Democratic Lawmakers Running for Cover

At WSJ, "As Her Poll Numbers Drop, Sen. Kay Hagan of North Carolina Steps Up Pressure on President Obama to Fix Health Law":

WASHINGTON—After President Barack Obama outlined his health-law retreat Thursday, Sen. Kay Hagan, a Democrat from North Carolina, joined some colleagues in expressing misgivings. "A one-year fix is not enough and we need to do more," she said.

To understand why Democrats are increasingly nervous about the health law, and why Mr. Obama rushed through a patch to calm their anxieties, look no further than Mrs. Hagan, who defeated Sen. Elizabeth Dole in 2008 when the president carried North Carolina.

Up for re-election in 2014, and with her poll numbers tumbling, Mrs. Hagan has emerged as a leader of the Democratic caucus openly criticizing the botched rollout of the Affordable Care Act. In the past month, she has called for extending an enrollment deadline, requested a formal investigation and vented her frustrations personally to the president. She took the rare step of publicizing that exchange after a White House meeting with other Senate Democrats.

Many of the vocally critical Democrats are up for re-election next year, including Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu. She's leading an effort to ensure that people can keep insurance that was canceled as a result of the law, the problem Mr. Obama sought to fix Thursday when he announced a one-year reprieve for that category of plan. Mrs. Hagan backs the Landrieu plan.

The imperative for Mrs. Hagan, however, is particularly acute, and is a warning sign for other incumbents facing voters in the midterms. A new poll this week showed a dramatic narrowing of the North Carolina Senate race that hadn't been particularly close. Americans for Prosperity, an outside group aligned with Republicans, is spending $1.7 million on a television ad criticizing Mrs. Hagan for supporting the health law.

President Obama said that Americans who received insurance cancellation letters will be able to keep those plans, though he urged people to look at other options availble on state and federal marketplaces.

Enrollment Under the Affordable Care Act
See the number of people who have selected a private health insurance plan sold on the new federally run or state-run exchanges in their first month of operations, as well as the number of people deemed eligible for Medicaid, the federal-state health program for the poor that is being expanded in some states.

"If we can get [the health law] rectified between now and the spring, Kay Hagan may be all right," said state Rep. Marvin Lucas, a Democrat from Spring Lake who supports the senator. "If not, she'll be in trouble."

Despite her consistent support for the health law, Mrs. Hagan also has been pushing for years to make changes. She backed a repeal of the 2.3% tax on the sale of medical-devices and co-sponsored a bill to eliminate the 15-person panel to find savings in Medicare.

"My focus has always been working to fix this law, rather than turning the issue into a political football," Mrs. Hagan said in a statement Thursday, responding to a Wall Street Journal request for comment.

Mr. Obama acknowledged the headaches the law was creating for his party. "There is no doubt that our failure to roll out the [Affordable Care Act] smoothly has put a burden on Democrats, whether they're running or not, because they stood up and supported this effort through thick and thin," he said Thursday.

Republicans seeking to topple Mrs. Hagan in next year's midterm elections said she is simply trying to distance herself from a law she helped pass and has supported since.

"Democrats like Kay Hagan weren't being honest when they promised everyone could keep their health plans," said Brook Hougesen, a spokeswoman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the chamber's campaign arm. "Now, in an act of pure political desperation, Hagan is attempting to hide the fact that she was the deciding vote on Obamacare."

A poll released this week by Public Policy Polling, a Democratic firm based in North Carolina, showed that the Republicans vying for the chance to face Mrs. Hagan next year are locked in a statistical dead heat with her. For much of the year, they were trailing by double digits.

The poll also found that 49% of North Carolina voters disapprove of Mrs. Hagan's performance, up 10 percentage points from September. Noting the torrent of attack ads, Tom Jensen, of Public Policy Polling, said, "Watching TV in North Carolina right now, you'd think it was September 2014 instead of November 2013."

Janie Benson, the head of the Democratic Party in Haywood County, acknowledged that the health-law implementation woes have given Republicans ammunition despite some unpopular bills passed by the Republican-controlled state legislature.

Like most other incumbents, Ms. Hagan enters 2014 with a sizable war chest. She had $5.4 million in her campaign account at the end of the September, according to the Federal Election Commission. Her next closest rival, GOP statehouse Speaker Thom Tillis, had $838,000.

Diana Vickers

At FHM, "Why we went old school on Diana Vickers' FHM cover."

'Because admitting that their god, the Lying King Obama, has lied is just too much to ask of their fine, libtard, nuanced minds...'

From Emperor Misha, "New York Slimes, the Grey Meth Whore, Digging Desperately for New Euphemisms":

The more we observe the desperate contortions our so-called “press” twist themselves into in order to protect their village idiot president, the more we realize how wrong we were to shake our heads at the blatant lies of Pravda and Izvestiya that we monitored in our youth. Those guys were the very epitome of honesty compared to the “free press” of the United States of America.

