VIRGINIA GOP, CROOKS AND LIARS

VIRGINIA GOP CROOKS AND LIARS

Virginia Republicans are so intent on denying health care to 400,000 of their constituents, they'll go to any lengths. They possibly bribed a Democratic legislator—a deciding vote on Medicaid expansion—to leave office with the promise of a job for himself and a judgeship for his daughter. They passed a budget with a provision explicitly preventing Gov. Terry McAuliffe from acting on his own to expand Medicaid. Then they essentially broke into his office to deliver the budget on a Sunday, Fathers Day, to give McAuliffe less time to review and sign it.

At the urging of House Speaker William J. Howell, the clerk’s office of the House of Delegates enlisted the help of the Capitol Police to enter Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s unoccupied, secure suite of offices on a Sunday afternoon to deliver the state budget.

The highly unusual entry on June 15 took place without the permission of administration officials or the knowledge of the Virginia State Police, which is in charge of protecting the governor. McAuliffe was not in the building.

That's a nice way of saying they broke in. That's how the governor's chief of staff sees it in a scathing letter sent to all parties concerned, including the chief of the Capitol Police, clarifying "that under no circumstances are you or any of your officers authorized to allow employees of the General Assembly to enter the secure areas of the governor’s office without my express permission, or the express permission of Suzette Denslow, the governor’s deputy chief of staff." These Virginian Republicans would be right at home in the Mississippi tea party.

McAuliffe did sign the budget, using his line-item veto to excise the parts that said he could not act unilaterally on Medicaid. In response, "Howell employed a procedural move during a special session Monday to overrule two of the governor’s line item vetoes, temporarily thwarting McAuliffe’s plan to expand Medicaid without legislative approval."

“I am continually surprised and disappointed by the lengths to which Republicans in the House of Delegates will go to prevent their own constituents from getting access to health care,” McAuliffe said in a statement Monday.

That's an understatement. It's callous enough for them to continue to deny the expansion. It's downright despicable that they'll skirt the law to do it.

Nothing is beyond the pale of a conservative, nothing!

NFTOS
Editor-In-Chief

Roger West

The GOP's Guide To Shutting Down The Government:

THE AMERICAN TALIBAN

As the nation races toward another budgetary crisis, Radical GOP leaders are using the prospect of a government shutdown and the need to raise the nation’s debt ceiling as leverage points to undermine the Affordable Care Act — just days before uninsured Americans are expected to sign up for health care coverage — and extract additional cuts to government programs.

Past Congresses have used the debt ceiling as a “vehicle for other legislative matters” or no germane amendments, but as the timeline below demonstrates, the Republicans that came to power after the 2010 midterm elections demanded something entirely different: they threatened to push the nation into default and shut down the government unless Congress approves deep structural budget cuts during a period of economic recession.

In November of 2010, GOP leaders informally polled the incoming freshman and were surprised to discover that “all but four of them said they would vote against raising the ceiling, under any circumstances.” This response was the result of what the Washington Post described as a “natural outgrowth of a years-long effort” by GOP recruiters to build a new majority with uncompromising anti-tax, anti-spending candidates and it effectively hamstrung Republican leaders from accepting any kind of budgetary compromise from the Obama administration. As a result, House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) walked away from so-called grand bargains with the White House at least twice and have since adopted the same kind of uncompromising rhetoric that’s known to animate political campaigns, not actual governance.

Though Congress has already enacted approximately $2.4 trillion in deficit reduction since the start of fiscal year 2011 — 72 percent of the savings have come through spending cuts — the deficit has fallen to the lowest level since 2008, and inflation-adjusted discretionary spending is now below the final two fiscal years of the Bush administration, Republicans keep holding the debt ceiling and continuing resolution hostage, to achieve more cuts. Here is how we got here:

2010

FEB 4: Congress votes to increase the nation’s borrowing limit — a vote it had taken 40 times in the past three decades. Republicans increased the debt ceiling 19 times during the presidency of George W. Bush, raising the nation’s limit by nearly $4 trillion.

