More Obamacare woes

The New Neo Posted on by

Please read this to hear about one woman’s struggles with getting health insurance post-Obamacare, in a state (New York) that has the Medicaid expansion. An excerpt:

In fact, I started this process in October. And only today did I receive an email that my eligibility had been determined and I should log on to the site and choose a plan.

A detailed timeline of the actions I’ve taken proactively and reactively over the past 5 months would be mind-numbingly boring to recount, much less to read…

I have now spoken to three representatives today.

No one can actually explain the relationship between Medicaid and these various plans. (One is “primary” and one is “secondary,” although the representatives have differed on which is which, and do not seem to know what those characterizations mean in practical terms anyway.) The site does not have any explanatory content on the subject. The plans (when the page does load, perhaps once every half hour) are indistingishable to me.

One representative listed the insurance provider names (Health Plus, Emblem, bla, bla) and said “just pick one and I’ll put it in for you.” But how am I supposed to distinguish between them, I asked?

She told me I should write them down and Google them.

One representative has told me I must choose a plan by Monday or it will not take effect until the next eligibility round in November.

The next representative tells me vehemently that this is not true…

You have to read the whole thing to get the full flavor, but that will do for an introduction.

These stories do not seem to be limited to the usual slowness and frustrations of dealing with most government bureaucracies. They seem to involve huge chasms in the law itself, combined with lack of communication, combined with true confusion on the part of officials and their representatives in understanding the law. If they don’t understand it (does anyone?) how could they ever communicate clearly on the subject to the consumer?

My own experience trying to get information about Obamacare for a relative in California has been similar, and Medicaid isn’t even involved. Every time I call, it’s a crapshoot in terms of the answers I will get to the very same question I keep asking over and over: are the networks the same if you buy the same policy from the same company on-exchange vs. off? I’ll spare you the details, but suffice to say I’ve been working on that (and some other questions) since December of 2013 and have probably put in close to 100 hours on the subject, and still don’t really know the truth. My current working theory, based on pooling all the answers I’ve gotten from Covered California plus the insurance companies themselves, is that the companies’ networks for the “same” policies on and off exchanges are the same de jure but not de facto.

Obamacare quote of the day

The New Neo Posted on by

From Ed Rogers:

After all the insurance cancellations, the administration’s insistence that 6 million people now have insurance because of Obamacare is a lot like firing 20 people, hiring 18 of them back and claiming that you have created 18 new jobs.

Indeed.

Another important test pending:

The real test will be if Obamacare can deliver insurance with a health-care plan that people actually like by November.

Narrow networks and high deductibles, anyone?

That’s one of many, many “real tests” yet to come. Others include what will happen to premiums in 2015—figures that will become public before the 2014 election.

“Some” contraception

The New Neo Posted on by

This piece by Margaret Carlson is disingenuous and/or purposely misleading in so many ways it’s hard to choose one to highlight, but I’ll deal with one of the simplest: it discusses the Hobby Lobby case without once mentioning that the forms of contraception the plaintiffs are objecting to being forced to help provide funds for could at least arguably be called abortificants, and that this is in fact the basis of their argument. They have no problem with other forms of contraception coverage required by the law.

You can take either side of the Hobby Lobby case and still write a piece that states the facts correctly without omitting one of the most important ones. In her article, Carlson refers to “contraception” and “some contraception,” and the casual reader would be led to believe that Hobby Lobby is objecting to contraception itself.

But two of the types of contraception Hobby Lobby objects to are the morning-after pill (“Plan B”) and the IUD. The left would argue that the preponderance of evidence at this point is that neither are actually abortificants, and there is certainly evidence to that effect. But the truth is that we really don’t yet know their mechanism in all cases, and that Hobby Lobby’s contention that they are abortificants is not the least bit frivolous:

The exact mechanism by which Plan B prevents pregnancies has been in question for decades and is not likely to be cleared up soon, says Donna Harrison, executive director of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

“How you ask the question determines what kind of answer you get,” she said. “What you don’t have is a lot of funding for research that says, ‘Does this drug affect the embryo?’ “

There is a similar case that can be made to consider the IUD a form of abortificant (at least in some unknown number of cases), if a person believes that personhood begins the moment an egg and sperm unite [emphasis mine]:

IUDs primarily work by preventing fertilization. The progestogen released from the hormonal IUDs prevents ovulation from occurring so an egg is never released. The hormone also thickens the cervical mucus so that sperm cannot reach the fallopian tubes. The copper IUDs contain no hormones, but the copper ions in the cervical mucus are toxic to sperm. They also cause the uterus and fallopian tubes to produce a fluid that contains white blood cells, copper ions, enzymes, and prostaglandins, a combination that is also toxic to sperm. The very high effectiveness of copper-releasing IUDs as emergency contraceptives implies they may also act by preventing implantation of the blastocyst.