And still it says less about the propaganda-spewing weasels of papers such as the New York Times than it says about the drooling idiots who subscribe to them. Who’s the bigger idiot? The publisher or the fucktards who pay for his propaganda?

Meanwhile, the Liberal Fascist Party members in DC are scrambling for the life boats, realizing all of a sudden that perhaps playing the part of the band on the Titanic while Obama sails off into the sunset for a life of ease isn’t all it’s been cracked up to be.

RTWT.

The 100 Things Every 20-Something Needs to Realize

From Elite Daily, "If you don’t work to improve yourself every day then you are wasting your life" (via Instapundit).

Adrift, Confused, and Over His Head: President's Statement on 'Fix' for #ObamaCare (VIDEO)

From Jennifer Rubin, at the Washington Post, "The Obama-disaster news conference" (via Memeorandum):

President Obama’s just-completed press conference was arguably worse than the Obamacare rollout. Alternately confessing, apologizing and blame shifting, he inadvertently made the case against his own executive skills, Obamacare and big government in general.

His announced fix is aimed at remedying the mass cancellation of individually-purchased insurance plans by letting insurance companies re-offer non-compliant policies. This makes clear that contrary to the statements from Jay Carney and Valerie Jarrett, Obamacare and not the insurers were the cause of the cancellations. Obama let slip that this is one big blame-shifting exercise when he announced that no one would be able to say Obamacare caused them to lose insurance. It is of course false because it is unlikely all the canceled policies can be restored.

The fix undermines the essential premise of Obamacare, namely that young, healthy people need to be herded into the  exchanges. Not only will this explicitly encourage many people to stay out but also will communicate that the entire program is in flux. Don’t sign up now — the deal may improve as the president gets more desperate!....

This is a president adrift, confused and entirely over his head. He has, in essence, confirmed what his harshest critics have long been arguing: he is incompetent and unknowledgable about how the world operates.  And we have three more years left of this.

More at the link.

Repeal: It's the Only Cure

At Dianny's Rants:

Those of us who reside on planet earth and not in Hopey/Changey Land knew this would be the outcome of passing Obamacare. We shouted it from the rooftops all through 2009 and into 2010 before the law passed. We continued to warn about the damage it would do, most recently, during Ted Cruz’s 21-hour filibuster at the end of September.

And here it is.

Everything we told you would happen is happening.

You didn’t listen to us then, please listen to us now.

There is no “fix” to “problems” that are arising with Obamacare. The problems are built in to the very structure of the law. What is happening is exactly what they wanted to have happen. Destroy the private insurance industry. Collapse the healthcare system. Then, proclaim that the only solution is complete government control in the form of single-payer, socialized medicine.

In a phrase: Medicaid for America.

The Republicans in the House and Senate: You too need to be reminded of that fact. Because if you lose sight of the reason Obamacare became law, you too will fall for the idea of “fixing” it.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was never meant to “work” in the sense that it will protect patients or make healthcare affordable.

I’m going to repeat myself here. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is doing exactly what they wanted it to do. It is destroying the private health insurance market. It is stripping the individual of any sovereignty over his or her own life, health and well-being. It is creating a vacuum in which these scurvy Liberals can then declare the need for a single-payer, government-run healthcare system.

There is nothing to “fix” because Obamacare is working exactly the way it was designed to work.

These Liberal Democrats who are proposing to “fix” it, have no interest in changing any aspect of the law. Their only hope is to change your opinion of them.

The only solution, the only cure to this law and the mess it has made is to repeal it.

Continue reading.

Health Insurance Industry Slams White House #ObamaCare Fix!

That sound you're hearing is the swirl of the #ObamaCare death spiral.

Here's the lead headline at Memeorandum, "Insurance Industry Rips White House Obamacare Fix."

And at Hot Air, "Scapegoated insurers fire back at Obama over “administrative fix”: You’re not pinning this ObamaCare mess on us."

Also at AoSHQ, "Insurance Industry: Obama's 'Fix' Is Entirely Unworkable."

And the statement of Karen Ignagni, CEO of America’s Health Insurance Plans, is at the Wall Street Journal, "Insurance Group Skeptical of Obama Plan."

Wolf Blitzer has an Inagni interview at the clip.

'Lord of the Flies' at Spurgeon Intermediate School in Santa Ana

Another harsh look at public education in America, this time close to home.

At the Los Angeles Times, "A hostile work environment, but 'these are not bad kids'":

On the first day of school at Spurgeon Intermediate, after the first bell had rung and administrators swept the halls for stragglers, new Principal Todd Irving faced dozens of parents in a room near his office. A translator stood at his side.

Eliazar Arines, whose son is in the eighth grade, told Irving that last year her boy was ridiculed so mercilessly that he was hospitalized for depression.

"I came to complain five times, and no one paid attention to me," she said, her voice cracking.

Edelmira Rodriguez told Irving her son's ID was snatched and marked up with slurs. She too complained, and nothing was done.

