Gov. Kasich and Medicaid Expansion

In the wake of the passage by Representatives in Columbus of a two-year state budget that contains funding for Medicaid expansion, here’s part of a column from The Washington Examiner on Gov. Kasich and health care:

John Kasich should be punished for expanding Obamacare

By Philip Klein | April 23, 2015

Ohio Gov. John Kasich has made clear that he's seriously considering running for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination. If he formally announces, it will be important for conservative voters to punish him for his expansion of President Obama's healthcare law in his state.

Kasich is currently polling in the low single-digits, has no clear path to the nomination, and the grassroots aren't exactly clamoring for him to run. Yet he is being egged on by a group of Republicans who want to see the party move in a direction that's more comfortable with a larger role for government.

Though on the campaign trail he'll insist that he's a warrior for limited government, in reality not only did Kasich decide to participate in Obamacare's fiscally destructive expansion of Medicaid, in doing so he also displayed a toxic mix of cronyism, dishonesty and executive overreach.

A 2012 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court made it easier for states to reject Obamacare's costly expansion of Medicaid — as many governors prudently chose to do.

But in February 2013, despite campaigning on opposition to Obamacare, Kasich crumbled under pressure from hospital lobbyists who supported the measure, and endorsed the expansion. When his legislature opposed him, Kasich bypassed lawmakers and imposed the expansion through a separate panel — an example of executive overreach worthy of Obama.

Kasich cloaked his cynical move in the language of Christianity, and, just like a liberal demagogue, he portrayed those with principled objections to spending more taxpayer money on a failing program as being heartless.

"Why is that some people don't get it?" Kasich asked rhetorically  at an October 2013 event at the Cleveland Clinic, which lobbied the administration heavily for the expansion so that it could access a stream of money from federal taxpayers. "Is it because they're hard-hearted or cold-hearted? It's probably because they don't understand the problem because they have never walked in somebody's shoes."

Kasich's defenses of his decision to expand Medicaid are built on a mountain of lies, which have been doggedly chronicled by Ohio native Jason Hart (currently with Watchdog.org) for the past two years.

One of Kasich's recurring defenses has been that he was simply making sure that money Ohio taxpayers sent to the federal government got returned to the state. That argument could theoretically pass muster if it were a situation in which money not spent by Ohio were automatically funneled to other states, as with the economic stimulus bill. But that isn't the situation with Medicaid expansion, the funding for which is only spent in states that agree to participate.

It's also worth noting that although the federal government picks up the full tab for the expansion in its first three years, starting in 2017, states will have to start pitching in and by 2020 will have to cover 10 percent of the costs. As it is, Medicaid is crippling state budgets and is everywhere among the largest state expenditures.

Kasich has also emphatically tried to claim that the expansion of Medicaid has nothing to do with Obamacare. This is ridiculous. The Medicaid expansion is one of the central parts of the law, which is why the administration is fighting so bitterly for states to adopt it. According to the latest estimate by the Congressional Budget Office, Obamacare spends $847 billion over the next decade on expanding Medicaid — representing roughly half of the expenditures in the law.

Read the rest here.

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The Cost of Obamacare: The Numbers Don't Lie

While President Obama and the Democrats may lie about the costs & effects of Obamacare - the numbers don't....

From Tea Party Patriots --

Remember when Obamcare opponents were warning about the havoc the law would surely wreak on our nation’s finances? Well, we’re already starting to see glimpses of that come to fruition. The first quarter of 2015 isn’t even over yet, and overall spending has increased eight percent, thanks to, you guessed it, Obamacare.

President Obama brazenly promised nationalized health care would reduce the deficit. Now we can count that as just one more Obamacare lie. As economist Stephen Moore noted in a recent op-ed, health care costs are exploding. The increases account for spending on everything from insurance subsidies to Medicaid.

Meanwhile, the government is pushing more and more people to sign up for insurance through the Obamacare exchanges, thereby making even more Americans reliant on taxpayer-funded subsidies. And as if that weren’t enough, those fortunate enough to be on the private market are still facing spikes in their premiums.

When is enough enough? Obamacare has neither lowered costs for Americans nor reduced the deficit. But it’s like President Obama expects the country to either keep living in a fantasy world with him, keep giving him the benefit of the doubt, or both.

The jig is up, Mr. President. The numbers don’t lie, and Obamacare’s are pretty horrific.

The Health Care Compact (HB 34) has been introduced in Ohio and if passed would give the state legislature the ability to take control of health care in our state out from under Obamacare and away from the federal government.

To learn more about the Health Care Compact (HCC) click here.  Then contact your OH Rep (Click Here) and ask them to support true healthcare freedom in Ohio by supporting HB 34 - the Health Care Compact in Ohio.

