Obamacare Is Going To Be The Biggest Expansion Of The Welfare State In U.S. History

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Obamacare Is Going To Be The Biggest Expansion Of The Welfare State In U.S. History Posted: 21 Nov 2013 04:21 PM PST Can the U.S. government afford to pay for the health care of 38 million more people?  As you will see below, Obamacare is going to be the biggest expansion of the welfare state in U.S. history.  It is being projected that a decade from now 17 million Americans will be receiving Obamacare subsidies and an additional 21 million Americans will have been added to the Medicaid rolls.  At a time when we are already running trillion dollar deficits, is this really something that the government should be taking on?  In addition, it is being projected that bringing millions upon millions of new people into the Medicaid program will also cause enrollment in many other federal welfare programs such as food stamps to surge.  Right now, the percentage of Americans that are financially dependent on the U.S. government is already at an all-time high, and Obamacare is going to cause the level of government dependence to go much, much higher.  But how much weight can the “safety net” actually carry before it breaks entirely? Since October 1st, the number of Americans enrolling in Medicaid has surprised many government officials.  For example, as USA Today recently reported, the number of Americans signing up for Medicaid is far surpassing the number of Americans signing up for private health insurance policies in many states… States are reporting far higher enrollment in Medicaid than in private insurance since the Affordable Care Act exchanges opened Oct. 1. In Maryland, for example, the number of newly eligible Medicaid enrollees is more than 25 times the number of people signed up for private coverage. And there are some Americans that are going to the health care exchanges intending to buy private coverage that are finding out that they are only being given the option to enroll in Medicaid instead.  The following example comes from the Wall Street Journal… The situation sounded absurd, so I asked her to walk me through her application on Washington Healthplanfinder to make sure she wasn’t missing anything. Sitting in New York with my computer, I logged onto the site under her name and entered the information my mother provided over the phone. I fully expected her to realize that she had forgotten some crucial piece of information, like a decimal point in her annual income. We checked and double-checked the information, but the only option still appeared to be Medicaid. She suggested clicking on “Apply for Coverage,” thinking that other options might appear. Instead, almost mockingly, her “Eligibility Results” came back: “Congratulations, we received and reviewed your application and determined [you] will receive the health care coverage listed below: Washington Apple Health. You will receive a letter telling you which managed care plan you are enrolled with.” Washington Apple Health is the mawkish rebranding of Medicaid in Washington state. The page lacked a cancel button or any way to opt out of Medicaid. It was done; she was enrolled, and there was nothing to do but click “Next” and then to sign out. As you read this, there are more than 62 million Americans enrolled in Medicaid right now. According to Obamacarefacts.com (a pro-Obamacare website), Obamacare could add 21 million more Americans to the Medicaid rolls over the next decade. And according to a report that came out earlier this month, 17 million Americans will qualify for Obamacare subsidies. So when you add those numbers together (21 million plus 17 million), you come up with a total of 38 million more people that the government will soon be providing health care for. And that does not even take into account more than 20 million elderly Americans that will be added to the Medicare program by 2025 as our population rapidly ages. The government is going to have to find a whole lot of money from somewhere to pay for all of this. And as I mentioned above, it is being projected that this surge in Medicaid enrollment will also be accompanied by a surge in enrollment in other welfare programs such as food stamps.   Just check out the following excerpt from a recent Politico article… Noting that the Affordable Care Act “could potentially have a profound impact on SNAP participation,” the Agriculture Department announced its plans to study the possible development last week in a document submitted to the Office of Management and Budget for review. The department says it wants to look into state coordination of SNAP and Medicaid enrollment and renewal, the process for directing Medicaid applicants to SNAP and the number of SNAP applications. Lawmakers who have advocated for SNAP stressed that the increase in food stamp recipients would result from people who should already have been in the program. “If people are eligible, they ought to be enrolled in it, so that’s a good thing,” said Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), a farm bill conferee who has stated that he would not vote for a bill that includes significant cuts to SNAP, in a phone interview with POLITICO. So we could ultimately end up with millions upon millions more Americans enrolled in food stamps and other major federal welfare programs. Not that helping the poor is a bad thing.  It certainly isn’t. But at some point if too many people jump on the “safety net” it is going to break. According to the most recent numbers from the U.S. Census Bureau, 49.2 percent of all Americans are currently receiving benefits from at least one government program each month. That is nearly half the country. Most of the people that are receiving these benefits actually need them and would be glad to get off of these programs if they could. However, without a doubt there are some people out there that are abusing the system. For example, one welfare recipient recently called into a radio show in Texas and was completely unapologetic about the fact that she planned to stay on welfare for the rest of her life… While workers out there are preaching morality at people like me living on welfare, can you really blame us? I get to sit home… I get to go visit my friends all day… I even get to smoke weed… Me and people that I know that are illegal immigrants that don’t contribute to society, we still gonna get paid. Our check’s gonna come in the mail every month… and it’s gonna be on time… and we get subsidized housing… we even get presents delivered for our kids on Christmas… Why should I work? Ya’ll get the benefit of saying “oh, look at me, I’m a better person,” but when ya’ll sit at home behind ya’lls I’m a better person… we the ones gettin’ paid! So can you really blame us? You can find a YouTube video of the entire conversation right here. Once again, the vast majority of Americans on welfare are not like this. Most Americans would prefer to have a good job or to own a thriving business and be providing for themselves.  But as our economy continues to decline, the number of Americans that are able to independently take care of themselves will continue to go down. Right now, the percentage of Americans that are dependent on the government is already at an all-time high, and Obamacare is going to add tens of millions more Americans to the welfare rolls. So what does this mean for the future of our country?  Please feel free to share what you think by posting a comment below…

