Chinese wall (Photo credit: rvw)

English: Iraqi-American, Samir, 34, pinning deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein to the ground during his capture in Tikrit, on Saturday July 24, 2004. Samir was the translator for the U.S. Special Forces that helped find Hussein and pull him from his hiding place on December 13, 2003. Samir recently met with U.S. President Bush and thanked him for liberating Iraq. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Sarah B.

Sarah B. commented on the blog post The Completely Overblown Polling Divide on Obamacare vs. Affordable Care Act

2013-09-27 16:48:50View | Delete

The average cost to folks for ACA is under $400.00. The average cost for private insurance to an employer is around $500.00.

Which “folks” are you referring to, and what are their ages, and what is their annual income, and what are their ZIP codes? Those are the variables that will determine the cost of the premiums for individuals and families — cost averages are irrelevant — plus, the numbers you cite say nothing about the ancillary cost-shifting out-of-pocket burden, i.e., the annual deductibles, co-insurances, and co-pays.
You love to throw numbers around, but you fail to back up your claims with evidence — so, can you please provide links to support the referenced assertions?
Are you, by any chance, attempting to audition for The Onion?

Even for your Republican brain that calculation should be easy.

You didn’t provide a “calculation” — you threw out a number:

The average cost to folks for ACA is under $400.00.

You offer no evidence to support that figure, and you provide no numbers or variables to explain how you arrived there — But wait! There’s more!

The average cost for private insurance to an employer is around $500.00.

Prove it! Let’s see the evidence, including the numbers and variables, that led to your conclusion.
Last, but not least, my favorite:

Even for your Republican brain….

D’oh! — I happen to be a democratic socialist, so that would place me about as far away from being a Republican on the political spectrum — let alone having a “Republican brain” — as it is humanly possible to be. Nice try, though, but just too clever by half.
You, on the other hand, appear to be such a besotted Obot that you don’t even recognize an actual Lefty when you’re in the process of interacting with one. Do you believe that anyone who is critical of Obama and his policies, or who does not self-identify as a Democrat, must therefore be a Republican?
Where did you get such a laughable notion? Or is that pronouncement yet another gaseous emanation spewing forth like volcanic ash from the nether regions of your anatomy?
PS — The lion’s share of the criticism of Obama and his policies at FDL comes from the Left and the Far Left, and that includes me. So, kindly direct your feeble insults elsewhere.

Sarah B. commented on the blog post Did Iran Win The US-Iraq War?

2013-09-26 21:47:17View | Delete

Did Iran Win The US-Iraq War?

Clearly, the answer is Yes! — But wait! There’s more!
The Pivot to Asia — oh, not the much-touted Obama pivot, in which he points himself in the direction of Asia and pivots and spins until he is so dizzy that he falls on his face.
This is the pivot — and the really Big Winner — to watch:
China Is Reaping Biggest Benefits of Iraq Oil Boom
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/03/world/middleeast/china-reaps-biggest-benefits-of-iraq-oil-boom.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

BAGHDAD — Since the American-led invasion of 2003, Iraq has become one of the world’s top oil producers, and China is now its biggest customer.
China already buys nearly half the oil that Iraq produces, nearly 1.5 million barrels a day, and is angling for an even bigger share, bidding for a stake now owned by Exxon Mobil in one of Iraq’s largest oil fields.
“The Chinese are the biggest beneficiary of this post-Saddam oil boom in Iraq,” said Denise Natali, a Middle East expert at the National Defense University in Washington. “They need energy, and they want to get into the market.”
Before the invasion, Iraq’s oil industry was sputtering, largely walled off from world markets by international sanctions against the government of Saddam Hussein, so his overthrow always carried the promise of renewed access to the country’s immense reserves. Chinese state-owned companies seized the opportunity, pouring more than $2 billion a year and hundreds of workers into Iraq, and just as important, showing a willingness to play by the new Iraqi government’s rules and to accept lower profits to win contracts.