Speaker J. Wellington Wimpy

Art credit: www.daveposh.org

It’s Not Just Tactics, Mr. Speaker

By Jenny Beth Martin

7:27 PM 01/25/2015

The Daily Caller

“The issue with the Tea Party isn’t one of strategy. It’s not one of different vision … It’s a disagreement over tactics, from time to time,” said Speaker of the House John Boehner, on 60 Minutes Sunday night.

More than a year ago, Speaker Boehner took serious offense when conservative groups criticized a budget deal he favored. They had “lost all credibility . . . I don’t care what they do.” So irrelevant is the Tea Party movement that the Speaker took to 60 Minutes to complain about its criticism of him Sunday night.

The Speaker trivializes the differences that led to the biggest intraparty rebellion against a sitting Speaker since the Civil War. His first problem isn’t with outside groups, it’s his own GOP colleagues in the House. When one out of every ten takes the extraordinary step of standing before his colleagues and calling out the name of someone else for his job, he should realize he’s got a problem.

As for us, our opposition to his leadership centers on our belief that we do NOT, in fact, share visions and strategies.

For example, we oppose amnesty for illegal immigrants because we believe it would not be fair to the millions waiting in line to get into America legally, nor to the millions who already arrived legally after waiting in line. Amnesty rewards lawbreaking, and only serves to incentivize further lawbreaking.

The Speaker, on the other hand, dances to the tune of the Chamber of Commerce, whose members and supporters want cheaper labor, and are, consequently, major proponents of the kind of comprehensive amnesty legislation that passed the Senate in 2013 and which the Speaker clearly wanted to put on the floor of the House last year before Dave Brat’s stunning upset of the former Majority Leader put the kibosh on those plans.

Moreover, we seek a federal government that is actually smaller than the one we have now, not merely one that is smaller than the one Barack Obama would prefer. We note with disdain the Speaker’s willingness to sign off on budget and debt ceiling increase “deals” that appear to have been negotiated by Popeye’s J. Wellington Wimpy — he will gladly give the president a spending/debt ceiling increase now, in exchange for the promise of spending cuts to come Tuesday. And when Tuesday arrives, somehow the spending cuts never materialize.

Similarly, we seek the repeal of Obamacare because we believe it tramples the fundamental liberties guaranteed us by our Constitution, destroys patient choice, degrades the quality of health care delivered, increases costs, and will ultimately break the bank. The Speaker, on the other hand, seems perfectly content to tinker at the margins (1099 repeal? Medical device tax repeal?) secure in the knowledge that many of his major funders — the health insurance and pharmaceutical companies who support Obamacare because of its mandates, which lead to a massively growing client base, and, hence, increased profits — don’t actually want him to fight to repeal the legislation.

Here’s a test of the Speaker’s assertion that our differences are merely differences in degree, not kind: Why has he refused to lead his GOP Conference to vote in favor of the bill introduced by his colleague Ron DeSantis of Florida, which seeks to overturn the August 2013 OPM [Office of Personnel Management] ruling granting generous employer subsidies to Members of Congress and their staffs for the purchase of health insurance through the Obamacare exchanges, in clear violation of the law? That legislation is a fundamental part of a strategy designed to raise the temperature inside the offices of the Democrat Members of Congress whose votes are needed to build the necessary majorities for repeal in both House and Senate; yet, given multiple opportunities to put the bill on the floor, he has refused to do so.

Finally, I would note one other difference with the Speaker’s view, specifically regarding his assertion that the Tea Party’s opposition is manufactured for fundraising purposes: Every dollar we raise is contributed voluntarily, by donors whose only interest is seeking to influence their government to tax less, spend less, and stop running up a massive debt. They seek little from the government other than to be left alone, and we have nothing to offer them other than our promise that we will use the resources they contribute to do the best job we can to achieve our shared vision of greater personal freedom, economic freedom, and a debt-free future.

JENNY BETH MARTIN is co-founder and national coordinator of the Tea Party Patriots, the nation’s largest tea party organization.

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An Ohio Patriot corrects the record

Art credit: ayurvedamagazine.org

Fellow Ohio patriot Nelson Hack of the Morrow County Tea Party, had his letter published in The Morrow County Sentinel on Dec. 30:

To the Editor:

Last week our representative to Congress answered critics who have been vocal about the recently passed government funding bill – the so-called Cromnibus.  I would guess he included me since I copied to him and his staff my Letter to the Editor of 12/17/14.  I also let him know that I sent it to all the Morrow County TEA Party members, the Morrow County TEA Party web page, Facebook, other Tea Parties, and newspapers throughout his district and state.  

