Perspectives; Thoughts; Comments; Opinions; Discussions

Posts tagged ‘Medicaid’

South Carolina Agency: The Feds Force Us to Give Voter Registration to Foreign Nationals


BY: M.D. KITTLE | MAY 07, 2024

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2024/05/07/south-carolina-agency-the-feds-force-us-to-give-voter-registration-to-foreign-nationals/

South Carolina state welcome sign.

Author M.D. Kittle profile

M.D. KITTLE

MORE ARTICLES

As South Carolina law enforcement investigates allegations a state agency is handing out voter registration forms to foreign nationals, an agency official tells The Federalist that federal law has tied the state’s hands. 

Jeff Leieritz, a spokesman for the state’s Department of Health and Human Services, says the department, as the state’s Medicaid agency, is mandated to provide voter registration information under Section 7 of the National Voter Registration Act Of 1993. The information apparently goes out to everyone applying for the benefits, including foreign nationals.

Section 7 requires each state to designate voter registration agencies, including all state offices providing public assistance, unemployment compensation, or disability services; state or local government offices; federal and nongovernmental offices; and armed forces recruitment offices. 

“SCDHHS does not believe the state Medicaid agency should have a role in voter registration. However, absent the legal authority to make this change, SCDHHS remains required by federal law to provide voter registration application forms with each Medicaid application,” Leieritz said in a statement Monday to The Federalist.

‘That’s Insane’

South Carolina state Rep. Adam Morgan has been pushing for answers after a refugee reported receiving a packet of information, including voter registration forms, at the Health and Human Services office. Morgan did not return The Federalist’s requests for comment, but he did speak about the issue last week on FrankSpeech. 

“The refugee was actually confused. They were like, ‘Am I supposed to fill this out?’ They asked a relative, and the relative is a citizen who said, ‘No, you can’t fill this out. You’re not a citizen.’ [The refugee] said, ‘Why are they giving this out to noncitizens?’ And we were, like, “Exactly! That’s insane,” Morgan told The Absolute Truth with Emerald Robinson. 

Morgan said the refugee mailed the forms back to the Medicaid office advising that the government agency shouldn’t be giving voter registration information to people who are not eligible to vote. The office sent the refugee even more information in response, Morgan claims. 

“It’s just infuriating that the government is actually sending these forms out and literally confusing people who may not be trying to do wrong, or opening the door wide open for somebody to do wrong and get people who are not citizens to vote in the election,” said the president of the South Carolina Freedom Caucus and a Republican candidate for a U.S. House seat. 

On, Wednesday, the Freedom Caucus sent Gov. Henry McMaster a letter expressing its “grave concern with this breach of election integrity.” They asked that the state inspector general’s office launch an immediate investigation and that the governor order state agencies to “cease and desist distributing voter registration and voter declination forms to non-citizens.”

McMaster, a Republican, quickly responded, saying he has asked the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division to immediately contact Morgan to “provide SLED with any and all evidence, documents and information that you possess in order to evaluate the authenticity of your allegation of illegalities.”  

“SLED has received the Governor’s letter to Representative Adam Morgan and will review the allegations provided,” the Law Enforcement Division told The Federalist in an email Monday. 

‘Overreaching Federal Requirements’

Leieritz, the spokesman for the state health department, said the agency is aware of reports circulating on social media about the refugee receiving voter registration forms. He said the department does not process or submit voter registration forms for Medicaid applicants or members. That is the domain of the South Carolina Election Commission.

“SCDHHS is investigating what has been reported on social media,” the spokesman said, adding that the agency believes the 30-year-old National Voter Registration Act needs to be amended “to repeal these overreaching federal requirements.”

“South Carolina’s citizens would be better served by a state Medicaid agency that is able to focus singularly on efficiently operating the state’s Healthy Connections Medicaid program,” Leieritz said. 

Morgan and the Freedom Caucus are proposing adding a provision in the state budget prohibiting state money from funding the distribution of voter registration information to foreign nationals at South Carolina agencies. 