Read the entire piece to get a fuller and deeper understanding of just what a big win this is for the Chinese and what a commensurate loss it is for the United States and its oil-driven fantasy of hegemony in the Middle East.
Plus, the Chinese appear to be on excellent terms with both the Iraqi and Iranian officials, and the relationships and the trust among these nations and their respective leaders will no doubt grow and deepen over time — and without the threat of military force! — imagine that.
So, we now have China ensconced in Iraq and engaging in shuttle diplomacy and business deals with Iran, and Russia is now taking a much more active role inside Syria — at this rate, maybe some balance of power and stability in the Middle East is possible after all, with the U.S. relegated to the sidelines with its ghastly bedfellows Israel and Saudi Arabia.
Yikes! — Barry, Bibi, and Bandar — They really do deserve each other.

Sarah B. commented on the blog post Goldman Sachs Chief Says Solution To Occupy Wall Street Is Reeducation Of Public

2013-09-26 20:00:48View | Delete

You can go ahead and include drugs and gambling in that list of rackets, as well as murder….

Your point is well-taken.
I focused my comment somewhat narrowly on the immediate activities of Clinton Crime Family Charity Slush Fund — specifically, the Lloyd Blankfein invitation. But, when you expand the political landscape to accommodate the wider lens, one that includes the Oval Office and the levers of power that include military force and covert operations at the president’s disposal, you are absolutely correct.
When you consider the military and the various alphabet agencies and the black ops maneuvers and covert operations funded by enormous black budgets and the War on Drugs and the War on Terror (often interchangeable) and gun running and the funding of ruthless “rebels” to destabilize countries across the Middle East and South Asia to maintain a permanent level of chaos and sweeping electronic surveillance on an unprecedented scale, the Clinton/Bush/Obama Crime Family together run the table on all of the above — including major tax-avoidance schemes by the rich and super rich, who stuff their profits and ill-gotten gains into offshore bank accounts.
Just follow the money when dealing with this crowd and nothing they do will surprise you — shock, maybe, but not surprise. It’s all too predictable.
PS — Jeremy Scahill’s latest book, Dirty Wars: The World Is A Battlefield, is a brilliant account of the dark and sinister back stories behind the headlines of much that we see regarding the Middle East, North Africa, Africa, and South Asia in quick flashes on various cable news shows — I’m eagerly awaiting the release of the film version of the book on DVD, which is scheduled to hit the stores sometime in mid-October.

Sarah B. commented on the blog post Bill Introduced To End NSA Bulk Telephone Records Collection

2013-09-26 12:34:41View | Delete

Bill Introduced to End NSA Bulk Telephone Records Collection

This bill certainly sounds promising, as do so many worthwhile bills introduced in the House and Senate that languish in committee and die on the path to nowhere.
So, how long will it be before the utterly corrupt Senate “leadership” — Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell and the Senate Intelligence Committee hierarchy, Dianne Feinstein (Chairperson) and Saxby Chambliss (Ranking Member) and the Official Secrets Caucus move to give the bill the Grover Norquist treatment?
Either the bill will be drowned in the bathtub, to use Norquist’s colorful phrase, or it will go into the Bernie Sanders Snowball’s Chance in Hell File where it will die a slower, duller, but just as inevitable death, with the many other hopeless bills that fake-socialist Sanders has introduced since he was elected to the Senate in 2006.
Does anyone know if Rep. Justin Amash (R-MI) is planning to reintroduce his bill to reign in the NSA in the House? That bill was so narrowly defeated that maybe the second time around would prove the charm.
I would love to be pleasantly surprised, but I’m not holding my breath.