Let me say I like Pat Tiberi as a person.  I believe he is a good man and has a wonderful family and seems to be honest until it comes to politics.  There is a war in the Republican establishment against Constitutional Conservatives within the party of which I am one.  For over a hundred years the progressives (liberals), both Republican and Democrat, have been doing their best to destroy the Constitution.  Did you ever wonder why, when a so-called conservative is elected, he/she never tries or manages to undo the legislation or programs the progressives and, most of the time they themselves, voted to have enacted?  Most of this legislation and these programs are unconstitutional and no one says a word!  After a long-enough silence it stands as law.    

Something Representative Tiberi did not tell is the political earmark in the Cromnibus bill that INCREASES the amount the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) can collect from individual donors from $32,400 per year to $324,000 – a tenfold increase! Since the NRSC takes sides in primaries, the new donation limit will help the DC establishment do more to support liberal incumbents. It's an earmark for RINOs (Republican In Name Only)!  This bill was so bad that Republican leaders had to rely on 57 Democrats to pass it.  President Obama even whipped up votes in support of the bill, and NOTE that Representative Jim Jordon did NOT vote for it. 

Let’s look at what Representative Tiberi calls “things in this bill that conservatives can be proud to have accomplished”:  

1. “The agency that handles immigration enforcement is only funded until February.”  But negotiators gave new money for immigration programs through OTHER federal agencies.  They gave $948 million to the Department of Health and Human Service for an unaccompanied children program -- an $80 million increase. That program provides health and education services to the young migrants (MIGRANTS!  I believe they mean illegals).  The department also gets an additional $14 million to help school districts absorb new illegal students. And the State Department gets an additional $260 million to assist Central American countries from which the illegal children are coming.   Current funding for Department of Homeland Security which oversees most immigration policy is scheduled to end in February.  If Congress fails to pass legislation to fund it for the remainder of the year before the deadline there will be no pay for the Border Guards.  Wow, wouldn’t that be a real poke in the eye to Obama - no Border Guards!  That would surely put a stop to Obama’s illegal executive overreach on immigration, wouldn’t it?   Because the Republican establishment in D.C. cannot figure out strategies that work they will be made to look foolish and will cave in again.  Once again they will say this is not the right time for a fight - we will fight in September.  As someone on radio said, they are just like Lucy; they will once again yank the football away just when Charlie Brown (the Constitutional Conservatives) is ready to kick it.

2. “It doesn’t provide new funding for Obamacare.” The key word is NEW.  It doesn’t stop any money that is already in place to fund whatever is already authorized in Obamacare until October.  Take that, Obamacare!

3. “Strengthens pro-life provisions.” REALLY?  Here is what this bill does: once again it bans using federal funding to perform most abortions; blocks the use of local and federal funding for abortions in the District of Columbia; and blocks the use of federal dollars for abortions for federal prisoners. Republicans say that there's also new language directing the Secretary of Health and Human Services to ensure that consumers shopping for health-care coverage on the federal exchange can see whether or not a plan covers abortion services.

These are only a few examples of political speak our dear congressman learned from the years he has been in Washington.  I could go on but I think most will get the point.  Our Constitution does not guarantee anyone to be coddled and cared for from cradle to grave.  Socialism promises that, but it has failed everywhere it has been tried.  There have always been those who hate the freedoms our Constitution protects.  The only way our Republic will survive is to elect Constitutional Conservatives in both parties (or in another party) that may be on the ballot.  For those that say they are conservative but their voting record tells otherwise, hold their feet to the fire, let them know how they failed, and remember it at the next election.  Term limits, anyone?

Nelson Hack

Mount Gilead

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Action Alert: The Time for True Health Care Freedom in Ohio is NOW!

 Action Alert  

Now that the elections are over, it is time to get back to work on fighting for our healthcare freedom. With the election night victories by the GOP in the U.S. Senate, now that they have control, there should be no excuses on why they cannot get rid of Obamacare.

After using the often repeated refrain of "Repeal of Obamacare" & "Health Care Freedom" as a fundraising banner since the passage of Obamacare, the GOP must now make good on their promises. 

The health care system in our country was broken prior to Obamacare and Obamacare just made it worse. But even a full repeal of Obamacare will not fix the health care problem we face as a nation.

Freeing us from the chains of Obamacare is not enough - we need true health care freedom and that can only come through the Health Care Compact (HCC).

The Health Care Compact is the only Constitutional option that not only allows states to remove themselves from the chains of federal control, it empowers the member states to address the health care concerns, needs and costs at the state level regardless if Obamacare is repealed or not.

Currently at the federal level Congressman James Lankford (R-OK) has introduced the Health Care Compact (H.J. Res. 110).

Click to Enlarge

To date, nine states have joined the Health Care Compact (Kansas, Oklahoma, Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, Missouri, South Carolina, Texas, and Utah), and legislation has either passed the state legislature or is being considered in 12 additional states.

