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To: tejek who wrote (781301)4/23/2014 1:12:47 AM
From: joseffy1 Recommendation

Recommended By
steve harris

  Respond to of 1578498
 
tejek LIES.

Gas price has doubled since Obama became Soros' puppet 'president.'



To: tejek who wrote (781301)4/23/2014 1:22:10 AM
From: i-node  Read Replies (3) | Respond to of 1578498
 
>> I don't know about Arkansas but gas is cheaper here than when Bush was in office before the recession.

Looks to me like gas prices took off when it became apparent the Community Organizer in Chief would be president.

eia.gov



To: tejek who wrote (781301)4/23/2014 7:58:14 AM
From: steve harris1 Recommendation

Recommended By
joseffy

  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 1578498
 
We see what you did there ted.

No wonder you're not a school teacher anymore......



gasbuddy.com

Btw, notice how the gas prices jumped after the democrats won control of the House and Senate also?

How's your DNDN investment doing?



To: tejek who wrote (781301)4/23/2014 10:28:31 AM
From: joseffy  Respond to of 1578498
 
How the ACA Could Collapse
.....................................................................................
National Review ^ | 04/23/2014 | By Amity Shlaes


Some time in the coming months, the Supreme Court will hand down its opinion in Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby, the case of the retailer that claims that its religious freedom or that of its employees is violated by contraceptive coverage required as part of the Affordable Care Act. The attitude of the health-care act’s supporters toward such cases is irritation. How dare a little religious case trip up the mighty Affordable Care Act and jeopardize the ACA’s establishment as permanent law of the land?

Cases involving religious details, however, do have a way of stopping big social legislation, and not only because they violate the principles of the religious denominations involved. Regardless of the Court’s decision, even pro-choice Jews, Unitarians, and Muslims may eventually change their views on the ACA precisely because of Hobby Lobby and cases like it.

To see how this might happen, it helps to go back to a case involving a commensurately ambitious piece of legislation, Franklin Roosevelt’s 1933 National Industrial Recovery Act.

The National Industrial Recovery Act, like the Affordable Care Act, aimed to do nothing less than change an entire sector of the economy — in that case, the industrial and business sector. After passage in 1933, NIRA created a bureaucracy labeled, in its turn, the National Recovery Administration, or NRA. NRA was hard to contradict: Its leader was a general; its emblem, the bald eagle. “Almighty God have mercy on anyone who attempts to trifle with that bird,” General Hugh Johnson told the public. The courts seemed to agree: Nine in ten NRA cases at first were decided in favor of the government.

NRA administrators led companies in the writing of codes for their respective trades. Like the ACA’s rules, these codes were offered in agonizing and counterintuitive detail. In those days NRA codes mandated minimum wages, minimum prices, new health and safety regulations, and business practices that efficiency experts recommended whether or not firms themselves saw their logic.

Just as the ACA stumbled over its own website this past winter, the NRA stumbled over it own forms and names, which were long enough to provoke ridicule. The name of the code that governed a family of Brooklyn chicken butchers called Schechter, for example, was “The Code of Fair Competition for the Live Poultry Industry for the Metropolitan Area In and About New York.” Nonetheless, as with the Affordable Care Act today, a general wait-and-see attitude prevailed. In 1933 and 1934 conservatives, mostly jurists, might protest that the NRA was too intrusive. But the rebuttal would come: “Intrude upon what? The Depression?” At a time when two in ten were unemployed, the country thought it had nothing to lose.

One of the many firms the NRA investigated was ALA Schechter Poultry, a Brooklyn butcher shop where authorities found numerous violations of the poultry code. After the Schechters were convicted in lower courts, the authorities grew increasingly confident that Schechter would be the case in which the Supreme Court would confirm the constitutionality of their law and the New Deal. Then as now, a kind of assumption, or at least a pretense, was at work. People pretended that the fact that the Schechters were Jewish and that the butcher shop they ran was kosher were ancillary details, a kind of coincidence, or even an annoyance.

