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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: i-node who wrote (749169)	10/24/2013 3:02:26 PM
From: bentway	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1572295

Welcome to Wonkbook, Ezra Klein and Evan Soltas's morning policy news primer. Send comments, criticism, or ideas to Wonkbook at Gmail dot com. To read more by Ezra and his team, go to Wonkblog. The classic definition of chutzpah is the child who kills his parents and then asks for leniency because he's an orphan. But in recent weeks, we've begun to see the Washington definition: A party that does everything possible to sabotage a law and then professes fury when the law's launch is rocky. On Tuesday, Rep. Paul Ryan became the latest Republicans to call for HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to step down because of the Affordable Care Act's troubled launch. "I do believe people should be held accountable," he said. Okay then. How about House Republicans who refused to appropriate the money the Department of Health and Human Services said it needed to properly implement Obamacare? How about Senate Republicans who tried to intimidate Sebelius out of using existing HHS funds to implement Obamacare? "Would you describe the authority under which you believe you have the ability to conduct such transfers?" Sen. Orrin Hatch demanded at one hearing. It's difficult to imagine the size of the disaster if Sebelius hadn't moved those funds. How about congressional Republicans who refuse to permit the packages of technical fixes and tweaks that laws of this size routinely require? How about Republican governors who told the Obama administration they absolutely had to be left to build their own health-care exchanges -- you'll remember that the House Democrats' health-care plan included a single, national exchange -- and then refused to build, leaving the construction of 34 insurance marketplaces up to HHS? How about the coordinated Republican effort to get the law declared unconstitutional -- an effort that ultimately failed, but that stalled implementation as government and industry waited for the uncertainty to resolve? How about the dozens of Republican governors who refused to take federal dollars to expand Medicaid, leaving about 5.5 million low-income people who'd be eligible for free, federally-funded government insurance to slip through the cracks? The GOP's strategy hasn't just tried to win elections and repeal Obamacare. They've actively sought to sabotage the implementation of the law. They intimidated the people who were implementing the law. They made clear that problems would be exploited rather than fixed. A few weeks ago, they literally shut down the government because they refused to pass a funding bill that contiained money for Obamacare. The Obama administration deserves all the criticism it's getting for the poor start of health law and more. Their job was to implement the law effectively -- even if Republicans were standing in their way. So far, it's clear that they weren't able to smoothly surmount both the complexities of the law and the political roadblocks thrown in their path. Who President Obama will ultimately hold accountable -- if anyone -- for the failed launch is an interesting question. But the GOP's complaints that their plan to undermine the law worked too well and someone has to pay border on the comic. If Republicans believe Sebelius is truly to blame for the law's poor launch, they should be pinning a medal on her.

To: i-node who wrote (749169)	10/24/2013 5:51:50 PM
From: Alighieri	1 Recommendation Recommended By tejek Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1572295

Most New Jobs Were Full-Time Jobs STEVEN PERLBERG OCT. 22, 2013, 8:33 AM Read more: businessinsider.com According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics' household survey, part-time jobs fell 594,000. Full-time workers were up 691,000. This was the second straight month of part-time jobs falling. Workers are considered to be " part time" if they work under 35 hours a week. Some economists had speculated that an earlier observed shift from full-time job growth to part-time job growth was due to the employer mandate in the Affordable Care Act Under the law, employers will be required to offer health insurance or face penalties (though the White House will delay enforcement until 2015). As a result, some companies have threatened to reduce their full-time staff to below the 50-employee bar or scale back worker hours. Though, others argue that the trend we saw this summer was merely seasonal and expected. Read more: businessinsider.com businessinsider.com

To: i-node who wrote (749169)	10/24/2013 5:56:51 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1572295

Rs will regret their criticism of ACA just as they regretted closing down the gov't. Tale of Two Obamacares as Some States Bypass U.S. Site By Shannon Pettypiece, Freeman Klopott & Margaret Newkirk - Oct 23, 2013 11:01 PM CT bloomberg.com Don’t tell Elisabeth Benjamin it’s tough to sign up for Obamacare. For two weeks, she has been enrolling uninsured people from her New York City office through an online marketplace created by the law. With many Republican-controlled states refusing to build exchanges, supporters of the law from Texas to Michigan to Florida have been relying on the troubled federal site and preaching patience, rather than enrolling the uninsured. Most recently, she helped a Bronx home-health worker in her 30s get health coverage for $70 a month. “By week two, the system was pretty smooth,” said Benjamin, who’s certified to assist people signing up for health insurance. In Texas, which has more uninsured than any other state, 90 health insurance navigators, doing the same job as Benjamin, haven’t been able to sign up a single person despite a flood of interest, said Tim McKinney, head of the United Way of Tarrant County. The difference: New York built its own exchange website and it has been running with few technical troubles since the opening week while Texas, and 35 other states, is tied to a federal site plagued by errors and delays. Three weeks after the sites debuted, a tale of two Obamacares is emerging with perceptions about the effectiveness of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 varying widely from state to state. Coming Deadlines The state and federal exchanges are designed to sell health insurance to millions of Americans under the law known as Obamacare. More than half of about 500,000 enrollees since the Oct. 1 opening come from the 14 states running their own exchanges independent of the U.S. government. While enrollment continues through March, consumers must sign up and choose a plan by about Dec. 15 to get insurance coverage as of Jan. 1. Elizabeth Watts of Kentucky, which runs an independent exchange, had her application accepted at 12:04 a.m. on Oct. 1, making her one of the first to start the enrollment process. Because of a rare disorder, she has already had a heart attack and a stent put in place. She makes $220 a week working at a Shell service station. Previously, the only insurance she could find was for $300 a month, which was too much for her to afford. Using the exchange site, Watts learned she was eligible for Medicaid, the state-federal program for the poor that was expanded under the law and will cover most of her costs. “It’s been such a relief,” said Watts, 31. The last time she saw her heart doctor, “it took 15 minutes and cost $160.” Texas Troubles It’s a very different story happening in Texas, said McKinney of the United Way that serves the Fort Worth area. Instead of enrolling consumers, 90 Texas navigators funded in part by a $5.9 million federal grant are spending their time answering caller questions and holding educational events. They haven’t been able to complete the enrollment process on the federal exchange website without encountering errors. The navigators strongly encourage each caller and visitor to return next month, when McKinney said he hopes the problems will be resolved. “We knew there would be problems, we didn’t know the extent of the problems,” McKinney said in a telephone interview. “By this time, we expected the navigators to be enrolling a pretty good number of people on the site. But that just isn’t happening.” Slow Improvement The delays that have plagued the federal healthcare.gov website may be improving, according to Jodi Ray, a project director in the Tampa office of Covering Kids and Families, a nonprofit working to expand coverage. Florida residents must rely on the federal exchange. Community groups helping to enroll the uninsured are seeing “much better results” on healthcare.gov over the past week, said Ray, who heads a group of 10 navigator organizations for Florida. Until this week, the navigators were forced to rely mostly on the government’s call-in line and paper applications to sign up people. This week, they’re using the website more often. “They’re definitely seeing improvement,” Ray said. “They have been able to get people all the way through to making a plan choice, if they want to go that far, or at least examining their options.” businessweek.com