Sunday, March 9, 2014

ObamaCare will hasten income inequality, union report says


A new report from a major U.S. union says ObamaCare will hasten income inequality.
Although it defends the intent behind the Affordable Care Act, the report, entitled “The Irony of ObamaCare: Making inequality worse,” concludes that the law will transfer a billion dollars in wealth to insurance companies, uneven the playing field in the market, force employers to cut back on hours and result in pay decreases, Ralston Reports said.
“The promise of Obamacare was the right one and the hope for extending healthcare coverage to the un-and under-insured a step in the right direction,” the report says. “Yet the unintended consequences will hit the average, hard-working American where it hurts: in the wallet.”
The report says it’s “ironic” that the Obama administration is publicly discussing income inequality though it has yet to make the changes to ObamaCare that Unite Here believes are necessary to avoid exacerbating income disparity.
“Having already made efforts to accommodate businesses, churches and congressional staff, it is ironic that the administration is now highlighting issues of economic inequality without acting to preserve health plans that have been achieving the goals of the ACA for decades,” the report concludes. “Without a smart fix, the ACA will heighten the inequality that the Administration seeks to reduce … We cannot sit idly by as the politicians carve up our health plans while they carve out exceptions for themselves and every special interest feeding at the trough in Washington.”
The report comes about three weeks before the enrollment deadline for ObamaCare. While officials say 4 million have signed up for private insurance on the exchanges so far, the program is still short of its unofficial 7 million goal.

Even Obama seems to be losing faith in Obamacare

Supreme Court Hears Arguments On Constitutionality Of Health Care Law 

If you’d like the government to change something about Obamacare, give the White House a ring. They’re in a flexible mood.

President Obama this week approved yet another delay to provisions in the Affordable Care Act, giving insurers until 2016 to sell a type of insurance policy that’s supposed to be banned under the health-reform law. The ban, which was supposed to begin this year, would prevent insurers from selling bare-bones plans that might be affordable but don’t abide by 10 “essential service rules” required under the new law.
When insurers began canceling such coverage last year, however, several million Americans were forced off plans they had chosen, with most alternatives being more expensive. That undermined Obama’s frequent claim that “if you like your health insurance, you can keep it,” and turned into one of the most controversial elements of a law that hardly lacks detractors.
In November, Obama announced a one-year delay in the ban on “substandard” plans, as he used to call them. Now, extending the delay to 2016 will “provide consumers with choices so they can decide what is best,” the government says. Yet these limbo plans — temporarily allowed but bound to vanish at some point — defy the whole intent of Obamacare, as if the president is losing faith in his own plan. “This is a political move to minimize the impact of this as an argument against Democratic candidates,” says Sean Nicholson, a management professor at Cornell University.
Obama and his fellow Democrats certainly need some political cover as the November midterm elections approach. Support for the ACA has never risen above 45% and it actually weakened as the law went into effect. A recent Gallup poll shows 23% of Americans say they’ve been hurt by the law, while only 10% say they’ve been helped. That may overstate the ACA’s actual impact — since 16% of people said the ACA harmed them a year before it even went into effect — yet the negative impression alone is a big problem for Democrats who voted for the law and now must defend it as they run for reelection.
People with bare-bones insurance plans tend to be healthy enough to feel comfortable skimping on coverage. Yet it’s critical to get such people to enroll in the new federal program, so the premiums they pay will help offset the cost of older, sicker enrollees. If the ACA exempted everybody who wanted a cheap, limited plan, it could thwart the whole program, since it would include too many costly patients and premiums would be prohibitively high.
Obama now seems to be backing off one of the key planks of the whole reform effort. Yet many of the people “allowed” to keep a substandard plan will be forced to enroll in Obamacare anyway. The pressure, however, comes from three sources other than the federal government:
States. Insurance commissioners in each state must explicitly allow insurers to offer the limbo policies, and only about half of the states have said they will. So people in many states won’t be able to get a limbo plan even though Obama has said they can.
Insurers. Insurance companies spent three years preparing for the onset of Obamacare, including the ban on bare-bones plans. While reinstating old policies might earn them a few extra bucks, it’s also a hassle to cancel policies, then reinstate them only to cancel them again in a couple of years. “I would expect insurers that have already decided not to offer these are not going to change their minds in great numbers,” says Tim Jost, an expert on health law at Washington & Lee University law school.
Healthcare consumers. Bare-bones plans are the type consumers drop most frequently, as they get new jobs that offer better coverage, go onto a spouse’s plan or simply drop their insurance. Since insurers are only allowed to carry over plans that were offered in 2013 — not offer new ones — turnover alone should quickly reduce the number of people who have such plans, diminishing the importance of limbo plans.
The change means Democrats will be able to say Obamacare really does let you keep your insurance plan (wink, wink). But Jost says even that strategy carries risks. “By delaying it until 2016, that means some people might get cancellation notices right before the next presidential election," he says. “That doesn’t seem very smart.”
Of course, Obama could always extend the deadline.
Rick Newman’s latest book is Rebounders: How Winners Pivot From Setback To Success. Follow him on Twitter: @rickjnewman.

