Latest ObamaCare surprise: Most won't be able to buy health insurance until end of year

There is yet another ObamaCare surprise waiting for consumers: from now until the next open enrollment at the end of this year, most people will simply not be able to buy any health insurance at all, even outside the exchanges.
"It's all closed down. You cannot buy a policy that is a qualified policy for the purpose of the ACA (the Affordable Care Act) until next year on January 1," says John DiVito, president of Flexbenefit which has 2,500 brokers.
John Goodman of the National Center for Policy Analysis in Dallas adds, "People are not going to be able to buy individual and family policies, and that's part of ObamaCare. And what makes it so surprising is the whole point of ObamaCare was to encourage people to get insurance, and now the market has been completely closed down for the next seven months."
That means that with few exceptions, tens of millions of people will be locked out of the health insurance market for the rest of this year.
Only about one in four subsidy-eligible people signed up for health insurance," says Robert Laszewski of Health Policy Associates. "That means about 13 million subsidy-eligible people have not yet signed up for health insurance."
Add to that millions more who waited, or thought the policies under ObamaCare were too expensive and decided just to pay the tax penalty.
Although those who failed to buy insurance during the enrollment period could face a government penalty, most will not have to pay that penalty until they do their taxes next year.
“In all likelihood," says Laszewski, "we've only signed up somewhere between one in five and one in seven people who were uninsured prior to the start of ObamaCare."
That means millions are left outside the health insurance market. There is short term insurance, but anyone with a pre-existing condition can be turned down.
The reason sales of health insurance were crammed into short enrollment periods was so insurance companies would have some certainty about who would be in the risk pool, allowing them to set their rates accordingly.
Goodman explains, "they fear that the only people who will try to buy are people who are sick, and they are going to be expensive. So it’s built into the screwy logic of the whole ObamaCare system."
DiVito puts it this way: "So can you imagine that on July 1, an indvidual's walking down the street, they get hit by a car, the ambulance comes and picks them up and inside that ambulance is an insurance salesman selling them a policy. That is exactly what the insurance industry was trying to avoid."
There is one way consumers can still sign up, but only under limited circumstances.
"If you have a qualifying event, a life qualifying event, which means you get married, you get divorced, you get fired from your job" says Goodman. Or you have a child, or lose a spouse or have a change in income.
"It has to be one of those kinds of events,” he adds. “And if you don’t have that, you're not going to be able to buy insurance."
Barring any of those so-called life events, tens of millions will remain uninsured and won't be able to buy health insurance, no matter how hard they try.

Ukraine

Brandeis University withdraws planned honorary degree for Islam critic Ayaan Hirsi Ali

(Bailey) I'm guessing now that Muslims control the American Schools?
Brandeis University in Massachusetts announced Tuesday that it had withdrawn the planned awarding of an honorary degree to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a staunch critic of Islam and its treatment of women, after protests from students and faculty. 
The university said in a statement posted online that the decision had been made after a discussion between Ali and university President Frederick Lawrence. 
"She is a compelling public figure and advocate for women's rights, and we respect and appreciate her work to protect and defend the rights of women and girls throughout the world," said the university's statement. "That said, we cannot overlook certain of her past statements that are inconsistent with Brandeis University's core values."
Ali, a member of the Dutch Parliament from 2003 to 2006, has been quoted as making comments critical of Islam. That includes a 2007 interview with Reason Magazine in which she said of the religion, "Once it's defeated, it can mutate into something peaceful. It's very difficult to even talk about peace now. They're not interested in peace. I think that we are at war with Islam. And there's no middle ground in wars."
Ali was raised in a strict Muslim family, but after surviving a civil war, genital mutilation, beatings and an arranged marriage, she renounced the faith in her 30s. She has not commented publicly on the issue of the honorary degree. 
In 2007, Ali helped establish the AHA Foundation, which works to protect and defend the rights of women in the West from oppression justified by religion and culture, according to its website. The foundation also strives to protect basic rights and freedoms of women and girls. This includes control of their own bodies, access to an education and the ability to work outside the home and control their own income, the website says.
More than 85 of about 350 faculty members at Brandeis signed a letter asking for Ali to be removed from the list of honorary degree recipients. And an online petition created Monday by students at the school of 5,800 had gathered thousands of signatures from inside and outside the university as of Tuesday afternoon.
"This is a real slap in the face to Muslim students," said senior Sarah Fahmy, a member of the Muslim Student Association who created the petition said before the university withdrew the honor.
"But it's not just the Muslim community that is upset but students and faculty of all religious beliefs," she said. "A university that prides itself on social justice and equality should not hold up someone who is an outright Islamophobic."
Thomas Doherty, chairman of American studies, refused to sign the faculty letter. He said it would have been great for the university to honor "such a courageous fighter for human freedom and women's rights, who has put her life at risk for those values."
Bernard Macy, a 1979 Brandeis graduate, sent an email this week to university President Frederick Lawrence and several members of the faculty saying, "Thank you for recognizing Ayaan Hirsi Ali for defending Muslim women against Islamist honor violence."
But Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the nation's largest Muslim advocacy group, said, "It is unconscionable that such a prestigious university would honor someone with such openly hateful views."
The organization sent a letter to university President Frederick Lawrence on Tuesday requesting that it drop plans to honor Ali.
"This makes Muslim students feel very uneasy," Joseph Lumbard, chairman of Islamic and Middle Eastern studies, said in an interview. "They feel unwelcome here."
The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Pro-life teen called 'domestic terrorist' in petition supporting professor of feminism

