One in Ten California Workers are Illegal Immigrants

-By Warner Todd Huston

A new report released last week revealed the alarming statistic that nearly one in ten workers in California is an illegal immigrant.

The report released by researchers at USC found that nearly ten percent of the Golden State’s workforce is made up of illegal aliens. It was also estimated that at least 2.6 million illegals live in the state. This number is likely far higher, though.

As the LA Times reports, illegals have taken 38 percent of jobs in agriculture, 14 percent in construction, and half have been in the US for at least 10 years.

Pro-amnesty activists point to the study as proof that these illegals “contribute” to the state.
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One in Ten California Workers are Illegal Immigrants”


Pat Quinn’s Major Loss Over Forced Healthcare Worker Unionization

-By Warner Todd Huston

Several years ago the Governor of Illinois decided with a fiat decision to hand his union buddies millions of free taxpayer dollars by suddenly forcing all private in-home healthcare workers to be unionized without their knowledge or approval. Today the U.S. Supreme Court said that Illinois was not allowed to do this.

The year was 2003 and Democrat Rod Blagojevich–who later went to jail for corruption–was the governor who decided that all Illinois citizens who get a stipend from the state to help them take care of their mentally and/or physically disabled family member must be unionized.
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Pat Quinn’s Major Loss Over Forced Healthcare Worker Unionization”


Bankrupt Illinois Spent $12 Million on Medicaid for Dead People

-By Warner Todd Huston

Illinois is constantly at the bottom in every metric that measures our most successful states. It is perennially either the 48th, 49th, or 50th worst state in every category. And now we learn that the state is spending up to $12 million a year that it doesn’t have on Medicaid for people who are dead! Can this state become more of a joke?

The Associated Press recently filed a Freedom of Information Act request and uncovered a disturbing memo from the Illinois state auditor.

“State auditors identified overpayments for services to roughly 2,900 people after the date of their deaths,” the AP wrote.

This was more evidence that Obama’s claims that Democrats are fixing the Medicaid enrollment system is a failure.
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Bankrupt Illinois Spent $12 Million on Medicaid for Dead People”


Optional Medicaid Expansion: Considerations Facing the States

Across the country, state governments have been considering whether to expand Medicaid coverage as envisioned by the Affordable Care Act (ACA or “Obamacare”).

To help break down what’s at stake, a new video—based on a recent study by Mercatus Center scholar Charles Blahous—reviews the key factors states must consider in this complex decision.

View the study and learn more at Mercatus.org.


AP Touts ‘Non-Partisan’ Study Saying Obamacare Great for States

-By Warner Todd Huston

The Associated Press has done it again, pushing on readers a “study” by purported “nonpartisan” organizations that aren’t nonpartisan at all. This one claiming that Obamacare is a “good deal for states.”

The AP notes that this “report” by the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation and the Urban Institute says that Obamacare is good for the states because it picks up the largest amount of healthcare costs through its Medicaid expansion.

Expanding Medicaid to cover about 20 million more low-income people will cost over $1 trillion nationally from 2013 to 2022, said the joint report from the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Urban Institute. But the analysis found that states will pay just $76 billion of that, a combined share of roughly 7 percent. The feds will pay the other $952 billion.

But what of these two groups? Are they really “nonpartisan”?
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AP Touts ‘Non-Partisan’ Study Saying Obamacare Great for States”


Media Blasts Ryan, Acts as if AARP is Non-Partisan

-By Warner Todd Huston

Last week the media was all over Paul Ryan’s visit to an event with the American Association for Retired People gleefully reporting that he was booed. The media treated the whole affair as if the AARP was some non-partisan organization. But, the truth is, the AARP is no more non-partisan than any organization carrying water for the Obama administration.

Take The Hill, for instance. In its report the inside Washington newser noted that the boos Ryan received was “a clear sign of just how big a challenge Medicare poses to the Romney campaign.”

This characterization is absurd. It presents the AARP as a venue that might not boo any proposal of the reform of an over taxed government program! AARP is solidly on the side of big government – it was a leading proponent of Obamacare — and will brook no truck with anyone talking of reforming anything. Of course they’ll boo Paul Ryan.
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Media Blasts Ryan, Acts as if AARP is Non-Partisan”


American Action Network Releases State & District-Level Medicare Cuts in Obamacare

From the American Action Network

www.TheyCutYourMedicare.com has the State & District-by-District Breakdowns of How Much Members Who Voted for or to Keep Obamacare Cut from their Area’s Medicare

WASHINGTON – As part of its ongoing effort to make the case for prompt repeal of Obamacare, the American Action Network (AAN) released today the cuts to Medicare fee-for-service (FFS) and Medicare Advantage (MA) in the states and congressional districts of Senators and Members of Congress that voted for or to preserve Obamacare. The district and state specific cuts can be found at www.TheyCutYourMedicare.com and the member-specific sites linked below.

