UPDATE 1: Dec 31, 2013 at 4:58 pm — An emergency injunction granted just moments ago in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit means that Priests for Life will not have to obey the contraception mandate contained in the Affordable Care Act as its appeal is being heard. It also means that, tomorrow, Priests for Life will not have to cancel health insurance for its employees.
UPDATE 2: Tuesday night, Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor acted on an emergency request from an order of Catholic nuns in Colorado to block the HHS Mandate starting January 1. Justice Sotomayor is giving the government until Friday morning to respond to her decision. … SOTOMAYOR blocked the HHS Mandate?! Did the sun set in the East or something?
December 16, 2013: U.S. District Court Judge Brian Cogan in theEastern District of New York ruled FOR religious libertyin Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York v. Sebelius.
December 19, 2013: U.S. District Court Judge Emmet G. Sullivan in the Eastern District of New York ruled AGAINST religious liberty in Priests for Life v. Sebelius.
Dec 23, 2013: Fr. Frank Interviewed on Fox News about the HHS Mandate [0:49]
Priests for Life is appealing and has declared that, regardless of the outcome,they will NOT comply with the HHS Mandate.
[I couldn’t find a ruling or a news report on the Priests for Life case, maybe because it was a dismissal. As I understand it, the judge just said, “Go away, fools.” Or something.]
Comments Off on Update: Court challenges to HHS Mandate UPDATED
December 19, 2013: U.S. District Court Judge Emmet G. Sullivan ruled against Priests for Life in their lawsuit against the HHS abortion mandate. In other words, in his opinion, our First Amendment right to freedom of religion is subject to the government’s approval. Since a different District Court Judge ruled the OTHER way on this matter, it’s virtually a done deal that the issue will go to the United States Supreme Court. You can donate to the Priests for Life legal fund @ https://www.priestsforlife.org/donate/donate-creditcard.aspx
December 19, 2013: The White House announced it will grant a “hardship exemption” for people who have had their prior coverage canceled and believe that Obamacare’s offerings are unaffordable.Note: This isn’t insurance. It’s just an exemption from the FINE for not having insurance. But, oh goodie, Obama is encouraging health insurers to make up bare bones options for these people … which the guy in this video says aren’t affordable either.
So … those people we have heard about?The ones with cancer, MS and other devastating illness who WERE getting the care they wanted but have had their health insurance plans eliminated by Obamacrat Decree? THOSE people are STILL SCREWED … and the individual health insurance market is in chaos.
The Obamacrats have made it clear they are not going to do the right thing by us and repeal their disaster of a healthcare law. Obama went so far as to say there was NO WAY the law would be repealed as long as he is in office.
That’s not technically true.
PPACA (aka, ACA) could be repealed by Congress with a simple majority vote in the House and Senate, though the latter won’t happen with a Democrat majority under Harry Reid running the Senate.
If Republicans win the Senate majority next fall, they could pass a law overturning Obamacare.
Obama would certainly veto this law, but a presidential veto can be legally overturned by a two-thirds majority vote in Congress.
Keep in mind that “Obamacare” includes not just the ACA, but also the bazillion heinous regulations subsequently inflicted on us by an unelected band of pro-abortion Obamacrats.
There are signs of hope!
Eleven Republican physicians are running for U.S. Senate on a “Repeal Obamacare” platform.
South Carolina and Georgia are moving to outlaw Obamacare within their own borders. Former New Jersey Superior Court Judge Andrew Napolitano says the states do have the power to do that.
A legal challenge has targeted the unconstitutional origins of the PPACA itself. SCOTUS ruled that the ACA’s penalty for non-compliance is not a fine, but a tax. The Constitution says tax laws must originate in the House. The PPACA originated in the Senate.
Another avenue open to individuals is to refuse to participate in the exchanges. If a majority of us do so, maybe the damn thing will collapse under the weight of its own pretensions.
Remember when SCOTUS ruled 5-4 that the IRS fine in ObamaCare was a tax, so therefore, it was constitutional? Roberts may not have been selling out, but instead going for a longer, surer end to the monstrous law.
As I understand it, the fine/tax challenge SCOTUS ruled on was somewhat limited; ruling against it wouldn’t have killed the whole law. But ruling it a tax could potentially kill the whole thing dead, Dead, DEAD … because the Constitution says revenue-raising bills (i.e., tax laws) must originate in the House of Representatives and the ACA “Obamacare” bill originated in the Senate.