Ohio is hoping to be the tenth state to pass the Health Care Compact with HB 227 having passed out of the OH House State & Local Government Committee and pending a full vote on the Floor of the OH House.

Having the support of 4 out of 6 in the OH House Majority Leadership, the HCC should be one of the first things on the House agenda when they return to session next week on 11/12/14.  

Passion to Action

We are asking everyone to contact your Ohio House Representative and ask that they support the Health Care Compact (HB 227) and true healthcare freedom in Ohio. 

For a county by county list of OH Rep's contact information, please click here.

Please sign the petition in support of the Health Care Compact to show Ohio legislators you support true health care freedom in Ohio. After you sign it please forward it your friends, family and social network.  To forward this post, click here.

Click to Sign the Petition

More Obamacare Lies: Obama looking to Win 2014 Lie of the Year!

President Obama, in winning the 2013 Lie of the Year Award with his, "you can keep your health plan and your doctor under Obamacare," may have one upped himself and is in contention for 2014 Lie of the Year. 

Rivaling his 2013 lie, as explained in the below video by Ezekiel Emanuel (Rahm's big brother), Obamacare will also cause the demise of any employer based health insurance with an estimated 80% disappearing in the next 10 years.

The only way we can Constitutionally shed the shackles of Obamacare is through the Health Care Compact.

At the federal level, in February 2014, Congressman James Lankford (R-OK) introduced the Health Care Compact (H.J. Res. 110)

To date, passing legislation at the state level, nine states have joined the Health Care Compact (Oklahoma, Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, Missouri, South Carolina, Texas, Utah and Kansas), and legislation has either passed the state legislature or is being considered in 11 additional states.

With the efforts in Ohio and the Ohio Health Care Compact (HB 227) pending in the OH House, hopefully Ohio will be 10th state to pass the Health Care Compact.  

Federal appeals court panel deals major blow to the ACA (Obamacare): UPDATED

Art credit: insureblog.blogspot.com

UPDATED: From The Hill:

The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday that ObamaCare subsidies issued through the federal exchanges are legal, contradicting a separate ruling by the D.C. Circuit Court on the same day.

Fourth Circuit Judge Roger Gregory argued that because the statutory language of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is ambiguous, courts should defer to the interpretation of the Internal Revenue Service and allow the subsides to stand. 

"Applying deference to the IRS's determination … we uphold the rule as a permissible exercise of the agency's discretion," Gregory wrote.

The decision came just hours after the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals came to the opposite conclusion in its ruling. . . .

From Cleveland.com:

Taxpayer subsidies of the Affordable Care Act in many states, including Ohio, could be in jeopardy because of a federal appeals court decision this morning.

The case, Halbig v. Sebelius, did not specifically involve Ohio, although the legal scholarship of a particular Ohioan, Case Western Reserve University law professor Jonathan Adler, provided the basis for the argument against providing the subsidies.

In a nutshell, the U.S Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled that when Congress wrote the Affordable Care Act, or ACA, it specifically said that federal taxpayer subsidies should help offset the costs for people buying health coverage in new, state-based marketplaces.

But a number of states, including Ohio, declined to set up their own marketplaces, or “exchanges,” in the ACA’s parlance. Instead, they piggybacked on the federal exchange, although each state offered policies specific to insurers and medical providers in the state.

The problem with this, as Adler first found while doing academic research, is that Congress specifically called for subsidies in state exchanges. While the federal exchange offered a fallback in states that would not set up their own, state-specific exchanges – many in states with Republican governors – that did not automatically transfer the right to give subsidies in federal-exchange states. Adler wrote this first in a scholarly paper after reviewing the law, and his analysis soon made the rounds in conservative and libertarian circles and became championed as a legal theory for challenging the ACA.

More than 80 percent of policy buyers on ACA exchanges have relied on subsidies. Three dozen states are using the federal exchange. So in those states, a court agreeing with Adler and other conservative legal authorities could shoot a substantial hole in the underpinnings of the ACA – namely, insurance coverage made affordable through federal subsidies.

In a 2-1 ruling today in Washington, D.C., a federal appeals court did just that. The court ruled that language in the ACA “unambiguously restricts” the taxpayer subsidies to exchanges “established by the state.”

President Barack Obama’s administration argued that Congress intended for subsidies to be offered in every state, and that the ACA established complete equivalence.

But the appeals court said that the wording in the ACA “plainly distinguishes exchanges established by states from those established by the federal government.”

The ruling was 2-1, and parties in the case may ask the full court for an opinion. Some analysts believe the full court may be more friendly to the Obama administration. If not, the Obama administration could appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, although that would come with risk.

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

More from The Washington Post is here.

And Jonathan Adler's report in the WaPo is here. 

