Saturday, November 29, 2014

CEOs Threaten to Pull Tacit Obamacare Support in 'Wellness' Spat

CEOs Threaten to Pull Tacit Obamacare Support in 'Wellness' Spat

Saturday, 29 Nov 2014 07:25 AM

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Leading CEOs, angered by the Obama administration's challenge to certain "workplace wellness" programs, are threatening to side with anti-Obamacare forces unless the government backs off, according to people familiar with the matter.Major corporations have broadly supported President Barack Obama's healthcare reform despite concerns over several of its elements, largely because it included provisions encouraging the wellness programs.
The programs aim to control healthcare costs by reducing smoking, obesity, hypertension and other risk factors that can lead to expensive illnesses. A bipartisan provision in the 2010 healthcare reform law allows employers to reward workers who participate and penalize those who don't.
But recent lawsuits filed by the administration's Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), challenging the programs at Honeywell International and two smaller companies, have thrown the future of that part of Obamacare into doubt.
The lawsuits infuriated some large employers so much that they are considering aligning themselves with Obama's opponents, according to people familiar with the executives' thinking.
"The fact that the EEOC sued is shocking to our members," said Maria Ghazal, vice-president and counsel at the Business Roundtable, a group of chief executives of more than 200 large U.S. corporations. "They don't understand why a plan in compliance with the ACA (Affordable Care Act) is the target of a lawsuit," she said. "This is a major issue to our members."
"There have been conversations at the most senior levels of the administration about this," she added.
Business Roundtable members are due to meet Obama in a closed-door session on Tuesday, where they may air their concerns.
It is not clear how many members of the group, whose companies sponsor health insurance for 40 million people, are considering any action. It is also not clear if the White House can stop the EEOC from challenging wellness programs.
A threat of a corporate backlash comes at a time when Obama faces criticism even from his Democrats' ranks that he had devoted too much political capital to healthcare reform.
Such action could take the form of radical changes in health benefits that employers offer. It could also mean supporting a potentially game-changing challenge to Obamacare at the Supreme Court next year and expected Republican efforts to eviscerate the law when they take control of Congress in 2015.

CARROTS AND STICKS
Obamacare allows financial incentives for workers taking part in workplace wellness programs of up to 50 percent of their monthly premiums, deductibles, and other costs. That translates into hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars in extra annual costs for those who do not participate.
Typically, participation means filling out detailed health questionnaires, undergoing medical screenings, and in some cases attending weight-loss or smoking-cessation programs.
One of the arguments presented in the lawsuit against three employers is that requiring medical testing violates the Americans with Disabilities Act.
That 1990 law, according to employment-law attorney Joseph Lazzarotti of Jackson Lewis P.C. in Morristown, N.J., largely prohibits requiring medical tests as part of employment.
"You can't make medical inquiries unless it's consistent with job-necessity, or part of a voluntary wellness program," he said.
The lawsuits are based on the view that it is no longer voluntary if employees face up to $4,000 in penalties for non-participation, loss of insurance or even their jobs.
Employers, however, see the lawsuits as reneging on the administration's commitment to an important part of the healthcare reform.
On Nov. 14, Roundtable president John Engler sent a letter to the Labor, Treasury and Health and Human Services cabinet secretaries who oversee Obamacare asking them to "thwart all future inappropriate actions against employers who are complying with" the law's wellness rules, and warning of "a chilling effect across the country."
Asked for a response to the letter, an administration official told Reuters that it supported workplace health promotion and prevention "while ensuring that individuals are protected from unfair underwriting practices that could otherwise reduce benefits based on health status."

UNDERMINING OBAMACARE
In practical terms, large corporations have several ways to undermine Obamacare if they decide to.
One is to support legal challenges to the subsidies given to low-income individuals who buy health insurance on the federal exchange established under the law. Neither the Business Roundtable nor any of its CEO members have done this so far. The Supreme Court is expected to hear oral arguments in the case in 2015.
Another option is to make top executives available for hearings on repealing or diluting Obamacare. "We never did this before," said the person familiar with the executives' thinking. "But they could turn up the noise. I don't think the White House would want the CEOs turning on them and supporting these efforts on the Hill."
The nuclear option would be to radically change employer-sponsored health insurance. Large corporations are highly unlikely to eliminate it, but they might give workers a fixed amount of money to buy coverage on a private insurance exchange. That would allow employers, almost all of which pay workers' medical claims out of their earnings, to cap their healthcare spending.
© 2014 Thomson/Reuters. All ri


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Cost of ObamaCare for Virginians on Bronze Plan

Because many doctors and hospitals have been dropped from ObamaCare, their services are not eligible for ObamaCare payments. What would happen to their patients who are now suddenly forced into ObamaCare?