Martha Roby, who will go on to represent Alabama in Congress, issues a statement condemning the vote. “This ‘need’ to raise the debt ceiling is caused by one thing: out-of-control spending in Washington,” she says. Reid Ribble, a soon-to-be Congressman from Wisconsin, agrees, “This Congress has done nothing but spend future generations of this country into a black hole.”

SEP 10: Speaking at the Faith & Freedom Conference, Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA) tells the crowd, “The government shut down…That’s what I wanted to hear! A good clap for that!” “We want you with us,” says Westmoreland. “We gotta have you there. Because they’re going to come and say, ‘Daddy can’t go to the VA, the national parks are closed’ … we need to make sure you’re going to be with us.”

SEP 30: With the fiscal year ending and the 2011 budget not yet adopted, Congress passes an extension –- known as a continuing resolution –- to keep the government running under existing spending levels until Dec. 3.

NOV: Republicans vow to cut $100 billion from the 2011 budget during the mid-term elections and win back control of the House. Initially, Boehner seems hesitant to use the debt ceiling as leverage to achieve the cuts. “I've made it pretty clear to them that as we get into next year, it’s pretty clear that Congress is going to have to deal with” the debt limit, Boehner told reporters on Nov. 19. “We’re going to have to deal with it as adults. Whether we like it or not, the federal government has obligations, and we have obligations on our part.”

DEC: Alarmed by growing talk from Republicans about taking the debt ceiling hostage to achieve spending cuts, the White House tries to increase the borrowing limit as part of a tax package that passed Congress, but the effort fails. “I’ll take John Boehner at his word — that nobody, Democrat or Republican, is willing to see the full faith and credit of the United States government collapse,” Obama says at an end-of-the year press conference. “Once John Boehner is sworn in as speaker, then he’s going to have responsibilities to govern. You can’t just stand on the sidelines and be a bomb thrower.”

DEC 2-21: Unable to pass a spending bill, Congress enacts four different continuing resolutions to keep the government running until March 4.

These appropriations cut the Congressional Budget Office’s projection of discretionary spending from 2013 through 2022 by more than $400 billion.

2011

JAN: At a closed-door retreat at a Marriott in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, just days after taking power, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) promises to use the debt ceiling as leverage to achieve spending cuts.

“I’m asking you to look at a potential increase in the debt limit as a leverage moment when the White House and President Obama will have to deal with us,” he says. “Either we stick together and demonstrate that we’re a team that will fight for and stand by our principles, or we will lose that leverage.”

FEB: Paul Ryan announces that Republicans will seek a budget for FY 2011 with $35 billion in budget cuts, far less than the $100 billion in cuts that House Republicans had promised. Later that month, the House passes $61 billion in cuts for the remainder of FY 2011, “the amount that would remain to be slashed had a $100 billion cut been applied to the full-year budget.”

MARCH 2: Congress passes a short-term resolution extending operations to March 18. Spending is cut by $4 billion.

MARCH 16-17: Congress approves yet another continuing resolution extending federal operations through April 8. Spending is cut by $6 billion.

APRIL 4: House Republicans “gave the speaker an ovation” when he informed them that he was advising the House Administration Committee to begin preparing for a possible shutdown. That process included alerting lawmakers and senior staff about which employees would not report to work if no agreement is reached.

APRIL 14: Shortly before 11 pm, Boehner announced that he has agreed to support a seventh short-term extension, funding the government through Sep. 30. Spending is cut by $38 billion, but budget analysts reported that the plan would reduce actual spending in the current year by only $350 million.

JUNE-AUG: House leaders try to convince their caucus of the dangers of defaulting on the debt ceiling. “Leaders like me would try to tell them: Look, no, really, we think it could be bad,” Ryan says. “They’d look at it with suspicion …If there was any semi-credible source saying default wouldn't be so bad, they clung to that.”

AUG: At the last minute, Congress passes the Budget Control Act, increasing the debt ceiling immediately by $400 billion, then by another $500 billion after September.