“But isn’t it insane that we have to do that,” the lawmaker told Robinson.  “It’s crazy to me that we are at a place in America where we have government employees and government agencies who are willing to actively give out voter registration forms to noncitizens. And if it’s happening in South Carolina, you’d better believe it’s happening all over especially the swing states.”

It is, via federal executive fiat. 

‘Bidenbucks’

Beyond the NVRA, President Joe Biden’s Executive Order 14019 commands federal agencies to do what some legal experts say the executive branch does not have the legal authority to do: expand voter registration and turnout — using White House “approved” third-party organizations connected to Democrats. The sweeping initiative has been billed “Bidenbucks,” since it uses federal dollars. Think of Executive Order 14019 as Zuckbucks on steroids, using your money.

“This is clearly weaponization of the government for a partisan purpose,” Dave Craig, a senior legal fellow at the Foundation for Government Accountability, told me in February. 

On the swing state front, the Michigan Department of State earlier this year signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the U.S. Small Business Administration “to promote civic engagement and voter registration in Michigan.” The agreement, according to Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson and SBA Administrator Isabel Casillas Guzman, is a “first-of-its-kind collaboration” for the federal agency. It is expected to run through Jan. 1, 2036. Such constitutionally suspect “agreements” between the Biden administration and left-led state executive branches are part of Biden’s unprecedented executive order. 

‘Non-issues’ Becoming ‘Major Issues’

The South Carolina State Election Commission (SEC) last week said it had received several questions and concerns about foreign nationals registering to vote in defiance of basic election integrity protections. 

“The SEC is actively auditing voter data through the Department of Homeland Security’s Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) Program database to ensure that only U.S. citizens are included on the active list of registered voters. Regardless of the method of registration, no voter may be registered in South Carolina without signing an oath swearing that they are a citizen of the United States,” the agency states on its website. “The auditing process ensures that any bad actors are removed from voter rolls and held accountable through state and federal election law statutes.” 

The elections regulator said it has not received any “specific information that non-U.S. citizens are fraudulently being registered to vote” in South Carolina.  

“The SEC will not allow fraudulent voter registration to happen on our watch,” said Howie Knapp, executive director of the SEC. “Should we receive or discover information that non-U.S. citizens are being registered to vote in our state, we will immediately report to our law enforcement partners for investigation and prosecution to the fullest extent of the law.”

South Carolina is looking to join a growing list of states passing resolutions for constitutional amendments barring foreign nationals, including illegal immigrants, from voting in local elections. 

“Many said this was a non-issue. Then we discovered state agencies sending voter registration forms to non-citizens. These ‘non-issues’ keep turning out to be major issues,” Morgan recently tweeted on his X account. 

Matt Kittle is a senior elections correspondent for The Federalist. An award-winning investigative reporter and 30-year veteran of print, broadcast, and online journalism, Kittle previously served as the executive director of Empower Wisconsin.

Category:

corruption, Political

Tagged with:

Trump Gets Key Win From 8th Circuit


Reported By Randy Desoto on August 28, 2017 at 12:55pm

URL of the original posting site: http://www.westernjournalism.com/trump-gets-key-win-from-8th-circuit/

The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Monday that a state has the right to defund Planned Parenthood. The 2-1 ruling specifically provided that while plaintiff Medicaid recipients who brought the suit are entitled to care, they cannot dictate that care includes Planned Parenthood facilities.

“The plaintiffs are asserting a right — the absolute right to a particular provider of their choosing — that (the law) does not grant them,” Judge Steven Colloton wrote in the majority opinion.

Several states, including Arkansas, the defendant in the suit, voted to defund Planned Parenthood after the release of a series of undercover videos that allegedly showed executives from the top abortion provider in the country discussing the sale of aborted babies’ body parts.

In April, Congress voted and President Donald Trump signed into law legislation guaranteeing states the right to defund Planned Parenthood, overriding an Obama administration Department of Health and Human Services regulation that had gone into effect two days before Trump took office. The regulation mandated that “states and localities could not withhold money from a provider for any reason other than an inability to provide family planning services,” The New York Times reported.