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Art credit: amsimaging.com

Betsy McCaughey is a former Lt. Gov. of New York, author, and frequent columnist and TV news guest. In the months preceding the passage of Obamacare in Congress, McCaughey was one of the critical resources for patriots across the country, who relied on her analyses to prepare for visits to their Representatives and Senators, calls to the congressional switchboard, etc. She published another analysis the other day in the New York Post about the latest document dump of ... over 1,200 pages of NEW regulations on Obamacare. Here is her complete article: 

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ObamaCare: Death by paperwork 

On July 3, with Americans preparing to celebrate freedom, the Obama administration reduced freedom by adding 1,296 pages of new regulations to ObamaCare.

It was a classic pre-holiday document dump, publishing the mind-numbing rules in the Federal Register on the eve of Independence Day, when few were likely to be watching. So much for transparency.

ObamaCare regulations compel doctors and their office staff, business owners, local officials and virtually everyone else subject to the law to spend hours filling out paperwork with no pay for their labor. It’s a colossal theft.

Now four years old, ObamaCare imposes 159 million hours of paperwork a year on the public. That’s the administration’s own estimate, undoubtedly a lowball.

Even so, it’s up by 48 million hours over last year, when fewer regulations had been rolled out. And there’s more to come.

Among the July 3 rules is one that compels doctors who take Medicare to report 18 different clinical measurements on their patients, such as whether they are overweight and have been counseled about weight control.

Doctors who fail to do it will get whacked with lower payments starting in 2015.

The regulators estimate that this single report could take as long as 108 minutes per patient and consume 5.4 million hours a year nationwide. That’s time that could be spent treating patients or calling them to remind them to take their meds.

Instead, the federal bureaucracy is confiscating those hours to serve its own ends.

Small-business owners get hit hard, too. Notably, restaurateurs face 622,000 hours of work to comply with ObamaCare’s menu-labeling rules.

The American Action Forum, a public-policy organization, notes that ObamaCare is in a class by itself, imposing almost three times as much paperwork as the notoriously complex Dodd-Frank financial regulations, and more than 10 times as much as under the Sarbanes-Oxley financial-reform law.

The Department of Health and Human Services, or HHS, is the biggest culprit, responsible for 90 million hours a year of ObamaCare paperwork chores. Most are foisted on hospitals, doctors, insurers and local governments.

Because it includes the IRS, Treasury is the No. 2 culprit, with paperwork requirements up 23 percent this year. The IRS is ObamaCare’s chief enforcer; paperwork misery will continue to soar, especially if and when the employer mandate goes into effect.

ObamaCare gives the IRS 46 new functions, including collecting new taxes and exchanging information about you, your family and your income with HHS and state insurance exchanges.

For example, the IRS requires employers to report the value of insurance you get through work in a new box on your W-2, even though it’s not taxable (yet).

And dealing with the IRS is no longer a once-a-year affair. Have a baby, change jobs or get a divorce, and the IRS will be recalculating your insurance compliance and eligibility for premium subsidies.

“It’s unprecedented in recent history, the amount of responsibility the IRS is being given in an area that most people don’t think of as an IRS function,” J. Russell George, a tax official, told Congress last March.

The administration plainly doesn’t want to tell the truth about these burdens.

For example, it claims that people who are uninsured or lose coverage will spend 12.6 minutes a year to comply with the individual mandate. Preposterous: Even when the Web sites work, it takes far longer to shop for insurance and report to the IRS that you’re compliant.

On July 4, 1776, when American patriots signed their Declaration of Independence from Great Britain, they recounted the crimes of the tyrannical British king: “He has erected a multitude of new offices and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.”

Nearly 2½ centuries later, our own government is eating out our substance with mandatory paperwork.

Not to mention the drag on our economy.

According to the Heritage Foundation’s 2014 Index of Economic Freedom, America is the only country to have lost economic freedom for seven straight years, now ranking 12th behind Hong Kong,
Singapore, Australia, Canada and seven other nations.

“Burdensome and redundant regulations are the most common barriers to the free conduct of entrepreneurial activity,” Heritage cautions.

But some benefit from this out-of-control regulatory state.

“Government bureaucracies like complexity because it keeps them busy and funded,” warns Carly Fiorina, former CEO of Hewlett Packard. She laments that “as a result of these regulations on steroids, innovation, business creation and job growth are being stifled.”

Government bureaucrats are stealing our time, our economic growth and our liberty. Don’t count on Washington to fix the problem.

In the end, only an outraged public can put a stop to this regulatory oppression.

Betsy McCaughey is the author of “Beating ObamaCare 2014.”

