Federal judge gets crazy for ObamaCare

A federal District Court ruling today ignored the plain language of ObamaCare and claimed people in states who opted out of setting up their own exchanges face tax penalties under the law, even though the "Affordable Care Act" statute specifically excludes them.

United States District Judge Paul L. Friedman ruled that the phrase "established by the State" means "established by the federal government, too" in this case because construction of the statute is sloppy in other places. I'm not kidding:

"Looking only at the language of 26 U.S.C. § 36B(b)-(c), isolated from the cross-referenced text of 42 U.S.C. § 18031, 42 U.S.C. § 18041, and 42 U.S.C. § 300gg-91(d)(21), the  plaintiffs’ argument may seem the more intuitive one. Why would Congress have inserted the  phrase “established by the State under [42 U.S.C. § 18031]” if it intended to refer to Exchanges created by a state

or by HHS? But defendants provide a plausible and persuasive answer: Because the ACA takes a state-established Exchange as a given and directs the Secretary of HHS to establish such Exchange and bring it into operation if the state does not do so. See 42 U.S.C. §§ 18031(b)-(d), 18041(c). In other words, even where a state does not actually establish an Exchange, the federal government can create “an Exchange established by the State under [42 U.S.C. § 18031]” on behalf of that state."

 

So this judge wants to appoint the Secretary of HHS as Governor and legislature of each of the states? That's interesting.

 

But the best part came later:

 

"If construed literally, these provisions would be nullified when applied to states without state-run Exchanges, leading to strange or absurd results."

 

Exactly.

 

I remain perplexed by those nominal Republicans who seem so eager to give up this fight. When the other side is melting down, continue to apply heat.

 

You can read the ruling for yourself here.

Tea Party rally on Thursday in Frankfort

Obama and Beshear need you to believe the fight is over. The fight is not over.

In fact, right now we are much closer to winning the ObamaCare battle and turning back the tide of big government than ever before. Beshear needs to slip legislative approval and funding for his grand schemes past us in the weeks ahead and he knows it. Not even House Democrats appear willing to bail him out now.

So they are stuck trying to shout us down. Our fellow Kentuckians see the all-out assault on conservatives and they wonder if we will stand strong.

We will.

Please join a rally in support of conservative values in state government in opposition to ObamaCare, Common Core, reckless spending, higher taxes, immoral and unaccountable government officials and their disregard for human life and liberties at the State Capitol Rotunda in Frankfort on Thursday January 9 at 11 am ET. (Click here for a Facebook event page.) While opponents of freedom hope to keep us divided and demoralized, let's take the fight to them as only we can. Let's show them trying to defeat us is a pointless exercise on the wrong side of history.

Did Steve Beshear commit Medicaid fraud?

Since Kentucky started taking applications for ObamaCare and forcing most applicants into Medicaid, the Kentucky Health Benefit Exchange has been excluding disability payments from income used to determine Medicaid eligibility. That changed yesterday and that's a big problem.

Under the Affordable Care Act, Medicaid eligibility is determined by a formula based on taxable income. The formula counts disability income as income, but excludes SSI payments. Until Thursday, applications for Kentucky ObamaCare excluded all disability income. That means potentially thousands of applicants to Kentucky ObamaCare who were placed into Medicaid were put there erroneously.

The correct thing to do here is to come clean immediately and bring all Beshearocrats in to fix all the applications they messed up prior to yesterday. Any further delay in doing so only compounds the existing mess. The Kentucky Supreme Court could and should make this whole thing go away by clarifying Beshear's illegal actions creating the mess. Before that happens, we really need to hear from Beshear on this right away.

Kentucky ObamaCare changes everything

Please ask any candidate for the Kentucky House of Representatives in 2014 if he or she will vote to impeach any Supreme Court justice who demonstrates support for Gov. Steve Beshear's illegal and unconstitutional ObamaCare actions without legislative approval.

Looking for a simple "yes" or "no."

Any candidates wishing to answer this simple question here can save us all some time.

When you need it most

With the smoldering wreckage of "if you like your plan, you can keep it," still smoldering, the micro-targeting geniuses at Organizing for Action sent me an email today in which they have written a check they cannot cash.

The email, signed simply "Barack," urges continued fighting for ObamaCare:

"From here on, no American should have to go broke just because they get sick. You can't be dropped from your plan when you need it most. Pre-existing conditions will never prevent someone from getting coverage, and women can't be charged more than men for their plans."