The measure cuts $2.4 trillion over 10 years and establishes a Super Committee to recommend a deficit-reduction package by Thanksgiving 2011. If the committee fails, automatic cuts worth $1.2 trillion are automatically triggered. After deep cuts are enacted by the end of the year, the debt ceiling will increase by another $1.2 trillion to $1.5 trillion, covering the Treasury’s borrowing needs until 2013. Ryan boasts that Republicans won two-thirds of the cuts to discretionary spending that they wanted.

AUG 5: Standard & Poor’s issues the first downgrade of the nation’s credit rating, saying the “political brinkmanship of recent months” had shown evidence of “America’s governance and policy making becoming less stable, less effective, and less predictable.” This costs the country a million jobs and $19 billion.

2012

SEP: Congress passes a continuing resolution through March of 2013. The government is funded at an annual rate of $1.047 trillion, consistent with the cap set by the Budget Control Act.

2013

JAN 2: Congress passes the American Taxpayers’ Relief Act. The measure makes permanent most of the Bush tax cuts. The Act also reduces deficits over the next 10 years by about $750 billion: $630 billion comes from revenue increases, approximately $30 billion comes from programmatic spending cuts, and the rest from interest savings resulting from lower deficits.

The measure also postpones automatic cuts for two months, until March 1, 2013. An increase in the debt ceiling is not included.

JAN: Congress agreed to suspend the debt ceiling without additional program cuts –- but only through May 2013.

MARCH 1: The sequester begins to take effect at the end of the two-month delay under ATRA. Democrats have called for a balanced package of revenue increases and spending cuts to replace the sequester, while Republican congressional leadership has stated that deficit reduction must come solely from cuts.

MARCH 21: Congress approved an appropriations bill to fund government operations through the remainder of fiscal year 2013, which largely maintains low current funding levels –- further reduced by $85 billion in cuts from the sequester.

JULY: Sens. Mike Lee (UT), Ted Cruz (TX), and Rand Paul (TX) circulate a letter warning they will not approve any spending measure to keep the government operating “if it devotes a penny” to Obamacare. The letter is signed by Sens. John Cornyn (TX), John Thune (SD), and Marco Rubio (FL).

AUG 22: Eighty members of the House Republican conference sign on to a letter sent to Republican leaders “demanding that any spending bill that reaches the House floor be free of funds to implement or enforce the president’s healthcare reform law.”

AUG 26: The Treasury Department announces that the nation will hit the debt ceiling by mid-October.

SEP 30, 2013: Fiscal year 2013 ends. Congress and the President must agree on appropriations for fiscal year 2014 by September 30 so the government can function when the new year begins on October 1, 2013.

You do not have to kill to be a terrorist, but in essence, denying the poor food, and denying 30 million Americans affordable healthcare is in essence killing your own kind! Americans do not need to be worried about foreign terrorists, when our bigger threat is terrorism from within - from the right wing nut job better known as "The American Taliban".

Since the presidency of George W. Bush, we have seen nothing from the GOP but:

Radicalism to the highest degree
The party of "Do-Nothings"
The party of "Know-Nothings".
They party of Filibusters
The Party of Extortionists
The party of Obstructionists
The party of elite whites only
The party of racists
The party of kick the poor when they are down
The party of ideals of 50- 300 years ago.
They party of extreme human control [Women and Blacks]
The party of biblical and constitutional hypocrisy Since the era of George W. Bush

There is a huge difference between educated decisions versus unlettered irrational ones. Even the slightest tinge of conversations of shutting down this country, this preposterous and incoherent idea, should not be taken lightly. Sarah Palin, Ted Cruz, and any other tin foil hat society member suggesting such extreme measures, should be considered internal enemy combatants.

The president has sworn to uphold the constitution from "all enemies, foreign and domestic". These teahadists need to be considered domestic enemies of the constitution. These special "patriots" seem hell bent on one thing, to do harm to this nation and its people. Domestic enemies should be treated accordingly.

Most RWNJ's seem to admire Ted Cruz's willingness to risk other people's careers, humans health and his party's future in order to impress Sarah Palin.