The data used to determine this state and congressional district data comes from the census, the Congressional Budget Office, and a new University of Minnesota study that provided a county-by-county analysis of the Medicare fee-for-service and Medicare Advantage cuts included in Obamacare.

Obamacare cut Medicare by $716 billion to fund a new entitlement, and is leading to higher taxes on consumers and providers, rising healthcare costs for families, and will lead to diminished quality of care for seniors. The need to repeal this disastrous law is more evident daily.
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American Action Network Releases State & District-Level Medicare Cuts in Obamacare”


We Must Put an End to Medicare Fraud

From the office of Rep. Peter Roskam (R, Illinois 6th District)…

America’s elderly are victims of a crime spree so expansive that on an annual basis exceeds the value of all the cocaine smuggled in to North America. The crime is Medicare fraud, and it is conservatively considered to be a $50 billion industry.
While the federal government intercepts almost 40% of cocaine shipments to the United States, it stands virtually idle in apprehending Medicare fraudsters, recovering just $2.5 billion in fraudulent transactions and improper payments in 2009. Originating disproportionately from the Miami area, according to the FBI in September, “South Florida remains ground zero for healthcare fraud.” The unfortunate reality is that Medicare not only needs significant fiscal reforms to be around for future generations – like through the House Republican Budget: The Path to Prosperity – but its mechanics are also in dire need of substantive reform.

Fortunately, the solution to this crime problem is not to create another “taskforce” or “war on” anything; in part it takes adapting the proven fraud prevention mechanisms of the credit card industry – an industry suffering just .044 percent fraud out of $17 trillion in annual transactions.

This is not a failure of our law enforcement community. It is the product of Medicare’s broken “pay-and-chase” system for reimbursing claims. Medicare does not effectively guard against fraud on the front end — cutting checks without thorough fraud-check measures – so law enforcement officials must pursue fraudulent claims after reimbursement. It is the equivalent of a retail store processing a customer’s credit card approval long after the clothes have left the store. It’s nonsensical.
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We Must Put an End to Medicare Fraud”


It Begs the Question: How Many Times Will You Let Them Fool You?

-By Frank Hyland

You take your car to the local auto dealership because it just isn’t running right, like it used to run. For the third time, you tell the Service Manager what the symptoms are and what you think the cause is. You’ve had this car for two and a half years, and plenty of other cars before this one, so you’re a pretty good judge of how an auto should operate. Your gas mileage is declining, there’s a persistent odor as you drive, ominous-sounding noises have crept in and are now getting louder and louder, neither the brake nor the accelerator pedal seems responsive. You return to the dealership, pay them, and drive away. Right away you notice that it is still sluggish and still smells, and the noises you reported yesterday are even louder.

Will you return to that dealership again? Will you give them more of your money in return for what they claim is the best service around? Will you accept their word that they “guarantee” their work? They’ve sent you back out into traffic in a vehicle that doesn’t run well and that has problems in both stopping and accelerating. It’s very likely that you won’t return to them. Even if they were the only dealership in your town, you would find a way to get the car to the nearest town with another dealership, one that doesn’t ignore you or make you false promises on which it cannot and/or will not deliver.
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It Begs the Question: How Many Times Will You Let Them Fool You?”


Democrats Plan: Destroy U.S. Healthcare So They Can Re-Build it in Socialist Image

-By Warner Todd Huston

Obama and his Democrat pals have been lying to you, America. They do not want to find a cure for America’s obviously ailing healthcare system. They want to erect its headstone. Democrats want to destroy every aspect of our healthcare system. They have to, you see, because if they don’t they cannot rebuild it to operate under a socialist model. More proof of that was highlighted by Conn Carroll earlier in the week at the Washington Examiner.

Carroll rightly points out that Obamacare is purposefully designed to collapse Medicare and to run 25% of all hospitals out of business. Sure this will hurt — even kill — thousands of America’s most vulnerable citizens, but, heck, you have to break a few citizen eggs to create the ideal, socialist omelet, don’t you know?
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Democrats Plan: Destroy U.S. Healthcare So They Can Re-Build it in Socialist Image”


Kinzinger on ‘Mediscare’

From the office of Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R, ILL)…

“Social Security and Medicare are the electric third rails of American politics. Touch them and you can expect reprisal. It’s hard to have an intelligent discussion when one side is determined to scare the bejabbers out of people.

“U.S. Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Manteno, has taken to calling such tactics ‘Mediscare.’ We agree.”