Sissel v. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services challenges ObamaCare on this basis. The lowest court found for Obama and it’s now before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.
More than 40 members of the House have signed onto the lawsuit saying, “Given that an Origination Clause challenge against a taxing bill of this magnitude has never before been mounted, it is imperative that this Court not sanction the lower court’s superficial analysis of the Origination Clause.”
“Since the 2010 elections, the people’s immediate representatives have voted some 40 times to repeal or defund the ACA, but the senators, who sit for six years unchallenged, have never agreed. The Framers’ exact fear of taxation without adequate representation has materialized due to the complete disregard of the mandates of the Origination Clause by the U.S. Senate.”
Planned Parenthood is pissed about the Fifth Circuit ordering immediate enforcement of Texas’ abortion safety law requiring abortionists to have admitting privileges at a local hospitalso women injured by botched abortions can get swift attention.
Calling this a “dangerous and extreme law”, Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, explained why they’re asking the US Supreme Courtto hear their appeal:
“Your rights … should not depend on your zip code.”
Well, even a broken clock is right twice a day. It just so happens I totally agree with Cecile, though obviously not in the way she means it.
I think your right to life should not depend on your “zip code” either.
“It’s been one full week since the flagship technology portion of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) went live. And since that time, the befuddled beast that is Healthcare.gov has shutdown, crapped out, stalled, and mis-loaded so consistently that its track record for failure is challenged only by Congress.
“The site itself, which apparently underwent major code renovations over the weekend, still rejects user logins, fails to load drop-down menus and other crucial components for users that successfully gain entrance, and otherwise prevents uninsured Americans in the 36 states it serves from purchasing healthcare at competitive rates – Healthcare.gov’s primary purpose. The site is so busted that, as of a couple days ago, the number of people that successfully purchased healthcare through it was in the “single digits,” according to the Washington Post.
“The reason for this nationwide headache apparently stems from poorly written code, which buckled under the heavy influx of traffic that its engineers and administrators should have seen coming. But the fact that Healthcare.gov can’t do the one job it was built to do isn’t the most infuriating part of this debacle – it’s that we, the taxpayers, seem to have forked up more than $500 million of the federal purse to build the digital equivalent of a rock.” —Andrew Couts, We Paid Over $500 Million for the Obamacare Site And All We Got Was This Lousy 404
“The House Republicans’ fourth (and latest) offer asks for only two changes in Obamacare: First, eliminate the subsidy for members of Congress, which has outraged the public. And second, delay for a year making insurance mandatory for individuals. Let anyone enroll in Obamacare who wants to. But don’t penalize individuals for being uninsured in 2014 when the president has already postponed the penalty on big companies for not insuring workers.
“‘The Affordable Care Act is a law that passed the House, it passed the Senate, the Supreme Court ruled it constitutional … and it is settled,’” said Obama.
“Not so. The health program the president is imposing on us is not the Affordable Care Act. The president has dismembered and mangled it. Gone is the employer mandate, the cap on out of pocket expenses, income verification and over half the deadlines specified in the law. The President delayed or did away with these features, without asking Congress. Illegally. Then he added 1,472 waivers and connived a subsidy for members of Congress that no one else in American earning $174,000 a year could get. The Supreme Court has ruled twice that presidents cannot delay, amend, and repeal parts of laws.” —Betsy McCaughey, Obama’s Dangerous Claim to Executive Power
“By funding uncontroversial and broadly popular programs while not automatically funding everything else, the Republicans are trying to trick the government into setting priorities, building bipartisan coalitions, and engaging the public in how to spend their tax money. Obama seemed to think this was self-evidently foolish, which tells you much about what the president thinks of the taxpayers.
