Marines Over Medicaid

To the great surprise of nobody, another blue-ribbon panel of Washington’s A-list nabobs has failed at its task: In this case, it is the so-called supercommittee charged with nudging the federal government away from the edge of the debt abyss. Investors despaired at the news, and there was talk of a second downgrade of U.S. Treasury debt.

The failure of the supercommittee is a testament to Democrats’ tax obsession. With the supercommittee having fizzled, the next step is the automatic sequestration process, which imposes 50 percent of the cuts on a program that accounts for only 20 percent of spending (national defense) while leaving the entitlements largely untouched. But the country needs the Marines more than it needs Medicaid.
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Marines Over Medicaid”


Illinois: Beloved Doctor Benched For Not Being Proficient with Electronic Medical Records System

-By Warner Todd Huston

A popular, longtime Doctor from central Illinois has been sidelined by employer Springfield-based Memorial Health System because he has not become proficient with the electronic medical records system, named EPIC Systems, that they purchased and implemented. Patients are so incensed that they’ve started a Facebook page as well as a blog to rally to his defense.

This situation brings into focus the problem of top-down medical solutions, calling into question the efficacy of healthcare by committee, not to mention Obmacare itself. Do we really want to sacrifice good doctors in favor of good followers of top-down rules? Do we want good users of computers or excellent doctors?
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Illinois: Beloved Doctor Benched For Not Being Proficient with Electronic Medical Records System”


Rep. Joe Walsh Discusses Obamacare

-By Warner Todd Huston

Representative Joe Walsh appeared at a conference earlier this month and he was asked to address some of the troubles that this nation is going to suffer once Obamacare really kicks in.

Walsh is 100% right about his contentions over this destructive Obamacare mess.

Representative Walsh has already announced that he will run against Republican Congressman Randy Hultgren in the newly re-configured 14th District in the upcoming primaries.
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Rep. Joe Walsh Discusses Obamacare”


Did a Big Dem Donor Turned Obama Medical Records Czar Hoodwink Members of Congress?

-By Warner Todd Huston

Did Obama’s medical record czar, Judy Faulkner, hoodwink five members of Congress into pushing her own medical records company as the solution for the problem of electronic medical records for all government contracts? That’s what some wonder as Obama’s search for an electronic medical records solution evolves.

In a likely earnest effort to bring jobs to Wisconsin and help improve the fortunes of a home state company, five members of Congress signed onto a letter urging the Department of Defense to seriously consider EPIC Systems medical records computer architecture. (Download PDF of letter)

The letter, signed by Wisconsin Senators Herb Kohl (D) and Ron Johnson (R), as well as Representatives Paul Ryan (R), Tammy Baldwin (D), and Ron Kind (D), was written some two years after EPIC Systems CEO, Judith Faulkner was appointed (April 3, 2009) to Obama’s Health Information Technology Policy Committee. This is a committee established by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act that will, “make recommendations on creating a policy framework for the development and adoption of a nationwide health information technology infrastructure,” for electronic medical records.
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Did a Big Dem Donor Turned Obama Medical Records Czar Hoodwink Members of Congress?”


Obama Donor, Now Medical Records Czar Gets Little Gov’t Job BIG Gov’t Contracts

-By Warner Todd Huston

Must be nice to be a member of the “in” crowd, the crowd of crony capitalists to whom President Obama has given so much of the taxpayer’s money. And not just money but positions of power in the government.

Take, for instance, Obama’s newest czar, Judith Faulkner, recently named Obama medical records czar. She was not only put in charge of deciding which company would be used for Obama’s official electronic medical records system, but she also just happens to have an electronic medical records company of her own. And, gosh, it seems her company is suddenly quite busy and just might be in line to become THE electronic medical records company. Imagine that.