In a statement, Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson described the 8th Circuit Court’s ruling as “a substantial legal victory for the right of the state to determine whether Medicaid providers are acting in accordance with best practices, and affirms the prerogative of the state to make reasoned judgments on the Medicaid program.”

The 8th Circuit’s jurisdiction includes Arkansas, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, and North and South Dakota.

Planned Parenthood noted that it had won federal suits against other states that sought to defund the organization.

“To date, seven other states (Alabama, Arizona, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas) have sought to bar Planned Parenthood from Medicaid, and all have been blocked by federal courts,” Planned Parenthood said in a statement.

Louisiana has asked the 5th Circuit to rehear the case en banc, meaning all of the justices (rather than just three) would preside. The differing rulings between the eighth and other circuit courts make it more likely the Supreme Court will take up the matter.

“This is not over,” said Planned Parenthood Federation of America chief medical officer Raegan McDonald-Mosley. “We will do everything in our power to protect our patients’ access to birth control, cancer screenings and other lifesaving care. Extreme politicians are trying to defund and shut down Planned Parenthood — and this is not what Americans want.”

Jerry Cox, the executive director of the Family Council, an Arkansas-based conservative group, told public radio station KUAR, “The videos aside, the question is should the state of Arkansas do business with an organization that aborts babies, when they don’t need to.”

Category:

Political

Tagged with:

Obamacare Regulation Pressures Insurers to Cover Sex Change Operations


waving flagBY: May 13, 2016

URL of the original posting site: http://freebeacon.com/issues/obamacare-pressures-insurers-sex-change/

The Department of Health and Human Services issued a final regulation Friday that will pressure health insurers to cover sex change operations, which could then be subsidized by taxpayers through Medicare, Medicaid, and Obamacare.

The final rule comes the same day the Obama administration ordered schools to let children use whatever bathroom or locker room matches “their chosen gender identity,” or risk losing federal funding.

The agency released its final “Nondiscrimination in Health Programs and Activities” rule, which enforces Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act.pure socialism

The regulation “prohibits discrimination based on race, color, national origin, sex, age, or disability; enhances language assistance for individuals with limited English proficiency; and protects individuals with disabilities,” the agency said in a release.Leftist Socialist Propagandist News

Doctors and health insurers also cannot deny “health care or health coverage based on an individual’s sex, including discrimination based on pregnancy, gender identity, and sex stereotyping.”

In a fact sheet on the portion of the rule regarding sex discrimination, the government explains that health care providers cannot refuse to cover all services related to a sex change—such as hormone therapy, breast implants, and the surgery itself—as a matter of policy.

“Categorical coverage exclusions or limitations for all health care services related to gender transition are discriminatory,” the agency said.

The rule also includes a bathroom provision, stating that “individuals must be treated consistent with their gender identity, including in access to facilities.”Complete Message

Additionally, health care providers “may not deny or limit treatment for any health services that are ordinarily or exclusively available to individuals of one gender based on the fact that a person seeking such services identifies as belonging to another gender.”

The regulation will apply to virtually all hospitals, health care providers, and insurance companies.

“The Section 1557 final rule applies to any health program or activity, any part of which receives funding from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), such as hospitals that accept Medicare or doctors who receive Medicaid payments; the Health Insurance Marketplaces and issuers that participate in those Marketplaces; and any health program that HHS itself administers,” the agency said.engineering

The Obama administration praised the rule as a win for “civil rights.”

The regulation is the “first federal civil rights law to broadly prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex in federally funded health programs,” the agency said.

“A central goal of the Affordable Care Act is to help all Americans access quality, affordable health care,” said Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia M. Burwell. “Today’s announcement is a key step toward realizing equity within our health care system and reaffirms this administration’s commitment to giving every American access to the health care they deserve.”pure socialism

The agency told the Washington Free Beacon that the rule does not force health insurance companies to cover sex reassignment surgeries, but companies cannot deny treatments related to a gender transition outright.

