IRS scandal: Mainstream media fails to show the slightest curiosity about inconsistencies in Obama administration defenses

It has been troublesome that so much of the media is already arguing from the beginning of this last week that this wasn't like Watergate.  My question is: how could they already know that the Obama White House wasn't involved in these decisions?  What would have happened with Watergate if the media had shown the same quickness in drawing conclusions?  

Politico provides one of many examples of how the mainstream media.

Lew also defended Sarah Hall Ingram, a commissioner who has been targeted by Republicans for formerly overseeing the tax exempt division before heading to her current post helping the agency implement the health care law.
Ingram, Lew said, was not involved in the targeting program.
“Chronology matters in cases like this,” he said. “I’ve asked some questions since becoming aware of this, and my understanding is her responsibilities moved over from the tax exempt unit to implementation of the Affordable Care Act before there was any opportunity to be involved in this.”
Ingram served as the commissioner of tax-exempt organizations between 2009 and 2012. . . .

Why not even list some obvious questions such as the events at the tax exempt division occurred during  early 2010, early in the 2009 to 2012 period when Sarah Hall Ingram was in charge of the division?  How could she have been involved in the implementation of the ACA in March of 2012 before it was signed into law on March 23, 2010?

Timeline of Key Events Surrounding IRS Targeting of Conservative Groups 

March 1, 2010:  An IRS manager in Cincinnati, Ohio asks employees to begin searching for 501(c) tax exemption applications using the terms Tea Party, Patriots and 9/12 as their criteria. 

April 1, 2010:  Managers in Washington, DC and Cincinnati decide to send a “Sensitive Case Report” about the Tea Party cases up the chain in Washington. 

April 19, 2010:  The Sensitive Case Report is shared with two executives in Washington, DC, one of whom is Lois Lerner and the other her immediate subordinate.   

August 12, 2010:  The IRS creates a “BOLO” (Be on the Lookout) listing instructing agents to identify Tea Party case files. 

December 13, 2010:  A manager for the Exempt Organizations (EO) group at the IRS in Washington informs the manager in Cincinnati that the processing of Tea Party cases would soon be reviewed with the Senior Technical Advisor to Lois Lerner, the Director of EO. 

June 1, 2011: The Acting Director of Rulings and Agreements in Washington, DC, Lois Lerner’s immediate subordinate, asks the manager in Cincinnati for the criteria used to identify Tea Party groups. 

June 29, 2011:  The Director of EO in Washington, DC, Lois Lerner, is briefed that the criteria being used by employees includes “Tea Party,” “Patriots,” “9/12 Project,” “Government Spending,” “Government Debt,” “Taxes,” “make America a better place to live,” and cases with statements that criticize how the country is being run. 

July 5, 2011:  The BOLO listing criteria is revised to search for “organizations involved in political, lobbying, or advocacy.” 

January 25, 2012:  The BOLO is updated to change the search criteria to “limiting/expanding Government,” “Constitution and the Bill of Rights,” and “social economic reform/movement.” 

March 12, 2012: Senator Chuck Schumer sends a letter to IRS Commissioner Shulman along with six of his Democrat colleagues, calling for the agency to impose a strict cap on the amount of political spending by tax-exempt, nonprofit groups. 

There is another problem.  Let's just say that Sarah Hall Ingram immediately started working on Obamacare when it became law even though she was still technically in charge and running the tax exempt division.  Why was that?  Was something being hidden by her not being officially assigned to Obamacare?  For example, where costs for Obamacare being shifted onto other programs?

Take another claim from something taken seriously by the mainstream media, Salon.com.  "No evidence of White House involvement . . . none is found in the IG’s report"

If the IG did not interview people in the White House, how could the report determine that there was no evidence of White House involvement?  If the IG did interview people in the White House, how could the Obama White House claim that they had no knowledge of IRS punishing conservatives?

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Democrats' reasonable fear about what Obamacare will do to their 2014 election hopes

Here is another quote by a candidate running for the special election Tuesday in South Carolina who distanced herself from Obamacare.  From Politico:

South Carolina’s Elizabeth Colbert Busch, a favorite of the Democratic left, couldn't get away from the law fast enough, calling Obamacare “extremely problematic” — a quote that got wide play from GOP groups like the National Republican Senatorial Committee. . . . 