But the fact that these particular butchers observed kashruth, the Jewish body of laws involving food, was not a coincidence of this case. It was causal. This was the early 1930s, after all. These were immigrants in an industry that had already seen convictions for racketeering. One could suggest they were the Jewish equivalent of Al Capone. The immigrants’ lawyers were not likely to be a match for the government’s untouchables, the legal-powerhouse solicitor general, Donald Richberg, and his talented deputy, Walter Lyman Rice (Harvard Law). A smelly business, a poultry butcher shop would be unattractive to the public. The pro-Roosevelt journalists could make a funny story out of the pathetic little immigrants with their chickens, and they did.

The distingushed columnist Drew Pearson (Phillips Exeter, Swarthmore, American Friends Service Committee) titled his book chapter on the Schechter case “Joseph and His Brethren” and wrote mockingly of the Schechters’ attorney, Joe Heller (Brooklyn Law). “In his Brooklyn Hebrew accent he told the jury how he had known the Schechter boys since they were children,” Pearson wrote of the lawyer. The government attorney could suggest, and did, that such a company’s practices were antiquated and that poultrymen endangered public health either by ignoring Jewish law or by enforcing it imperfectly. Perhaps the Schechters were hypocrites, as it is being suggested the Hobby Lobby proprietors are. Very early on, indeed, the federal prosecutors on the Schechter case began to contend that the Jews had broken their own religious law by selling many sick chickens.

But this contempt backfired, just as contempt for Christian pro-life culture may backfire on the government in Hobby Lobby. That is because the exposure the Schechters’ case got was extensive. The public, if it cared to know, learned that the butchers worked on Sundays but not Saturdays, that they allowed the customers to pick their chickens from the coop (another NRA violation), that their butchers had special Jewish titles — they were called “shochet” or “shochtim.” All this was transcribed in the newspapers. And that exposure gave the public time to think about what they were observing.

What was evident was that two large bodies of law were clashing. On the one hand was the elaborate and new NRA poultry code. On the other hand there was the code of the Jewish dietary law, based on the Bible itself. In a contest between NIRA (48 stat. 195) and Deuteronomy (14:21), perhaps Deuteronomy had more authority. The government had its health inspectors, but who were they to go up against Maimonides himself, who had proclaimed that Jews were forbidden to serve “unwholesome” food? As it turned out, the Schechters had not sold much, if any, bad meat — there was no actionable “sick chicken” in the Sick Chicken Case.

In the Supreme Court arguments, the standard jurisprudential challenges involving the Commerce Clause and delegation were standard. Violation of those principles turned the justices against the NRA. But what had also become clear to the justices and the public was that the Schechters were simple businesspeople. By now it was 1935, and recovery had commenced; the country understood that such businesses were needed if the recovery was to continue. When the Schechters’ lawyer, that same Heller, showed how ludicrous the regulations for chicken selection were, the justices and the whole room laughed. The same kind of slapstick humor that had worked against the butchers before now worked for them. Even the justices got in on the wordplay, writing in their 9–0 finding against the NRA that the Schechter case showed that not only the poultry code but also the entire NRA corpus must collapse, “bone and sinew.”

The best explanation for the shift in opinion is that such conflicts give the public a chance to consider what it is the government is intruding into or impinging on — not just a vacuum, but the private sphere, the personal sphere, the business sphere, and, yes, the sphere of faith. The spectacle of that intrusion is not easily forgotten once perceived. The chicken of daily business life and ritual can, from time to time, vanquish the eagle.

— Amity Shlaes chairs the board of the Calvin Coolidge Presidential Foundation.



To: tejek who wrote (781301)4/23/2014 10:49:08 AM
From: joseffy1 Recommendation

Recommended By
FJB

  Respond to of 1578498
 
The Epic Hypocrisy of Tom Steyer

....................................................................................................
April 20, 2014 by John Hinderaker
powerlineblog.com



Billionaire hedge fund operator and “green” energy magnate Tom Steyer has pledged $100 million in the 2014 election cycle to help Democratic candidates who oppose the Keystone pipeline and who favor “green” energy over fossil fuels. Steyer claims to be a man of principle who has no financial interest in the causes he supports, but acts only for the public good. That is a ridiculous claim: Steyer is the ultimate rent-seeker who depends on government connections to produce subsidies and mandates that make his “green” energy investments profitable. He also is, or was until recently, a major investor in Kinder Morgan, which is building a competitor to the Keystone pipeline. Go here, here, here, here, here and here for more information about how Steyer uses his political donations and consequent connections to enhance his already vast fortune.