Kankakee Daily Journal Editorial: Years of Security

Adjusting the time payments begin might be one compromise
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Kinzinger on ‘Mediscare’”


Fleebagging TV: Democrat Walks Off TV Show

Here we have a whiner Democrat that can’t take the heat of a TV cable show… and hasn’t two neurons to rub together. You know… a typical Democrat.

I love how Ed Morrissey explained how Democrats like this twerp work…

Step 1: Declare that the Republican plan will kill people
Step 2: Denounce demagoguery
Step 3: Offer no plans of your own
Step 4: Feign offense when challenged on strategy
And finally…
Step 5: Walk off in a huff without doing anything, Fleebagger Style

Liberalism really is a mental disease.


Congress Must Work Together to Reform and Save Medicare for Future Generations

From the office of Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R, ILL)…

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Congressman Adam Kinzinger (IL-11), last night appeared on “America’s Nightly Scoreboard” on Fox Business to discuss the Senate Democrats’ failure to produce a budget or to work with House Republicans to save Medicare less than two weeks after the bi-partisan Medicare Trustees produced a report that said Medicare will be exhausted five years earlier than anticipated. Kinzinger also discussed job creation in Illinois.

On whether Senate Democrats plan to address entitlements

The big key is it’s been 755 days since Senate Democrats have passed a budget.

This is something we’re supposed to do every year. We have a responsibility out here, a responsibility to pass a budget.
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Congress Must Work Together to Reform and Save Medicare for Future Generations”


Newt’s Tuesday Blogger Conference Call

-By Warner Todd Huston

I just finished with a blogger conference call held by Speaker Gingrich in which he tried to further explain where he stands on Paul Ryan, the budget, and Obamacare.

Newt has have been characterized as “trashing Paul Ryan,” and Ryan himself took a swipe at him on a Chicago radio show (Ryan said something like, “with conservative like him who needs enemies?”), and of course many see his purported attack on Ryan as a violation of Reagan’s famed 11th Commandment. So Newt has a lot to answer for, for sure.

He’s badly confused the situation and some are calling for him to drop out and give it all up. Even Rush Limbaugh is claiming that Newt knows he can’t win the nomination and this whole thing is just an effort at positioning himself for other things in the future. (Rush says Newt might just be angling for a position at the Aspen Institute)
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Newt’s Tuesday Blogger Conference Call”


Kinzinger, House Freshmen Call on President Obama to End “MediSCARE” Tactics

From the office of Rep. Adam Kinzinger (Ill. 11)…

Yesterday, Congressman Adam Kinzinger (IL-11) along with his freshman colleagues, reiterated their call on the President at a press conference to keep his commitment made at the 2010 Republican Retreat in Baltimore to have a fact-based conversation immediately over reforming spending on entitlement programs and addressing the debt crisis now before it is insurmountable. (See .pdf of letter)

Last year, President Obama asked, “At what point can we have a serious conversation about Medicare and its long-term liability…or a serious conversation about budget and debt in which we’re not simply trying to position ourselves politically?’ The President went on to say we cannot start these discussions by asking “who’s to blame,” who is “trying to hurt our senior citizens” or “how can we make the American people afraid of the other side.” The President said this is what he’s “committed to doing.”
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Kinzinger, House Freshmen Call on President Obama to End “MediSCARE” Tactics”


Obama Doubles Down on Socialist Appointee

-By Warner Todd Huston

Democratic leadership has been reported to have “cooled” on support of Dr. Donald Berwick, Obama’s appointee to run Medicare and Medicaid. The Senate has decided not to take up Berwick’s appointment because of Berwick’s controversial, socialist ideology. But Barack Obama has doubled down on his support of the Euro-loving Doc and given Berwick another recess appointment despite his far left, out of touch policy ideas.

Berwick is now well known for saying that the U.S. “must redistribute the wealth” in its administration of government healthcare systems. His sentiment is far, far outside the mainstream of American opinion. Statements such as this have caused even Democrats in the Senate to shy from his appointment. But not Obama…

Read the rest at RightPundits.com.
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Obama Doubles Down on Socialist Appointee”


President Gets Around Annoying Voters, Instills Death Panels By Regulation

-By Warner Todd Huston

Some of you may have missed this story since it was published on the day after Christmas (and a Sunday at that), but Obama’s death panels are back, this time via the president’s fiat regulatory powers. Since it was easy to have missed, I’ve decided to post the story today (Monday) so that more people might see it now that Christmas and the weekend both are over.

You might recall the end of life care policies that were once in Obamacare. You might also remember the political firestorm these death panels whipped up. The pressure was heavy enough that the Democrats removed the policy from the final Obamacare bill.