The Affordable Care Act specifies in Section 1401of its voluminous content that subsidies cannot be paid to people residing in states that do not have a State Exchange. The decision was upheld in the D.C. Federal Circuit Court and the Supreme Court will make a decision in June 2015.
In the Commonwealth of Virginia, no subsidy will thus be paid on the 80 percent of subscribers’ premiums who enrolled in ObamaCare and are eligible for subsidies. And the 2015 costs of these premiums have not been made public until November 15, 2014, conveniently after the November election.
Using the calculator on the ObamaCare website for the Bronze Plan (a plan with a 60 percent reimbursement rate after deductibles have been met) for a Preferred Provider, Thomas L. Cranmer, Vice President of Fairfax County Taxpayers’ Alliance,determined that a northern Virginia family of four would pay “at any income a deductible out of pocket of $12,600 and a premium of $7,224 per year. The total $19,824 represents 40 percent of $50,000 and 20 percent of $100,000 gross income.”
If doctors are not “preferred,” ObamaCare labels them “out of network,” in which case the costs can be limitless. The website calculator, which is now operational (HHS had taken it down temporarily before the elections), can be used anonymously to calculate the cost for any individual or family.
People, who have lost their plans due to the increased demands of ObamaCare on private insurance companies, and have been forced to sign for Obamacare, report two and half times higher costs.
Many insured by Medicare have lost their supplemental insurance and those with Medicare/Medicaid have been moved into Humana. Humana is now busy rationing care to the elderly in order to meet the President’s plan to take billions from Medicare in order to fund ObamaCare. Many retirees are thus forced to find other plans with higher premiums and deductibles.
Illegal aliens, who were not “supposed” to be covered by ObamaCare as falsely reported, are getting their premiums for free or $2.71. A lady I met recently in a doctor’s waiting room was excited that her premium was $24 a month. She had never bought insurance before, betting on her good health, but was now experiencing declining health in her mid-thirties and was glad for ObamaCare’s low premium.
With the three plans, Bronze, Silver, and Gold, the reimbursement rates for doctors are 60 percent, 70 percent, and 80 percent respectively. If doctors accept ObamaCare, can they cover their expenses?  Do they ask for payments in advance, considering that the out-of-pocket deductible for patients is $12,600, and they may not be able to pay for the visit?
Tom Cranmer asked his physician in a very direct letter if the “concierge fee” of $1,650 he paid him covers his expenses. Additionally, if the “doc fix reimbursement schedule for Medicare does not pass Congress (it comes up for renewal in December 2014), and doctors’ compensation is lowered,“  how would it affect their medical practice in terms of doing what is best for their patients?
Because many doctors and hospitals have been dropped from ObamaCare, their services are not eligible for ObamaCare payments. What would happen to their patients who are now suddenly forced into ObamaCare?
Where would they find new doctors, especially since many are retiring or pursuing other careers? Did the President not promise, “if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor?” Would these patients be forced to accept nurse practitioner care instead?
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Thursday, November 27, 2014

Executive Amnesty + Obamacare = Businesses Getting $3000 to Hire Illegals over Citizens

Much has already been said about the problems with President Obama’s amnesty decree, but thanks to a quirk in Obamacare, we can add another to the list. Now, businesses with more than 50 employees will, in essence, be getting $3000 for hiring illegal aliens granted amnesty over lawful citizens of this country. Here’s how the Washington Times describes it:
Under the president’s new amnesty, businesses will have a $3,000-per-employee incentive to hire illegal immigrants over native-born workers because of a quirk of Obamacare.
President Obama’s temporary amnesty, which lasts three years, declares up to 5 million illegal immigrants to be lawfully in the country and eligible for work permits, but it still deems them ineligible for public benefits such as buying insurance on Obamacare’s health exchanges.
Under the Affordable Care Act, that means businesses who hire them won’t have to pay a penalty for not providing them health coverage — making them $3,000 more attractive than a similar native-born worker, whom the business by law would have to cover.
This means that we can add this to the long list of problems with Obamacare, as well, alongside “Typo-gate“. However, one of the most important parts of the article is buried deep into the second page. It appears that the creation of this loophole was a deliberate action on Obama’s part. Here’s what the article says:
Mr. Obama created the Obamacare loophole incentive in a 2012 Homeland Security decision.
Until August of that year, those granted “deferred action” — the power Mr. Obama also used in his new temporary amnesty — were eligible for public benefits, including Obamacare. But just two months earlier, Mr. Obama had announced a massive expansion of deferred action for hundreds of thousands of “dreamers,” or young illegal immigrants brought to the U.S. as children, and in order to prevent them from getting public benefits, Homeland Security officials issued a new policy giving the dreamers a new category of legal status that left them outside of Obamacare.
An action like this makes it seem like the loophole is a feature, not a bug, of both Obamacare and the President’s amnesty order. The President’s actions, whether they were intentional or not, are now incentivizing bad behavior. We cannot allow this to stand. The incoming Congress must push back against these action. We can start by repealing Obamacare and defunding the President’s amnesty. If the Republicans in Washington had any guts, they’d follow Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX)94%‘s advice and refuse to confirm any of Obama’s executive appointments, too.
Even if the President was merely ignorant of this loophole, it’s all but a given that we cannot trust him to fix it, meaning it is up to Congress to act. Let’s make sure Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY)68% and Rep. John Boehner (R-OH)N/A know that.
*=I reject the notion that Americans are above certain jobs, by the way. That sounds like a sentiment who have never really had to look for work.