But Steyer’s hypocrisy goes still deeper. Today, he is a bitter opponent of fossil fuels, especially coal. That fits with his current economic interests: banning coal-fired power plants will boost the value of his solar projects. But it was not always thus. In fact, Steyer owes his fortune in large part to the fact that he has been one of the world’s largest financers of coal projects.

Tom Steyer was for coal before he was against it.


A reader with first-hand knowledge of the relevant Asian and Australian markets sent us this detailed report on how Steyer got rich on coal. He titled his report “Hypocrisy & Hedge Funds: Climate Change Warrior Tom Steyer’s Secret Life as Coal Investment Kingpin.”

Here it is, in full:


Tom Steyer founded Farallon Capital Management L.L.C. (“Farallon”) in 1986. Farallon has grown to become one of the largest and most successful hedge funds in the United States with over $20bn in funds under management.1 Mr. Steyer’s net worth is reported to be $1.6bn.2

Mr. Steyer left Farallon in 2012 to focus on political and environmental causes and potentially to position himself for public office. He has been described in the press as the “liberals’ answer to the Koch Brothers”3 due to his wealth and his opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline and carbon-based energy in general. He has dedicated some $50 million of his personal fortune to back political candidates who support his position on climate change – and punish those who don’t. Mr. Steyer has led recent campaigns with Bill McKibben to encourage university endowments to divest coal equities.

In his recent letter to the Middlebury College and Brown University Boards of Trustees, investment professional Mr. Steyer wrote:

I believe a coal free portfolio is a good investment strategy…4

In a recent interview, Mr. Steyer was quoted referring to “coal-industry baron David Koch”:

[Koch is] taking the most incredible risk that I’ve ever seen someone take, of going down in ?history as just an evil – just a famously evil – person!5

By their nature, hedge funds are shadowy organizations and Farallon is no exception. Farallon staff do not talk to the press. Their website provides virtually no information and, because it is a private fund, Farallon is not required to report details of its investments.

Essentially all the public knows about Farallon’s investment activities is what the fund is forced to file; for example when their ownership stake in a publicly listed company rises above a disclosable threshold, or when they are compelled to disclose information pursuant to a lawsuit.

While a few bits of information on Farallon’s investments in carbon energy have seeped into the North American press via these disclosures, this information doesn’t begin to scratch the surface. The North American press’s lack of awareness of Mr Steyer’s activities in the coal sector is due to the fact that all of Farallon’s investments in coal have been made outside of North America, and wherever possible through opaque structures which mask their direct involvement.

In order to gain an appreciation of the extent of Farallon’s epic involvement in the coal sector under Mr. Steyer’s tenure one needs to spend time in Jakarta and Sydney, and in the regional financing centers in Hong Kong and Singapore, and speak to professionals (bankers, lawyers, mining consultants and principals) who were directly involved in these Farallon-sponsored coal transactions. With a modicum of effort one discovers that since 2003 Farallon has played the pivotal role in financing the tremendous restructuring and growth in thermal coal production in the region. All of this took place under Mr. Steyer’s tenure as founder and senior partner of Farallon.





Buried in his recent missive to the Middlebury College and Brown University trustees on the evils of investing in coal, Mr. Steyer added this statement:

…I have directed my financial team to divest my holdings of coal investments so that I will have a ??coal free portfolio…

Perhaps he is being disingenuous and wishes people to believe that some low level employee at Farallon bought a few shares in coal companies without his permission. It is possible that he is trying to inoculate himself against the inevitable perceptions of hypocrisy that he knew would arise when the scale of his involvement in the coal sector came to light, as eventually it must.
?