. . . On Tuesday, a Kaiser Family Foundation poll showed just 35 percent of Americans hold a favorable view of the law, right as the administration is planning to roll it out. 

All the panic forced President Barack Obama to rush to the law's defense, saying at a news conference Tuesday: “Even if we do everything perfectly, there'll still be, you know, glitches and bumps. … And that's pretty much true of every government program that's ever been set up.” 

Obama’s goal was to dismiss what he called “all the hue and cry and, you know, sky-is-falling predictions about this stuff.” 

Don't bet on that happening. Democrats have been fretting about the law since it passed, and they're not exactly falling in love with it now either. . . .

The problem is that while Democrats are distancing themselves from Obamacare now, they virtually voted for it before.  The law wouldn't have passed if all the Democrats in the Senate hadn't voted for it.

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Senators and Congressmen want an exemption from Obamacare

What is it Obamacare that Senators and Congressmen don't want it to apply to them?  One thing is clear that neither Democratic nor Republican politicians in Washington want the new regulations to apply to them.  Well, guess what?  Apparently Democrats have discovered that Obamacare will be very expensive.  From Politico:

Congressional leaders in both parties are engaged in high-level, confidential talks about exempting lawmakers and Capitol Hill aides from the insurance exchanges they are mandated to join as part of President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul, sources in both parties said. 

The talks — which involve Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), the Obama administration and other top lawmakers — are extraordinarily sensitive, with both sides acutely aware of the potential for political fallout from giving carve-outs from the hugely controversial law to 535 lawmakers and thousands of their aides. Discussions have stretched out for months, sources said. . . . 

There is concern in some quarters that the provision requiring lawmakers and staffers to join the exchanges, if it isn’t revised, could lead to a “brain drain” on Capitol Hill, as several sources close to the talks put it. 

The problem stems from whether members and aides set to enter the exchanges would have their health insurance premiums subsidized by their employer — in this case, the federal government. If not, aides and lawmakers in both parties fear that staffers — especially low-paid junior aides — could be hit with thousands of dollars in new health care costs, prompting them to seek jobs elsewhere. Older, more senior staffers could also retire or jump to the private sector rather than face a big financial penalty. . . . 

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More on Democrats now criticizing Obamacare

From The Hill newspaper:

"I just see a huge train wreck coming down," [Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) ] told Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius at a Wednesday hearing. "You and I have discussed this many times, and I don't see any results yet." . . .
"Small businesses have no idea what to do, what to expect," Baucus said.
Citing anecdotal evidence from small businesses in his home state, Baucus asked Sebelius for specifics about how it is measuring public understanding of the law.
"You need data. Do you have any data? You've never given me data. You only give me concepts, frankly," he said. . . . 

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Obama administration finally admits that health insurance premiums are going up under Obamacare

This is not a big surprise (my book "At the Brink" predicted this), but I am sure that they will figure out a way to blame the insurance companies.  From the WSJ:

Some people purchasing new insurance policies for themselves this fall could see premiums rise because of requirements in the health-care law, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told reporters Tuesday. 

Ms. Sebelius’s remarks come weeks before insurers are expected to begin releasing rates for plans that start on Jan. 1, 2014, when key provisions of the health law kick in. Premiums have been a sensitive subject for the Obama administration, which is counting on elements in the health law designed to increase competition among insurers to keep rates in check. The administration has pointed to subsidies that will be available for many lower-income Americans to help them with the cost of coverage. . . .

As The Wall Street Journal reported last week, some insurers have already begun signaling they could dramatically increase prices for people buying policies in the individual market to compensate for restrictions on how they treat consumers, as well as new fees and requirements that they provide bigger benefits packages. 

The Society of Actuaries, a nonpartisan professional association, has issued a new report warning that the cost of medical claims in the new individual-insurance market could rise by an average of 32% per person over the first few years the law is in place, as more people with higher medical needs get coverage, and that the impact will be very different depending on the state. Medical bills are another key factor in determining premiums. . . . 