(Bailey) Instead of this professor pushing her own political agenda, why doesn't  she do what she is paid to do and that is to teach? A supposedly grown woman against a 16 year old, really?

Dueling petitions involving a pro-life teen and a professor charged with attacking her are circulating at the University of California at Santa Barbara, and the student body is backing the teacher.
Students at the University of California at Santa Barbara are circulating the petitions, one in support of feminism Prof. Mireille Miller-Young, and another backing Thrin Short, the 16-year-old pro-lifer whose March 4 demonstration was allegedly broken up by Miller-Young. The one backing the professor, who has been charged with battery and vandalism, has more than 2,000 signatures, while the one in support of Short has 150, according to The College Fix.

“They talk about prioritizing the safety of our campus involving activists, yet it’s our professor that attacks somebody.”- Katie Devlin, UCSB student

“The last thing we need are these people invading our community,” UCSB sophomore Katherine Wehler, a theater and feminist studies major, told the site.
She said pro-lifers with graphic images of aborted fetuses such as Short and her sister carried are like “domestic terrorists.”
However, another petition making its way around the student body calls for Miller-Young’s termination.
“This is about someone who violated the law in several ways, disregarded the idea of freedom of speech, and tarnished the image of the UCSB,” it reads, before emphasizing that it is not a petition in support of the pro-life movement, but one advocating freedom of speech.
“They talk about prioritizing the safety of our campus involving activists, yet it’s our professor that attacks somebody,” UCSB student Katie Devlin told The College Fix. “I think it’s just the contrast that she is a feminist professor and stands for protecting women, yet she attacks a young girl.”
Thrin told FoxNews.com that she and her older sister Joan, 21, were holding signs and demonstrating in a free speech zone on the UCSB campus with other pro-life activists when the feminist studies professor -- who teaches one course on campus titled “Black Women in Pornography” -- approached the group.
“Before she grabbed the sign, she was mocking me and talking over me in front of the students, saying that she was twice as old as me and had three degrees, so they should listen to her and not me,” Thrin Short wrote in an email to FoxNews.com earlier this month. “Then she started the chant with the students about ‘tear down the sign.’ When that died out, she grabbed the sign.”
The professor snatched the sign and then allegedly walked through two campus buildings as Short, her sister and two UCSB students followed her. Short said Miller-Young pushed her at least three times as she tried to stop the elevator door from closing and get back her sign.
Miller-Young was charged last month by the Santa Barbara County district attorney's office with misdemeanor counts of theft, battery and vandalism. She pleaded not guilty last week.

Mozilla

Boehner: Lawmakers to weigh criminal case against Lerner for 'misleading the Congress'

House Speaker John Boehner confirmed to Fox News’ Megyn Kelly Monday that lawmakers plan to press the Justice Department to consider a criminal case against ex-IRS official Lois Lerner for “misleading the Congress.”
Boehner also said if Lerner does not cooperate soon by providing information on the IRS targeting scandal, the House would hold her in contempt of Congress.
“Somebody at the IRS violated the law,” Boehner said on “The Kelly File.”
“Whether it was Lois Lerner or not, we’ll find out.”
A meeting of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee to consider contempt is set for Thursday.
But before that, the House Ways and Means Committee will meet Wednesday to prepare a letter to the Justice Department citing possible criminal activity by Lerner.Formal notice was given Monday night by the committee to Attorney General Eric Holder about the referral for possible criminal prosecution of Lerner “based on evidence the Committee has uncovered in the course of investigation of IRS abuses.”
Fox News has learned the letter will argue Lerner violated the constitutional rights of citizens, gave misleading information to investigators and inappropriately released private taxpayer information.
The accusations generally relate to the scandal over the agency's practice of singling out conservative groups seeking non-profit status for extra scrutiny.
Boehner told Kelly that any criminal case against Lerner would be for “misleading the Congress.”
He said at the Ways and Means Committee’s Wednesday session, “they will go over this letter that they have put together outlining names of taxpayers who’ve been harmed and aggrieved and lay out a case for how Ms. Lerner misled the committee.”
He said he also expected that after Easter recess, Congress would take up a contempt resolution against Lerner. He added, “if she’s not going to tell us the truth, we are going to hold her in contempt. The House will vote. The House will hold her in contempt.”
Republicans argue that Lerner played a key role in the agency's practice of singling out conservative groups seeking non-profit status for extra scrutiny as head of the Exempt Organizations Division.
Criminal referrals from Congress to the Justice Department are rare -- and the Justice Department is under no obligation to pursue such a case.
The last major effort of this sort was in 2008, when the leaders of the House oversight committee sent a criminal referral to the Justice Department after they claimed baseball star Roger Clemens failed to tell the truth during a hearing about performance-enhancing drugs.
In that case, the department accepted the referral and prosecuted Clemens. He was eventually exonerated in court.
Asked for comment Monday on the latest pending referral, IRS Commissioner John Koskinen said: "They're doing what they think is right, and I'm sure the Department of Justice is doing what they think is right."
Lerner, speaking before the House oversight committee last year, defended herself against the allegations in the IRS case.
"I have not done anything wrong. I have not broken any laws. I have not violated any IRS rules or regulations," she said.
Lerner, though, refused to answer questions from the committee, and did so again last month.
In his interview with Fox News, Boehner also said House Republicans had not expanded ObamaCare last week with a voice vote to expand coverage choices for small businesses -- a departure from their strategy to try to dismantle or repeal the 2010 health care law.
Asked by Kelly about 2014 midterm election prospects, Boehner said he thought the GOP had a “a real good opportunity” to take the Senate and also to pick up seats in the House.
Fox News' Chad Pergram contributed to this report.