Only a few weeks ago news of Faulkner’s elevation to Obama’s Health Information Technology Policy Committee. This committee is charged with deciding how $19 billion in Obama bucks is spent on healthcare IT systems.
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Obama Donor, Now Medical Records Czar Gets Little Gov’t Job BIG Gov’t Contracts”


Health Care Compacts Would Save $3 Trillion

From the effort to create the Health Care Compact to replace Obamacare…

Alexandria, VA – Today, the Health Care Compact Alliance released its analysis of the financial impact of the Health Care Compact on the national deficit. The Alliance found that, if implemented in all 50 states, the compact would cut the deficit by nearly $3 trillion by 2021.

“The Health Care Compact is more than just health care reform,” said Leo Linbeck III, Vice Chairman of the Health Care Compact Alliance. “It is governance reform that will make a difference in not only the way Americans choose their health care system but will save our federal government trillions. In the coming weeks, members of the Congressional super-committee will continue meeting to determine ways to reduce our nation’s deficit and reigning in health care spending must be their priority. The Health Care Compact offers real reform while reducing the deficit.”
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Health Care Compacts Would Save $3 Trillion”


Big Donor to Democrats Appointed to Obamacare Policy Panel

-By Warner Todd Huston

We’ve seen it over and over with the Obama administration. All one need do to become a “czar” or get a plum appointment to yet another Obama regulatory board is to donate big money to Obama’s campaigns specifically or the Democrats in general. Now it’s happened again.

The Washington Examiner’s Lachlan Markay reports that Judith Faulkner, founder and CEO of Epic Systems Corp., has been awarded a seat on the 13-member Health Information Technology Policy Committee, an Obamacare board charged with recommending how $19 billion in stimulus money gets spent on healthcare IT systems.

Faulkner and her employees have been big donors to Democrats having donated over $30,000 to Democrats since 2006.
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Big Donor to Democrats Appointed to Obamacare Policy Panel”


Obamacare Far, Far Worse Than Imagined

-By Warner Todd Huston

The Congressional Budget Office has said that only about 7% of employers will drop their own company-offered plans and enter the new government plans that Obamacare will feature when the crap hits the fan in 2014. This small percentage, though is likely untrue. More likely it will be somewhere around 30% — or higher — costing the federal gov’t $466 billion in the first decade alone just for the costs of those joining the gov’t exchanges.

Reason TV’s Nick Gillespie has the scary, budget-busting details in the following video.

Nick interviews Glen Morton, author of Passing ObamaCare, which reveals the boondoggle that Obamacare will be. Morton feels that “ultimately everyone” will end pin the gov’t exchanges and will not have private insurance costing the gov’t (and all of us) trillions of dollars.

We cannot afford this mess. Obamacare must be eliminated.
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Obamacare Far, Far Worse Than Imagined”


Obama DID Lie: Obamacare Now Paying for Illegal Immigrants

-By Warner Todd Huston

Remember when South Carolina Representative Joe Wilson called out “You Lie!” when Obama claimed in his 2009 state of the union address that his Obamacare plan would never go to care for illegal aliens? Well, turns out Wilson was right. We now know that Obama did lie. His latest move has been to turn Obamacare to benefit illegals just like Wilson said it would.

Last week the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced that it was funneling Obamacare cash to 67 community health centers where the money would be used for migrant farm workers. HHS also informed us that the immigration status of said farm workers would not be ascertained before free care was given meaning that illegal aliens would be given Obamacare funding.
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Obama DID Lie: Obamacare Now Paying for Illegal Immigrants”

Scarier than a ‘Death Panel’? Being 65 or Older

-By Kevin Roeten

Of course, the words ‘Death Panel’ weren’t in Obama’s 2000-word health care plan. The words socialism, aborting, taxing, and redistribution of earned money weren’t in there either. But most Americans know they’re in there.

Obama’s Universal HealthCare won’t give people the option to put people’s relatives to death. At least not yet. It is known by millions what will happen if government-run health care becomes a reality. First, people will be allowed (or the government will do it for them) to euthanize older folks, or generally anyone expected to die in less than six months.