“The final rule does not require covered entities to cover any particular procedure or treatment for transition-related care, including gender reassignment surgery. However, it does bar a covered entity from categorically excluding from coverage or limiting coverage for all gender transition-related services,” an agency spokesperson said.

The rule itself could open the door for lawsuits by transgender individuals, who could claim that being denied a service related to a sex-change violates their civil rights because it is now illegal to deny care on the basis of gender identity.

Several states already had policies in place that ban private insurance companies and Medicaid providers from excluding services for a gender transition. California, Oregon, Washington, Colorado, Illinois, New York, Vermont, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and the District of Columbia all have “explicitly prohibited private health insurance plans sold in the state from having exclusions for transition-related care,” according to the National Center for Transgender Equality. The final rule now essentially makes those laws national.

The Obama administration removed a ban from Medicare covering gender reassignment surgeries in 2014.

The average surgery cost for a man to become a woman is $23,000.Not okay

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Elizabeth Harrington

Elizabeth Harrington is a staff writer for the Washington Free Beacon. Elizabeth graduated from Temple University in 2010. Prior to joining the Free Beacon, she worked as a staff writer for CNSNews.com. Her email address is elizabeth@freebeacon.com. Her Twitter handle is @LizWFB.

Picture1 true battle Picture1 In God We Trust freedom combo 2

Category:

Political

Tagged with:

Ann Coulter Letter: First Mary Jo Kopechne, Then America


waving flagWritten By  Ann Coulter  | Wednesday Jun 17, 2015

 

First Mary Jo Kopechne, Then America

     Sen. Ted Kennedy’s 1965 immigration act allowed the Democrats to start winning elections the same way they win recounts: by enlarging the pool of voters. Liberals couldn’t convince Americans to agree with them, but they happened to notice that the people of most other countries in the world already agreed with them. So Sen. Ted Kennedy’s immigration act brought in millions of poverty-stricken foreigners to live off the American taxpayer and bloc-vote for the Democrats. The American people aren’t changing their minds. Americans are becoming a minority to other, new people.

Deft politicians used to know how to convince the 15 percent on the fence. But even Reagan would look at today’s electorate and say: Who are you guys? We live in a different country, and I don’t remember moving.

At the precise moment in history when the United States abandoned any attempt to transmit American values to its own citizens, never mind immigrants, the 1965 immigration act began dumping the poorest of the poor from around the world on our country.Only Reason

When the Republican Congress passed welfare reform in 1996, one of the provisions prohibited immigrants from going on welfare for the first five years they were here — a mere five years! It turned out to be the single biggest savings of the entire welfare bill. The New York Times immediately denounced the provision, demanding that at “the very least,” immigrants get food stamps if they become “disabled” after arriving — i.e., the biggest scam in the welfare apparatus — and also that they be eligible for health care under Medicaid. Previewing the line that would soon be adopted by the Democrats’ plaything, Sen. Marco Rubio, the Times proclaimed: “After all, legal immigrants pay taxes like everyone else.”Picture3

No, they don’t. Perhaps the Times is unfamiliar with America’s tax system, but half the country doesn’t pay taxes. The only contact most immigrants have with the Internal Revenue Service is to receive money under the Earned Income Tax Credit. That’s money meant for America’s poor!

Also “cruel,” according to the Times, was the Republican Congress’ cut of $20 billion from legal aid for immigrants. (Americans: WE GIVE FREE LEGAL AID TO IMMIGRANTS?) Yes, it’s “cruel” for the American taxpayer not to spring for lawyers suing taxpayers for yet more immigrant benefits.

At the risk of striking a discordant note: We don’t have an obligation to bring in people who need government assistance intended for our own people. You only have to do something you don’t want to do if you’re obliged morally, legally or with a gun to your head. You have to invite your relatives to Thanksgiving dinner because you’d be a jerk not to — but you don’t have to invite your neighbor’s relatives to dinner.burke

What is the point of bringing in immigrants whom we have to help? Oh, I remember now! The rich need cheap labor and the Democrats need welfare-dependent voters.