OBAMACARE

Gallup survey suggests sign-ups under ObamaCare not as high as White House says

A major new Gallup survey suggests the ObamaCare sign-up numbers are not as soaring as the White House claims. 
The massive survey, released on Monday, shows the number of uninsured indeed has fallen to its lowest level in years, likely thanks to the Affordable Care Act. The Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index measured the share of adults without health insurance. That shrank from 17.1 percent at the end of last year to 15.6 percent for the first three months of 2014. 
The decline of 1.5 percentage points would translate roughly to more than 3.5 million people gaining coverage. 
But the numbers, released a week after the close of the health law's first enrollment season, also suggest a far more modest impact on coverage than statistics cited by the Obama administration. 
The administration says 7.1 million have signed up for subsidized private plans through new insurance markets, while 3 million previously uninsured people gained coverage through the law's Medicaid expansion. 
Why the huge difference? For starters, the administration's numbers include people who switched or were dropped from their previous coverage, as well as people who have not paid their first month's premium, and who would therefore still be uninsured. 
The administration is also counting sign-ups dating back to October, though enrollment in the first few months was relatively low. 
According to Gallup, the number of uninsured has fallen by a greater amount since the start of open enrollment on Oct. 1. Gallup shows the percentage spiked to 18 percent at the end of the third quarter. But the spike could be attributed in part to people being kicked off their prior coverage, due to changes in the health care law. A look back at mid-2013 shows the percentage of uninsured, before the run-up to open enrollment, was also at 17.1 percent. So the number of people gaining coverage since then would still be roughly 3.5 million. 
Still, it's not quite an apples-to-apples comparison. Gallup is counting just adults, while the administration figures include children as well. 
It may take much of the rest of the year to get a true bottom line of the health care law's impact on coverage. The Gallup survey noted that those signing up for coverage during an extended enrollment period could further drive down the number -- though some enrollees will ultimately choose not to pay their premiums, which would drive the number up. 
But Gallup's numbers do show an improving trend. The share of Americans without coverage is at its lowest since late 2008, before Obama took office, the survey found. 
That's independent validation for the White House, and shows the country at least is not suffering from a net loss of insurance coverage due to cancellations. 
Some feared the cancellations of more than 4.7 million policies that didn't measure up to the law's standards would actually swell the ranks of uninsured people. That created huge political problems for Obama, who had promised Americans they could keep their insurance if they liked it. 
About half the states authorized extensions belatedly granted by the White House. 
Gallup found the biggest insurance gains were among lower-income people and among African-Americans. 
Among people with household incomes of less than $36,000 a year, the share of uninsured shrank by 3.2 percentage points from levels at the end of 2013.
African-Americans saw their uninsured rate drop by 3.3 percentage points. 
Although the proportion of Hispanics without coverage fell by 1.7 percentage points, Latinos remained more likely than any racial or ethnic group to lack access, with 37 percent uninsured. 
Gallup found gains in coverage among all age groups, but not much evidence of a late surge of younger people that the administration had hoped for to help keep premiums in check. 
Results were based on telephone interviews conducted Jan. 2 -March 31 with a random sample of 43,562 adults 18 and older living in all 50 states and Washington, D.C. For results based on the total sample of national adults, the margin of sampling error is plus or minus 1 percentage point at the 95 percent confidence level. 
The Associated Press contributed to this report.