YOUR FIRST CHRISTMAS CARD...

 

I love Christmas lights!

They remind me of the people who voted for Obama.

They all hang together, half of them don't work,

and the ones that do aren't all that bright!

Americans in Benghazi attack sent distress calls, pleading for their lives!

by Dr. Eowyn

Clockwise from top left: Ambassador Christopher Stevens; Foreign Service Information Management Officer Sean Smith; former Navy SEALS Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty. Rest in Peace

Read more of this post

The government of the United States of America is being represented by thieves, liars and sycophants.

Prepare For What’s Coming: “The Largest Financial Collapse This Planet Has Ever Seen” by Mac Slavo Over the course of the last six weeks, since the disastrous launch of health care exchanges mandated under the new Patient Affordable Care Act, we have been made privy to something most Americans didn’t believe was possible: that the government of the United States of America is being represented by thieves, liars and sycophants. Read more of this post

Possibly The Best Email of the Year...

 

My gut tells me this should be sent around again and again and again and again ...

 

DO YOU HAVE THE INTESTINAL FORTITUDE TO SEND THIS TO YOUR ADDRESS  LIST AND LET THEM KNOW THAT IT IS TIME FOR THIS ADMINISTRATION TO LEAVE WHILE THEY  STILL HAVE SOMETHING.  THEY SHOULD ALL BE DEPRIVED OF ANY FUTURE BENEFITS THEY WOULD HAVE RECEIVED IF THEY SERVED HONORABLY.  ANY MILITARY MAN THAT IS PRESENTLY DEFENDING THIS "MAN"(?) WOULD BE COURT MARTIALED FOR FAILURES THAT THIS GUY AND HIS ADMINISTRATION HAVE COMMITTED.

 

Government Opening Free Gas Stations In Poor Neighborhoods!!! WTFFFFFFFFFFFFF!!!

 