One woman, who recently moved to Santa Ana from Tustin, said what many in the room were thinking:

"When someone says Spurgeon, it's like the worst thing in the world."

Spurgeon Intermediate in Santa Ana sits squarely in the center of one of the poorest ZIP Codes in Orange County. For years, it has consistently ranked one of the lowest-performing schools in the region. But early this year, things got even worse.

In March, 36 teachers and employees took the unusual step of filing a hostile work environment complaint against the administration and students. Children were accosting adults, smoking marijuana, making sexual noises in class, the complaint said. By the end of the school year, more than 40% of the students had been suspended for a total of more than 800 days.

Things were so bad, one teacher said, it was like "Lord of the Flies."

Continue reading.

Lara Logan Hammered on Botched Benghazi Report

Her "60 Minutes" Benghazi segment ran during the World Series and I never did get a chance to blog it.

Turns out that's probably for the better.

At the Washington Post, "CBS News and reporter Lara Logan face brutal criticism on flawed Benghazi report":

Lara Logan, CBS News’ hard-charging chief foreign correspondent, has repeatedly risked her life in pursuit of the story. She’s been shot at, arrested, blindfolded by militiamen, and physically assaulted by a mob while reporting from some of the most troubled places on earth.

But her mistaken “60 Minutes” report about a supposed eyewitness to the Benghazi consulate attacks has put Logan under a different kind of pressure. Despite two on-air apologies, including one Sunday night on “60 Minutes,” Logan, 42, has come in for widespread criticism and demands for a more complete explanation of how her Oct. 27 report went so wrong.

Until last week’s unpleasantness, the Washington-based journalist has lived an almost made-for-TV idea of a foreign correspondent. Glamorous and intense, she has reported — and reported well — from combat zones in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan and across the Middle East for years. Among other reporting triumphs, she was the only journalist from an American TV network to broadcast live from Firdos Square in Baghdad in 2003 when American soldiers pulled down the statue of Saddam Hussein.

She has been amply recognized for her work, having won an Emmy Award, an Overseas Press Club Award and the duPont Award, among others.

At the same time, Logan’s globetrotting lifestyle and striking looks have occasionally made her tabloid fodder. Her relationship with a security contractor in Iraq, Joseph Burkett, became the subject of gossip columns in 2008; Logan and Burkett were married to others at the time, although both were separated from their spouses when their relationship began. They married in 2008 and live in Cleveland Park.

Logan’s feminity often attracts as much attention as her reporting; virtually every profile of her mentions that she was once a swimsuit model. On Halloween, people who live in Logan’s neighborhood were startled to see the famous TV correspondent trick-or-treating with her children while dressed in a hot-pink bodysuit costume, set off with high heels.

Logan has also been outspoken about some of the stories she has covered. After Rolling Stone published a story by Michael Hastings in 2010, in which aides to Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal criticized Washington’s civilian leadership of the war in Afghanistan, Logan rushed to defend McChrystal. “Michael Hastings has never served his country the way McChrystal has,” she told CNN.

Last year, she offered some unusually blunt public comments about the American response to the Benghazi attack. Speaking to a civic group in Chicago a month after the compound was assaulted on Sept. 11, 2012, Logan scoffed at the Obama administration’s initial statements about the incident as a spontaneous protest that spun into violence.

“When I look at what’s happening in Libya, there’s a big song and dance about whether this was a terrorist attack or a protest,” she said. “And you just want to scream, ‘For God’s sake, are you kidding me?’ The last time we were attacked like this was the USS Cole, which was a prelude to the 1998 embassy bombings, which was a prelude to 9/11. And you’re sending in the FBI to investigate? I hope to God that you are sending in your best clandestine warriors who are going to exact revenge and let the world know that the United States will not be attacked on its own soil, its ambassadors will not be murdered and the United States will not stand by and do nothing about it.”

Continue reading.

And at CBS News, "60 Minutes apologizes for Benghazi report."

'Palestinian' Teenager Kills Israeli Soldier on Bus in Afula, Northern Israel

He was stabbed to death.

At the Times of Israel, "Palestinian youth stabs sleeping soldier to death on Afula bus":

An Israeli soldier died after he was stabbed multiple times in the neck Wednesday morning by a Palestinian youth on a bus at the central bus station in Afula.

The soldier, 18-year-old Eden Atias of Nazareth Illit, was evacuated to the city’s Haemek Hospital. Doctors operated on him in an attempt to stabilize his condition but he succumbed to his injuries a few hours later.

His funeral was due to be held Wednesday evening at 23:00pm at the Nazareth Illit military cemetery.

Eyewitnesses said Atias was sleeping in his seat on the bus when he was attacked.

Also at the New York Times, "Attack on Israeli Worsens Tensions With Palestinians":

JERUSALEM — A Palestinian teenager fatally stabbed a 19-year-old Israeli soldier on a bus in northern Israel on Wednesday, according to the police, shocking Israelis who have grown unused to such killings in their cities and further clouding a peace process that was already severely strained by Israeli settlement plans in the West Bank.