The facts, summarized below, might lead one to conclude that:

• Mr. Steyer has had a direct, personal involvement in assembling, through Farallon, a portfolio of strategic investments in overseas coal miners and coal fired power plants which is unprecedented in scale. The total quantum of Farallon’s investments in these transactions is not publicly disclosed, but reasonable estimates suggest that it could be between US$1 and $2 billion in total.6 Taken collectively, the coal producers in which his fund has amassed these investment interests represent one of the largest sources of thermal coal in the world;

• The financing provided by Mr. Steyer’s fund enabled these coal producers to restructure and recapitalize thereby freeing them to grow rapidly during a period of rapidly rising coal prices, leading to one of the largest expansions of thermal coal production in modern times7;

• Made during a period of ever rising coal prices, these investments were almost certainly extremely profitable for Mr. Steyer’s fund overall, and my extension Mr. Steyer personally. It stands to reason that few people in American history have made more money from investment in thermal coal than Mr. Steyer.

Some facts:

• As casual conversation with professionals involved in the regional coal sector will confirm, over the past decade Farallon has become, without question, the pre-eminent financier of coal transactions in Asia and Australia.

• Under Mr. Steyer’s tenure as senior partner, Farallon has been responsible for providing acquisition and expansion funding to about a half dozen of the largest coal mine and coal power plant buyouts in Australia and Asia since 2003. In each case the funding provided by Farallon was pivotal to the success of the transaction.

• Without the leading role played by Farallon many of these transactions, and the subsequent leaps in production (often necessary to repay Farallon’s high interest rate debt facilities), would not have occurred.

• The half dozen Indonesian and Australian coal producers in Farallon’s investment stable produced about 80 mtpa of coal collectively prior to Farallon’s involvement. By 2012 these companies produced 150 mtpa (see table below). In other words, the capital provided by Mr. Steyer’s Farallon group was pivotal in enabling incremental coal production of about 70 million tonnes of thermal coal production per year.

• Looked at another way, the coal mines that Mr. Steyer has funded through Farallon produce an amount of CO2 each year that which is equivalent to about 28% of the amount of CO2 produced in the US each year by coal burned for electricity generation.8

• As above, the companies in which Farallon has made these huge strategic investments produced about 150 mt of coal in 2012. On a combined basis this would make them one of the largest private coal sector companies in the world9 (by comparison the “famously evil” Koch brothers appear to own a grand total of … wait for it ….one coal mine which, at its peak, produced 6 mtpa and is no longer in operation).10

• The quantum of Farallon’s profits on these investments over the past 10 years is not publicly available. Based on the estimated investment quantums6, typical hedge fund returns of 20% and an assumed average holding period of two years per investment, total profit to Farallon from coal investments of $400 million is a reasonable estimate. As the founding and senior partner of Farallon, Mr. Steyer would have received a sizeable share of this profit personally.

Partial History of Farallon’s Overseas Coal & Related Investments:11

This data is based on public information and in a few instances information available from professional sources. All of these investments took place during the period of Mr. Steyer’s tenure as senior partner of Farallon.

2003 – PT Kaltim Prima Coal

In October 2003 Indonesia’s Bakrie Group, through listed vehicle PT Bumi Resources, purchased PT Kaltim Prima Coal from Rio and BP in a transaction valued at $500 million. Around $200 mn of the financing was technically underwritten by an investment bank but Farallon is understood to have been the actual provider of funds. At the time of the transaction Kaltim Prima Coal produced 18 mtpa. As a result of the buyout the mine has been able to lift production of to 41 mtpa by 2012.

This transaction initiated a long standing relationship between Farallon and the Bakrie group, one of Indonesia’s leading business groups and largest coal mine owners. This relationship led to a series of refinancings of their coal operations including the PT Arutmin coal mine.
??
Farallon has also been a substantial lender to other Bakrie Group assets. They have recently been identified in the press as a leading member of a consortium which lent $1.4 billion to Long Haul Holdings12, which owns various Bakrie-linked investments including stakes in listed PT Berau Coal (subsequently sold) and the Bakrie’s stake in PT Bumi Resources (which in turn controls the PT Kaltim Prima Coal and PT Arutmin coal mines).