Did you catch that? "You can't be dropped ... when you need it most." Premiums will more than double this week. How long will it be before we are covered up with stories of people who can't make their monthly premium payments? It's an opportunity both sides are waiting for and one for which we must be better prepared.

I have been saddened to see well-meaning people who claim to understand capitalism and freedom but who lack the will to fight for them. The other side understands well this is a long battle in midcourse. Early in the spring, desperate people victimized by this ObamaCare game and faced with unaffordable health insurance premiums will turn either to masters promising them free coverage or brothers offering a path to prosperity without a bureaucratic fix.

We must be those brothers. To do so, we must stay strong. So stay strong because when you need it most is right now.

Final hours for this ObamaCare escape

Today is the last day to buy major medical health insurance in Kentucky that is not "improved" by ObamaCare. Your only choice left for an insurer is United HealthCare.

A 36 year old man in Louisville can get a $3500 deductible plan with 20% coinsurance until the out-of-pocket limit of $6500 is reached for $86.51 a month today only. Tomorrow, a somewhat similar plan from Anthem ($6300 deductible and out-of-pocket limit with no separate coinsurance) will cost $203.27 a month.

Starting tomorrow, this fight is no longer about any kind of theory, unless you want to start talking about death spirals. If you are still pro-ObamaCare, you don't. Ready?

Ask Stumbo/Stivers their ObamaCare intentions

If the legislature does not provide funding for the Kentucky Health Benefit Exchange in 2014, it cannot function in 2015 when federal funding is gone. We would then default to the federal exchange, which lacks proper authorization to impose tax penalties and reward subsidies.

 

Given their track record for dishonesty and corruption, I suspect Greg Stumbo and Robert Stivers may try to slip funding into the budget without alerting rank and file legislators or the public. This matter has received no media coverage, of course, and simply asking the Speaker and the President about it may yield an interesting story.

Steve Beshear needs a pony

The much-celebrated Kentucky ObamaCare online application site is down and has been down all week. You can go to www.kynect.org but you can't start or edit an application. Operators have been telling callers that they are "updating" the system and to try again in an hour since Monday morning.

And right now the phone lines are down. ObamaCare goes live two weeks from today.

It's almost pitchforks and torches time. If you are available tomorrow though, just bring a recording device.

Beshear asks court to dismiss Common Core challenge; we respond today in court

Plaintiff David Adams in opposition to Defendants Motion to Dismiss, states:

ARGUMENT

            The Constitution of the Commonwealth of Kentucky is the heart of Kentucky law. Violations of same by government officials constitute the vilest of injuries in a constitutional Republic, which fact should not need explanation to otherwise educated people in the 21^st Century. Nevertheless, Defendants apparently fail to recognize constitutional rights as inherently valuable and worthy of protection by the Court in their Motion. Violation of Section 183 of the Kentucky Constitution occurs when appropriate legislation providing for efficient common schools is not sufficiently present. That situation has come about with the acceptance by Defendants of the Common Core State Standards. Lack of efficiency in Kentucky schools, as defined by the Court in Rose v. Council for Better Education, Inc. (KY 1989) 790 S.W.2^nd 186 cannot be wished away as evidence of harm to a Plaintiff.

            This case involves a request for a declaration of rights. Plaintiff attended Kentucky schools, is a citizen of Kentucky, a taxpayer in Kentucky, a parent of students in Kentucky schools and asserts rights under KRS 418.040 that states when “an actual controversy exists, the plaintiff may ask for a declaration of rights, either alone or with other relief.” Defendants claim Senate Bill 1 from 2009 authorized the acceptance of Common Core. They cannot prove this because it is not true. If Defendants’ acceptance of the Common Core standards and all the baggage that goes with them involved no controversy, why would they feel the need to lie about their genesis and otherwise choose the decidedly sketchy KRS Chapter 13A administrative route to implementation rather than appropriate legislation? Defendants attempt at subterfuge so early in this case is telling.

CONCLUSION

            Defendants argue that Senate Bill 1 authorized acceptance of Common Core State Standards, which it did not. Defendants further argue that using the KRS Chapter 13A regulatory process to implement the scheme somehow absolves Defendants of their sworn allegiance to following the requirements of Section 183, which it does not. Defendants expect the Court to accompany them on this magic carpet ride to a place in which falsehoods and distortions by government officials wipe away centuries of jurisprudence carefully constructed to protect individual rights in the Commonwealth.