“Then the president added, almost as an afterthought: ‘And you know, we don’t get to select which programs we implement or not.’ Since Obama chooses which parts of which laws he wants to implement and enforce at will, as if Congress were a supercommittee brainstorming ideas rather than a coequal branch passing laws, I’m guessing he would explain that he is again being take too literally when he’s obviously just posturing.” —Seth Mandel, Obama Stumbles Despite Friendly Press
“[Obamacare] was presented as an act of charity, a plan to cover the uninsured. That was the issue as they presented it. But the actual goal of Obamacare’s socialist sponsors was a single payer system – government healthcare — which would put the state in control of the lives of every American, man, woman and child. That is the reason that none of the promises made about Obamacare was true, beginning with his campaign lie that Obamacare government health care was not a program he would support. Obamacare will not cover 30 million uninsured Americans, as Obama and the Democrats said it would; Obamacare will not lower costs, as they promised it would; Obamacare will deprive many Americans of their doctors and healthcare plans, as they assured everyone it would not; Obamacare is a new tax, as they swore it wouldn’t be. All these promises Obama and the Democrats made were false because they were only a camouflage for their real goal actual goal, which was universal control. …
“If you want to fight the left you have to fight fire with fire. That means first and foremost you have to hold them to account for hurting the people they are pretending to help. Whose opportunities are going to be wrecked by Obamacare? Health care taxes will go up for those who pay taxes – the middle class – while their incomes will go down. Already Obamacare is cutting the workweek to 30 hours. Whose pocket books do you think that is hitting?” —David Horowitz, The Threat We Face
“President Obama has made many promises about his signature health care plan, but one of the simplest was an assurance that it would lower national health care spending and save every family thousands of dollars.
“But now government actuaries have reached a different conclusion, finding that ObamaCare will actually increase health care spending by $621 billion over the next 10 years. …
“Jim Capretta of the Ethics and Public Policy Center says the actuaries ‘made it very clear in their projections that the health care law did not bend the cost curve down. It bent it up,’ he says, adding, ‘there will be increase in national health spending associated with the implementation of the health care law.'” —Jim Angle, Government Actuaries Say Obamacare Will Increase Health Care Spending
“I’ve worked on massive database projects in the private sector, and I suspect that Chung is correct. We do know that some testing took place, which is why everyone involved in the project was sending up warning flares for months about its status. HHS and the White House might have rolled it out with full knowledge of its incompetence hoping that they could provide enough assistance to jolly people along, but I don’t think that was the case. The failure caught them flat-footed last Tuesday, and the failure of the weekend retooling effort seemed to do the same. It looks as though no one bothered to actually sit down and try to go from A to Z in the system themselves.
“By the way, in one such project in my experience, the company got rid of the program managers when the team didn’t deliver … after eight months. There isn’t a private-sector firm in the world that would have tolerated a web-portal project taking 42 months and delivering this kind of train wreck.” —Ed Morrissey, Did Anyone Bother to Test the Obamacare Software First?
“Canadian provincial health officials last year fired the parent company of CGI Federal, the prime contractor for the problem-plagued Obamacare health exchange websites, the Washington Examiner has learned.
“CGI Federal’s parent company, Montreal-based CGI Group, was officially terminated in September 2012 by an Ontario government health agency after the firm missed three years of deadlines and failed to deliver the province’s flagship online medical registry. …
“Officials at the U.S. government’s Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services awarded six technology contracts worth $87 million to CGI Federal for Obamacare website work, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office.
“The CMS officials refused to say if federal officials knew of its parent company’s IT failure in Canada when awarding the six contracts.
“CGI Federal built Obamacare’s Healthcare.gov, which went live Oct. 1 but has since experienced multiple technical problems, including crashes, refusal to load and sign-on, or to provide accurate information.” —Richard Pollock, Canadian Officials Fired IT Firm Behind Troubled Obamacare Website
Audio recording of a real Obamacare help line call [14,26]
QUOTE from Obamacare help line (begins at about 5:00 in to this phone call recording): “The Affordable Care Act requires that most people maintain health insurance. … In 2014 [the fee for failing to buy and maintain health insurance] is 1% of your yearly income or $95 per person for the year, whichever is higher. Uninsured children would be $47.50 per child … The most any family would have to pay is $285, but the amount will go up after 2014. … In 2015, the fee per person rises to $325 per person or $975 per family or 2% of income, whichever is higher. … For 2016, the fee per person increases to $695 or $2,085 per family or 2.5% of your household income, whichever is higher. … From 2017 on, the fee will rise each year with inflation.”
NOTE: He keeps calling this thing a “fee”, but the Supreme Court ruled that it’s really a TAX … a TAX levied on any American who refuses to purchase and maintain a health insurance policy that meets the federal standards. (Please note: These standards include paying for abortion.) That’s all it is. A punishment for NOT buying something you DON’T want. Paying the fee won’t get you health coverage.