Sarah B. commented on the blog post ACA Exchanges Still Have Some Serious Glitches

2013-09-26 11:59:40View | Delete

More Glitches, Bitches!
Obamacare is not ready for Prime Time – not even in Obama’s own neighborhood!
By Sarah Kliff
D.C.’s Obamacare fail: Prices won’t work until November
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/09/25/d-c-s-obamacare-fail-prices-wont-work-until-november/

Just days away from launch, the District of Columbia’s health marketplace is announcing a pretty significant delay.
While the D.C. Health Link will launch a Web site on October 1, shoppers will not have access to the their premium prices until mid-November. The delay comes after the District marketplace discovered “a high error rate” in calculating the tax credits that low- and middle-income people will use to purchase insurance on the marketplace.
The insurance marketplaces, if working as plan, are supposed to spit out an estimate for a tax credit after a shopper enters in some basic information about where she lives and how much she earns. In the District, that won’t happen next month. Instead, the eligibility determination will be made “off-line by experts” by early November.
The delay will be less significant for people who likely qualify for Medicaid in the District, which covers everyone below 200 percent of the poverty line (about $22,000 for an individual). In cases where someone is found likely eligible for that program, D.C. Health Link spokesman Richard Sorian said they should get a determination with 24 hours.
The idea is to make sure that potential Medicaid enrollees–who could gain benefits right now–are processed quickly. People who qualify for tax credits, and for whom benefits wouldn’t start until January, they’ll have to wait a bit longer.

Critical Analysis:

This certainly is not good news for Obamacare, especially in the wake of the other reports on similar glitches at the federal level. The Obama administration has repeatedly promised that, starting on October 1, all Americans will be able to purchase insurance coverage on the new marketplaces. In the District of Columbia, that won’t be true.
Will it matter for who gains coverage? That’s a bit more difficult to gauge. The D.C. Health Link says it will get eligibility determinations out by early November. Since coverage on the marketplaces doesn’t begin until January 1, that would still give people enough time to sign up for a plan by day one. What’s hard to gauge is, after this clunkier experience, whether they’ll still want to enroll.

“Obama’s Law” — a variation on Murphy’s Law — “Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.”
“Obama’s Law” is working flawlessly thus far, even if Obamacare is not working at all.

Sarah B. commented on the blog post HHS Releases Some Data About Premiums on Federally Run Exchanges

2013-09-25 15:29:44View | Delete

“Family glitch”
Both of the examples you cite — (1) keeping insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, and hospitals from “raising prices at 10% a year” and (2) putting an end to exclusions and cancellations of coverage for preexisting conditions — would have been resolved by a comprehensive Medicare-For-All system with negotiated drug prices, everybody in and nobody left out, and no gimmicks like keeping one’s adult child on a family policy until age 26.
Medicare currently has lower reimbursement rates for providers than private health insurance carriers and administrative costs of approximately 1% compared to 6% or more for the privatized Medicare Advantage plans and significantly more for private employer-provided health insurance:
Setting the record straight on Medicare’s overhead costs
http://www.pnhp.org/news/2013/february/setting-the-record-straight-on-medicare%E2%80%99s-overhead-costs
The traditional Medicare program allocates only 1 percent of total spending to overhead compared with 6 percent when the privatized portion of Medicare, known as Medicare Advantage, is included, according to a study in the June 2013 issue of the Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law.
The 1 percent figure includes all types of non-medical spending by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services plus other federal agencies, such as the IRS, that support the Medicare program, and is based on data contained in the latest report of the Medicare trustees. The 6 percent figure, on the other hand, is based on data contained in the latest National Health Expenditure Accounts (NHEA) report.
According to Dr. Kip Sullivan of PNHP:
The average overhead of the health insurance industry is approximately 20 percent.”
So, administrative costs of 1% for Medicare and 20% for the private for-profit health insurance industry. Whom would you say is getting screwed?
Here is what really matters in the cold and calculating heart of Obamacare:
The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE): Closing Bell 09/25/2013:
Cigna (CI) — 78.40
Aetna (AET) — 65.03
United Health Group (UNH) — 72.09
Wellpoint (WLP) — 84.17
Humana (HUM) — 94.87
Those corporations are AHIP’s Big Five private-for-profit publicly traded corporations on the NYSE — their owners and CEOs and boards of directors have a fiduciary duty to boost profits for their shareholders and to beat analysts’ expectations every quarter. Period. Full stop. End of story.
That big five cartel and its many subsidiaries that do business across the country represents the rentier class that Obamacare is designed to serve —
Obamacare was never designed to benefit the poor chumps who are mandated by law to purchase these defective and inadequate and expensive policies and who will certainly go broke trying to stretch their household budgets to pay the ever-increasing policy premiums and annual deductibles and co-insurances and co-pays for doctor’s visits and prescription drugs, most of which will go on their credit cards until their debts reach critical mass and they are forced to file for a medical-related bankruptcy.
PS — The Big Five were mildly bullish today — they all finished in the green.
You can’t “REVISE” a pile of excrement — you really do need to scrap it (in an environmentally safe manner).
You REVISE the law, you don’t scrap it!