One year before Clinton’s re-election in 1996, the Immigration and Naturalization Service began running a “pro-Democrat voter mill” — as the agency itself complained — by processing 1 million citizenship applications before Election Day. It was, The Washington Post said, among “the most damning indictments ever leveled at the immigration service: that it has cheapened U.S. citizenship.” Thousands of criminals were made citizens to ensure Clinton’s re-election. If felony records were ignored, it goes without saying that there was zero effort at enforcing other basic citizenship requirements, such as having good moral character, five years’ U.S. residency or an understanding of American civics.

Kennedy’s 1965 immigration bill, combined with white self-loathing and, in some quarters, WASP-loathing, has made it impossible for America to assert any sensible traditions, even abandoning the requirement that immigrants learn English, our “common medium of speech,” as Justice Louis Brandeis put it.

And if tolerance is so important, why aren’t Third World immigrants asked to be tolerant of American laws and morals? To the contrary, in any cultural conflict, Americans are expected to give way to immigrant values — or be accused of opposing “inclusivity.”Liberalism a mental disorder 2cause of death

Why does all the bending and conforming have to come from us? Americans didn’t move to Somalia; Somalis moved here. Apparently, the bargain is: We assimilate to Sharia law, and they assimilate to America’s culture of constantly bellyaching minorities.

True, our laws and traditions are very different from the places where most of our post-1970 immigrants come from, but again, they moved here. It makes me wonder if maybe they’d be happier in their own countries.freedom combo 2

Category:

Political

Tagged with:

Obamacare Support at All-Time Low on Eve of Its Collapse


Posted on June 15, 2015 by

Searching through the media, it’s become very difficult to find positive reports on Obamacare that actually report the truth. There are still those reports that claim that the number of uninsured Americans is at an all-time low, but like reporting on unemployment, they purposely neglect the figures that undermine their report.

A few months ago I saw some reports that tried to say that voter support for Obamacare was up significantly. But that was before the announcements of much higher rates, the closing of at least one state run exchange and policy holders started getting outrageous bills from the federal government wanting them to pay back some or all of their federal subsidies.

The latest Washington Post/ABC News poll reveals that only 39% of registered voters still back the Affordable Care Act. This ties the record low support from back in April of 2012. A year ago, only 48% of registered voters said they opposed the Affordable Care Act and now that figure has increased to 54% opposition.

Perhaps the weakening support and growing opposition has been sparked by the rate increases being requested in many states as reported by Michael D. Tanner:

“Already we’ve seen requests for increases for individual plans as high as;

  • 64.8 percent in Texas,
  • 61 percent in Pennsylvania,
  • 51.6 percent in New Mexico,
  • 36.3 percent in Tennessee,
  • 30.4 percent in Maryland,
  • 25 percent in Oregon, and
  • 19.9 percent in Washington.

Those increases would come on top of premium increases last year that were 24.4 percent above what they would have been without Obamacare, according to a study from the National Bureau of Economic Research. At the same time, deductibles for the cheapest Obamacare plans now average about $5,180 for individuals and $10,500 for families.”Dupe and Chains

Another sign that Obamacare is failing and on the verge of collapse is how few enrollees there really are, especially compared to the goals set by the White House. Again, turning to Tanner:

“New evidence also suggests that Obamacare is struggling to meet its goals for covering the uninsured. According to a report in Investor’s Business Daily, the Obama administration estimates that roughly 10.2 million people have enrolled in Obamacare plans and paid at least one month’s premium. This meets the White House’s revised sign-up goal announced late last year, though it falls below the Congressional Budget Office’s earlier projections. The CBO had originally projected some 12 million sign-ups through 2015, later lowering that estimate to 11 million. So, while we should recognize that Obamacare has significantly increased coverage, there clearly is a long way to go.”

“A very long way, in fact. The CBO still hopes for 21 million enrollees next year, which would mean more than doubling current sign-up levels. Anyone see that happening? But failure to meet those numbers would mean that Obamacare would continue to flirt with the possibility of an adverse-selection ‘death spiral,’ which could take down the entire insurance market. Already, insurance companies are warning that exchange enrollment is weighted too heavily toward sicker and older patients. And the Republican Congress is unlikely to renew bailouts designed to protect insurance companies from such adverse selection.”