So … “let me answer your jail question real quick ……………….. pause ………………… there are no liens or penalties for not paying the fee.”
What a relief. They’ll just put a lien on future overpayment of taxes. This presumes the guy is not lying or they don’t change the rules.SCOTUS said the Obamacare fee is a LEGAL TAX. The IRS can levy fees, fines and liens for non-payment of tax. Therefore, all they have to do is say, “Oops, we didn’t realize this was a tax when we wrote this ‘no liens or penalties’ blah blah, so now there will be.” In this case then the IRS would be empowered to suck out and freeze your bank accounts, confiscate your property and/or send you to jail.
All it would take is a slight change to the regs.
Just like the “slight change” they made when they went from“Oh no WAY will Obamacare force people to pay for abortion” (Executive Order by Prez Obama) to “Everybody will pay for abortion” (HHS Mandate by HHS Sec Sebelius)
Comments Off on It’s not free and you will be fined
A year ago, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius issued a “preventive services” regulation under Obamacare. This regulation requires almost all health care plans to cover, without fees or co-pay, sterilizations, artificial contraceptives and abortion-inducing drugs.
The U.S. Catholic bishops have unanimously condemned this regulation. Calling it “illegal and unjust”, the bishops have encouraged all American Catholics to disobey it.
In October of 2012, the Catholic Kennedy family that owns Autocam sued the government over this issue.
Last month, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit ruled against them, saying the sole owners’ First Amendment rights don’t count, because “the mandate falls on Autocam.”
It does not matter to the court that the Kennedys are the sole owners of Autocom or that they are great bosses to their 661 employees, precisely because they live their Catholic-Christian faith in every aspect of their business.
The Kennedys intend to appeal their case to the Supreme Court.
Those who choose not to participate are going to be hit with punitive fines … I mean, TAXES … which is what SCOTUS ruled the IRS will be collecting from all those deadbeat taxpayers who try not to contribute Their Fair Share toward providing free birth control, abortions and gender changes to non-taxpaying deadbeats, illegals, sluts, and welfare queens (and kings).
Besides all that, the Obamacare online system functions so poorly that less than 1% of all visitors have successfully signed up for health insurance. In California and Connecticut, the rate is under a half a percent.
Freedom Post collected it’s top 21 faves of the comments that have been posted on the official Healthcare.gov Facebook page so far…
21. “I am so disappointed. These prices are outrageous and there are huge deductibles. No one can afford this!”
20. “Good grief. Day three of trying and still can’t get on this website. The government KNEW about this thing going live for two years. TWO YEARS! And this is the best they could do? I shudder to think what’s going to happen once they are in control of my healthcare. They can’t even get their website functioning properly. If my business had rolled out a piece of crap that worked like this I’d be out of business.”
19. “How is it that Facebook, which is a non-essential social networking web site, can reliably handle BILLIONS of electronic interactions per second, but the Healthcare.gov site, which is literally the very heart of the Obamacare program wasn’t ready for the obvious millions of visitors that you had to know it would be receiving?”
18. “i’m just going to stop even bothering for a couple weeks or so … once the fervor dies down, hopefully I’ll be able to actually create an account!”
17. “The Federal Gov’t has ruined everything it has gotten involved in, does anybody really expect this healthcare disaster to be any different? Sorry, I’ll take the asinine fine.”
16. “And yet another day and several tries I once again keep getting nothing but a completely blank page after I log in. The top tab says ‘Successful URL’. Oh how ironic.”
15. “Didn’t these Feds ever have mothers that told them not to lie? Maybe they were raised in the wild. This system is trash. I can’t verify my identity or upload documents. Also what’s with Experian verifying ID’s? Don’t care for that at all.”
14. “I am a single mother of two, in school and working full time, living 75% below the poverty level and I DO NOT qualify for a healthcare subsidy”
13. “the website can’t verify my identity…the people at the experian verification number can’t verify my identity either….i tried to upload a scan of my driver’s license, and that won’t work either……very annoying process…….I’ve wasted 3 days on this junk.”