Did They Want More Violence In Ferguson? 10 'Coincidences' Too Glaring To Ignore

Was it a conspiracy or was it incompetence?  Those appear to be the only two alternatives that we are left with after the horrific violence that we witnessed in Ferguson on Monday night.  The first round of Ferguson rioting back in August took everyone by surprise, but this time authorities had more than three months to prepare.  They had the ability to control precisely when the grand jury decision would be announced and how many cops and National Guard troops would be deployed on the streets.  But despite all this, the violence in Ferguson on Monday night was even worse than we witnessed back in August.
Either this was a case of almost unbelievable incompetence, or there was someone out there that actually wanted this to happen.  If someone out there is actually trying to provoke more violence in Ferguson, then the rioters are being played like a fiddle.  Most of them have no idea that they could potentially just be pawns in a game that is far larger than they ever imagined.  The only other alternative to explain what we just saw is incompetence on a level that is absolutely laughable.  Something definitely does not smell right about all of this, and let us hope that at some point the American people get the truth.
The following are 10 “coincidences” from Monday night in Ferguson that are too glaring to ignore…
#1 Federal, state and local law enforcement authorities had more than three months to prepare for the violence that would follow the announcement of the grand jury decision.  The mainstream media endlessly hyped this controversy and everyone knew that trouble would be brewing.  But despite an enormous amount of time to prepare, very little was actually done to prevent any violence from happening.
#2 Someone made the decision to make the public announcement about the grand jury decision in the evening.  Anyone involved in law enforcement knows that crowd control is far more difficult after dark.  This also ensured that instead of being tied up with work or school, a maximum number of protesters would be able to be involved in the violence.
#3 Fortunately for the mainstream media, the announcement of the grand jury decision was perfectly timed to provide the largest possible number of prime time viewers for the big news networks.
#4 Just like back in August, no law enforcement authorities of any kind responded while dozens of businesses were vandalized, looted and set of fire.
#5 According to Ferguson Mayor James Knowles, National Guard troops were purposely held back from intervening in the rioting that was unleashed when the grand jury decision was made known to the public…
In a press conference, he called the delay “deeply concerning” and said the Guard troops were available but were not deployed when city officials asked.

The troops had been readied last week by Gov. Jay Nixon as the grand jury announcement neared. But as gunshots rang out in the night and looters torched buildings, they were nowhere to be seen.
#6 It is being reported that the heavily armed National Guard troops were limited to “keeping the peace at a courthouse, patrolling the outskirts of town and preventing disturbances in other suburbs” as horrific violence raged in the heart of Ferguson on Monday night.
#7 Missouri Lieutenant Governor Peter Kinder has accused Missouri Governor Jay Nixon of holding back the National Guard troops because of pressure from the Obama administration.  On Monday night, he angrily made the following statement to Fox News…
“Is the reason that the National Guard was not in there because the Obama Administration and the Holder Justice Department leaned on you to keep them out? I cannot imagine any other reason why the governor who mobilized the National Guard would not have them in there to stop this.”
#8 The Washington Post has documented that Attorney General Eric Holder had been in direct contact with Governor Nixon and had expressed “frustration” with the fact that the National Guard had been activated…
A top aide to Holder called the governor’s office earlier this week to express Holder’s displeasure and “frustration,” according to a Justice Department official.