Infuriated by news of long-term planning for more settlement housing, the Palestinian leadership is expected to meet on Thursday to discuss the future of the American-backed negotiations, which began this summer and were supposed to continue for nine months.

The latest crisis was set off by reports on Tuesday that Israel’s housing minister, Uri Ariel, had started planning for about 20,000 new settlement homes. But some officials suggested that talk of a possible collapse of the negotiations amounted to posturing, especially after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered Mr. Ariel to “reconsider” his new settlement plans, essentially putting them in suspension.

“If the Palestinians want to create an artificial crisis, that’s unfortunate,” a senior Israeli official said on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the peace talks in public. Dismissing Mr. Ariel’s plans as having no legal standing or practical significance, the Israeli official said the Palestinians were “going through the motions.”

Arik Ben-Shimon, an aide to Mr. Ariel, said on Wednesday that the new settlement planning was “frozen” but not canceled. Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, who offered his resignation two weeks ago, along with his fellow negotiator Muhammad Shtayyeh, in frustration over a lack of progress in the talks and the continuing settlement activity, said Mr. Ariel “needs to revoke the orders,” indicating that the issue was far from resolved.

The president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, confirmed in an interview with Egyptian CBC television this week that the Palestinian negotiating team had resigned, though it was never clear if the resignations had been accepted. Mr. Abbas said he was trying to persuade the negotiators to continue, adding, “If they don’t accept, I will form another team.”

The interview was recorded two days before the Palestinians learned of the latest settlement plans, according to Mr. Erekat.

The stabbing of the soldier on Wednesday also prompted calls for a rethinking on the Israeli side. Right-wing Israeli politicians have demanded a re-examination of Israel’s agreement to release 104 long-serving Palestinian prisoners from Israeli prisons in four batches as part of a deal to resume peace talks. Two of the four groups have already been released.

In a post on her Facebook page, Tzipi Livni, the minister leading the negotiations for the Israeli government, wrote: “I wrote here earlier and harshly criticized the damage in announcing settlement construction, but I took the post off because the profound political debate about the future of our life here will certainly continue, but not now. Now I would like to pay my respects to the memory of the soldier and express sorrow to the family and to clarify one more thing: violence will not bring political achievements. And we will fight terrorism and extremists decisively and without compromise.”

The stabbing took place when the bus, traveling from Upper Nazareth to Tel Aviv, pulled into a station in the northern town of Afula.

The elusive peace. Sigh.

Seriously, the murder is so shocking because they're so infrequent since Israel put up the wall. And this 19-year-old terrorist didn't even have a legal visa to be in the country. The so-called Palestinians just want the Israelis dead and buried so they can take over all of historic Palestine. Screw 'em.

Alternative to #ObamaCare

From Ramesh Ponnuru and Yuval Levin, at the Wall Street Journal, "A Conservative Alternative to ObamaCare":

As ObamaCare's failures and victims mount by the day, Republicans have so far mostly been watching in amazement. They expected the law to fail, but even among its most ardent opponents few imagined the scale and speed of the fiasco.

Seeing the pileup, Republicans might be tempted to step aside and let ObamaCare continue to disappoint and infuriate Americans. After all, the GOP doesn't have the power to repeal the law, or even to make meaningful changes to undo its worst effects. So why not just watch the Democrats pay the price for their folly?

But such passivity would actually protect the Democrats from paying that price. What Republicans can and should do is offer the public something better. Now is the time to advance a conservative reform that can solve the serious, discrete problems of the health-care system in place before ObamaCare, but without needlessly upending people's arrangements or threatening what works in American medicine. That the Democrats are now making things worse doesn't mean the public wants to keep that prior system, or that Republicans should.

The biggest Republican misconception about health care is that the system before ObamaCare was a free-market paradise. On the contrary: It has consisted chiefly of massive and inefficient entitlements that threaten to bankrupt the nation; the lopsided tax treatment of employer-provided coverage that creates incentives for waste and overspending; and an underdeveloped individual market struggling to fill the gaps.

Exploding health-care costs and millions left needlessly uninsured are a result of misguided federal policies. Solutions require targeted reforms to those policies.

The outlines of such reforms have been apparent for years. The key is to enable all Americans to purchase coverage and to approach health care as consumers: with an interest in quality and an eye on cost.

The first step of a plan to replace ObamaCare should be a flat and universal tax benefit for coverage. Today's tax exclusion for employer-provided health coverage should be capped so that people would not get a bigger tax break by buying more extensive and expensive insurance. The result would be to make employees more cost-conscious; and competition for their favor would make insurance cheaper.

That tax break would also be available—ideally as a refundable credit sufficient at least for the purchase of catastrophic coverage—to people who do not have access to employer coverage. This would enable people who now choose not to buy insurance to get catastrophic coverage with no premium costs. It also would give those who want more-comprehensive coverage in the individual market the same advantage that people with employer plans get.

