07.04.13
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CNN Money: Delay in Obamacare – what you need to know

The Obamacare employer mandate has been delayed by a year to 2015, meaning that many businesses can push back providing worker health insurance a bit longer.

When the Affordable Care Act was passed in 2010, it required that companies with 50-plus full-timers start providing them coverage in 2014 — or face penalties.

That changed on Tuesday. In a blog post, the U.S. Treasury Department explained that the government needs time to simplify reporting requirements, and businesses need breathing room to adapt to the changes.

“This provides vital breathing room. I think businesses are relieved there’s more time to get this right,” said James A. Klein, president of the American Benefits Council, an employer benefits advocacy group.

Here’s what businesses and workers need to know.

Who‘s affected?

A relatively small share of the country’s businesses fall under Obamacare’s employer rules, and most of those that do already provide insurance. That might sound surprising, because the biggest Obamacare myth spouted by opponents is that it will crush small business.

The vast majority of the nation’s businesses, 97% of them, are too small to be affected.

What’s more, most larger employers already provide insurance anyway. Of the nation’s 6.5 million workplaces, only about 70,000 — a little more than 1% — must actually start providing insurance.

Then why does this matter?

The mandate affects most of the nation’s workers. According to the latest Census data, close to 80 million people work at firms that must provide insurance. Though most of them are offered insurance, that still leaves millions who will have to wait another year.

Has the mandate already affected businesses?

It has impacted those businesses that intend to dodge Obamacare by cutting worker hours. The employer mandate kicks in at 50 full-timers, and the law counts anyone who works at least 30 hours a week as full-time.

That’s given rise to the “29ers” phenomenon, in which business owners reduce workers’ hours from full-time to 29 hours per week. This has been especially prevalent in the franchising and restaurant industries, where shift hours are frequently swapped.

There’s no telling whether the mandate has already impacted hiring, though.

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Click below for the full article.

http://money.cnn.com/2013/07/03/smallbusiness/obamacare-employer-mandate/index.html?iid=HP_LN

 

07.03.13
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Bloomberg Business Week: Obamacare’s Medicaid Expansion Shortfall Shuts Millions Out of Health Care

Rose Ruiz earns $8 an hour taking care of a 67-year-old diabetic on Medicaid in Austin, Tex. At an annualized rate of $16,640, she can’t afford to buy her own medical insurance. Her best shot at getting coverage was through the expansion of Medicaid mandated under the Affordable Care Act. But because of a U.S. Supreme Court decision that the law’s Democratic authors in Congress never anticipated, millions of low-wage workers who were supposed to be helped by Obamacare will probably end up without coverage.

Obamacare set aside billions of dollars for states to expand their Medicaid programs. Twenty-four of them, most led by Republican governors, have opted out since the Supreme Court ruled a year ago that states could choose not to participate in the expansion. That’s left their low-wage workers in a bind: They make too much to qualify for Medicaid in its present form, but too little to afford a plan their employer might offer. And they don’t earn enough to qualify for subsidies available to help the uninsured buy plans on the state-run Obamacare marketplaces opening in October. These subsidies are available to people with modest incomes—$24,000 to $94,000 for a family of four. Democrats in Congress who wrote the law figured anyone making less would get coverage through the Medicaid expansion.

States dictate the rates they pay companies for providing Medicaid services. The companies then decide the hourly wages they pay home-health aides like Ruiz, which average less than $10 an hour nationally, says William Dombi, vice president for law at the National Association for Home Care & Hospice. Many health aides in states that aren’t expanding Medicaid could need pay raises equal to triple their current wages or more to qualify for the Obamacare subsidies. “It’s one of those things that I’m sure nobody thought about when they were putting this together,” Dombi says.

The problem leaves employers with their own predicament. Those who don’t offer coverage face fines of as much as $3,000 per employee. Yet if an employer offers a new health plan for workers who can’t afford the existing one, and the new plan is deemed “affordable” under the law—meaning it would cost an employee no more than 9.5 percent of his income—then the employee becomes ineligible for Obamacare subsidies to buy a potentially cheaper plan offered through a state-run marketplace. “Lots of employers are really agonizing with the decision,” says Steve Wojcik, vice president for public policy at the National Business Group on Health, a lobbying group. They’ll now have more time to figure it out. On July 2, the Obama administration pushed back the penalties, set to take effect next year, to 2015.

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Click below for the full article.