Well, now that Obamacare is passed, Obama is slipping these death panels right back into existence by ordering Medicare to just make the policy a new rule under updated Medicare regulations.
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President Gets Around Annoying Voters, Instills Death Panels By Regulation”


FDA: Dec. 17, Countdown to a Death Panel for Breast Cancer Drug Avastin

-By Warner Todd Huston

In a few days the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is expected to release its final decision on whether or not 17,000 women across the country will have the same access to the breast cancer drug Avastin that they now have. Several congressmen, thousands of doctors and patients, and many small government activists stand against this perceived example of Obamacare-like rationing.

As I reported last week, with this Avastin situation five Congressmen have become alerted to the threat that government is instituting cost-based rationing of healthcare and have become alarmed at the effects that will have on the sick. It seems that this FDA decision will set the table for the rationing war to come under Obamacare unless that legislation is repealed or inhibited.

Avastin is, admittedly, an expensive drug. But are we ready for government to decide if your lifesaving medicines are “too expensive” to be allowed for use? Is that the cost-based road down which we wish to travel? And how far down that road do we go? How much cost-cutting do we want government to indulge where it concerns our health? And should government even have that role in the first place?

These are questions that the Avastin decision evokes.
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FDA: Dec. 17, Countdown to a Death Panel for Breast Cancer Drug Avastin”


Obama Claims Power to Decide if Your Medicine is Too Expensive to be Allowed

-By Warner Todd Huston

It’s very easy for Obamacare supporters to scoff at the whole idea that there are “death panels” ensconced in Obama’s health care power grab. But the fact of the matter is that they exist in a defacto form. One of those defacto death panels is the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB), an agency invented under Obamacare that has no congressional oversight and will be able to summarily cancel your drug prescriptions as paid for by Medicare.

The IPAB is not well known by Americans, but it is a 15-member board appointed by the president and while members are confirmed by the Senate, the board is not otherwise answerable to anyone but the president. As to its duties, this board was given the responsibility to put a spending cap on Medicare. One way that the IPAB intends to do that is to decide what drugs are cost effective enough for government to pay for.

In other words, the IPAB will decide whether or not Medicare patients will be allowed to have a drug and its decision to eliminate the drug will be based solely on cost, not effectiveness or medical necessity. These decisions will also not be made with your doctor. It will be a top down, bureaucratic decision, not a decision based on medical science.
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Obama Claims Power to Decide if Your Medicine is Too Expensive to be Allowed”


Obama’s Socialist-Admiring Medicaid/Medicare Chief Gets Hearing

-By Warner Todd Huston

Donald Berwick, Obama’s nominee to head up the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, made himself infamous earlier this year when video came to light showing him telling a British audience how much he admired their socialist healthcare system because it “redistributes” the Brit’s wealth.

Berwick went all warm and fuzzy over the socialist features of the British National Health Service saying,“Any health care funding plan that is just, equitable, civilized, and humane must, must redistribute wealth from the richer among us to the poorer and the less fortunate. Excellent health care is by definition redistributional.” The Heartland Institute had an extensive report on Berwick’s British address back when the video first surfaced.

Recently Senator Jim Bunning (R, KY) challenged Berwick, who accepted a recess appointment after his initial nomination never came to a vote in the Senate. Republicans are concerned that a man so taken by socialist policies would be in a position to attempt to implement similar left-wing policies here.

Berwick was brought before the Senate on Wednesday and The Heartland Institute covered the hearing in a live blog. It makes for interesting reading.
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Obama’s Socialist-Admiring Medicaid/Medicare Chief Gets Hearing”


The Truth about Social Security and the Federal Budget

-By Dan Scott

The coming federal budget debacle is one shrouded by lies wrapped in euphemisms, obfuscated by spin. Just as an example of the less than truthful statements coming from the Federal Government in it’s denial of the impending disaster to befall the nation I need only to point to the excerpt from the Trustee’s Report on Social Security.

The outlook for Medicare has improved substantially because of program changes made in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act as amended by the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010 (the “Affordable Care Act” or ACA). Despite lower near-term revenues resulting from the economic recession, the Hospital Insurance (HI) Trust Fund is now expected to remain solvent until 2029, 12 years longer than was projected last year, and the 75-year HI financial shortfall has been reduced to 0.66 percent of taxable payroll from 3.88 percent in last year’s report. Nearly all of this improvement in HI finances is due to the ACA. The ACA is also expected to substantially reduce costs for the Medicare Supplementary Medical Insurance (SMI) program; projected program costs as a share of GDP over the next 75 years are down 23 percent relative to the costs projected for the 2009 report.
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The Truth about Social Security and the Federal Budget”