If Universal Healthcare gets voted in, the Obama administration holds every ‘control’ button. With the unsustainably high budget deficit, the government will inevitably make cost-minded judgments about what procedures are ‘worth’ doing, and which are not.
Continue reading “Scarier than a ‘Death Panel’? Being 65 or Older”


No, John Adams Did Not Pass the First Obamacare Law

-By Warner Todd Huston

Every few weeks for months now leftist bloggers have been happily touting the “fact” that our second president, John Adams, passed the first “national healthcare law” one that supposedly forced Americans to buy a form of healthcare. Unfortunately for them, this is simply untrue and comparing John Adams’ sailor’s relief act to Obamacare is misleading at worst and an apples to oranges comparison at best.

But even as today’s leftists want to use this old sailor’s act as poof that nationalized healthcare has precedent, and even as they are wrong, the history does serve us well as an example of the follies of nationalized healthcare. Curiously enough, it’s a lesson that the leftists don’t seem to mention in their laudatory pieces on John Adams’ law.

The law in question is the “act for the relief of sick and disabled seamen,” passed in 1798.

This law mandated owners of sailing vessels to pay a per-sailor tax to the federal government so that members of the merchant marine could find temporary healthcare when they got sick. The act informed the nation that the president is “hereby authorized, out of the same, to provide for the temporary relief and maintenance of sick, or disabled seamen, in the hospitals or other proper institutions…”

Now, the modern American left points to this and, squealing with glee, claims that this was the first “healthcare mandate.” They imagine that this law was the first version of Obamacare and that this is somehow precedent for Obama’s modern, socialist power grab.

Unfortunately for our friends on the left, a closer look at this ancient law fails the test as support for Obamacare.
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No, John Adams Did Not Pass the First Obamacare Law”


Video Interview: Eric O’Keefe and Getting Rid Of Obamacare With The Health Care Compact

-By Warner Todd Huston

Obamacare will sink this country if it is ever allowed to come into full operation. So says Eric O’Keefe, Chairman of Sam Adams Alliance, a Chicago-based, free market organization, and chief advocate for the Health Care Compact, an effort that can replace Obamacare and give us a truly American way to address our healthcare problems.

I met up with Mr. O’Keefe at the RightOnLine conference in beautiful downtown Minneapolis, Minnesota this year and in the following video we talk about a great new way to get rid of Obamacare and solve our healthcare problems at the same time.

Mr. O’Keefe is a principle advocate of the Health Care Compact (healthcarecompact.org), a great 10th Amendment effort to return the problems and solutions of healthcare to the states.

From the Compact’s website:
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Video Interview: Eric O’Keefe and Getting Rid Of Obamacare With The Health Care Compact”


Getting Muddy: Tim Pawlenty Attacks ‘ObamneyCare’

-By Warner Todd Huston

Tim Pawlenty is one of only two GOP contenders that have a nation-wide ground game and it looks like he’s starting to go on the attack against Mitt Romney, the other Republican with a nation-wide organization. On Fox News Sunday today he attacked Romney’s disastrous healthcare bill that he signed when Governor of Massachusetts head on calling the legislation “ObamneyCare.”

With one phrase he was able to link Romney’s healthcare law directly to the hated Obamacare legislation. It was clever, but it shows that Pawlenty feels that Romney is not only the guy to beat, he’s vulnerable as well.

Read the rest at RightPundits.com.


Healthcare: Let The States Decide

-By Warner Todd Huston

The debate about healthcare coming from the Democrats is steeped in purposeful misdirection on one hand and a complete lack of any real knowledge about what Obamacare will even do on the other. It is also a major overreach on a federalism level which is why it is hard to understand why more people aren’t talking about the Healthcare Compact plan (healthcarecompact.org).14 states have already signed onto it and has even been signed into law in two of them, Georgia and Oklahoma.

Of course, the problem is that we are expected to believe that Obamacare — which is essentially a nationalized healthcare policy — will work just fine on a national level. Despite that history has proven over and over again that centralized planning simply does not work, most especially with something as unwieldy and complicated as healthcare.