Medicaid could be converted into a means-based addition to that credit, allowing the poor to buy into the same insurance market as more affluent people—and so give them access to better health care than they can get now.

All those with continuous coverage, which everyone could afford thanks to the new tax treatment, would be protected from price spikes or plan cancellations if they got sick. This guarantee would provide a strong incentive to buy coverage, without the coercion of the individual mandate. People who have pre-existing conditions when the new rules take effect would be able to buy coverage through subsidized, high-risk pools.

By making at least catastrophic coverage available to all, and by giving people such incentives to obtain it, this approach could cover more people than ObamaCare was ever projected to reach, and at a significantly lower cost.

The new alternative would not require the mandates, taxes and heavy-handed regulations of ObamaCare. It would turn more people into shoppers for health care instead of passive recipients of it—and encourage the kind of insurance design, consumer behavior and intense competition that could help keep health costs down. Redesigned and directed this way, the flow of federal dollars and tax subsidies would do much less to distort health markets than it has for the last several decades, while getting far more people insured...

Click through at Google to read the whole thing.

The Left's Skeezy 'Hosurance' #ObamaCare Distraction

At Michelle Malkin's, "Bros and hos: Obamacare’s bread and circuses."

Liberal marketing gurus here in Colorado are masters of Obamacare distraction. While customers struggle to apply through the still-broken health insurance exchange and consumers grapple with cancellation notices, these hipster ad designers are partying it up. Who cares about the insurance market meltdown? They’ve got keg stands and one-night stands!

The “Got Insurance?” campaign is the lame brainchild of two “progressive” outfits with dubious nonprofit status: ProgressNow and the Colorado Consumer Health Initiative. Their previous claim to fame: a “Thanks, Obamacare” social media movement to propagandize praise and gratitude for the federal mandate.

Modeled after the “Got Milk?” ads, the latest print and web promos pander to young people with pop-culture memes and entitlement-friendly appeals. The dumbed-down website address: doyougotinsurance.com. Last month, while federal and state Obamacare exchange sites 404′ed, the Colorado marketing buffoons LOL’ed. Their “Brosurance” ads featured frat boys with red solo cups guzzling beer, playing golf and celebrating government with a “Thanks, Obamacare!” smile.

ProgressNow’s Alan Franklin boasted about his coverage. Media coverage, that is: “Within the first few weeks, ‘Brosurance’ has been featured by The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, CNN, MSNBC, Conan O’Brien, Bill Maher and Roll Call, as well as the front page of Buzzfeed and Jezebel, just to name a few. Just in the first 24 hours of the campaign’s launch alone, #Brosurance was mentioned more than six million times on Twitter, and #GotInsurance more than 1.7 million times. Yes. The ads went viral.” Priorities.

On Tuesday, the groups launched phase two of their Obamacare bread and circuses. Aimed at young women, the ads show party gals with shot glasses lined up on a ski; “Hey, Girl” gags involving a cutout of actor Ryan Gosling; and the Sandra Fluke-inspired promo featuring birth control-wielding “Susie” and her “hot to trot” date, Nate. The caption reads:

“Let’s Get Physical. OMG, he’s hot! Let’s hope he’s as easy to get as this birth control. My health insurance covers the pill, which means all I have to worry about is getting him between the covers. I got insurance. Now you can, too.”

It’s bad enough that these idiocracy-targeted ads reduce young people to perpetually partying boozers and traffic-bait boobs. But what’s truly toxic is the ad campaign’s cynical feint to draw attention away from Obamacare’s undeniable harm to responsible young people.

More at the link.

And at AoSHQ, "Progressives' "Brosurance" Ads Are An Embarrassment." And Daniel J. Mitchell, "The Oleaginous Interaction of Sex and Obamacare."

#ObamaCare Girl Comes Out!

At Instapundit, "WELL NOW, DOESN’T THIS JUST SAY IT ALL: Obamacare girl not a citizen, hasn’t signed up and….wasn’t paid."

Boom! Panicked White House Now Welcomes #ObamaCare Fix!

Hell freezes over.

At the Wall Street Journal, "Obama Open to Health Law Fix: Shift Comes as Figures Show Far Lower Insurance Enrollment Than Expected":

WASHINGTON—The government released numbers Wednesday showing that far fewer Americans had enrolled in private insurance plans under the new health law than expected and, in a marked shift, the Obama administration signaled it was open to legislation to fix the troubled rollout.

The move came as the administration faced mounting dissatisfaction from Democrats over the law's implementation.

New administration figures showed that only 26,794 people nationwide had enrolled in a private health plan through the balky online federal marketplace in its first month—far short of projections. Meantime, some 79,391 people had bought private plans on state-run exchanges.

In the past, White House officials had said they strongly preferred an administrative remedy to the law's shortcomings. But on Wednesday, officials suggested that President Barack Obama was open to a bill by Sen. Mary Landrieu (D., La.), that would require insurers to continue offering plans that were in existence this year, even if that meant reinstating ones that had been canceled because they didn't meet the health law's standards.