More free stuff to get votes and we have to pay for it. Our marvelous country is going to the dogs & this is what the liberals want. Give everything away so nobody has to work & vote for them. Hard to believe they can run our country into the ground with nobody doing anything about it. The liberals love this because of more votes for them, but look at the cities they run. They are all in trouble & of course they blame it on somebody else. Our freedom is going, but the liberals do not care. They do not want anybody that works hard & is successful to have a good life. They want to give it all to people that do not work & do not want to work. I know some of you will just delete this & not read it, because it is always someone elses fault. I have had liberals say socialism isn't so bad. What a crock. WAIT UNTIL YOU READ THIS!!!   Our government is determined to destroy all stable systems.   http://dailycurrant.com/2013/10/29/government-opening-free-gas-stations-in-poor-neighborhoods/   Government Opening Free Gas Stations in Poor Neighborhoods Oct 29, 2013 First 'Obamastation' Debuts in Detroit, Seventy Planned Nationwide Tweet   As the battle over Obamacare rages in Washington, the White House is quietly using a little known provision of the law to roll out a nationwide network of free gas stations for minorities and the poor. According to a report in The Detroit News this morning, the administration is using its authority under the Affordable Care Act to "improve transportation routes to hospitals" to dispense gasoline free of cost in disadvantaged neighborhoods. The $2 billion-a-year program aims to distribute 40 million gallons of free gasoline each year through 70 new gas stations constructed in major metropolitan areas. The Department of Health and Human Services (DHS) will be responsible for operating the network, whose first station opened yesterday in Detroit. "It's not something we're publicizing very much, for obvious reasons," explains Dori Salcido, assistant DHS secretary for public affairs. "But under the law we are well within our rights to offer this service, and we think it's good public policy. "How are people supposed to get to the doctor's office if they don't have gas in their cars? Health insurance is worthless if you can't make your appointment. This is just another fine example of government stepping in and solving big problems." No Gas for You Although some developing oil-rich nations like Venezuela and Indonesia subsidize gasoline for the poor, the practice has never before been tried in the United States. The plans are proving controversial with some taxpayers who are loathe to see their money go to subsidize others. "So basically I'm being punished for not living in the ghetto," says Colin Blair, a white person from the affluent Detroit suburb of Farmington Hills. "I have three kids and a mortgage. Life isn't cheap for me either. I could use some free gasoline too." An investigation into the station's operations, however, reveals that Blair is unlikely to be able to use the service. "Supposedly access to the station is determined by income," says Ebony Jackson, manager of the first Obamastation. "But it's pretty unrealistic to do an income check on each and every driver. So what we do is basically let all the black people pump for free, and charge all the white people the market rate." The Obamastations scandal was uncovered by Nolan Finley , a conservative Detroit News columnist widely lauded for his groundbreaking exposé on Obamaphones. Finley says the blatant racial bias in the program is only one of its many outrageous aspects. "The stations have Obama campaign logo on them and giant photos of the president," he explains. "He's trying to buy votes ahead of the midterm elections. This is something you normally only see in third world countries. I've never been more scared for our democracy."

Get Used to This Headline: 'Obama Approval Hits Record Low'