“Of course, these numbers do not count the nearly 7 million people who signed up for Medicaid because of Obamacare’s expansion of the program. But given the increasing evidence that Medicaid provides dubious value in terms of health outcomes, how this will affect federal and state budgets remains an open question. To cite just one example, getting poor people enrolled in Medicaid was supposed to reduce the strain on overburdened emergency rooms, by steering patients toward primary and preventive care. But the low physician-reimbursement rates under Medicaid mean that few physicians will treat Medicaid patients. As a result, emergency-room visits have actually increased under Obamacare.

“Very soon the Supreme Court will rule on Obamacare’s subsidies. But for the law as a whole, the verdict is already in. By almost any measure, Obamacare is a failure.”

If you search the media, you will find far more reports echoing the words of Tanner, a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute, than echoing the hollow chatter of die-hard loyalists like Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama. No matter what they keep trying to tell us, the facts indicate that Obamacare is on the verge of collapse due to extremely high premiums and deductibles, fewer subsidies and fewer enrollees. The program had to have a high number of young healthy people enroll and the opposite is true. The nails in the Obamacare coffin are being hammered in and will soon be ready for burial. Then it’s up to the Republicans to come up with a real workable and affordable solution.

Category:

Political

Tagged with:

Democrats label lazy welfare recipients as ‘working families’


waving flagBy on May 19, 2015

CALIFORNIA VOTER ALERT
A guide to the 2014 California propositions

Welfare is often unpopular with the voters who fund it through their taxes. So California politicians and academics who support it are now redefining welfare recipients as “workers” even if they do almost no work, and as members of “working families” if they live in the same household as someone who does a tiny bit of work. By doing this, they hope to brand critics of welfare as “anti-worker.”

Fifty-six percent of welfare recipients are in “working families,” according to a misleading recent report by the University of California at Berkeley’s left-wing Center for Labor Research and Education. But the report reached that false conclusion by defining even very lazy people as “workers”: “We define working families as those that have at least one family member who works 27 or more weeks per year and 10 or more hours per week.”

But working just ten hours a week for only about half the weeks in the year doesn’t make you a typical worker, or show industriousness. As Breitbart notes, “If someone is only working ten hours a week, there is probably time to find a second job, rather than rely on government assistance.” The Center that put out this ridiculous “study” is funded not just by taxpayers, but also by government employee unions like AFSCME whose members are hired to administer such welfare programs.Liberalism a mental disorder 2

That slanted “study” coincides with a recent push by California’s governor to expand welfare for so-called “workers” who actually do very little work. The Associated Press reported that Gov. Jerry Brown (D) is

proposing a $380 million earned income tax credit” for “as many as 825,000 families and up to 2 million Californians. “It’s just a straight deliverance of funding to people who are working very hard and are earning very little money, so in that sense I think it does a lot of good things,” Brown said of the tax credit. The average tax credit would be $460 a year with a maximum credit of $2,653 for families with three or more children, to complement the federal tax credit program. It would be available to individuals with incomes of less than $6,580, or up to $13,870 for families with three or more dependents.Picture11

For an individual to have an income of less than $6,580 at the California minimum wage of $9 per hour (and thus qualify for this welfare), he would have to work no more than 731 hours per year, or 14 hours per week. That’s not “working very hard,” Governor Brown. The Associated Press story, which reads like a press release for the governor’s proposed budget, never even questions his strange claim about this being hard work. The AP wrongly calls this huge, record-setting budget “a cautious approach to spending” even though it does nothing about California’s massive unfunded pension problems, and is balanced only due to tax increases that are supposedly temporary but that most California Democrats now want to make permanent, such as those in Proposition 30.Picture7

As the Los Angeles Daily Newspoints out:

In 2013, California’s public-employee pension systems—including those for police, firefighters and teachers—were carrying an estimated aggregate of $198 billion in unfunded liability. That’s 31 times the unfunded liability 10 years earlier.Picture8

Governor Brown has largely turned a blind eye to pension-spiking by CALPERS that will explode California pension costs by billions of dollars, half-heartedly objecting to only one of the “ninety-nine categories used” in its “scheme.”