Junk Science Behind Junk Food

From Tea Party Patriots --

First, it was skyrocketing premiums. Then, it was non-compliant plans. Now, the far-reaching effects of Obamacare are coming to a vending machine near you. Food labeling regulations, namely Section 4205 of the Affordable Care Act, were finalized on April 3 by the Food and Drug Administration, requiring vending machines to now post the calorie content of all food items. This latest action sets into motion another costly measure that will have a profound impact on businesses.

Companies operating 20 or more vending machines, which dispense prepackaged and premade food items, will have to adhere to the new rule. According to the FDA’s own analysis, millions of machines will be affected.

“FDA estimates that there would be approximately 10,800 operators under the proposed requirements, controlling between 4 million and 5.6 million machines that sell covered vending machine foods. The initial mean estimated cost of complying with the proposed requirements is $25.8 million, with an estimated mean ongoing cost of $24.0 million… Per operator costs are estimated to be $2,400. FDA estimates that average per machine costs are less than $10 annually.” [1]

The FDA report tried to make this unreasonable mandate appear more palatable with its $10-per-machine breakdown. However, as Ohio Watchdog.org pointed out, it’s going to financially squeeze small businesses.

“Chris Heaton, director of sales for Enterprise Vending Inc., said his company can now begin to calculate costs. It won’t be cheap.

“It’s an investment without any return to the company,” Heaton said.

If the FDA estimates of less than $10 per vending machine for compliance costs are accurate, “the impact to Enterprise will be close to $500,000 annually.”

Based on industry estimates of one vending machine for every 40 adults, the total cost for Ohio businesses could be more than $2.2 million each year…

Does the FDA expect vending companies to eat the cost of the regulation?

“Unfortunately, that is realistic to expect,” Heaton said. “Just knowing the industry, the costs and the prices, there will be companies that struggle with the cost, the needed manpower, the labor and the printing to be able to cover the mandate with their current prices.”

He doesn’t think his competition will allow Enterprise to pass along the costs.” [2]

The added expense isn’t the only hurdle the industry faces in bringing the machines into compliance. The FDA originally estimated it would take 14 million hours annually for vending companies to comply. 

This generated outcry from industry experts, including National Automatic Merchandising Association (NAMA) Sr. VP Government Affairs Ned Monroe, who stated, “Our industry has always understood that consumers need access to product nutritional information, but requiring an industry to invest 14 million hours annually is absurd and sure to kill jobs. We are opposed to the colossal burden these regulations impose on our industry and this report just confirms what an enormous and unfair burden it truly is.” [3] Through further data collection, the FDA decreased the hours of burden to 816,000. [1] 

This massive effort to “fundamentally transform” vending machines into calorie-conscious reminders at the expense of businesses must provide substantial benefits to do all this, right? Think again. FDA openly admitted:

“FDA has not estimated the actual benefits associated with proposed requirements. Food choice and consumption decisions are complex and FDA is unaware of any comprehensive data allowing accurate predictions of the effect of the proposed requirements on consumer choice and vended foods.” [1]

What’s even more disturbing is that there are published studies proving food labeling does nothing to modify consumer choice or curb obesity. [4]

Expensive, ineffective regulations backed by junk science or assumptions – what else can we expect from Obamacare?

When Government Makes Your Business Theirs

From Tea Party Patriots --

For those who believe in personal freedom, Tuesday’s oral arguments at the nation’s highest court hold significant value. The outcome will have profound implications on the government’s say in private businesses. Through Obamacare, Washington has sought to tighten its grip on companies through higher taxes and more regulations. Never before has the government made such an effort to force owners to comply with laws contrary to their religious convictions.

The two high-profile cases – Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. and Conestoga Wood Specialties Corp. v. Sebelius – have stirred the Right and the Left to action, resulting in thousands of people to brave the cold, snowy weather and rally outside the Supreme Court.

The Left, remaining true to their political playbook, turned the issue into a rally cry for women’s rights. Their theme: it’s “not my boss’ business.” What they fail to recognize is that it isn’t government’s business either. If we believe in choice, then we must afford Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood Specialties the right to choose what’s best for them and their businesses.

To help put this issue into proper perspective, we asked those within Tea Party Patriots to share why it was important to be at the Supreme Court on Tuesday and stand with Hobby Lobby.

“The First Amendment states, ‘Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.’ Hobby Lobby has all the right in the world to express their beliefs, and they can do that in their business and in their private lives. It’s not up to government to determine how they express their beliefs,” stated Bill, who oversees Tea Party Patriots’ Constitutional training.

Chris, who is part of the organization’s national healthcare working group added, “Religious liberty is foundational. If you go back and look at the history of freedom and how we got to be a free society, a self-governing people, you will find that the major fight was over religious freedom. It’s why the Settlers came to these shores.”

If our constitutional rights are subverted at the whim of government, the impact will go far beyond the loss of personal freedom as Gregg, a member of Tea Party Patriots’ national support team, pointed out.