Today on NRO ANDREW STILES: What we know about Obama's secretive adviser. The Jarrett File. THE EDITORS: JFK: a so-so president, a deeply flawed man. A Beautiful Mediocrity. JAMES C. CAPRETTA: The GOP should support any and all escape hatches from Obamacare. Keeping the Pressure on Obamacare. BETSY WOODRUFF: Yes to abortion, no to eye care. What Some D.C. Plans Cover. THE EDITORS: Elizabeth Warren wants to expand Social Security.Wrong on Social Security. JONATHAN STRONG: Will the House GOP hold firmly onto its leverage or throw in the towel on budget increases? Sequester Skirmish Breaks Out on the Right. SLIDESHOW: The Gettysburg Address. Morning Jolt . . . with Jim Geraghty November 20, 2013 Off to Boston; Hope to See You Tonight! Get Used to This Headline: 'Obama Approval Hits Record Low' Breaking this morning: the Obama presidency. Also, a new poll: President Obama's job approval rating has plunged to the lowest of his presidency, according to a new CBS News poll released Wednesday, and Americans' approval of the Affordable Care Act has dropped it's lowest since CBS News started polling on the law. Thirty-seven percent now approve of the job Mr. Obama is doing as president, down from 46 percent in October -- a nine point drop in just a month. Mr. Obama's disapproval rating is 57 percent -- the highest level for this president in CBS News Polls. Republicans are nearly unanimous in their disapproval of the law, and now more than two-thirds of independents agree. Almost six in ten Democrats continue to support the law, but their support has dropped 16 points from last month -- from 74 percent in October to 58 percent today. More than a month after the health care exchanges opened, just one in 10 Americans think the sign-up for the exchanges has been going well. Instead, more than two-thirds think it's not going well -- including seven in 10 of those who have looked up information on the exchanges themselves. And just a third of Americans are confident that the federal government's healthcare website --HealthCare.gov -- will be fixed by the December 1stdeadline set by the Obama administration. That one-third of Americans also believed it when they were told the word 'gullible' is not in the dictionary. On a related note: "The 30th of November is not a magic go, no-go date. It is a work of constant improvement," Sebelius told the Associated Press Tuesday. "We have some very specific things we know we need to complete by the 30th and that punch list is getting knocked out every week." An Optimistic Vision of Our Near Future "We are going to have to obviously remarket and rebrand [Obamacare], and that will be challenging in this political environment." -- President Obama, speaking about Obamacare, at the Wall Street Journal's CEO Summit yesterday. Obama may or may not be stupid, but he sure as heck has a blind spot when it comes to evaluating problems. The problem with Obamacare is not the program'sbranding. The problem with Obamacare is Obamacare -- how it's structured, what it requires Americans to do, what it requires insurers to do, the false promises used to sell it, and most important, the administration's utter inability to do any of the basic tasks that it promised -- like have the payment system built, never mind up and running, six weeks after the exchanges launch: A crucial system for making payments to insurers from the federal Obamacare marketplace, HealthCare.gov, has yet to be built, a senior government IT official admitted Tuesday. The official, Henry Chao, visibly stunned Rep. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) when he said under questioning that a significant fraction of that online insurance marketplace has yet to be constructed. "We still need to build the payments system to make the payments [to insurance companies] in January," Chao said during testimony. That so-called financial management tool was originally supposed to be part of HealthCare.gov when it launched Oct. 1, but officials later suspended its launch as part of their effort to get the consumer interface part of the site ready. Chao on Tuesday said other areas that need to be built include "the back-office systems, the accounting systems." "This means that insurers, who are already dealing with dramatically lower enrollment numbers on HealthCare.gov than they were expecting, are not going to get paid while the government gets its act together, and the software in place to makes those payments happen," CNBC's Dan Mangan explains. "That's like setting up an online bank without setting up a way to make deposits," an industry source told CNBC. A cynic would argue Obama's obsessed with the "branding" because that's the only part he really understands. We know he has conditioned his staff to avoid telling him bad news -- doesn't need the drama. He's telling us now that the process of buying insurance is more complicated than he and his team thought, raising the question of how well they understood the entire issue throughout this process. He's clearly not interested in digging into the details of the problem; he told us that even a week after the troubled launch, he believed it was just routine "glitches." The fact that we're learning this from Chao, now, suggests that the situation is still basically the same now as it was October 1: No one in the White House really knows the status of Healthcare.gov and its repairs and implementation. They're flying blind, making optimistic promises and hoping for the best. The audacity of hope, you might say. Allow me to lay out a scenario that some will find excessively optimistic, and some will find excessively pessimistic. Everyone in America is now required to buy health insurance or pay a fine equal to one percent of their income, and that process they're supposed to use to shop for and buy insurance doesn't have a billing system. The cries to delay