelation, but all they really show is that politicians have rigged the budget rules to hide the true cost of entitlements.

Anyone in search of economic or fiscal reality will have to turn to other sources. Two particular ObamaCare heroes are Richard Foster, the chief Medicare actuary with the courage to publish more honest analyses, and Paul Ryan, the Wisconsin Republican who is the most fluent scourge of ObamaCare's book-cooking, including in a debate last year in which President Obama had no response to his critique.

We also single out the economists Doug Holtz-Eakin, a former CBO director, and Eugene Steuerle, of the Urban Institute. Both have been voices in the wilderness about the incentives ObamaCare creates for businesses to drop coverage and dump their employees into "free" coverage, which really will "explode the deficit" far more than CBO projects.

But our core appeal isn't to this technical detail or that underlying assumption. It's to common sense. Amid the repeal debate, Democrats and the media are behaving as if they have no knowledge of Congress's habits or the history of government health-care programs over the last half-century. Entitlements are always sold as modest and "paid for," then years later everyone suddenly discovers that they are "unaffordable" without digging deeper into the pockets of the middle class. How do you think Medicare and Medicaid got to their current pass?

The government can't subsidize coverage for tens of millions of new people and simultaneously reduce the deficit, as most Americans seem to intuitively understand. The real offense Republicans are committing in the eyes of Washington is exposing its illusions.

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