I am not sure that the following glitch is that important because the grant is less than the cost of insurance and the penalty from not having insurance.  From Reuters:

. . . Millions of Americans will be priced out of health insurance under President Barack Obama’s healthcare overhaul because of a glitch in the law that adversely affects people with modest incomes who cannot afford family coverage offered by their employers, a leading healthcare advocacy group said on Tuesday. 

Tax credits are a key component of the law and the White House has said the credits, averaging about $4,000 apiece, will help about 18 million individuals and families pay for health insurance once the Affordable Care Act takes full effect, beginning in January 2014. 

The tax credits are geared toward low and middle-income Americans who do not have access to affordable health insurance coverage through an employer. The law specifies that employer-sponsored insurance is affordable so long as a worker’s share of the premium does not exceed 9.5 percent of the worker’s household income. 

In its rule making, or final interpretation of the law, the IRS said affordability should be based strictly on individual coverage costs, however. That means that, even if family coverage through an employer-based plan far exceeds the 9.5 percent cutoff, workers would not be eligible for the tax credits to help buy insurance for children or non-working dependents. . . .

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"ObamaCare Tax Increases Are Double Original Estimate"

From the Economic Policy Journal: 

The Joint Committee on Taxation recently released a 96 page report on the tax provisions associated with Affordable Care Act. The report describes the 21 tax increases included in Obamacare, totaling $1.058 trillion – a steep increase from initial assessment, according to the Tax Prof Blog. The summer 2012 estimate is nearly twice the $569 billion estimate produced at the time of the passage of the law in March 2010.

Thanks to Tony Troglio for the link. 

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Over 20,000 pages of regulations written up so far to implement Obamacare

828 pages of regulations were released in just one day.  But with a total of over 20,000 pages released so far, that is just the tip of the iceberg.

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Obamacare increases cost of owning pets

It turns out medical equipment is medial equipment.  Obamacare apparently has a lot of unintended consequences.

Pet owners listen up: You may want to start saving more money for veterinarian care this year. The reason goes all the way back to Washington and an unintended consequence from medical reform. 

Dog owner Lori Heiselman was surprised where her veterinarian posted a warning on Facebook. 

The notice read: “Because medical equipment and supplies will be going up in cost, that extra expense will have to passed on to the customers.” . . . .

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Another Obamacare proposal that didn't deliver promised cost savings

If making medical records electronic really saved money, doctors would do this without the subsidies.  The fact that they are being forced to do this should make it clear that there are not the promised cost savings.  From Bloomberg:

Most doctors who install electronic medical records systems will lose money in the first five years, according to a study that suggests a multibillion-dollar effort to computerize care in the U.S. may not live up to its promise. 

A survey of Massachusetts physicians indicated an initial loss of $43,743 on the investment, researchers said today in the journal Health Affairs. Almost two-thirds of the 49 practices using electronic records would lose money even with subsidies included in President Barack Obama’s stimulus package, the researchers said. 

The 2009 law set aside $27 billion to help doctors and hospitals go digital, ballooning sales along the way for technology providers including Epic Systems Corp. and Allscripts Healthcare Solutions Inc. (MDRX) The Massachusetts results show companies and politicians may have oversold the potential gains, said Julia Adler-Milstein, the study’s lead author. . . . 

Even the doctors who would have made money dispute the premise pushed by supporters that electronic systems can help reduce U.S. health costs, she said. Practices projected to gain did so mainly because they were able to see more patients or get more claims approved by insurers, the study found. . . .

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Senate Democrats outraged by problems with Obamacare

The video from Fox News is available here.

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26 states completely opt out of state run exchanges, seven other states would only take on part of the task

From the Washington Times:

The backbone of President Obama’s health care law is taking shape, with 26 states choosing to let the federal government run the online insurance markets mandated by his signature reforms instead of keeping the job in-house or partnering with the feds. 

The Department of Health and Human Services had encouraged states to run their own markets, or “exchanges,” that help the uninsured find coverage. Only 17 states and the District of Columbia took on the task, while seven states decided to split the duty with the Obama administration, according to a breakdown by the Kaiser Family Foundation. . . .

This is putting it mildly.

“It’s not what the drafters of the bill had hoped would happen,” Timothy Jost, a health law expert at Washington and Lee University School of Law, said of the outcome on Friday. . . . 