It doesn’t help that we are not being told the truth by those pushing Obama’s plan, either. Many times the president has claimed that with Obamacare you can “keep your health care plan” if you like it, you can keep your doctor if you like him. This, however, has been generously called a “questionable” promise. And that isn’t the only untruth coming from Obamacare supporters.
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Healthcare: Let The States Decide”


Debt Ceiling Debate: Democrats Won’t Even Vote For Their Own Ideas!

-By Warner Todd Huston

Late on Tuesday the GOP led House of Representatives defeated a vote to raise the debt ceiling. This is not a surprising vote, to be sure, but the odd part of this deal is that some Democrats voted with Republicans even after sending a letter to Obama only a month ago saying they supported raising it.

In mid April, 114 Democrats sent a letter to President Obama pledging their support for a “clean extension of the debt ceiling.”

These 114 Democrats agreed with Obama that the debt ceiling needed to be raised without adding spending cuts to the bill and that anyone that wants to force spending cuts to be added to the bill would be “willfully risking the full faith and credit of the United States of America.” It was an emergency, they claimed.
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Debt Ceiling Debate: Democrats Won’t Even Vote For Their Own Ideas!”


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”


Romneycare: Wait Times to see Docs Growing in Massachusetts

-By Warner Todd Huston

The Boston Globe is reporting that wait times are growing for citizens of Massachusetts to get in to see their doctors under the universal healthcare plan that Mitt Romney saddled Bay Staters with. Wait times have grown to as much as 48 days it has been found.

The average wait ranged from 24 days for an appointment with a pediatrician to 48 days to see an internist. The wait for an internist was actually down slightly, from 53 days in a similar 2010 survey, but the waits for family doctors, gastroenterologists, orthopedists, and ob/gyns increased.

Worse, new patients are finding it almost impossible to even find a new doctor as most of them are full and not accepting new patients.
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Romneycare: Wait Times to see Docs Growing in Massachusetts”


429 Pages of New Regulations Wrought from 6 Pages of Obamacare

-By Warner Todd Huston

Obamacare will destroy our healthcare system and our economy both while giving unprecedented and unconstitutional powers to unelected, unaccountable federal regulators. It’s just that simple. Further proof of this was reported by US News and World Report on April 7 where we see that out of just six pages of the Obamacare law, federal regulators have written 429 pages of new regulations!

As it happens, that 429 pages of new federal regulations amounts to 45 more pages than Barack Obama’s autobiography, The Audacity of Hope.

Section 3022 of the law, which is about the Medicare shared savings program, take up just six pages in the 907-page Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. But HHS has turned that into 429 pages of new regulations and that’s too much, says Republican Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso, a practicing doctor.

Brasso is correct to say that these thousands of new regulations will “increase the cost of doing business,” too.
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429 Pages of New Regulations Wrought from 6 Pages of Obamacare”


Obama’s Bribes to the Wash. Post and CBS

-By Warner Todd Huston

In a blow to the autonomy of the media it has been discovered that employees of two Old Media outlets are the happy beneficiaries of hundreds of thousands of federal dollars from an Obamacare slush fund. CBS and the Washington Post have both taken large payments from Obama’s Early Retiree Reinsurance Program (ERRP), with the Post getting $573,217 while CBS has received a whopping $722,388.

Matthew Boyle reported that the news of the media giants taking federal cash was revealed at a hearing before the House Energy and Commerce Committee last week.

The question here becomes one of disclosure. Will CBS and the Washington Post put disclaimers on any story they relate about Obamacare? After all, if we see a positive story about Obamacare from the Washington Post or CBS might we assume the stories are so positive because employees of those media organizations know they could be the beneficiaries of thousands of dollars in federal cash? Might we assume that these Old Media employees might fear that any negative story might put that largess at risk?
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Obama’s Bribes to the Wash. Post and CBS”


For Nancy Pelosi It’s Lonely at the… Bottom

-By Warner Todd Huston

Politico has a sad tale to tell about former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (I just love that: former. Say it with me, FORMER House Speaker). The once powerful California Representative held a big one-year celebration of Obamacare to show off her keystone legislative victory and like the kid nobody likes, her invites to the party were ignored by all the top Democrats. Not just some of them, ALL of them!