A Kaltin Prima coal mine in Indonesia

2004 – PT Berau Coal

Farallon provided significant financial backing to the Indonesia buyout consortium for their ~$279 m
buyout of a 90% stake in Berau Coal (conducted in two stages in 2004 and 2006).13

PT Berau Coal was subsequently sold to another Indonesian investor which was then sued by Farallon in 2010 in order to obtain a 3% equity stake in PT Berau Coal that Farallon said they were entitled to (these were most likely “equity kickers” which Farallon was given for providing debt financing for the buyout).14

PT Berau Coal is an Indonesian thermal coal producer which mines and sells around 21 mtpa today.

2005 – PT Adaro Coal

Farallon played a leading role in an investment consortium which purchased the 41% equity stake in Indonesian coal producer PT Adaro Coal from New Hope Corporation of Australia for $378 million.15 PT Adaro is one of the world’s largest thermal coal producers with annual production of 50 mtpa.

2010 – Maules Creek Acquisition

In a transaction initiated personally by Steyer16, Farallon took the lead in providing $455 m of debt and equity linked acquisition financing to back Australian entrepreneur Nathan Tinkler in his A$480 m acquisition from Rio of the Maules Creek coal mine in Australia’s Hunter Valley. Maules Creek was not in production at the time of the acquisition, but with Farallon’s support it was able to complete an initial public offering on the ASX (as Aston Resources) with a completed feasibility study to reach 10 mtpa of annual coal sales.


Protesters at Steyer’s Maules Creek coal mine, Jan 2014

2011 – Aston Resources – Whitehaven Coal Merger and Restructuring

Aston Resources and ASX listed coal producer Whitehaven Coal merged in March 2012. Mr. Tinkler emerged as the largest single shareholder of the combined entity. It is widely reported16 that Farallon is one of Mr. Tinkler’s leading financiers (with the lion’s share of a reported A$600 m financing facility to Mr. Tinkler backed by his shares in, among other entities, Whitehaven Coal). Pursuant to a restructuring of the facility to Mr. Tinkler, Farallon acquired a direct stake in Whitehaven in June 2013, buying 9.9% for A$300 million. At that time a representative from Farallon took a position on Whitehaven Coal’s Board of Directors. Farallon is now listed as one of Whitehaven’s single largest shareholders with 16.6%.17
?
Data on growth in coal production from Farallon-invested coal companies is provided below:17



???Farallon’s Strategic Investments in Coal Fired Power Plants

In addition to strategic investments in major coal producers, under Mr. Steyer’s direction Farallon became a major investor in coal fired power plants, all made offshore and with barely a ripple of publicity.

In late 2012 Mr. Steyer said: “We immediately get off coal. We move to something …where we are not causing massive destruction.”18 More recently his NexGen Climate Action group was stirring up concern about sinister Chinese investment in Canadian tar sands.19

Shortly before these statements Mr. Steyer’s fund was, in fact, banking the check from the sale of their investment in a major Chinese coal fired power producer, Meiya Power, to China Guangdong Nuclear Power Company. Farallon and another fund had purchased Meiya Power a few years earlier. Meiya Power is one of the leading foreign invested independent power producers in China (founded by PSEG), with ownership stakes in six major coal fired power stations in China which provide more than 2,400 MW of electricity per year.20

In 2008 Farallon purchased an 18% stake in India Bulls Power, one of India’s top power developers, for approximately $158 m.21 At the time of the investment India Bulls Power had 11,400 MW of power developments underway in India – the two most active are 2,700 MW of coal fired power at the Amravati and Nasik projects.


India Bulls power plant, Amravati

The foregoing suggests that there is a significant gap between Mr. Steyer’s words and deeds with respect to carbon based energy. Since he has chosen to inject himself into the national dialogue in such a high profile fashion it is reasonable for the public to ask Mr. Steyer to clarify his personal history regarding fossil fuel investments.