            Plaintiff requests the Court refuse to allow Defendants to abuse the system in this fashion.

 

A Kentucky ObamaCare reprieve drying up

For three more days, Kentuckians who don't want or need ObamaCare in 2014 but do need to buy health insurance still have an option Governor Steve Beshear doesn't want you knowing about.

You can still buy 2013, non-ObamaCare coverage at 2013 premiums for the next year through this weekend. After that, the option goes away.

The only place I have seen this is on www.ehealthinsurance.com. So if you know you aren't having a baby in 2014, aren't going in to drug rehabilitation or aren't otherwise an excessive premium-paying masochist, you might want to check it out.

Robert Stivers falling hard for ObamaCare

Kentucky Senate President Robert Stivers, an embarrassingly moderate Republican, is trying to quietly soften up members of his caucus so they might cave in to Gov. Steve Beshear on ObamaCare early in 2014. Fortunately, his plan is not going well.

Beshear needs the Senate to go along with his 2013 interim reorganization executive order creating Kynect, the Kentucky state-run ObamaCare exchange. If they don't, the executive order will expire and take the exchange and the funding mechanism for the exchange with it. When federal money runs out at the end of 2014, the federal government will be forced to take over paying for the exchange.

Beshear has talked Stivers into trying to bail him out of this mess before it explodes in the open, but almost no Senate Republicans are taking the bait. Stivers is selling a left-wing talking point that the state can run the exchange on a 1% tax on insurance premiums -- which is not true -- while a federal exchange could cost as much as 3.5%. There are two points he is trying to gloss over here -- first, ObamaCare participation is so low in Kentucky -- due to outrageously high premiums -- that Kentuckians as a whole will certainly be better off joining the three dozen other states opting out of the exchange and facing no drain on our state budget to prop up the Obama/Beshear pipedream than they will be if Stivers has his way. Second, if an Oklahoma lawsuit to be heard in federal court early next year is successful in forcing the letter of the ObamaCare law to be followed and ObamaCare penalties to be disallowed in states on the federal exchange, victimization of Kentuckians by this horrible law will be mostly eliminated when we shut down Kynect.

The vast majority of Americans are unified in defeating ObamaCare and for very good reasons. If you are represented by a Republican in the Kentucky state Senate, please call him or her and urge standing strong against Beshear and Stivers in their ObamaCare mischief. 

Were 280,000 Kentuckians abducted by aliens?

The initial group of Kentucky citizens forced off their health insurance by ObamaCare have less than two weeks left to sign up on Kynect to avoid a lapse in coverage on January 1.

 

Where the hell are they?

 

"Kentucky's media is missing the story of the unaffordability of the "Affordable Care Act" in addition to missing the story about Gov. Beshear illegally and ill-advisedly throwing us into the worst part of this mess," said tea party activist David Adams. "If all these people are herded up and put into ObamaCare, I wonder how many will wind up on Medicaid and it makes a big difference financially whether its old Medicaid or new Medicaid. Shut down Kynect and drop the Medicaid expansion nonsense and we are a big step away from the worst of this disaster." 

 

The 2014 General Assembly must address not only Beshear's unconstitutional Medicaid administration expenditures that start January 1, it must also find significant funds for Medicaid in the next budget and fund Kynect in addition to ratifying Beshear's executive order creating it. Legislators are less likely to do these things than they are to be picked up by the next spaceship passing by our planet.

Good morning, Al Cross!

Courier Journal political columnist Al Cross has been a rather energetic supporter of ObamaCare in Kentucky and somewhat resistant to seriously exploring evidence strongly suggesting his enthusiasm may have been misplaced. In a weekend blog post, however, Al shows signs of gaining a wider perspective:

As for Kentucky specifically, "Although a Kynect spokeswoman said the exchange has dealt with only 'minor issues' since it started sending enrollment files to insurers a month ago, she didn’t indicate whether those issues had resulted in flawed forms or if they’d been resolved."

Tony Felts, a Kentucky spokesman for Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield, told Politico that it's too early to say if the problems have been solved: "In general, the situation is the same for the state-run exchanges as it is for the federally facilitated exchanges."

Over the next couple of weeks, these problems and others with the Kynect debacle will become even harder to ignore. Hold on tight for a very bumpy ride.

Beshear upstages Obama with new health law lie

We already know that you can't keep your health insurance for much longer as ObamaCare rolls in. We. Already. Know. That.