Sarah B. commented on the blog post HHS Releases Some Data About Premiums on Federally Run Exchanges

2013-09-25 13:37:24View | Delete

Obamacare — Glitches, Bitches!
Just when you thought you had it all sussed out:
The Family Glitch
“Family glitch” in health law could be painful
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2013/09/23/aca-family-glitch-issues/2804017/
It could leave up to 500,000 children without coverage and cost some families thousands of dollars.

WASHINGTON — A so-called “family glitch” in the 2010 health care law threatens to cost some families thousands of dollars in health insurance costs and leave up to 500,000 children without coverage, insurance and health care analysts say.
That’s unless Congress fixes the problem, which seems unlikely given the House’s latest move Friday to strip funding from the law, which is also called the Affordable Care Act.
Congress defined “affordable” as 9.5% or less of an employee’s household income, mostly to make sure people did not leave their workplace plans for subsidized coverage through the exchanges. But the “error” was that it only applies to the employee — and not his or her family. So, if an employer offers a woman affordable insurance, but doesn’t provide it for her family, they cannot get subsidized help through the state health exchanges.
That can make a huge difference; the Kaiser Family Foundation said an average plan for an individual is about $5,600, but it goes up to $15,700 for families. Most employers help out with those costs, but not all.
Read the entire piece, but be prepared for the way in which the author gets into the weeds in a way that will make your head explode. Still, better to be prepared for the worst so that you don’t suffer a sudden and nasty shock — it’s not good for your health.
The Seniors Glitch
Seniors push bill to repeal Obamacare provision that raises their costs
http://washingtonexaminer.com/seniors-push-bill-to-repeal-obamacare-provision-that-raises-their-costs/article/2536019

Rep. Ron Barber, D-Ariz., introduced a bill to repeal a provision of Obamacare that threatens to increase costs for senior citizens after constituents brought the issue to his attention.
“This piece of legislation is a direct result of the concerns of the people I represent and discussions with the people of Green Valley,” Barbersaid in a statement Tuesday on the Helping Families and Seniors Save on Health Care Act.
“The most important thing I can do is bring the voice of our community to Washington. In this case, that means protecting Southern Arizona seniors from rising health-care costs,” Barber said.
Barber wants to repeal a provision of Obamacare that diminishes the amount of medical expenses that senior citizens can deduct on their tax filings.
“Currently, taxpayers can take a federal income tax deduction for medical expenses that exceed 7.5 percent of their adjusted gross income,” a Barber aide said in explaining why the congressman wants to keep the threshold for deducting medical expenses at 7.5 percent. (Emphasis mine.)
“As part of health care reform, this year that threshold is to be raised to 10 percent for taxpayers under age 65. In 2017, the increase also will apply to taxpayers 65 years of age and older,” a background document said. (Emphasis mine)
The bill is a response to a resolution passed by the Green Valley Community Coordinating Council, the volunteer government of a community in southern Arizona, which brought the health care law’s cost increase for seniors to Barber’s attention.
You know things are getting bad when a Democrat — Rep. Ron Barber (D-AZ) — introduces a bill to repeal a provision of Obamacare that specifically hurts seniors.
Obama’s Law — A variation on Murphy’s Law — “Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.”
Stay tuned….

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So I don’t blog for a couple of months, then, when I finally decide to break radio silence, it’s about Obamacare? Sure, why not. Go ahead and alienate at least half the population no matter what I say. Anyway, here’s the thing. The premium numbers are in – first year numbers anyway. All along, a big part of the Republican narrative has been that premiums under Obamacare would be far too expensive.