The magnitude of Democratic support for a legislative solution will become clearer on Friday, when the House is set to vote on a separate Republican plan to let insurance companies continue to offer policies that were canceled recently. That vote may push Mr. Obama to move before Friday to offer his own administrative remedy or more fully embrace Ms. Landrieu's bill.

The White House shift came as more Democrats in Congress, fearful of a voter backlash due to the law, have lost confidence in administration assurances that the problems could be solved without changing the legislation.

"Sen. Landrieu's proposal shares a similar goal to what the president has asked his team to explore," White House spokesman Jay Carney said. "There may be ways to help some people with cancellation notices without legislation, but we are happy to work with her and any member of Congress who has ideas on how to make the Affordable Care Act better."

At least five Democratic senators have backed Ms. Landrieu's bill, with the latest, Sen. Jeff Merkley (D., Ore.), joining on Wednesday. Support from Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.), which came on Tuesday, was considered significant because she is an influential senior lawmaker.

In the House, where every member is up for election in 2014, Democrats on Wednesday confronted two White House aides who were dispatched to Capitol Hill to explain that the administration was working to address flaws in the online marketplace and warn representatives that it would be a mistake to reinstate insurance policies that don't meet minimum standards set by the 2010 law.

While some Democrats emerged from the meeting circling the wagons around the White House, others said they would vote anyway on Friday for the Republican plan—or at least consider doing so

"The frustration level is growing," said Rep. Jose Serrano (D., N.Y.) after leaving the closed-door Democratic strategy session. "The main message is there were three years to make this good, and it's not good. It's a mess right now."

The House bill is expected to come to an up-or-down vote Friday without any opportunity for lawmakers to offer amendments.

PREVIOUSLY: "Democrats Threaten to Abandon Obama on Health Law Provision."

The Numbers Behind Victoria's Secret and Its Iconic Fashion Show

At BuzzFeed:

The annual show tapes tonight and airs Dec. 10.

Democrats Threaten to Abandon Obama on Health Law Provision

At the New York Times:

WASHINGTON — Anxious congressional Democrats are threatening to abandon President Obama on a central element of his signature health care law, voicing increasing support for proposals that would allow Americans to retain the health insurance coverage they are losing because of the Affordable Care Act.

The dissent comes as the Obama administration released enrollment figures Wednesday that fell far short of expectations, and as House Republicans continued their sharp criticism of administration officials at congressional hearings examining the performance of the health care website and possible security risks of the online insurance exchanges.

In addition, a vote is scheduled Friday in the Republican-controlled House on a bill that would allow Americans to keep their existing health coverage through 2014 without penalties. The measure, drafted by Representative Fred Upton, the Michigan Republican who is the chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, is opposed by the White House, which argues that it would severely undermine the Affordable Care Act by allowing insurance companies to continue to sell health coverage that does not meet the higher standard of Mr. Obama’s health care law.

But a growing number of House Democrats, reflecting a strong political backlash to the rollout of the health care law, are warning the White House that they might support the measure if the administration does not provide a strong alternative argument. The approaching House vote is shaping up as an important test for both the health measure and the unity that Democratic leaders have so far been able to maintain around the health law despite a fierce Republican attack against it.

In a closed-door meeting Wednesday of House Democrats and White House officials, tensions flared as several lawmakers upbraided the administration, saying that the president had put Democrats in a tough political position by wrongly promising consumers that they could keep their existing health care plans. In fact, hundreds of thousands of Americans have received cancellation notices from their insurers because their health care coverage does not meet the minimum standards dictated by the new law.

“I’m frustrated in how it rolled out, and I let them know in no uncertain terms,” said Representative Mike Doyle, Democrat of Pennsylvania. “The point I was making in caucus to the administration is don’t give us this techno-babble that you’re going to do some administrative fix down the road. There’s a bill being put on the floor on Friday.”

Continue reading.

That's the House Republicans' press conference today at the clip.

And actually, it's not clear to me why Republicans are bailing out the Democrats on this. Erick Erickson has that, "It's a Trap!" (At Memeorandum.)

#ObamaCare Enrollment Deals Blow to White House

At the Wall Street Journal, "Obama Administration Gives First Month Health-Site Tallies":

The Obama administration said Wednesday that 26,794 Americans selected a private insurance plan sold through the troubled federally run health exchange in its first month, falling far short of initial expectations.

The administration, releasing the first nationwide figures on enrollment under the Affordable Care Act, said that through Nov. 2, an additional 79,391 people were able to choose a private plan in states running their own exchanges.

The news that only 106,185 people nationwide were able to get through the sites in a month comes as a significant blow to the administration. In one memo, it had projected some 500,000 people would obtain private-insurance coverage through the federal exchange in October. The Congressional Budget Office projected in May 2013 that seven million people nationwide would sign up for private plans by the end of March 2014.