Maybe this horrible GOP extortion plan, in which a GOP/Cuban/Canadian terrorist kills millions of Americans by denying them coverage for pre-existing conditions - is actually just a dream.

I leave you with two queries: Why is it OK to mandate transvaginal ultrasounds on women and not mandate full healthcare? How dare the RWNJ's - to not bat an eyelash when telling women that they must have a probe forced inside their vagina - yet call foul on affordable healthcare. Why is the ACA acceptable under Mitt Romney and not Obama? They are one in the same!

Portions of blog from thinkprogress

NFTOS

Editor-In-Chief

Roger West

WHAT FALLING OFF THE CLIFF COULD MEAN TO YOUR HEALTH

If President Barack Obama and Congress cannot reach an agreement on the fiscal cliff, economic experts agree it would be devastating.

It would likely send the country back into recession, according to the Congressional Budget Office, and some 3.4 million jobs would be lost. And ultimately, it could hurt your physical and emotional health.

That's because the part of the government that handles health-related programs -- Medicare, veterans' medical benefits, food safety inspectors -- all would be automatically cut starting January 2 if there is no agreement on the Budget Control Act. If not amended in time, the move would abruptly remove $1.2 trillion from the federal budget.

The BCA essentially forces Congress and the president to reach a budget agreement before the end of the year. If they do not and they do not amend the BCA, the Office of Management and Budget estimates each government division would see about an 8.2% budget cut. Medicare would face a 2% cut.

Many, including health care economist Ken Thorpe, are anxious to see that scenario avoided.

"I hope they will reach agreement quickly and do it in a thoughtful way," said Thorpe, a professor of health policy and management at Emory University. "Then next year we can really work on these important structural issues to slow growth in these programs, rather than these across-the-board cuts that would arbitrarily make cuts. It's not the smartest way to do it."

Ellie Dehoney, vice president of public policy and programs for Research!America, said her group has been hard at work visiting as many members of Congress as possible to stop across-the-board cuts. Her nonprofit is particularly concerned about cuts in medical research.

"Across-the-board cuts would put so many vital medical research programs at risk," Dehoney said. Her organization brought a handful of Parkinson's patients to meet with congressional officials. The patients told the representatives how medical advances made through research funded by the National Institutes of Health gave them hope for a cure for their Parkinson's and how much more research was necessary.

 "Many we met with were clearly moved by their stories," Dehoney said. "We have seen bipartisan support for medical research funding overall, but in a few offices we still heard about the need for more 'shared sacrifice.' That's why we are still working with such urgency."

The individual departments that will see their budgets cut aren't commenting on specifics. But clearly something would have to give if these departments have less with which to work.

"I don't think there is a lot of cushioning in these program's budgets to just move money around to cover all the demand for these services," said Ted Marmor, professor emeritus of public policy and management at Yale. "It is a real problem when you already have this serious buildup of pressure on state budgets and family budgets with the recession. A one-time sharp drop in the budget would be devastating for a lot of people who depend on these programs."

That means there would be a cut in health services, although it's unclear which specific services would be cut; agencies referred questions back to the OMB and its report.

What is known is the cuts would happen quickly, since under the law most budgets have to be cut in the first year of the act.

 "You wouldn't necessarily see the impact right at first, but agencies like the CDC will have to prioritize. Something will have to give, so you'd see a lab close here and a monitoring program end here, so down the road they won't able to monitor, say, a disease outbreak nearly as well as they can now," said Indivar Dutta-Gupta, who works with the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

"The problem is, we already are seeing historic low spending on these types of programs, and even if the Congress and the president do reach an agreement and stop sequestration, the big worry is there may be even bigger cuts to these programs in the compromises they make."

If the country does go over the fiscal cliff and an agreement cannot be reached, here are general 10 ways it would hurt programs the government provides to help keep you and others healthy. The following budget estimates come from the latest OMB analysis:


Medicare

Some 50 million people rely on Medicare to cover their health care costs. The federal health insurance program, which is available to all people 65 and older and people with permanent disabilities, has seen a huge increase in people needing its help. Fewer companies offer retiree health benefits (down to only 25% of the population, according to the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation).