“If the Supreme Court rules against Hobby Lobby and Conestoga, then in essence they are destroying the incentive for citizens to pursue their American dream. Why would anyone be compelled or have hope to start their own business, if the government is going to mandate how they spend their money or run their company?”

For the last five years, Tea Party Patriots has championed the cause of personal and economic freedom; however, this newest court case over the mandate hits close to home.

“We have seen firsthand what happens when the First Amendment is trampled on and infringed with the IRS targeting that has happened to us. We wanted to make sure we were here today as Hobby Lobby is inside the court standing up for the First Amendment and for their right to freely exercise their religion,” explained Jenny Beth, co-founder of Tea Party Patriots.

As the Justices decide on the two cases, we hope they will realize that there is no place for an overreaching government that seeks to violate businesses and individuals’ First Amendment rights. There is only freedom, which should be equally enjoyed by all.

Follow ObamaCare Delays at Your Peril

Photo credit: wisegeek.com

Anthony Ciani has some good advice at AmericanThinker:

Despite being “the law of the land”, President Obama is telling a lot of people to ignore ObamaCare; but does that absolve you from following it?  The Affordable Care Act (ACA), also known as ObamaCare, is now in full effect, or it is supposed to be.  To avert certain political disaster for the Democratic Party, Obama has issued, as of March 5, 2014, 20 unilateral executive actions to “delay” ObamaCare mandates and taxes.

The President has the authority to pardon, but he cannot pre-pardon your crimes, just as a priest cannot pre-absolve your uncommitted sins; and just as a priest cannot change the list of sins, Obama cannot change the taxes you owe or the benefits you must provide.  So what could happen if you follow Obama’s “delays” and “waivers” in lieu of the law?

. . .  One of Obama’s unilateral changes was to allow people to keep their existing, non-qualifying insurance plans, but those who do will still owe the taxes, regardless of what Obama says or leads you to believe.

So what might happen if you keep your insurance and forgo your 2014 ObamaCare tax?  Regardless of reason, whether you believed Obama or were civilly disobedient, you failed to pay your taxes; however, the ObamaCare tax is special.  The IRS can neither criminally prosecute you nor seize your property for refusing to pay the mandate tax, but it can place liens on your property and assess penalties, and the IRS can criminally prosecute you and seize your property for failing to pay the penalties for evading the ObamaCare mandate.

These are potentially serious consequences, so if your 2014 tax preparation software omits the ObamaCare tax, complain to the manufacturer.  Find software or a preparer that includes the tax, or prepare the forms yourself.  If the official IRS forms omit the ObamaCare tax, complain to or sue the IRS, and then figure it out on your own.  Whatever you do, determine if you comply, and pay if you do not.

. . . Only the law is meaningful to the courts; they care nothing about unlawful executive decrees.[emphasis added]

Read more here. 

Another Day, another Obamacare Disaster

From The Washington Post --

In a colossal “oh by the way” revelation, last Friday afternoon the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), a federal agency under the United States Department of Health and Human Services (that would be the executive branch run by President Obama), quietly released a report exposing the fact that under Obamacare, two-thirds of Americans who work at small businesses will see their insurance premiums increase. So this report – which is more than two years late – says over 11 million American workers will have higher health insurance premiums because of Obamacare. Despite the administration’s attempts to, as House Speaker John Boehner put it, “delay and deemphasize” the report, we now have it straight from the Obama administration that Obamacare will raise health-insurance premiums for American workers. That is a far cry from Obama’s 2008 campaign promise that families would see lower health insurance premiums – $2,500 lower, to be exact – under Obamacare.

When you want to hide something in Washington, you release it on a Friday

afternoon – but this latest Obamacare revelation is too big to ignore. Remarkably, there have been so many horrific disclosures of the deceit, inaccuracies, inadequacies and flaws in Obamacare that this latest report hasn’t stirred much outrage. On its face, the fact that the CMS says 11 million workers will see their health-insurance premiums increase should be a banner headline. But in the Obamacare narrative, disclosures like this have pretty much become routine. And that’s what the White House wants the media to think – that there’s no more juice in reporting another Obamacare lie or providing details about how this law is coming apart, undermining health care, killing jobs, decreasing American household income, leaving the uninsured uninsured, etc.

When challenged on the negative impacts of Obamacare, the White House Obamacare media strategy appears to be either to just deny the accuracy of obvious facts or to shrug and assure the compliant media that there is nothing new here. They are counting on the media watchdogs becoming bored with the Obamacare debacle.

There is no evidence that the Obama administration has any intention of rebooting its health-care policy or actually trying to fix the damage done by Obamacare. Instead, it’s decided to go with a strategy that my old boss, Lee Atwater, would love: “That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.” No matter what the truth is, or what harm is done, it seems like this administration is dealing with the fallout from Obamacare by stiff-arming Congress and the press and giving the voters the finger.