“Instead of de-escalating the situation, the governor escalated it,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the subject. “He sent the wrong message. The tone of the press conference was counterproductive.”
#9 Firefighters in Ferguson did not immediately respond to calls to put out the multiple fires that were set by protesters.  As a result, many businesses essentially burned to the ground.  But this did make for some amazing television footage.
#10 In the worst of the “war zones”, journalists with cameras and microphones were crawling all over the place while there were hardly any police to be seen at all.  How is it possible that law enforcement could have failed so badly?  Could it be possible that this was orchestrated on purpose?
Sadly, as I have written about previously, the civil unrest that we are witnessing in Ferguson is just a small preview of what is coming to America.
The anger and frustration that are seething under the surface in this country have reached a boiling point.  Instead of coming together, we are seemingly more divided than ever.  Americans have been trained to hate one another, fear one another and blame one another.  I fear that we are not too far away from actually becoming ungovernable.
And when the next major wave of the economic crisis strikes and we start experiencing real suffering in this nation, the temper tantrums that we are going to witness in our major cities are going to make what is happening in Ferguson right now look like a Sunday picnic.
So buckle up and hold on, because it is going to be a really bumpy ride from here on out.
Ferguson is not the end – it is just the beginning of a horrible new chapter in American history.

A 'pull no punches' Rant...

1. Several generations of liberal progressive policies RE the black community have created a critical mass of impoverished, illiterate and perpetually aggrieved black folks that can be ginned up and pointed at the enemies of the Regime – or just let loose to wreak havoc/chaos on anybody unlucky enough to be in their way. Please note that Ferguson and all the other big protests last night were in BLUE cities/counties.
2. This liberal progressive brainwashing has affected whites as well RE the whole “white privilege” narrative and the idea that violence of the “oppressed” (=nonwhite) against the “oppressor” (= always white, heterosexual, Judeo-Christrians) is justifiable payback in some cosmic sense. This is nonsense spewed by the liberal progressive moonbats like the man-boobed metrosexual Chris Hays of MSNBC and watching him scurry away when he heard gunfire coming from his “comrades in arms” was an image I shall treasure for years.
3. When the uniforms go away, the thugs come out to play. Sorry, but the National Guard should have come down hard on the looters/arsonists, ie, shoot to kill, tear gas, the whole nine yards. There are clearly people in this world that care nothing for “justice”, the rule of law or civilized society. They can’t be reasoned with, or bargained with and they don’t feel pity or remorse. They don’t even care for the stuff they loot – they just want to watch the world burn. Better to get them out of the gene pool sooner rather than later. This principle applies to the chaos that has been unleashed upon the world with America’s military withdrawal from it, but that is a post for another day.
4. There are good people of all races/creeds/colors/whatever that want to just live and let live. Seek out those people, give them a voice, cherish them. Or, as we say in the prepper community – prep, train and form teams.
5. Now that the economic heart of the Ferguson community has been burned to the ground, we will likely see yet another self serving black politician like Maxine Waters (Watts riots) come to power promising all kinds of rainbow pooping unicorn lollipop goodies while Ferguson morphs into Detroit.
6. If you are a business owner close to a large mass of illiterate, impoverished and perpetually aggrieved people – tough shit. You are clearly on your own in a riot as the police/fire will not come to protect/help you.
Here’s a thought: When black people riot they burn down their own neighborhoods. When white people riot, they burn down entire continents.
7. Our preezy, the AG and most of the MSM are actively engaged in a race/civilizational war against white/Judeo-Christian/heterosexuals, aka Western Civilization. I can think of no other reason for Obama to speak this way in the midst of this chaos, embrace Al Sharpton as his go-to man on race, put up Loretta Lynch as the new AG, and the rest of the clapping-seal-stay-on-script MSM to act as enablers and cheerleaders to this madness. Personally, I don’t want my country to look like Mogadishu or Detroit but things are certainly headed that way.
8. Events in Ferguson are a great cover to avoid talking about the holocaust that has consumed so many black lives, a holocaust of crime, illegitimacy, poverty and dysfunction that can be laid solely and completely at the feet of those supporters of The Great Society. Racism? You bet. The soft racism of diminished expectations, no demands for accountability and lack of personal responsibility for a person solely based on the color of their skin. See also: Marion Barry (good riddance to bad rubbish).
9. Given the well coordinated nature of these multiple demonstrations after the grand jury, there is clearly a “Fifth Column” of commie rat bastards intent on the destruction the USA and the Rule of Law, using race (and black people as cannon fodder) as cover. Sadly, many of these scumbags are either part of the fed.gov or actively supported by them. Worse, these douchebags infest most of our elite universities, able to poison the minds of millions of young people. (Why do you think Obama has spoken almost exclusively to handpicked audiences of university students since about 2010?) If these people are not exposed and stopped, we are looking at a potential Reign of Terror here, a la the French Revolution. Google the commie “reporter” asking questions of Jay Nixon during his pre-verdict news confab.
10. Embrace the Doom. bargained with and they will not stop until the advocates of Western Civilization are all metaphorically and literally The (FU) USA is a powder keg into which the Obama Admin and the libtard proglodytes are throwing as many sparks as possible. Toss in a pinch of radical Islam and it’s gonna be Epic. In their hubris and their insanity, they truly believe they can burn it all down and build something better. They cannot be reasoned with, they cannot be dead.