Automatically, 2% would be cut from this program's budget. While this is less than the general 8.2% across-the-board cuts for other federal programs, it would amount to a budget reduction of around $554.2 billion. That would mean payments to doctors, hospitals, long-term care facilities and nursing homes could be reduced significantly.

Health care providers already complain that the Medicare reimbursement rate is too low. Ultimately, those facilities could stop taking Medicare patients.

"Or there would be a cost shift," said Julie Barnes, director of health policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center. "That means, ultimately, they might have to charge private patients more. What else can they do? They've got to meet their expenses."


Food safety

The number of foods recalled because they were bad or dangerous hit one of the highest levels in four years in the fourth quarter of 2011, according to the Expert RECALL Index.

Listeria, botulism, E. coli, Salmonella -- deadly problems for the food supply -- have all been caught by government food inspectors. Yet even with those inspections, tens of millions of people get sick every year and more than 3,000 people die each year from food poisoning, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

An 8.2% cut would slash the budget for plant and animal health inspections by $1.08 billion. The budget for the Food Safety and Inspection Service agency would lose more than a billion dollars from its budget. An additional $38 million would have to come out of the budget for inspectors who monitor the safety of our grain supply and stockyards. That could mean fewer inspectors -- and fewer inspections, which ultimately could mean a food supply that isn't as safe as it is now.

CDC

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's work touches many health aspects of daily life. Its nurses and doctors, epidemiologists and technologists work to prevent the spread of food-borne illnesses, to stop the spread of the flu and monitor disease outbreaks, to reduce the number of hospital-acquired illnesses, to increase immunizations and to create tools to help communities protect public health, among many other health-related efforts. It would lose $6.8 billion from its budget.

NIH

Ultimately, this cut would impact academic labs and research institutions in every single state. The National Institutes of Health funds a wide variety of medical research. It spends millions to help scientists discover the root causes and cures for childhood diseases, cancer, autism, diabetes, lupus and many other illnesses.

Spending on biomedical and health research and development was already lower than it has been in years, according to Research!America. Cuts now could have a severe, long-term impact on research, which could lead to fewer cures and therapies to fight common diseases. This department would lose more than $30.7 billion from its budget.

Food for lower-income families

The Women Infant and Children Supplemental Nutrition Program, known as WIC, helps feed families who are considered a nutritional risk because they can't afford to buy food. The program also teaches people about nutrition and provides referrals for health services.

Some 16.4% of the U.S. population is considered "food insecure," according to FeedingAmerica.org. That's more than 48 million people.

About $6.6 billion would be taken out of this program's budget.

Separately, child nutrition programs would be cut by $19.7 billion. Commodity Assistance would lose $263 million. Other nutrition programs would lose $139 million. And the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance program would lose $87.3 billion.

Maternal, Infant and Early Childhood Home Visiting Program

This is a home visiting program that helps pregnant women or women with children younger than 5 who may need additional help with maternal and child health issues. It also works to prevent abuse, neglect or child injuries because of an unsafe environment in the neighborhood or home.

Studies show this program reduces crime and incidents of domestic violence. It also increases a family's economic self-sufficiency. This program would see a $400 million reduction in its budget.

Office of Lead Hazard Control and Healthy Homes

Children in at least 4 million households are still being exposed to the dangers of lead, according to the CDC. Lead poisoning, which disproportionately hurts children, can curtail nervous system development, lead to behavioral disorders and cause headaches, anemia, seizures and even de

The Office of Healthy Homes and Lead Hazard Control is a federal agency established to eliminate lead-based paint hazards in private homes and low-income housing. The Healthy Homes program also helps prevent disease and injuries that result from housing-related hazards such as radon, poor indoor air quality and even poor lighting that can lead to falls.

The CDC estimates more than 11,000 people die each year from preventable unintentional injuries, including falls, fires and poisonings in unsafe homes. This program would lose $120 million.