the individual mandate will grow deafening, but Obama will insist on full-speed-ahead. Next year, those who have had their plans canceled will be angry, those who are paying higher premiums will be angry, those who are paying the fine will be angry, the insurers sure as heck will be angry, and those who did manage to buy through the site will be angry once they see their premiums, copays, and deductibles. And then, in fall 2014, the employer mandate kicks in, and an as-yet-unknown percentage of employers decide that it's cheaper to pay the penalty than pay the cost of insurance for their employees. Millions more Americans are suddenly informed that their plans are canceled. Meanwhile, premiums for 2015 are higher, because insurers are dealing with the consequences of the older, sicker pool of workers who signed up in 2014. Obama and his team will keep insisting that the health-care system is improving, contradicting the personal experience of millions of Americans. The 2014 midterms turn into a bloodbath for Democrats. Obama spends the final two years of his presidency vetoing efforts to repeal the whole damn thing. Here's where I really turn into an optimist: The catastrophic failure of Obamacare will cause Americans to drastically reevaluate President Obama himself, and the criteria they used to evaluate him as a potential president in 2008 and 2012. Maybe charisma, nice speeches, a beautiful family, and perfect pant creases aren't enough. You're not supposed to go from being an obscure state senator to president of the United States in a four-year span. The next president can't get the job based upon potential. We need a proven problem-solver. In the coming years, a solid majority of Americans outside of committed liberals will begin to acknowledge the hard truth that Barack Obama has been a failure as a president. It isn't merely that his signature reform was sold with lies and managed to exacerbate the problems of the health-care system instead of solving them. What else will be Obama's legacy? This terrific economy we're enjoying? The out-of-control domestic-surveillance programs at the NSA? Partisan abuses of the IRS?The national debt more than doubling under Obama's presidency? The partisan fury in Washington? Eight years of ignoring the ticking time bomb of entitlements as the Baby Boomers begin to retire? This isn't even touching on foreign policy. Yes, President Obama authorized the bin Laden mission and got U.S. troops out of Iraq, but the Middle East is a bloody mess, Israel feels besieged and abandoned, our allies are alienated by our NSA activities, we're spent enormous amounts of blood and treasure in Afghanistan for inconclusive results, Russia is on the march, and we appear to be desperately trying to get a deal with the Iranians that the French think will allow Tehran to pursue a nuclear program. He has no warm relationships with any other world leader. We on the right argued that America made the wrong call in 2008. Barack Obama is naïve in his view of the world. He did not and does not understand what causes businesses to hire people. He has way too much faith in government spending's ability to create jobs, and is ultimately comfortable with the practices of crony capitalism. He never foresees the failures of the federal bureaucracy and rarely is upset about them for long. Scandals like Fast & Furious, the IRS abuses, and Benghazi percolate under him and congressional demands for accountability are dismissed as partisan witch hunts. His cabinet is a collection of egomaniacs and tired pols who are incapable of instituting a culture of responsibility for taxpayer dollars. He is ultimately incurious about the world and has resisted reevaluating his approaches. He wings it at the worst times, instituting 'red lines', then hastily retreats from his commitments. The Obamacare Site Is Like Beirut for Your Social-Security Number A very close second in the competition for 'Worst News for Obamacare of Tuesday':   President Barack Obama's HealthCare.gov site is riddled with security flaws that put user data of millions of people at risk and it should be shut down until fixed, several technology experts warned lawmakers on Tuesday. The testimony at a congressional hearing could increase concerns among many Americans about Obama's healthcare overhaul, popularly known as Obamacare. Opinion polls show the botched rollout of the online marketplace for health insurance policies has hurt the popularity of the effort.  The website collects personal data such as names, birth dates, social security numbers, email addresses and other information that criminals could use for a variety of scams. In a rapid "yes" or "no" question-and-answer session during a Republican-sponsored hearing by the House of Representatives Science, Space and Technology Committee, Republican Representative Chris Collins of New York asked four experts about the security of the site: "Do any of you think today that the site is secure?" The answer from the experts, which included two academics and two private sector technical researchers, was a unanimous "no." One reason the Obamacare site is in such trouble is that what's left is not the easy stuff; what's left is the hard stuff. Our friend Bruce Webster reminds us of something he wrote about IT projects a while back that is extremely relevant today: There is a very natural, very human tendency to concentrate on the easiest tasks, the "low-hanging fruit" that can be readily implemented and checked off… In turn, this makes it possible for you to demonstrate the [user interfaces] to upper management and show what great progress is being made. Of course, this can get you into trouble, since upper management may think you're a lot farther along than you actually are. Even worse, you may think you're a lot farther along than you actually are… Let's say you have