Whatever the merits of his message, it would be unfortunate if it was clouded by the perception that he might be saying one thing (offering unsolicited investment advice to major educational foundations urging them to sell coal investments) while at the same time doing another (profiting massively from coal investments).

A complete declaration by Mr. Steyer of the following items might clear the air:

i) information on all of coal-related investments made by Farallon during Mr. Steyer’s tenure as senior partner (amount, date made, date sold, return);

ii) if he was on the Investment Committee when these investments were made, a record of whether he for or against the investment;

iii) a list of Farallon’s current holdings of coal investments (to the extent that Mr. Steyer has an ongoing financial interest in them);

iv) to the extent he does, a commitment on an absolute date by which they will be sold;

v) information on how much of his personal fortune comes from these coal investments (and out
of curiosity, is it more than the $50 million he intends to invest in the anti-coal message?)
?
Notes:

1. Regulatory Assets Under Management US Securities & Exchange Commission website, ADV filings, April 2014

2. Forbes on-line, April 19th, 2014

3. LA Times, December 21, 2013

4. Message to Middlebury College’s Board of Trustees, January 22nd 2013
??
?5. Men’s Journal, March 2013
?
6. Estimated as follows:



??7. Statistics from Barlow Jonker and the Indonesian Government suggest that Indonesian coal production rose from ?about 175 mtpa in 2004 to over 400 mt in 2013, an average growth rate of about 9% pa over ten years.

8. ?150 mtpa x ~2.86 tonnes of CO2 from one tonne of coal / 1,514 mtpa CO2 from coal burned in US to produce electricity. Data for 2012. Source eia.gov

9. As reference, Peabody Energy, the largest coal producers in the US, mined 184 mt of coal in the US in 2013. The next largest was Arch Coal which produced 137 mt of coal in the US in the same year.

10. A brief, good faith scan of the internet to understand the Koch brothers’ coal mining interests suggests that the only coal mine they own is through William Koch’s company Oxbow Mining LLC which operated the Elk Creek underground coal mine in Colorado. Elk Creek reached peak production of 6 mtpa in 2008 and subsequently closed due to seismic issues.

11. Farallon’s investment activities in Asia were completed under the “Farallon” name until about 2004. At that time the Asian activities of Farallon were restyled as Noonday Asset Management (“Farallon” and “Noonday” are the names of a group of rocks about 30 km off the coast of San Francisco). In 2013 Noonday Asset Management announced that it would once again use the name Farallon. In this note “Farallon” and “Noonday” are used interchangeably.

12. Financial Times, Oct. 4th, 2012. “Bakries Under Pressure Over Bumi Resources” ” …??For example, a $1.4bn financing in February 2011 to Bakrie and Brothers and another affiliate, Long Haul ?Holdings, was ultimately placed with several hedge funds including affiliates of San Francisco-based Farallon, DE Shaw and an Austrian bank, according to one hedge fund manager who was part of the lending group…”

?13. Reuters, June29th, 2010. “Ownership Claim Casts Pall on Berau’s IPO.”

?14. Euroweek, June 16, 2006. “…Merrill Lynch had been marketing a refinancing and recapitalisation that would allow?investors in the mine–which include Farallon Capital, the US fund–to recoup some of their investment in Berau by ?adding more leverage to the company…”

??15. New York Times, April 5th, 2005.

16. Sydney Morning Herald, October 30, 2011 “How Singo Made Tinkler Rich”

17. Listed company public filings.

?18. CleanTechnica and Reuters, October 10, 2012.

?19. See National Journal, Feb 20th, 2014, “Tom Steyer’s China Syndrome” and, in view of Farallon’s investments in coal?fired power plants, view the link to the Youtube video from Mr. Steyer’s NGO which attempts to malign Chinese ?investment in North American hydrocarbon resources.

20. Meiya Power website (www.meiya.com);”Electricity privatisation and restructuring in Asia-Pacific” by Steve Thomas, David Hall and Violeta Corral, December 2004; and Enipedia.tudeflt.nl.