The battle lines have been drawn, the battle space prep is complete, are you ready?

Thursday, November 13, 2014

Bank branches slowly fading away in neighborhoods

Bank branches slowly fading away in neighborhoods

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Scott Mlyn | CNBC
Bank branch closures are heading for a record year as the industry trims down and services get increasingly electronic.
Institutions have shut 2,599 branches in 2014 against 1,137 openings, a net loss of 1,462 that is just off 2013's record full-year total of 1,487, according to SNL Financial. The move brings total U.S. branches down to 94,752, a decline of 1.5 percent.
The trend, which has branches at their lowest aggregate level in at least eight years, has come about due to a plethora of reasons: A surge in mergers and acquisitions, primarily concentrated in regional banks but recently spreading to larger ones; the move to e-banking where customers can do most of their tasks either online or at automated tellers; and the economics of a low-interest-rate narrow-yield-curve environment that makes it less profitable to be spread out.

Top bank closures

Bank
Closures
Bank of America148
SunTrust60
BNP Paribas47
KeyCorp45
JPMorgan Chase40
Source: SNL Financial
General economics also play a role; JPMorgan Chase, for instance, lost some 45 branches in the Chicago area when Dominick's Finer Foods announced it was closing or selling 72 stores, many with bank satellites, while the Bank of Oklahoma said this week it will shutter 24 grocery store branches, primarily because of the preference for off-site banking.
"We launched the Instore grocery branch model back in the mid-1990s as a way to add another convenience option for clients who were visiting the grocery store and the bank weekly, or even more often," said Pat Piper, Bank of Oklahoma's executive vice president for consumer banking, in remarks reported by NewsOK. "Today, the majority of our clients are using mobile and online banking, as well as deposit-friendly ATMs, for the transactions they used to do in these regular bank visits."
Advocates have bemoaned the years-long trend of branch closures, with the National Community Reinvestment Coalition saying in a report that "the critical services they provide are essential to the vibrancy of communities." The group said that when branches close it opens to door to, among other things, predatory lenders.
But banking analyst Dick Bove thinks fear of branch extinction is overblown, with the trend likely to abate once the Federal Reservenormalizes interest rate policy and the yield curve—the spread between bonds of various duration—starts to expand.
"When banks are trying to collect deposits because the yield curve is steep and you're able to make a reasonable return on deposits, you open up branches," the Rafferty Capital Markets vice president of equity research said in an interview. "When you have a flatter yield curve, low interest rates and you don't want to attract deposits, you close branches."
Among institutions, Bank of America has been the most aggressive in closing offices, shutting down 41 in the third quarter alone and 148 over the past year. The bank is the second largest by deposits after JPMorgan and ranked third in branches as of June 30 with 5,099, according to the U.S. Bank Locations site.
Regionally speaking, the Chicago area has lost the most, with 125 shutting, while Washington, D.C., has been the next hardest hit with 39 closures, according to SNL.
Illinois leads the way among states, only six of which showed net additions over the past 12 months. The biggest gainer was Nebraska, with nine new branches. (Go here for a heat map on branch closings.)

Top 5 states for closures

Rank
State
Closures
1Illinois136
2Pennsylvania92
3Ohio84
4Michigan75
5New York70
Source: SNL Financial
Bove also attributed the high level of branch closings to a corresponding decline in banks. There were 6,978 banks in the U.S. at the beginning of 2009 and just 5,693 by midyear 2014, according to the St. Louis Fed. That's a decline of 18.4 percent.
He said banks are returning to a "spoke-and-wheel" approach in which more responsibility for operations is delegated through branches. The reason is that there is still a need to sell products, and that can't be done through electronic banking.
"There are a whole bunch of factors related to branches—the configuration of branches, the sizes of branches," Bove said. "But they will never, ever go away."