Department of Homeland Security, Office of Health Affairs

The Office of Health Affairs in the Department of Homeland Security is something Americans want to be fully operational if terrorists attack the country using chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear weapons. It serves as the department's authority for all medical and health issues. The office also provides experts to the department's leadership, builds national plans in case of terrorist attacks, helps first responders and protects the department itself from health threats. It would lose $167 million from its budget.

Veterans' health

An increasing number of people use services provided by the Veterans Health Administration. That's not a surprise when our nation has recently been involved in two major wars and Vietnam vets are at an age where they require more medical services.

About a quarter of the population is eligible for VA benefits and services. The VA managed some 80.2 million outpatient visits in 2010 alone. The department would lose $5.8 billion from its budget for Medical Support and Compliance and $45.5 billion for medical services. Some $581 million would be cut from medical and prosthetic research and $5.69 billion from its medical facilities budget. The Department of Defense-VA health care sharing incentive fund would lose $30 million.

 Social Security

Since the start of the recession, there has been a marked increase in the need for federal disability insurance as provided by Social Security. According to the last available census data, more than 8 million people are considered too disabled to work and receive this benefit from the government.

Automatic cuts would dramatically reduce these services. The federal disability insurance budget alone would be cut $2.9 billion for discretionary spending, and $144 billion for mandatory spending.

 

 

NFTOS
Editor-In-Chief
Roger West

TRUTH AND NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH

Once you peel back the layers you shall see Mittens has truth issuse

Polling sources say the verdict is in, and the jury says Mitt Romney handily won last night’s debate, and did what he needed to do to have a fighting chance at winning the election. But what he didn’t do, predictably, was tell the truth.

Romney’s debate performance was chock full of lies, recalling his running mate’s address to the GOP convention, which was also chock full of lies. Hopefully, just as Ryan’s address was dissected and debunked by some media outlets, Romney’s claims are as well, so the debate can move to substantive issues instead of stylistic ones.

Peeling back the layers of Mitts pomp and circumstances last night revels, that on facts Mitt loses horribly, and here are ten of Romney’s fact-challenged claims from last night:

1. An ‘Unelected Board’ Controlling Your Health Care

Despite President Obama trying to push back on this lie, Romney made this claim a few times last night. Obamacare, according to Romney, “puts in place an unelected board that's going to tell people ultimately what kind of treatments they can have.” In reality, as the Associated Press points out , the board that is tasked with bringing down Medicare costs is prohibited from “rationing care, shifting costs to retirees, restricting benefits or raising the Medicare eligibility age. So the board doesn't have the power to dictate to doctors what treatments they can prescribe.” This Romney claim also hearkened back to Sarah Palin’s lie that Obamacare created “death panels,” which was a straight up lie.

2. A Bipartisan Record

Romney referred to his alleged “bipartisan” record in Massachusetts as governor during the debate. But what’s the real story on this? ABC News calls the claim “not quite factual.” Indeed: Romney’s health care plan was enacted with the help of a Democratic legislature. But in general, the body was “frustrated” with Romney “because he wanted to govern like a ‘CEO’ and ‘didn’t pay heed to the legislature and they resented that,’” according to the Massachusetts Taxpayer Foundation’s Michael Widmer.

3. Dodd-Frank Labels Banks as ‘Too Big to Fail’

One contrast between the candidates that emerged during the debate was over Dodd-Frank, the weak Wall Street reforms and regulations passed after the 2008 financial collapse. Romney wants to repeal Dodd-Frank, and part of the reason why is his claim that the bill designates banks as “too big to fail” and therefore gives them “a blank check.” But as ThinkProgress notes, this is far from the truth: “the law merely says that the biggest, systemically risky banks need to abide by more stringent regulations . If those banks fail, they will be unwound by a new process in the Dodd-Frank law that protects taxpayers from having to pony up for a bailout.”

4. Obamacare Leads to Loss of Healthcare

Governor Romney claimed that the passage of the Affordable Care Act will lead to 20 million people losing health insurance. He based this claim on a Congressional Budget Office report. But according to PolitiFact, Romney “cherry picked” the CBO report and mislead viewers on why people would “lose” coverage.