Everyone capable of passing the fog-a-mirror test understands President Obama was lying when he said "if you like your plan, you can keep your plan." So it was noteworthy that Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear went to Washington D.C. yesterday to buck up congressional Democrats and tell them the tide will turn politically when eighty percent of Americans realize the "Affordable Care Act" does not affect them.

What planet are these people on?

ObamaCare is decimating health care providers and health insurance consumers as we speak. One-year delays (illegally implemented, I might add) have served to temporarily distract a lot of people who will no longer be distracted in just a matter of months.

Beshear's only hope is that mainstream media tolerance for being used like a bunch of two dollar hookers remains firmly in place long enough for some kind of point of no return to be reached. Fortunately, there really isn't one.

Jack Conway must not want to be Governor

Kentucky's Attorney General Jack Conway appears to have tossed away his chance to get the Democratic nomination for Governor in 2015 in a court filing on same-sex marriage.

Conway, a defendant in Kentucky Equality Federation et al v. Commonwealth, an ongoing case in Franklin Circuit Court, claimed plaintiffs Lindsey Bain and Daniel Rogers, a married same-sex couple, don't have standing to challenge our state definition of marriage and that their claim does not qualify as an "injury in fact" and it is not ripe for adjudication.

In a joint filing dated September 30, Conway and Governor Steve Beshear said they "deny that Plaintiffs are entitled to the requested relief or any other relief whatsoever." That won't go over well.

Public comment period on Medicaid expansion ends today

Just sent the following message regarding Kentucky's proposed Medicaid expansion to the Office of Legal Services in Frankfort as part of the public comment period for this huge waste of public money:

Expanding Medicaid as this proposed regulation attempts to do is a terrible idea with very negative fiscal implications for the Commonwealth. Statute requires administrative review of this action and same cannot legally be completed in time for a meaningful and legally required review process to be completed before the January 1 effective date. We lack funding in the current budget to pay the Medicaid administration costs immediately created by this regulation and the likelihood the legislature, which has not been consulted on this matter previously, will agree to fund more of the same in the next biennium is nonexistent.

 

This whole exercise has been a waste of time in contemplation of a waste of unavailable resources. We must end it now.

 

Thank you,

 

David Adams

121 Nave Place

Nicholasville KY 40356

859-537-5372

You may do the same today until the close of business by emailing Tricia Orme at tricia.orme@ky.gov. Reference 907 KAR 20:100.

Kentucky's ObamaCare constitutional crisis

Anthem knew Obama lied "almost immediately" in 2010

The best video clip of the ObamaCare "if you like it, you can keep it" scandal hearing today in Frankfort will be of an Anthem official admitting that Obama's "you can keep it" lie was identified as such back in 2010.

KET's video of today's Banking and Insurance hearing should be available in the morning.

Democratic members of the committee appear mostly ready to run as fast as possible from ObamaCare in the upcoming legislative session. We still await Kentucky Supreme Court action on Gov. Steve Beshear's illegal attempt to implement ObamaCare without legislative approval.

Another ObamaCare showdown in Frankfort

Tuesday morning in Frankfort government officials will hold a public hearing on the "if you like it, you can keep it" scandal. The Interim Joint Committee on Banking and Insurance will hear from officials at Humana and Anthem as well as Kentucky Department of Insurance Commissioner Sharon Clark.

The meeting will take place at 10 am in Room 149 in the Capitol Annex.

The Kentucky Department of Insurance claims its mission is to "promote sound, competitive insurance markets; protect the public through effective enforcement and regulation; and empower the public through outreach and education." Their utter failure on each of these points leads one to the inescapable conclusion that the department of insurance is corrupt or incompetent or both.

Hope to see you there.

An easy to fix part of broken Frankfort

If you liked how the Common Core science standards were voted down in committee in September but allowed to dumb down Kentucky public schools anyway, you probably like that the same thing happened yesterday when regulations for state ObamaCare exchange operations were also waved on through despite another overwhelming rejection by state legislators.

If Obama were working up a slogan for this kind of government, he might say "If you like having a voice in state government, you can keep it." Worse it's perfectly legal given how the statutes have been constructed.

Legislators should get to work giving teeth to the KRS 13A administrative review process so this sort of thing doesn't happen again. It would be quite simple to stop legislators from leaving meetings to bust up quorums and to prevent governors from ignoring the will of the people's representatives when they oppose him in this process. Anyone with a little courage willing to give it a shot?

Anyone?