 

Issa

Political Cartoons by Glenn McCoy

‘Game the system’? Nonprofits, including Farrakhan-tied group, enjoy windfall from farm subsidies

farm_subsidies.jpg

Several nonprofits that have little to do with farming or are in poor standing with their local governments have been receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars in farm subsidies over the past decade, federal records show.
They include an Islamic charity tied to Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, a Midwestern group devoted to waterfowl habitat, and a major conservation group with few farms to its name.
The group tied to Farrakhan, called the Three Year Economic Saving Program, has received nearly $160,000 in farm subsidies since 2002. The program was incorporated on Sept. 12, 2001, and is listed as “Not in Good Standing” by Illinois’s secretary of state.
The program has no record of ever being a charity with the Illinois Attorney General Office, which oversees the state’s 501(c)(3) nonprofits. The program nevertheless funded an operation called Muhammad Farms, purchased by Farrakhan in 1995. While Muhammad Farms consists of about 1,500 acres in Georgia, its farm subsidies are received at Farrakhan’s Chicago home.  
The Savings Program’s goal, according to its website, is “to provide at least one meal per day, according to the teachings of the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad for the 40 million black people in America.”
Adam Andrzejewski, founder of OpenTheBooks.com and former Republican candidate for governor of Illinois, questioned the subsidies.
“’Not in good standing’ doesn’t seem to trouble the Cincinnati office of the IRS,” he said. “Why is Farrakhan’s charity allowed to receive federal money? This is no longer about farm policy, it’s merely a transfer mechanism from one set of Americans who pay taxes to another set who know how to game the system.”
OpenTheBooks.com displays taxpayer dollars given to the charity since 2008, and FoxNews.com reviewed raw data since 1995 in the database run by Andrzejewski’s group
The Savings Program has been listed as “Not in Good Standing” since September of last year. According to the Office of the Illinois Secretary of State, the nonprofit was “involuntarily" dissolved by the State of Illinois on Feb. 1 following its failure to file an annual report within six months of its due date. “Sooner or later, the [Illinois] Department of Revenue will catch up with them during tax time,” said an employee of the Illinois Secretary of State’s Business Services office, who commented on the condition of anonymity. The employee could not comment on the legality of the program’s continued acceptance of donations under the auspices of being a 501(c)(3).
As with other nonprofits accepting subsidies, they ostensibly benefit from their government status in two ways – both by receiving the subsidies and by enjoying tax-exempt status.
The Muhammad Farms website says supporters can donate “tax deductible contributions” to the Three Year Economic Saving Program. Yet the IRS’s public database of 990 forms (which can prove a nonprofit’s tax-exempt status) shows no such listing for either Muhammad Farms, the Nation of Islam or the Three Year Program. Some religious organizations are exempt from filing 990 forms, which may allow the Three Year Economic Program to evade disclosing its assets. Through the Freedom of Information Act, nonprofits are required to provide the past three years’ 990 forms on request, and the Nation of Islam has not returned calls requesting the forms or comment.
The Southern Poverty Law Center calls the Nation of Islam a “black separatist group” and Farrakhan’s rhetoric “deeply racist, anti-Semitic and anti-gay,” stating that the Nation of Islam’s theology includes “innate black superiority over whites.”
Chicago Ducks
About $3.4 million in taxpayer funds have gone to foundations based in Chicago that seek to conserve waterfowl at the Putnam County, Ill., Dixon Waterfowl Refuge. Since 2001, seven waterfowl habitat foundations have received roughly $50,000 per year. Each foundation is an arm of the Wetlands Initiative, a program that, according to its website, is “dedicated to restoring the wetland resources of the Midwest.” 
Each of the seven separate foundations is run out of the same downtown Chicago high-rise office, has the same agent, shares the same IRS 990 filer and receives subsidies from the same USDA county office. Subsidies flow from the Putnam USDA office because the money goes to a waterfowl refuge overseen by the Wetlands Initiative in the same county.
The seven foundations are each dedicated in name to the Pintail, Ringbill, Blue-Wing Teal, Green-Wing Teal, Wood, Mallard and Gadwall ducks— none of which are endangered. Each of these ducks’ situations is labeled “of the least concern” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.  Only two of these ducks are in the Midwest year-round; the other five migrate briefly through the Midwest or are there for one season annually at most.
According the finance manager of the Wetlands Initiative, the seven foundations are named for ducks seen at Hennepin’s Dixon Waterfowl Reservation, which is owned nearly entirely by the seven foundations, and their subsidies are set to expire in October 2015. The Ringbill Habitat Foundation, according to the manager, has the most assets as it owns the most land. The finance manager did not respond to questions regarding why there are seven foundations, and not one.   
Group Compensated for Lamb Slaughter, Tobacco Loss
The National Audubon Society, a conservation-focused nonprofit headquartered in downtown Manhattan, has pulled in hundreds of thousands of dollars over the years in federal payments.
The society is the largest recipient of farm subsidies in New York’s SoHo neighborhood, having collected roughly $763,000 over the last decade.
The group’s payment recipients span eight states. Since 1995, about 90 percent of the foundation’s $932,801 in farm subsidy payments have gone to conservation, while about $114,000 was dedicated to crop and livestock payments.
The National Audubon Society’s benefits include crop payments for corn, barley, oats, sorghum, soybeans, cotton, wheat, oilseed, burley and sunflowers. The foundation received a $30 lamb meat slaughter subsidy in 2003 and has received $576 for tobacco loss assistance since 1995. The tobacco loss assistance program was introduced to help farmers regain money lost due to slashed U.S. tobacco quotas and acreage.  
In the eight states the payments flow to, just one farm affiliated with the society could be found during a review by FoxNews.com. Dayton, Ohio’s, Aullwood Farm has received no more than $3,224 of the $114,000 in payments since 1995. The farm does raise lamb, which could explain the lamb slaughter subsidy.  The farm also raises grass crops, which could cover some, but not all, of the payments the National Audubon Society has received.
The Minnesota chapter of the Society has received over $6,000 in various payments over the last decade, but the National Audubon site does not list any centers or sanctuaries in the state.
According to its 990 form, the foundation’s 26 “key employees” are collectively compensated with more than $8 million each year. The society’s president earns a salary of over $460,000.
The National Audubon Society did not return requests for comment.

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