It’s that “blastocyst” (i.e. newly fertilized egg), and its failure to implant in some cases as a result of an IUD, that is the issue (see also this). That’s the basis of Hobby Lobby’s objection, and to call it a refusal to provide contraception is an attempt to portray Hobby Lobby as more extreme than they are.

Gas prices: getting a foot in the door?

The New Neo Posted on by

Looking at the high gas prices at the pumps the other day, I had the usual and obvious thought, “When Bush was president the press blamed it all on him, and now that Obama’s president you hear the sound of MSM crickets chirping.”

Then it occurred to me that one simple way into a discussion with a liberal about how incredibly biased the media is would be to point that fact out. I’m not so sure even most liberals could deny it. They might pooh-pooh its significance, but they might have trouble saying it hasn’t happened, or explaining it as anything other than bias.

And then you could point out that if the media would do that, how could you trust them to tell the truth about other things? What else are they distorting or omitting through bias?

It might be worth a try, anyway.

With leftists, don’t even try.

Cillizza: “Obama got elected on competence. Now people are starting to wonder.”

The New Neo Posted on by

Chris Cillizza writes that now people are starting to wonder about Obama’s competence. You may shake your head in wonder at the word “now” and the word “starting”—how could people not have noticed long ago?

But even more curious is the “got elected on competence” bit. Really? Really? And yet, absurd as it may seem, Cillizza’s actually got a germ of an idea there. He writes:

A new CNN/ORC national poll reveals the problem. Asked whether Obama can “manage the government effectively,” nearly six in 10 (57 percent) say that statement didn’t apply to the president. Compare that to where Obama stood just before he was inaugurated, when 76 percent of respondents in a December 2008 CNN/ORC poll said he was an effective manager, and you see just how far he has fallen…

Here’s why that number…should scare President Obama and the Democratic Party. It goes directly to the heart of why he was elected — as an anti-George W. Bush, a person who, above all else, was competent at handling the basic affairs of government.

The poll numbers from 2008 referenced in the first paragraph bear out Cillizza’s contention in the second: that Obama was originally elected as someone “competent at handling the basic affairs of government.” That’s not the only reason he was elected, of course (and it couldn’t have been the reason he was re-elected). But clearly, it was part of the reason in 2008. The million-dollar question is why anyone would believe such a thing even back then of a man who (like him or not, agree with his politics or not) clearly had no track record of handling the basic affairs of government—or managing much of anything else—at all.

What the public perceived about Obama was not a track record, but a powerful impression of competence, apparently powerful enough to be instrumental in getting him elected. Obama was able to project an air of competence, and take advantage of the fact that a great many people seem unable to tell the difference between an act and the real thing.

A projection of competence without a track record requires the ability to resemble an actor in a TV show or movie who plays the role of president. Barack Obama was apparently very good at it. His voice was right. His height was right. His coolness and calm were right. He’d been to the right schools. His color, although unprecedented, seemed “right” also in the sense that its time had come and Americans were ready—nay, eager—for it.

I’ve seen many TV shows and movies where actors play presidents, and I’ve always been struck by how miscast they all seem. Comparing the actor-presidents I’ve seen to the actual presidents during my lifetime, the actors, almost to a person, seem too slick, too smooth, too generic (although Peter Sellers in the comic “Dr. Strangelove” seemed too bland). Real presidents have been, for the most part, far more idiosyncratic, with more complex energy and personality. But on the surface, Obama resembled the actors more than the presidents, and it impressed an electorate that favors role play over reality.

For all those who doubted my Sebelius/O’Toole…

The New Neo Posted on by

…separated at birth, there’s this, sent in by a helpful reader. On the upper right is an earlier photo of O’Toole, photoshopped to have brown eyes instead of blue, and on the lower right is the same photo, with Sebelius’s eyeglasses superimposed plus a little teeny tiny bit of the tops of her eyes to give his a slightly more hooded look (which he got naturally anyway as he aged).

I rest my case:

FiddledWith

Alinsky’s Rule #4 is a one-way street

The New Neo Posted on by

Excellent, excellent, excellent article by Jim Geraghty entitled “Unruly Progressives: why it’s so hard to make progressives live up to their own rules.”