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-07-03/obamacares-medicaid-expansion-shortfall-shuts-millions-out-of-health-care?campaign_id=yhoo

07.03.13
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The National Journal: Why the Obama Administration Can’t Win on Health Care

The Obama administration had been absorbing constant political attacks about the so-called job-killing nature of Obamacare, with its complex employer reporting requirements and fines for large companies that don’t offer their workers insurance. But when it announced Tuesday that it would delay implementation of the employer mandate to give businesses more time to prepare, the attack lines simply shifted from arguments about policy merit to those about the administration’s competence.

Republicans used the decision to amp up their calls for repealing the law, sounding as bullish as ever that the Affordable Care Act was inevitably flawed.

It shows that when it comes to the health care law—the president’s signature legislative accomplishment—the administration can’t win.

The White House appeased an angry business community with its decision to postpone a requirement that large employers offer their workers health insurance or pay a fine. The rule had angered even businesses that already insure their workers. It gave Republican opponents ammunition to attack the law, claiming it slowed economic growth. Its delay is likely to quiet some of those particular critiques, at least until after the 2014 election.

But the decision will still be politically useful to the health care law’s political foes, who are now painting the administration as incompetent. A flood of press releases Tuesday night described the law as “unworkable,” its implementation a “train wreck,” and the delay as evidence that all of Obamacare should be taken off the books. “This is a clear acknowledgment that the law is unworkable, and it underscores the need to repeal the law and replace it,” said House Speaker John Boehner in a statement.

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Click below for the full article.

http://www.nationaljournal.com/politics/why-the-obama-administration-can-t-win-on-health-care-20130703

06.30.13
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EFF: Campaign to End NSA Warrantless Surveillance Surges Past 500,000 Signers

Over five hundred thousand people have signed onto the Stop Watching Us campaign, a nonpartisan, grassroots campaign opposing the dragnet surveillance programs of the National Security Agency (NSA).  Galvanized by newly surfaced evidence confirming the NSA’s surveillance of the phone records and Internet activity of individuals in the United States and abroad, the Stop Watching Us coalition is seeking public accountability and tangible reform to rein in unconstitutional surveillance.

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Click below for the full story and an opportunity to support Stop Watching Us.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/06/campaign-end-nsa-warrantless-surveillance-surges-past-500000-signers

 

06.29.13
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Huffington Post: Marijuana Legalization Gains Support, Confounding Policymakers

It took 50 years for American attitudes about marijuana to zigzag from the paranoia of “Reefer Madness” to the excesses of Woodstock back to the hard line of “Just Say No.”

The next 25 years took the nation from Bill Clinton, who famously “didn’t inhale,” to Barack Obama, who most emphatically did.

And now, in just a few short years, public opinion has moved so dramatically toward general acceptance that even those who champion legalization are surprised at how quickly attitudes are changing and states are moving to approve the drug – for medical use and just for fun.

It is a moment in America that is rife with contradictions:

_People are looking more kindly on marijuana even as science reveals more about the drug’s potential dangers, particularly for young people.

_States are giving the green light to the drug in direct defiance of a federal prohibition on its use.

_Exploration of the potential medical benefit is limited by high federal hurdles to research.

Washington policymakers seem reluctant to deal with any of it.

Richard Bonnie, a University of Virginia law professor who worked for a national commission that recommended decriminalizing marijuana in 1972, sees the public taking a big leap from prohibition to a more laissez-faire approach without full deliberation.

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Click below for the full article.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/29/marijuana-legalization_n_3521547.html

06.28.13
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US News: Blackout: Defense Department Blocks All Articles About NSA Leaks From ‘Millions’ of Computers

The Defense Department's news blackout affects millions of computers around the world.

The Department of Defense is blocking online access to news reports about classified National Security Agency documents made public by Edward Snowden. The blackout affects all of the department’s computers and is part of a department-wide directive.

“Any website that runs information that the Department of Defense still considers classified” is affected, Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Damien Pickart told U.S. News in a phone interview.

According to Pickart, news websites that re-report information first published by The Guardian or other primary sources are also affected.

“If that particular website runs an article that our filters determine has classified information… the particular content on that website will remain inaccessible,” he said.

Pickart said the blackout affects “millions” of computers on “all Department of Defense networks and systems.”

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Click below for the full article.

http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/washington-whispers/2013/06/28/blackout-defense-department-blocks-all-articles-about-nsa-leaks-from-millions-of-computers