PolitiFact’s final verdict on the claim is: “That number is cherry-picked, and he’s wrong to describe it as only including people who ‘like’ their coverage, since many of those 20 million will be leaving employer coverage voluntarily for better options. Romney also ignores that under the status quo, many more people today ‘lose’ coverage than even the highest, cherry-picked CBO estimate. We rate his statement False.”

5. The Failure of the Obama Economy

Romney hammered Obama on the economy’s performance over the past four years. One claim Romney made was this: “[We have] 23 million people out of work...The proof of that is that 50 percent of college graduates this year can't find work.”

But here’s the AP breakdown of the facts on this claim: “The number of unemployed is 12.5 million, not 23 million. Romney was also counting 8 million people who are working part time but would like a full-time job and 2.6 million who have stopped looking for work, either because they are discouraged or because they are going back to school or for other reasons.”

And on the college graduate claim, Romney was also wrong. Back to the AP: “A Northeastern University analysis for The Associated Press found that a quarter of graduates were probably unemployed and another quarter were underemployed, which means working in jobs that didn't make full use of their skills or experience.”

6. Obamacare Cuts Billions From Medicare

This was one of Romney’s favorite attack lines last night: the notion that the Affordable Care Act is siphoning off funds from Medicare. The specific claim is that $716 billion was cut from Medicare because of the Affordable Care Act. In reality, this claim is highly misleading. What the number refers to is money that is saved “primarily through reducing over-payments to insurance companies under Medicare Advantage, not payments to beneficiaries. Paul Ryan’s budget plan keeps those same cuts , but directs them toward tax cuts for the rich and deficit reduction,” ThinkProgress notes.

7. Gas Prices Increase

Romney said that “gasoline prices have doubled under the president. Electric rates are up.” This is true--but to blame it on the president is highly misleading. Gasoline prices have little to do with individual policies carried out by a president. Instead, as the Associated Press states, “Gasoline prices are set on financial exchanges around the world and are based on a host of factors, most importantly the price of crude oil used to make gasoline, the amount of finished gasoline ready to be shipped and the capacity of refiners to make enough to meet market demand.”

The AP also skewers Romney’s claim on electric rates going up: “Retail electricity prices have risen since Obama took office — barely. They've grown by an average of less than 1 percent per year, less than the rate of inflation and slower than the historical growth in electricity prices. The unexpectedly modest rise in electricity prices is because of the plummeting cost of natural gas, which is used to generate electricity.”

8. Health Care Costs Rising Under Obama

Romney’s made this statement on the campaign trail--and if it was wrong then, it’s wrong now. Last night, Romney claimed that “health care costs have gone up by $2500 a family.”

But FactCheck.org was on this false claim back when Romney used it on the campaign trail in September. Their take: “Romney says health insurance premiums have gone up $2,500 under Obama. The actual increase has been $1,700, most of which was absorbed by employers and only a small part of which is attributable to the health care law.”

9. Oil and Gas Production Increases Only on Private Land

The former Massachusetts governor said last night that “all of the increase in natural gas and oil has happened on private land...Your Administration has cut the numbers of permit and licenses in half.”

But ABC News says Romney is playing loose with the facts. Data from the Bureau of Land Management shows that “the number of drilling permits on federal lands approved during the fiscal years President Obama has been in office has decreased somewhere between 20 and 37 percent compared to the years before he became president - not the 50 percent Romney claimed.”

10. No Tax Cuts for the Rich

To fend off the perception that he’s only concerned about the wealthy, Romney made sure to emphasize that his economic plan would not lower tax rates on rich people.

Think Progress has the details on that claim: “If Romney were to actually implement his plan to reduce tax rates by 20 percent while eliminating tax deductions in order to pay for it, taxpayers with more than $200,000 would certainly see a tax cut. But everyone else — 95 percent of Americans —will see their taxes increase.”

I have spent two and half years blogging, trying to rile the Democrats to get a backbone, to find their testicle fortitude, to verbally bitch slap the radical righties of our world into submission, and yet POTUS played the nice guy. Having debated often in my life, a passive debater loses his ass 100% of the time.