As profligate and irresponsible as his budget is, it could have been even worse: Jerry Brown is a model of responsibility and common sense compared to California’s money-wasting left-wing legislature and its big-spending Democratic leadership (the state legislature is two-thirds Democrat and only one-third Republican). The AP quotes Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de Leon (D-Los Angeles) demanding yet more “investments” (the trendy euphemism for government spending) and promising that “we can and will do more” to increase such spending.  State legislative leaders have sought to expand Medicaid and other government healthcare programs to cover illegal immigrants at a cost of at least $1.3 billion annually, which Brown has not yet fully endorsed, although his budget does earmark the more modest sum of “$62 million to begin enrolling low-income immigrants in Medi-Cal, California’s version of Medicaid, on the assumption that President Barack Obama will prevail in a court battle over his executive order.”burke

The relabeling of welfare recipients as “workers” even when they do little work echoes the approach of the progressive ideological guru George Lakoff, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley, who advocates reframing the political debate in deceptive ways. As The Atlantic noted:

Lakoff offers no new policy ideas. Instead he suggests that the Democrats reposition the ones they already have, and spruce up some unpopular terminology while they’re at it. He advocates referring to ‘trial lawyers’ as ‘public-protection attorneys,’ replacing ‘taxes’ with ‘membership fees,’ and generally couching the entire Democratic message in palatable—even deceptive—language in order to simplify large ideas and disguise them behind innocent but powerful-sounding phrases.more evidence

The Associated Press sometimes follows the deceptive Lakoff ideological approach when it comes to government spending, labeling spending on education and social programs as an “investment” even when the money spent will not be recouped later through higher tax revenue, making the reference to “investment” misleading.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Hans Bader

Hans BaderHans Bader is Counsel at the Competitive Enterprise Institute in Washington. After studying economics and history at the University of Virginia and law at Harvard, he practiced civil-rights, international-trade, and constitutional law. Hans also writes for CNS News and has appeared on C-SPAN’s “Washington Journal.”
OARLogo Picture6

Category:

Political

Tagged with:

States Signing Up Prison Inmates for Obamacare


http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/04/06/States-Signing-Up-Prison-Inmates-for-Obamacare

Cash-strapped states like Illinois, Iowa, and Ohio looking to offload costs onto the federal government are signing up prisoners for Obamacare.

As Fox News reports, at least six states are “taking advantage of a little-known provision that lets them shift some of those expenses to the federal government” by “enrolling inmates into a new expanded Medicaid program when they get sick.” Many more states are expected to follow.

States are also enrolling incarcerated criminals in Obamacare before they are released so they will have taxpayer-funded health insurance coverage before re-entering society.

Even former Democratic North Dakota Senator Kent Conrad says the practice raises serious concerns.

“It starts to look a little like a scheme by the states and local jurisdictions to avoid responsibilities that are really theirs,” said Conrad.

States are already making the Obamacare enrollment part of their prison protocols. In President Barack Obama’s state of Illinois, the largest jail complex in the country, Cook County, has processed over 13,000 insurance applications since last April.  Over 2,000 prisoners have already bagged coverage following their release, sheriff’s public policy official Marleza Jentz told Fox News.

Forbes writer and health care expert Avik Roy says the new Obamacare prisoner enrollment strategy stands to alter long-held social values and incentives.

“The political element of Obamacare is that we were helping what we called the deserving poor or what we used to call the deserving poor. A group of people who are just down on their luck…bring them the opportunities they need to get WHAT DID YOU SAYahead and get back on their feet,” said Roy. “And sometimes that’s true of people who served time in prison, and sometimes it’s not.”

Obamacare will cost U.S. taxpayers $2.6 trillion over the next ten years.

Complete Message

Category:

Political

Tagged with:

Tag Cloud