They are making a bet that this approach will yield better 2014 election results than telling the truth, admitting mistakes and fixing problems.

Rep. Lankford (R-OK) Introduces Bill to Free States from Obamacare

Congressman James Lankford (R-OK) introduced the one bill that will give states the ability to free themselves from the chains of Obamacare - the Health Care Compact (H.J. Res. 110).  

To date, eight states have joined the Health Care Compact (Oklahoma, Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, Missouri, South Carolina, Texas, and Utah), and legislation has either passed the state legislature or is being considered in 12 additional states.

Interstate compacts are governing tools that have been used on more than 200 occasions to establish agreements between and among states. Mentioned in Article 1, Section 10 of the U.S. Constitution, compacts are constitutional instruments that provide authority and flexibility to the states for administering government programs without federal interference. Congressional consent is required for states to enter into a legally binding compact.

Why is the Health Care Compact Important for Ohio?

In Ohio, many think or were led to believe the Ohio Health Care Freedom Amendment (OHCFA) completely stopped the implementation of Obamacare in Ohio.  It does not and never did.  (Click here to read text of OHCFA)

Simply put, while a good first step, the Ohio Health Care Freedom Amendment only stopped an Ohio resident from being forced into purchasing health insurance or from being forced into a health care system from the state or federal government. 

Due to the U.S. Supreme Court ruling on the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the Ohio Health Care Freedom Amendment passed in 2011, now only prohibits Ohio residents from being forced to purchase health insurance or from being forced into a health care program at the state level. 

Whereas any member state of the Health Care Compact, once approved by Congress, will be free from the chains of Obamacare and will be able to draft task specific health care laws that best suit their state -- without being bound by the federal constraints and mandates of ACA.

Continuing the fight against Obamacare in Ohio, Ohio Rep. Terry Boose & Rep. Wes Retherford introduced HB 227 and are hoping Ohio becomes the ninth state to pass the Health Care Compact.

From Breitbart -- 

Washington, DC—Representative James Lankford (R-OK), Chairman of the House Republican Policy Committee, today introduced the House Joint Resolution legislative proposal for the Health Care Compact, a breakthrough governance reform that allows states to clean up the health care mess created by the federal government.

“The Health Care Compact is a way for states to protect their residents from the top-down, one-size-fits-all health care ‘solutions’ that have been imposed from Washington DC, including Obamacare,” said Lankford.

“The compact transfers health care decision-making authority and responsibility from the federal level to member states. Those member states are then free to implement their own health care systems without interference from federal bureaucrats, using federal health care funds already collected and spent in their state.”

To date, eight states have joined the Health Care Compact (Oklahoma, Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, Missouri, South Carolina, Texas, and Utah), and legislation has either passed the state legislature or is being considered in 12 additional states.

Interstate compacts are governing tools that have been used on more than 200 occasions to establish agreements between and among states. Mentioned in Article 1, Section 10 of the Constitution, compacts are constitutional instruments that provide authority and flexibility to the states for administering government programs without federal interference. Congressional consent is required for states to enter into a legally binding compact.

The Health Care Compact does not conflict with efforts by state attorneys general, state legislators or Members of Congress to repeal or modify the President’s health care law.

“I still strongly support a full repeal of Obamacare. While we wait for this President and Senate Democrats to move beyond their intransigent support of this unworkable law, Congress can give interested states a way to solve their state’s health-care problems themselves. States that like their Obamacare can keep their Obamacare. The Health Care Compact simply gives a state like Oklahoma the option to create a customized system that better meets the needs of Oklahoma families.”

On average, more than 96 percent of health care is provided and consumed within a state by residents of that state. The Health Care Compact recognizes that with the lion’s share of health care being locally provided and locally consumed, regulating it at the state level makes more sense than the centralized, one-size-fits-all policies mandated from Washington. Centralized micromanagement of a complex industry serving more than 300 million people will not work.

“With $2.3 trillion spent annually and almost 3,000 pages of regulations for Medicare and Medicaid, federal management of our complex health care system has proved to be incompetent, inflexible and incomprehensible to the average American,” observed Lankford. “States already manage Medicaid, but they are burdened with thousands of pages of federal regulation, which makes the system inefficient and impersonal. The Health Care Compact moves decision-making closer to the people, freeing states to address health care innovation, increased options and affordability."

“I am proud to join the many state legislators, governors, businessmen and hard-working Americans who have worked to build support and momentum for the idea of the Health Care Compact, and I am proud to introduce the common-sense bill for this sensible solution,” concluded Lankford.

For a copy of the bill text, please click here.