First, a little review of Alinsky’s Rule #4: “Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.” Note first the word “enemy” rather than “opponent” or “adversary.” Alinsky knew what he was doing when he used language: the opposition is the enemy, according to the left. No beating around the bush; this is war.

Now note the idea that the enemy has rules it aspires to live up to. But really ruthless enemies in real wars are the ones who don’t mind bending or even breaking their own rules, if they have any at all in the first place. With the left, it’s hard to discern what their rules are except that the goal is to win at all costs. For the right, it doesn’t seem quite that way. It’s hard to make an enemy play by its own rules if abiding by the rules is not very important to them, and the left is that kind of enemy.

That’s why Geraghty writes:

James O’Keefe, the activist and journalist behind the famous ACORN videos, articulated the approach directly: “The Left doesn’t care about the laws or the rules. They are hypocrites, and the only way to win is to make them live up to their book of rules. I have found that the only thing they care about is racism, sexism and exploitation.”

Not to take away from O’Keefe’s work, which generates must-watch videos and scandal-inspired resignations with metronomic regularity, but there may be a flaw in this strategy. Ultimately, not that many liberals care whether their brethren are following their own book of rules. They’ve demonstrated a remarkable acceptance for one another’s hypocrisy.

That is their secret weapon, one that fewer on the right have mastered.

Which is why Richard Nixon resigned and Bill Clinton held fast, even through an impeachment trial. The first was abandoned by his own party because he had violated their principles, and the second was supported by his own party even though he had violated theirs (the ones they professed to have, that is).

[NOTE: On reflection, I think this has something to do with my change experience. Even when I was a liberal, I applied the same rules to both sides. I didn’t like hypocrisy and I didn’t like lies, no matter who was guilty of them. Once I got enough information to decide that liberals were more often guilty of them than conservatives were (not that either side is immune), it helped tip the balance for me.]

Whew!

The New Neo Posted on by

I saw an interview on CNN with Captain Brad Hawthorne of Houston, the fireman who was on the ladder during this video. His observation, “Most people will jump before they’ll burn.”

California State Senator Leland Yee (D) wins Hypocrite of the Year award

The New Neo Posted on by

It boggles the mind:

In a stunning criminal complaint, State Sen. Leland Yee has been charged with conspiring to traffic in firearms and public corruption as part of a major FBI operation spanning the Bay Area, casting yet another cloud of corruption over the Democratic establishment in the Legislature and torpedoing Yee’s aspirations for statewide office.

Yee and an intermediary allegedly met repeatedly with an undercover FBI agent, soliciting campaign contributions in exchange for setting up a deal with international arms dealers.

Not just any “international arms dealers,” but some special ones:

Yee had connection with Filipino rebel groups: “Keith Jackson advised that Senator Yee had an unidentified Filipino associate who was supplying ‘heavy’ weapons to rebel groups in the Philippines.”

Including Muslim terrorists: “According to Senator Yee, Mindanao was largely population by Muslim rebel groups who were fighting the federal government. Yee continued by saying the Muslim rebels had no problem ‘kidnapping individuals, killing individuals, and extorting them for ransom.”

In specific the Moro Islamic Liberation Front: “[The agent] asked about the major Muslim organizations in the Mindanao region of the Philippines. Senator Yee responded by saying ‘M.I.L.F.'”

Yee allegedly wasn’t making up the identity of his arms dealer: “This purported arms dealer was later identified.”

And, Russian arms dealers: “According to Senator Yee, the arms dealer source the weapons from Russia.”

In case you’re not familiar with California state politics (I certainly wasn’t), Yee was (is??) a prominent gun control advocate. As this piece suggests, “Maybe Sen. Yee came down so hard on private gun dealers because he wanted to muscle into the business himself.”

Clueless?

“It seems like nobody knew this was coming, and everyone is astounded by the allegations,” said Corey Cook, director of the University of San Francisco’s Leo T. McCarthy Center for Public Service and the Common Good. “I’m just astonished… Political corruption is one thing, but this is a whole other level.”

One should never be astounded at corruption in public officials, but maybe someone directing something called the “Center for Public Service and the Common Good” might be.

[NOTE: Here’s some background information on Yee’s career.]

Separated at birth?

The New Neo Posted on by

I know this one’s a stretch.

One was charismatic, one decidedly not.

One had riveting blue eyes, one not.