12. “if you’re stupid enough to put all your banking information in to the federal governments computers you are definitely part of the problem”
11. “Where the HELL am I supposed to get $3,000 more a year to pay for this “bronze” health insurance plan!?!??? And I DO NOT EVEN WANT INSURANCE to begin with!! This is frightening.”
10. “I have one question. What happens if I can’t afford the Affordable Health Care that you are cramming down my throat? I just ran your calculator, and if it is even close to accurate, I will have a choice…..I can pay my rent and buy groceries, or I can pay the health care premiums, move out into the streets and live under a bridge somewhere, and go hungry! Can I please get one of those exemption things that the President and Congress got?”
9. “I’ve been stuck at the security questions since 9am on October 1st”
8. “Death Panels. Yes. The red plan. It’s affordable. And painless!”
7. “Here in Austin, TX have gotten to login screen three times today, wait is getting shorter, but am still getting a blank screen after getting a quick ‘authenticating, please wait’ message at top left of screen, then nothing but a blank white page and no indication that the browser is waiting for the server to do anything. Attempts to refresh the screen sends me back to the please wait screen.”
6. “I finally got past the security question problem, got my account, my verification email, and when I went to log in, it said the information was invalid.”
5. “I want to know how I am expected to pay $300+ for this and still pay my bills when the only income is $710 a month from my husband’s SSI? Am i supposed to lose my home and water and electricity or go to jail because I can’t afford this?”
4. “Government forces people to pay a new tax. People click on website to see how much this new tax will cost them. Website crashes in the first hour. Government calls it a huge success.”
3. “I work a minimum wage job…how the heck can I afford health insurance and if the company doesn’t give full time? I am so angry right now…. I share housing with others because I can’t afford my own place… how do you expect people to afford Obamacare if they barely get by from paycheck to paycheck????? I can’t afford a fine either! I think you are obligated to give the American people an answer and an explanation!”
2. “Y’all can kiss my butt. You got that? You want my bank account? I’ll close it. You put a lien on my house? Take it…and the mortgage too. Some things are worth fighting for, and freedom is one of them! I am sick and tired of the redistribution strategies of this socialist country and having my wages STOLEN to pay for them!”
1. The best comment was posted by a man named Will Sheehan with type 1 diabetes who was initially very excited to sign up for Obamacare. But what he discovered while trying to sign up was absolutely horrifying …
I actually made it through this morning at 8:00 A.M. I have a preexisting condition (Type 1 Diabetes) and my income base was 45K-55K annually. I chose tier 2 “Silver Plan” and my monthly premiums came out to $597.00 with $13,988 yearly deductible!!! There is NO POSSIBLE way that I can afford this so I “opt-out” and chose to continue along with no insurance.
I received an email tonight at 5:00 P.M. informing me that my fine would be $4,037 and could be attached to my yearly income tax return. Then you make it to the “REPERCUSSIONS PORTION” for “non-payment” of yearly fine. First, your driver’s license will be suspended until paid, and if you go 24 consecutive months with “Non-Payment” and you happen to be a home owner, you will have a federal tax lien placed on your home. You can agree to give your bank information so that they can easy “Automatically withdraw” your “penalties” weekly, bi-weekly or monthly! This by no means is “Free” or even “Affordable.”
Candidate Obama said often that we could solve all our problems if we just talked to each other. President Obama is being hailed now for his willingness to negotiate with rather than bomb Syria. What a hypocrite! He has consistently refused to even sit down and talk to anyone who disagrees with him, especially if they’re Republicans.
I remember when the HHS mandate came out and the Catholic Bishops raised an uproar. The White House invited them to come and have a sit down about the issue, but afterwards, the Bishops said all that happened was that Obama aides pompously informed them that Obama knew more about Catholic teaching than the Bishops did and anyway shut up and do what you’re told.
Students Banned from Passing Out Constitutions on Constitution Day at Modesto Junior College [6:19]
Modesto Junior College in California told a student that he could not pass out copies of the United States Constitution outside the student center on September 17, 2013—Constitution Day.
Captured on video, college police and administrators demanded that Robert Van Tuinen stop passing out Constitution pamphlets and told him that he would only be allowed to pass them out in the college’s tiny free speech zone, and only after scheduling it several days or weeks ahead of time.
The links to the full, unedited videos taken by students are posted below this edited version, which contains the most relevant portions of the experience.
polination.blog 