There could be a lot of court cases determining whether there are now limits on what the Federal government can spend on health care in those states. 

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Obamacare unraveling

Two op-ed pieces here and here provide useful discussions on Obamacare.

You can see why: If the lowest-cost family plan (again, two adults and three kids) is to run a whopping $20,000, and if the employee’s contribution is limited to $3,800, the employer’s tab would be $16,200 — adding about $7.40 an hour to the cost of that employee. Wisely, the IRS announced on Jan. 30 that employers won’t have to pay for dependents. 

But the Congressional Budget Office’s much-cited prediction that ObamaCare would leave only 30 million people uninsured by 2016 was based on the assumption that kids would be covered by employers. At the very least, employers insuring their workers for the first time to avoid the penalty are unlikely to do that. 

So how will the kids be covered? They won’t. The IRS shocked the law’s advocates by announcing that the insurance exchanges won’t provide subsidies for a child whose parent is covered at work. 

Nor will these parents be penalized for not insuring their children — the IRS will kindly consider the kids exempt from the mandate. 

Also exempt are millions of people who’ll stay uninsured because their state is wisely choosing not to loosen Medicaid eligibility. . . . .

and this

So, Lambert says, the ACA’s penalties are too low to prod the healthy to purchase insurance, even given ACA’s subsidies for purchasers. The ACA’s authors probably understood this perverse incentive and assumed that once Congress passed the ACA with penalties low enough to be politically palatable, Congress could increase them. 

But Roberts’s decision limits Congress’s latitude by holding that the small size of the penalty is part of the reason it is, for constitutional purposes, a tax. It is not a “financial punishment” because it is not so steep that it effectively prohibits the choice of paying it. And, Roberts noted, “by statute, it can never be more.”As Lambert says, the penalty for refusing to purchase insurance counts as a tax only if it remains so small as to be largely ineffective. . . . 

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IRS needs more employees because tax code becoming "more complex and far reaching"

It is alway reassuring to see the IRS complaining that the tax codes are getting more difficult for them to deal with.  From Federal News Radio:

"In addition to facing budget cuts and the potential retirement of many experienced employees, the work performed by IRS employees continually requires greater expertise as tax laws become more complex and far reaching," [Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration] said.

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Obamacare increasing prices at a grocery store near you

Note that Restaurants could have provided this information on their own without the law if their customers valued the benefits from this labeling more than the costs.  It appears as if the restaurants wanted this in law because it hurt their competitors more than it hurt them.  From Fox News:

Supermarket owners argue a pending federal food-labeling rule that stems from the new health care law would overburden thousands of grocers and convenience store owners -- to the tune of $1 billion in the first year alone. . . .   

The rule stems from an ObamaCare mandate that restaurants provide nutrition information on menus. Most in the restaurant industry were supportive of the idea, but when the FDA decided to extend the provision to also affect thousands of supermarkets and convenience stores, the backlash was swift.   

The proposed regulation would require store owners to label prepared, unpackaged foods found in salad bars and food bars, soups and bakery items. Erik Lieberman, regulatory counsel at the Food Marketing Institute, said testing foods for nutritional data will require either expensive software or even more costly off-site laboratory assessments. . . .

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7 Million expected to lose health insurance because of Obamacare

I still don't think that the CBO numbers are even close, but at least they are moving in the right direction.

President Obama's health care law will push 7 million people out of their job-based insurance coverage — nearly twice the previous estimate, according to the latest estimates from the Congressional Budget Office released Tuesday. 

CBO said that this year's tax cuts have changed the incentives for businesses and made it less attractive to pay for insurance, meaning fewer will decide to do so. Instead, they'll choose to pay a penalty to the government, totaling $13 billion in higher fees over the next decade. . . .

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"IRS: Cheapest Obamacare Plan Will Be $20,000 Per Family"

In final regulations issued this week by the IRS, the least expensive family health insurance that will be offered under Obamacare will be $20,000. In 2012, the average price for insurance for a family of four was $15,745.

In a final regulation issued Wednesday, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) assumed that under Obamacare the cheapest health insurance plan available in 2016 for a family will cost $20,000 for the year. 

Under Obamacare, Americans will be required to buy health insurance or pay a penalty to the IRS. 