Not once did POTUS mention Bain Capitol, nor did he mention the 47%. Completely unacceptable! POTUS was trying to be nice man in a nasty mans game, Robme is a liar of epic proportions, Robme was on life support prior to the debate, he was one breath away from political death, and POTUS not only used the defibrillator, He made sure that Robme was upright and ventilated.

Unpacking the substance of Robme's message last night leaves us little doubt that he lies more than his companion, Paul "Lyin" Ryan. But a passive, 'nice" POTUS, or a POTUS unwilling to unleash the wrath on these two tools is political death by being a unprepared wimp. When debating, always assume your audience is dumber than a box of rocks, therefore it forces you to lay out all context of ones policy and weaknesses, never assume all Americans have heard of Bain Capitol nor the derogatory 47% comment, disclose everything!

This was just a bump in the road, and if voters truly see the facts for what they are, they shall see that Mittens puzzle pieces don't fit all together, that his math answers doesn't align with the formula he has laid out, that his modus operandi is to - "when you can't dazzle with brilliance, baffle with bullshit".

UPDATE: Thinkprogress defines Mittens lies as almost one per minute

NFTOS

Editor-In-Chief

Roger West

Hospital Trolling?

Hospital Debt Trollers

Imagine going into an emergency room or maternity ward and being greeted by a debt collector telling you that you won't receive treatment until you agree upon terms to pay an outstanding bill.

Its real, the next time you’re at the hospital, be on notice: The person taking down your information and admitting you for treatment might not be a hospital employee but a staffer from a debt-collection agency.

Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson filed suit against a debt-collection agency called Accretive Health in January after an employee left a laptop containing personal information about for 23,500 patients in a rental car last July. Swanson’s lawsuit alleges that Accretive Health’s access to patient records violates federal privacy laws.

The case brings attention to the little-known practice of hospital companies embedding debt collectors in their facilities, the New York Times reports.

Americans are being subject to increasingly harsh tactics by debt collectors seeking to recoup money for their clients by using tactics including threats, insults and lies, recent research shows. Lisa Lindsay, an Illinois woman recovering from breast cancer, endured an arrest and a brief stay in jail over an unpaid $280 hospital bill that wasn’t even hers.

Hospitals are under increasing financial pressure as health care costs escalate and payment rates from Medicare, Medicaid and private health insurance companies become smaller. And largely because of a decades-old federal law requiring hospitals to provide emergency medical care to anyone, regardless of their ability to pay, hospitals take on tens of billions of dollars in bad debt each year. In 2010, hospitals were stuck with $39.3 billion in unpaid bills, which amounted to 5.6 percent of their total expenses, according to the American Hospital Association.

Cash-hungry hospitals aren’t the only obstacle to patients’ getting the health care they need. Health insurance premiums continue to rise even as benefits get more meager, joblessness and the sluggish economy are causing many Americans to go without medical care or become uninsured, and the size of hospital bills themselves can be impossible to predict.

Anxiety about dollars and cents has driven hospitals into the arms of aggressive debt collectors, according to the Times:

As a growing number of hospitals struggle under a glut of unpaid bills, they are turning to companies like Accretive. To win promised savings, all hospitals have to do is turn over the management of their front-line staffing — ranging from patient registration to scheduling and billing — and their back-office collection activities. Accretive says it has such arrangements with some of the country’s largest hospital systems to help reduce their costs.

Accretive Health works with dozens of U.S. hospitals, including Fairview Health Services and North Memorial Health Care in Minnesota, according to the Times and a press release from Swanson’s office. Debt collectors are instructed to ask patients for credit cards or checks when they arrive at an emergency room seeking treatment, the Times reports.

Hospitals across the U.S. are trying new methods of avoiding unpaid bills. HCA, the largest for-profit hospital chain, and other companies have started demanding upfront payments as high as $350 from people in emergency rooms, Kaiser Health News reported in February. In 2011, about 80,000 people walked out of HCA emergency rooms before getting any medical care because of the company’s $150 fee, according to Kaiser Health News.




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