Top officials had been bracing for a low number and had sought to play down expectations for it. The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday that as of last week, fewer than 50,000 people had been able to enroll through the federal exchange. The Journal's figure included some enrollees past the Nov. 2 cutoff date.

The federal exchange serves consumers in 36 states. The remaining 14 states plus the District of Columbia are running their own health-insurance exchanges, and several posted better numbers.

California alone had more people picking private health plans—35,364—than the 36 states using the federal site combined. Still, California's enrollees represent less than 1% of the state's 6.6 million people who lack health insurance. Vermont was among the best performers, with 1,325 people picking a health plan, or 3.26% of the state's uninsured residents.

"There is no doubt the level of interest is strong. We expect enrollment will grow substantially throughout the next five months," said Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius in a statement on the release. "They're also numbers that will grow as the website, HealthCare.gov, continues to make steady improvements."

Still, the formal release of numbers showing that enrollees so far are just a tiny percentage of the goal is likely to fuel further attacks by Republican critics who have sought to repeal the 2010 health law.

Rep. Darrell Issa (R., Calif.) said Wednesday that the administration should have delayed the rollout rather than introduce a problem-plagued website that few have been able to navigate. "This was a monumental mistake to go live and effectively explode on the launch pad," Mr. Issa said.

The 106,185 figure doesn't include new enrollment in Medicaid, the federal-state health program for the poor that is being expanded in roughly half of the 50 states. The administration said that some 396,261 Americans have signed up for the newly expanded Medicaid programs.

The House is set to vote Friday on legislation that would allow insurers to continue selling current insurance policies that don't meet the standards of the new law. Some 5% of Americans buy health coverage on the individual market, rather than getting it through an employer or government program. Many of those people have received cancellation.

Also at NBC News, "GOP pounces on Obamacare enrollment figure."

New Guidelines: Heart-Risk Strategy Gets Major Shake-Up

At WSJ, "Panel Unveils Shake-up in Strategy to Cut Heart Risk: Long-standing Strategy Jettisoned Under New Guidelines":

The current strategy of reducing a person's heart-attack risk by lowering cholesterol to specific targets is being jettisoned under new clinical guidelines unveiled Tuesday that mark the biggest shift in cardiovascular-disease prevention in nearly three decades.

The change could more than double the number of Americans who qualify for treatment with the cholesterol-cutting drugs known as statins.

The guidelines recommend abandoning the familiar and easy-to-understand guidance to keep LDL, or bad cholesterol, below 100 or below 70 for people at high risk—a mainstay of current prevention policy. Instead, doctors are being urged to assess a patient's risk more broadly and prescribe statins to those falling into one of four risk categories.

The aim is to more effectively direct statin treatment to patients with the most to gain, and move away from relatively arbitrary treatment targets that are less reliable in predicting risk of attack than is widely believed.

"We're trying to focus the most appropriate therapy to prevent heart attack and stroke...in a wide range of patients," said Neil J. Stone, professor of medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and head of the panel that wrote the guidelines.


Cardiovascular disease is the Western world's leading killer. In the U.S., it accounts for about 600,000 deaths each year, or about one in four. About 130,000 Americans die annually of stroke.

Numerous studies show that statins reduce the risk of heart attack and stroke. But solid data demonstrating the benefit of reaching specific targets are lacking, said Dr. Stone.

While lowering the LDL number remains a critical goal, the focus is on the risk reduction achieved with statins rather than the effect on LDL, said Donald Lloyd-Jones, chief of preventive medicine at Northwestern and a member of the guidelines panel.

Cardiologists expect the recommendations, jointly developed by the American College of Cardiology and the American Heart Association, to substantially change the conversation between doctors and millions of patients over the best way to lower their risk of heart attack or stroke.

The risk groups identified in the guidelines include patients who have already had a heart attack, stroke or major symptoms of cardiovascular disease; those with an LDL of 190 or higher, which typically has a genetic cause; people with diabetes; and anyone ages 40 to 79 who faces a 7.5% risk of having a heart attack over the next 10 years, according to a new risk score. That score—with a lower threshold than under current guidelines—takes into account cholesterol level, smoking status, blood pressure and other factors.

All are recommended to take high or moderate statin doses that would result in LDL reductions of about 30% to more than 50%. If fully implemented, the guidelines could more than double the number of people who qualify for statins, to more than 30 million, the authors said.

The new approach is likely to have a modest immediate effect on the pharmaceutical industry. All but one of the statins available, including Lipitor, have lost patent protection and are available as inexpensive generics.

I'm not in any of those risk categories, although pharmacological treatment is the wave of medicine these days. If these medications are that effective, and less expensive generics are available, it makes sense to adjust treatment regimes to help the largest number of individuals.

Interesting, in any case.

More at the link.

Jonathan Cohn: We Had to Destroy the American Healthcare System in Order to Save It

Really, I'm freakin' astounded by the left's callousness. Deaf ears and hard hearts.