The IRS's assumption that the cheapest plan for a family will cost $20,000 per year is found in examples the IRS gives to help people understand how to calculate the penalty they will need to pay the government if they do not buy a mandated health plan. 

The examples point to families of four and families of five, both of which the IRS expects in its assumptions to pay a minimum of $20,000 per year for a bronze plan. 

“The annual national average bronze plan premium for a family of 5 (2 adults, 3 children) is $20,000,” the regulation says. 

Bronze will be the lowest tier health-insurance plan available under Obamacare--after Silver, Gold, and Platinum. Under the law, the penalty for not buying health insurance is supposed to be capped at either the annual average Bronze premium, 2.5 percent of taxable income, or $2,085.00 per family in 2016. . . .

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Wait a second here. Weren't benefits such as benefits such as preventive care supposed to lower health insurance costs?

So much for Obamacare controlling health care costs.

While the most sweeping provisions of the health care overhaul have not yet gone into effect, plenty of Americans will still be paying higher insurance premiums this year -- as insurance companies try to preemptively cover the cost of a tax increase included in President Obama's Affordable Care Act. 

That tax doesn't take effect until next year, when other major provisions like the so-called "individual mandate" and insurance subsidies also kick in. But that hasn't stopped insurance companies from charging higher premiums this year to cover the hike, as well as the cost of ObamaCare benefits such as free birth control and preventive care. 

Premiums for individuals and small businesses are projected to increase due to the tax by roughly 2 percent this year and by as much as 3.7 percent in 2023, according to a widely cited analysis by the insurance industry. 

Officials will argue about who is to blame for the hike -- insurance companies for sticking customers with the cost, or the government for imposing the industry tax hike in the first place. But the projected increases are the latest sign that Americans, in exchange for expanding and strengthening insurance coverage, will in many cases be paying more.  . . .

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A doctor speaks out on Obama efforts to get doctors involved in his gun control policies

Dr. Manny Alvarez has this discussion at Fox News:

One of the 23 executive actions Obama approved Wednesday was to "clarify" that the federal health care overhaul "does not prohibit doctors asking their patients about guns in their homes." 

An overview of the plan said "we should never ask doctors and other health care providers to turn a blind eye to the risks posed by guns in the wrong hands." 

Coupled with the language on asking patients about guns was a decision to "clarify" that no federal law prevents doctors from warning law enforcement about "direct and credible threats of violence." 

Physicians are already overwhelmed with bureaucratic rules and regulations that they are responsible for, which continues to limit their ability to practice medicine. . . . 

So, you see, Mr. President, we are just too busy to become a regulatory line in your gun control debate. . . .

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Who cares what the Obamacare law actually say, the IRS rules will make sure that the actual law doesn't matter

From CNSNews:

The Internal Revenue Service warned employers in a new regulatory proposal not to come up with clever schemes to avoid Obamacare’s employer health insurance mandate. 

The IRS said it would soon issue “anti-abuse rules” to discourage employers from taking advantage of any regulatory loopholes. 

“The Treasury Department and the IRS are aware of various structures being considered under which employers might use temporary staffing agencies (or other staffing agencies)… to evade application of section 4980H [the employer insurance mandate],” the IRS said in a proposed regulatory announcement issued December 28. 

The IRS said it would issue a so-called “anti-abuse rule” in an attempt to prevent employers from using temp agencies to circumvent the mandate, essentially writing into law that even though an employer hires temporary workers and therefore is not technically under the mandate’s jurisdiction, the IRS would fine them anyway for not providing health insurance. . . .

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More evidence that taxes matter: Obamacare forcing a lot of workers to work part time

Just remember that this is occurring around the country and it is lower wage people who are being hit the hardest.

Hundreds of Wendy’s workers are seeing their hours cut back because of President Barack Obama’s health care law. 

WOWT-TV reports that nearly 300 employees at 11 Wendy’s locations in the Omaha area will have their hours reduced to 28 hours a week because the franchise owner says he can’t afford to pay his employees health care. 

“It has a huge effect on me and pretty much everybody that I work with,” employee T.J. Growbeck told the station. “I’m hoping that I can get some sort of promotion because then I would get my hours, but everybody is shooting for that because of the hours being cut.” . . . .

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