This is a far cry from the power she wielded only months ago. Back in the old days when Pelosi sent out an invite to a press availability, like she did this week with her Obamacare celebration, the entire leadership would dutifully drop anything they were doing and they’d show up to Pelosi’s little show and they’d do it with bells on.

These days, not so much.
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For Nancy Pelosi It’s Lonely at the… Bottom”


Videos Wanted: $5,000 Prize for Your ObamaCare Horror Stories Video

From the Independent Women’s Voice…

The Independent Women’s Voice (IWV) announces its “ObamaCare Anniversary Video Contest!” We want your one-minute or less video explaining how the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act — popularly known as ObamaCare — will hurt our medical system and our freedoms.

At IWV, we believe the health care law passed last year takes our country in the wrong direction by putting government bureaucrats in charge of health decisions instead of empowering patients. We worry that ObamaCare will drive medical costs higher, reduce the quality of care, and ultimately lead to rationing.

If you share these concerns, we want you to put together a video of one minute or less that dramatizes the problems with ObamaCare. The video can be clever, personal, funny or touching – however you can make the most compelling case. So grab your camera, invite your friends and family, and tell your story!
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Videos Wanted: $5,000 Prize for Your ObamaCare Horror Stories Video”


Now THERE’S Chutzpah: Obama Claims He hasn’t Raised Taxes?

-By Warner Todd Huston

John Kartch over at Americans for Tax Reform found President Obama’s claim that he hasn’t raised taxes a bit, shall we say, quixotic. At one point in the interview with Obama conducted by Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly and shown on Sunday, Obama stated bald faced that he didn’t do so. The truth seems to be a different animal, however.

Employing his best preacher’s alliterative mode by repeating it twice, Obama told O’Reilly, “I didn’t raise taxes once. I lowered taxes over the last two years. I lowered taxes for the last two years.”

But did he hold the line on taxes? Kartch shows that Obama’s claim does not hold water. In fact, “just sixteen days into his presidency,” Kartch reminds us, Obama raised taxes on tobacco by 156 percent! Then came Obamacare, little else but a defacto tax hike in at least a dozen areas.

And then there is the smoke and mirrors:
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Now THERE’S Chutzpah: Obama Claims He hasn’t Raised Taxes?”


Union Fights to Force You into Obamacre While Getting Waivers for Itself

-By Warner Todd Huston

The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) is one of Obama’s biggest donors. Curiously enough, the SEIU is also one of the more than 700 unions and corporations that have gotten waivers from the Obama administration to get out from under some of the oppressive rules of Obamacare. Yet, even as they have been allowed to escape Obamacare’s rules, the SEIU is lobbying hard to make sure the rest of us don’t have as much luck.

The Hill reported that the SEIU lobbied hard against the repeal measure that Senate Minority Leader Republican Mitch McConnell helped bring to the Senate floor earlier this week.

The SEIU sent around a flurry of emails to senate offices.
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Union Fights to Force You into Obamacre While Getting Waivers for Itself”


Senate’s Repeal Healthcare Vote Failure Further Makes Lie to Term ‘Conservative Democrat’

-By Warner Todd Huston

Newly minted West Virginia Senator, Democrat Joe Manchin, ran for office denigrating Obama’s take over of our national healthcare system with his Obamacare law. Tonight he and other so-called “conservative Democrats” in the Senate got a chance to prove that they were, indeed, as conservative as they claimed to be by voting to repeal Obamacare. Not one of them made that vote, however.

In a vote strictly down party lines, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R, KY) repeal measure lost in a 51 to 47 vote. It needed a 60 vote super majority to pass.

McConnell did not likely expect his measure to pass, to be sure. His aim was meant at the very least to put everyone in the Senate on record as to where they stood on Obamacare. This isn’t the last word on the debate, either, as Republican Senator John Cornyn (Texas) vowed that this fight was not nearly over.