I thought these people were supposed to be about compassion, diversity, and tolerance!

This is literally painful, from Jonathan Cohn, at the New Republic, "Bill Clinton Is Wrong. This Is How Obamacare Works" (via Memeorandum):

The Affordable Care Act includes a so-called grandfather clause. That allows insurers to keep renewing plans, without changes or benefits and prices, as long as they were available before March 2010, when the Affordable Care Act became law. But the non-group market is volatile: Very few people stay on plans for more than two years anyway. And the grandfather clause is narrow, by design: If insurers made even modest changes, the protection goes away. Those plans are subject to the new regulations that take effect in January. As a result, the majority of people who buy insurance on their own are learning they can’t have what they had before, even though Obama promised everybody they could. Either their premiums are going up, as insurers accommodate the new regulations, or the plans are disappearing altogether. In those cases, people have to find new plans. And the sticker price of what they’ll find is higher than what they pay now.

This is not a glitch or an accident. This is the way health care reform is supposed to work. And it’s important to put these changes into context. For one thing, it’s a small number of people relative to the population as a whole. The vast majority of Americans get coverage through employers or a large government program like Medicare. These changes don’t really affect them. The law also anticipates these changes by, among other things, offering tax credits that discount the premiums—in many cases, by thousands of dollars. (Other provisions of the law, like a limit on insurance company profits and overhead, should restrain prices more.) As a result, many people buying coverage on their own will be paying less money for benefits that are as good, if not better, than what they have now.

But there are real people who must pay more and, in some cases, put up with less. Some of them are people walking around with junk insurance, the kind are practically worthless because they pay out so little. Some of them are young people, particularly young men, whom insurers have coveted and wooed with absurdly low premiums—and make too much money to qualify for substantial subsidies. And some of them are reasonably affluent, healthy people with generous, open-ended policies that are hard to find even through employers. Insurers kept selling them because they could restrict enrollment to healthy people. Absent that ability, insurers are canceling them or raising premiums so high only the truly rich can pay for them.

Those people are the ones everybody is hearing about now, partly because they are a compelling, sometimes well-connected group—and partly because, absent a well-functioning website, stories of people benefitting from the law’s changes aren’t competing for attention. It’s impossible to know how big this group is. The data on existing coverage just isn’t that good. The anecdotes are frequently, although not always, more complicated than they seem at first blush. It’s probably one to two percent of the population, which doesn’t sound like much—except that, in a country of 300 million, that’s 3 to 6 million people. Most experts I trust think they represent a minority of people buying coverage on their own, but nobody can say with certainty.

Is that a worthwhile tradeoff for reform? Obviously that’s a matter of opinion. The fact that some people—even a small, relatively affluent group—are giving up something they had makes their plight (genuinely) more sympathetic. They are right to feel burned, since Obama did not make clear his promise might not apply to them. And there’s a principled argument about whether people should be responsible for services they’re unlikely to use presently, whether it’s fifty-something year olds paying for maternity care or twenty-something year olds paying for cardiac stress tests.

Read the whole thing. Utterly astounding.

Where to begin?

Well, for one thing, Obama lied to get this law passed, without a singe Republican vote in Congress. It's a wholly partisan bill that's now generating majority disapproval in national surveys. And right, it's not a glitch. Democrats literally had to destroy the private insurance market before they could ram down the ObamaCare monstrosity on the people.

How's the working out for you, Dems? Oh, not so great, eh? Well, people liked their healthcare plans. They shopped for what best fit their needs. That's the American way: individualism and diversity all in one. And all of a sudden statists like this idiot Jonathan Cohn are saying, "Hey, this is how it's supposed to work. Suck it up you privileged fat slobs." Well, f-k you buddy. The "real people" now forced to "pay more" are telling you to shove it. Just anecdotes, eh? Right. You tell "3 to 6 million people" they're just anecdotes, alright. You will be buried alive. Damned straight they "are right to feel burned," you smug a-hole. You burned them. You and your statist Democrat clusterf-k party that rejected all expert warnings because you didn't want to give the Republicans ammunition against the law. That is, you knew it wouldn't work, and you planned all along to stiff "3 to 6 million" people" for the absurd theory about how insurance markets are "supposed to work." Hey num-nuts, it's not working! Get that? It's a bleedin' disaster unfolding right before our eyes. Democrat defections are piling up faster the corpses in Stalin's Ukrainian famine. Because anecdotes! Those 60-year old couples needed that maternity coverage anyway! It's all for the common good. Sacrifice people!

Seriously, I'd like to pound this dolt Jonathan Cohn into the ground. In theory, of course. All in theory.

IMAGE CREDIT: Diogenes' Middle Finger, "ObamaCare or (SPMD) - Sick Pig of Mass Deception."

Hope is All #ObamaCare Has Left

From Megan McArdle, at Bloomberg.

Like I said a few days ago, I never realized how good she is.