And then of course there’s that little man/woman thing.

But still—what do you think?

oToole

HHS Sec. Sebelius testifies on 2012 budget in Washington

STRENGTH IS WEAKNESS, WEAKNESS IS STRENGTH

The New Neo Posted on by

Scott Johnson writes the following about Obama’s recent statement “Russia is a regional power that is threatening some of its immediate neighbors, not out of strength, but out of weakness”:

You have to wonder just how weak Russia is, in Obama’s calculation. Is it so weak that it will invade the rest of Ukraine? Moldova? Estonia? Latvia? Maybe!

Obama didn’t have time to flesh out his thoughts into full doctrinal form. Is getting taken over by Russia a sign of strength? Does he stand in admiration of Crimea for being taken over, and of Ukraine for standing down? Their forbearance reflects strength.

Obama’s deep thoughts serve a useful purpose. It’s time to think seriously about weakness. Weakness takes many forms. Weakness doesn’t get much weaker than this.

That is followed by this video of Obama at the Hague making the point about Russian’s weakness, embedded in a statement so meandering that—well, watch for yourself:

There’s no question that countries sometimes invade other countries out of fear or insecurity. But weakness? Only of the moral sort, which is not especially relevant in the sense of geopolitical power struggle. Obama is either merely BS-ing here (always a distinct possibility), purposely abdicating US power and defining that action paradoxically as strength (very likely), or doesn’t even understand the Cold War or power struggles in the international arena. Because invading Ukraine does not indicate weakness, either of resolve or of drive to get what one wants through the raw exercise of force. And it has been successful, so far, although it may not remain so. But ask the people of Ukraine whether they think this is a show of weakness on Russia’s part.

The title of this post is modeled, of course, after the three slogans of the Party written on the wall of the Ministry of Truth in Orwell’s masterpiece Nineteen Eighty-Four: “WAR IS PEACE,” “FREEDOM IS SLAVERY,” “IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.”

It’s worth exploring a bit more about the Ministry of Truth:

The Ministry of Truth is involved with news media, entertainment, the fine arts and educational books. Its purpose is to rewrite history to change the facts to fit Party doctrine for propaganda effect. For example, if Big Brother makes a prediction that turns out to be wrong, the employees of the Ministry of Truth go back and rewrite the prediction so that any prediction Big Brother previously made is accurate. This is the “how” of the Ministry of Truth’s existence. Within the novel, Orwell elaborates that the deeper reason for its existence is to maintain the illusion that the Party is absolute. It cannot ever seem to change its mind (if, for instance, they perform one of their constant changes regarding enemies during war) or make a mistake (firing an official or making a grossly misjudged supply prediction), for that would imply weakness and to maintain power the Party must seem eternally right and strong.

Sound familiar? I thought so.

By his own definition of strength/weakness, this must be a very strong recent move by Obama:

Obama’s FutureWar Battle Plan:
Step 1. Reduce the Military Budget By Relying More on Stand-Off Weapons Like the Tomahawk and Hellfire Missiles
Step 2: Slash Funding for the Hellfire Missile and Eliminate the Tomahawk Entirely

President Barack Obama is seeking to abolish two highly successful missile programs that experts say have helped the U.S. Navy maintain military superiority for the past several decades.

The Tomahawk missile program””known as “the world’s most advanced cruise missile”””is set to be cut by $128 million under Obama’s fiscal year 2015 budget proposal and completely eliminated by fiscal year 2016, according to budget documents released by the Navy.

…The Navy will also be forced to cancel its acquisition of the well-regarded and highly effective Hellfire missiles in 2015, according to Obama’s proposal.

…Nearly 100 of these missiles are used each year on average, meaning that the sharp cuts will cause the Tomahawk stock to be completely depleted by around 2018. This is particularly concerning to defense experts because the Pentagon does not have a replacement missile ready to take the Tomahawk’s place.

“It doesn’t make sense,” said Seth Cropsey, director of the Hudson Institute’s Center for American Seapower. “This really moves the U.S. away from a position of influence and military dominance.”

Cropsey said that if someone were trying to “reduce the U.S. ability to shape events” in the world, “they couldn’t find a better way than depriving the U.S. fleet of Tomahawks. It’s breathtaking.”

The military always squawks when cuts are being made. This seems—different. Very different.

But let’s just remember: WEAKNESS IS STRENGTH. Apparently we are so strong in the geopolitical sense, thanks to Obama’s wonderfulness, that we don’t have to worry about that sort of thing.