21. The Financial Express, Feb 15, 2008.

Hypocrisy is not in short supply in the political world, but Tom Steyer is in a class by himself. Now that he is enriching himself through “green” cronyism, coal is evil. Sure: like all hydrocarbons, it competes with the solar energy boondoggles on which he is making millions, with the aid of the Obama administration. But where was Steyer’s alleged social conscience when he was one of the world’s biggest investors in coal? And how substantial are his current holdings in coal projects? Is Steyer financing his anti-fossil fuel campaign on profits from past or, perhaps, ongoing investments in Asian and Australian coal? Inquiring minds want to know! Tom Steyer appears to have elevated political hypocrisy to an entirely new level.






To: tejek who wrote (781301)4/23/2014 10:53:20 AM
From: joseffy  Respond to of 1578498
 
Hypocrisy is not in short supply in the political world, but Tom Steyer is in a class by himself.

Now that he is enriching himself through “green” cronyism, coal is evil. Sure: like all hydrocarbons, it competes with the solar energy boondoggles on which he is making millions, with the aid of the Obama administration.

But where was Steyer’s alleged social conscience when he was one of the world’s biggest investors in coal?

And how substantial are his current holdings in coal projects?

Is Steyer financing his anti-fossil fuel campaign on profits from past or, perhaps, ongoing investments in Asian and Australian coal? Inquiring minds want to know!

Tom Steyer appears to have elevated political hypocrisy to an entirely new level.

The Financial Express, Feb 15, 2008.



To: tejek who wrote (781301)4/23/2014 7:41:19 PM
From: Broken_Clock  Respond to of 1578498
 
NEARLY 1,000 DOCTORS LISTED ON CA OBAMACARE WEBSITE DON'T ACCEPT PLANS



by WYNTON HALL 22 Apr 2014 213 POST A COMMENT

California Obamacare customers are expressing outrage after finding out that nearly 1,000 California doctors were listed on the Covered California website as accepting Obamacare plans when in fact they do not.Guda Venkatesh told KPIX 5 CBS San Francisco that the only reason he selected his insurance plan was because the California Obamacare website claimed the plan included nearby Stanford doctors. Venkatesh learned the hard way about the doctor bait-and-switch.

"Except when I started going through the doctors, each one and calling them up, none of them actually accepted the Covered California plan," said Venkatesh.

He added, "The premise of Covered California is that you're able to compare plans and see which one is best for you. But if they are presenting that they have all these doctors in network but they don't, then it doesn't work," said Venkatesh.

According to the California Medical Association, the California Obamacare doctor bait-and-switch came to light when Anthem Blue Cross admitted that 965 doctors had been notified that they were erroneously placed on the Obamacare lists, even though they do not accept Obamacare plans. Anthem Blue Cross claims the doctors were "inadvertently" listed for a "certain period of time" during Obamacare's open enrollment.

The Obamacare doctor bait-and-switch is merely the latest in a round of outrages over the pain imposed by Obamacare's narrow networks--extreme restrictions to doctors and hospitals imposed by the unpopular healthcare overhaul.

UCSF Dr. Kevin Grumbach calls the phenomenon "medical homelessness." California health care clinics say the problem is growing.

Rotacare clinic staffer Mirella Nguyen told CBS San Francisco that the low-income individuals they helped sign up for Obamacare are now coming back to the clinic complaining they cannot find doctors who accept the Obamacare plans they purchased and are now "begging for help."

"They're coming back to us now and saying, 'I can't find a a doctor.' What good is coverage if you can't use it?"

California single mother of two Thinn Ong said she's shelling out $200-a-month for an Obamacare plan that few doctors appear to even accept.

"Yeah, I sign it. I got it. But where's my doctor? Who's my doctor? I don't know," said a frustrated Ong.

Narrow network Obamacare horror stories are beginning to crop up elsewhere.

In Staten Island, New York, a woman with a neurological disease that required four brain surgeries had her vital medications denied and all of her doctors dropped because of her Obamacare plan even though she says she was assured that the plan covered her medications and existing doctors. Dozens of Staten Island residents say the same has happened to them.

The Washington Post conceded in January that "Obamacare's narrow networks are going to make people furious."