a hard problem X to solve in subsystem A; you also have a hard problem Y to solve in subsystem B. After brilliant work and brainstorming, you have come up with solutions to X and Y. The problem: the two solutions are mutually incompatible. In other words, the solution to X precludes the solution to Y, and vice versa. This may seem unlikely, but I have seen it any number of times, particularly where problem X is a functionality problem requiring intense data retrieval and processing, while problem Y is a performance problem requiring a much quicker response time or heavier load processing than the system can currently handle. Now imagine that you have a dozen or so different "hard problems" to solve — with any number of interdependencies and exclusions — and you can begin to understand why so many IT projects get to the 80 percent to 90 percent "completed" stage and then get stuck there for months. Morning Joe Speaks to the Morning Jolt! I had a chance to speak with Joe Scarborough, host of MSNBC's Morning Joe, recently, about his new book, The Right Path: From Ike to Reagan, How Republicans Once Mastered Politics -- And Can Again. I'll share more of Scarborough's policy prescriptions later this week, but I thought I'd begin by asking Scarborough about what his pitch is to those who dismiss him as a RINO. Jim: As you no doubt are aware, in the world of Twitter and in comment sections of websites, there are some folks who are a wee bit skeptical of your assessment of the Republican party. So I wanted to give you a chance to give your elevator pitch, your short pitch, to someone who's skeptical of the criticisms you made of Republicans recently, and why should they listen to you and why the ideas you're articulating would move the party in a better direction. Scarborough: (laughing) Yeah, why should they listen to me? Why in the world would anyone in the Republican party listen to me? Because they have absolutely no idea how to win elections! You know, I was only the first Republican to get elected in my [House] district since 1873. I started out a campaign against a 16-year incumbent. Everybody said I was going to lose. Newt Gingrich said I was too conservative for my own district. He and the entire Washington establishment threw all of their weight and power and K Street behind my moderate pro-choice opponent. And I ended up winning the election with 62 percent of the vote. And how did I do it? I ran as a conservative, pro-life, pro-gun Republican. I wasn't extreme on any of the issues. I talked about economics. I talked about tax reform. I talked about getting rid of the income tax and reforming the tax code, going to a tax system that actually encouraged hard work and economic development. I'd get a lot of people coming up to me saying that they disagreed with me on a lot of issues, that I was more conservative than they were, but they liked me and they voted for me because they knew I was going to go to Washington and I was going to fight for them. You can trace a straight line from what I said on the campaign trail in 1994 in northwest Florida, to what I have said throughout my congressional career, what I voted in thousands and thousands of congressional votes, what I said on 'Scarborough Country' every night -- in 2003, I started warning about George W. Bush's big government spending ways -- in early 2003, everybody else was turning a blind eye to it. In 2004, I wrote a book, Rome Wasn't Burnt in a Day. I predicted that big-government Republicanism was going to lead to the destruction of the GOP majority and wreck the economy. The only people who were talking that way in 2004 were Tom Coburn, myself, and the Wall Street Journal editorial page. In 2009, I wrote another book, where I said the same exact things I said years back. Over the past several years, I've been branded this RINO, for basically calling the people that our party keeps putting up for elections 'amateurs.' I was right when I criticized Mitt Romney, and I was attacked for being a RINO. I was right when I kept saying to people like Sarah Palin and Herman Cain and Rick Perry and a lot of these other contenders that were getting a lot of national media attention, I said they're amateurs, they're not going to be able to win a national general election. I said time and time again, on air, that this happens to us every four years, where we get amateurs. They run on the extreme right. I don't just mean ideologically, I mean temperamentally, in a way that offends voters in all the swing areas we need to win, whether it's the suburbs of Philly, the I-4 corridor [in Florida] -- areas Republicans need to win in order to win national elections. (getting excited) In spite of all these predictions that always turn out to be right, I'm somehow a RINO because I'm being the Cassandra here, who has been saying the same . . . exact . . . thing! I almost swore! There is one issue where people can say, 'Joe Scarborough has changed,' and they would be right. That has to do with guns, specifically background checks. I support background checks, that puts me with 90 percent of Americans, that puts me with Ronald Reagan. If that one issue alone that I've changed on, since 1994, if that makes me a RINO, and these people say I don't fit in the party, I think they're sadly mistaken. It's always been my party, it is my party, and it's going to be my party. I believe in small-government conservatism and that's what drives me every day. ADDENDUM: From Gallup: To read more, visit www.nationalreview.com Why not forward this to a friend? Encourage them to sign up for NR's great free newsletters here. Save 75%... Subscribe to National Review magazine today and get 75% off the newsstand price. Click here for the print edition or here for the digital. National Review also makes a great gift! 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