Within minutes after the vote, on the GOP’s Senate Twitter feed, Cornyn talked of the battle to come. “These are the first steps in a long road that will culminate in 2012 where we will continue to expose the flaws in this bill,” he said.
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Senate’s Repeal Healthcare Vote Failure Further Makes Lie to Term ‘Conservative Democrat’”


Romney: Nope, I’m NOT Apologizing for Romneycare!

-By Warner Todd Huston

After all these years in politics, Mitt Romney has finally found something he isn’t going to flip flop on — so far, anyway. Romney recently started a tour to kick off the release of his latest book and when asked if he was sorry he ever signed his name on the Massachusetts healthcare law derided as Romneycare, he ignored the advice from every GOP thinker out there and refused to distance himself from the calamitous law. It’s no apology from Mitt for Romneycare, then.

On his ABC News blog, George Stephanopoulos (every time I hear his name I think Snuffleupagus. I just can’t help it) reported that Romney is standing firm that Romneycare was a good idea at the time. Imagine that. Right when the bulk of the American people are appalled at Obamacare and Romney is about to launch a second attempt to take the White House, Mitt doubles down on Romneycare.
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Romney: Nope, I’m NOT Apologizing for Romneycare!”


Senate Republicans Call for Vote on a Repeal of Obamacare for Wednesday

-By Warner Todd Huston

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R, KY) announced on Tuesday that he intends to bring to the floor a vote to repeal Obamacare on Wednesday.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid certainly does not want this vote to occur but even so it is highly doubtful that McConnell can get the 60 votes needed to sustain a repeal. The Democrats still out number Republicans 53 to 47.

But a repeal is not all that McConnell wants with this vote. At the very least the Republican leader wants to put the entire senate on record giving the voters a clear accounting of which senators support Obamacare and which do not. McConnell hopes to put centrist Democrats on record as to where they stand.
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Senate Republicans Call for Vote on a Repeal of Obamacare for Wednesday”


Obama Gives Obamacare Waivers to 28 Unions, His BIG Donors

-By Warner Todd Huston

More on the waivers for Obamacare. A look at the president’s waiver list reveals he’s given waivers to 28 food workers union locals so that they can get out from under the oppressive, budget busting requirements in his take over of our nation’s medical system. Curiously enough, the PAC for those unions gave Obama $673,309 to his 2008 election campaign. Quid pro quo? Is there any doubt? Just a coincidence, right?

The list shows that Obama administration issued one-year waivers to 28 chapters of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW). These waivers exempt the union insurance plans from being forced to obey rules that prevent the plans from limiting what they will pay for employee’s healthcare coverage.

The UFCW was a vocal supporter of Obamacare and was part of a large coalition of unions pushing the bill early in 2010.

The UFCW was also a big, big supporter of candidate Obama in 2008 and Democrats generally.
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Obama Gives Obamacare Waivers to 28 Unions, His BIG Donors”


Remember: Obamacare is Great… Well Unless You Are a Union, Then You Don’t Have to Suffer Under it

-By Warner Todd Huston

If you’ll recall, Big Labor was one of the biggest cheerleaders for Obamacare. Big Labor was insistent that Obama’s take over of our nation’s healthcare was the best thing since sliced bread, to be sure. But once Obamacare got passed into law, we’ve learned that dozens of unions have sought exemptions to get out from under the destructive dictates of the law and they have been given that pass by their pal in the White House. Republicans are vowing to probe these cynical exemptions.

The waivers the Obama administration bestowed upon his biggest donors and friends allows the insurance plans of unions and various Obama-friendly corporations to get out from under the annual limits on what they spend on their employee’s medical coverage. Obamacare bans annual limits, but 222 unions and corporations and other Obama buddies are now exempt from this ban.

Apparently, while they all clamored for the rest of us to suffer under Obamacare, they’ve decided that they shouldn’t have to. And who is the biggest beneficiary of these waivers? Unions, of course.
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Remember: Obamacare is Great… Well Unless You Are a Union, Then You Don’t Have to Suffer Under it”