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An illegal immigrant in New York is serving as an Obamacare navigator, according to the Center for Immigration Studies, a non-profit limited immigration group. According to a CIS report, Maria Marroquin — identified as an illegal immigrant as recently as March 2013 — from Peru is also the “Health Education Organizer” for the Restaurant Opportunities Center of New York (ROC-NY). ROC-NY is listed as a subcontractor for the “New York Health Benefit Exchange: In-Person Assistors and Navigators.”

On Tuesday, Mediaite White House correspondent Tommy Christopher added another chapter to his ongoing self-promotional crusade masquerading as a career in journalism. And this time, it didn’t involve a shameless ploy to be an invited guest on whatever incarnation of Chris Hayes’ show MSNBC is currently airing. During Tuesday’s White House briefing on Tuesday, Christopher, whose name isn’t really “Tommy Christopher,” asked a question about President Barack Obama’s health-care reform law that incorporated his personal experiences with health insurance after his 2010 heart attack. ...more (w/video)...

President Barack Obama has "full confidence" in Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius despite the troubled launch of the U.S. government website for signing up for his signature healthcare insurance program, the White House said on Tuesday. Americans trying to shop for health insurance at healthcare.gov under Obama's healthcare law have been frustrated by error messages, long waits and system failures, with many failing to make it through the system despite repeated tries.

The media, members of Congress, and the President of the United States have gleefully disseminated misinformation about what would happen if we do not raise the debt ceiling by October 17th. The biggest blow these lies encountered was when Moody’s, one of the nation's top credit rating agencies, released a memo on October 7th stating: “We believe the government would continue to pay interest and principal on its debt even in the event that the debt limit is not raised, leaving its creditworthiness intact...The debt limit restricts government expenditures to the amount of its incoming revenues; it does not prohibit...

House Republicans scrambled Tuesday to convince their skeptical conservative flank to support a new plan to end the government shutdown and increase the debt ceiling. Rank-and-file GOP lawmakers pushed back on the original plan from Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and his lieutenants, forcing party leaders to modify a proposal just hours after they laid it out in a private meeting. By Tuesday afternoon, Republican leaders had dropped a proposal to delay a medical device tax that has opponents in both parties, making a provision to strip employer contributions that lawmakers and congressional staff get for health insurance as the only...

House Republicans scrambled Tuesday to convince their skeptical conservative flank to support a new plan to end the government shutdown and lift the debt ceiling. Rank-and-file GOP lawmakers pushed back on the original plan from Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and his lieutenants, seeking more sweeteners to what was essentially a framework crafted by the Senate. The impasse sidelined the Senate, which on Monday appeared close to a tentative deal. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) suspended their recent talks, as the Senate GOP sought to give Boehner more maneuvering room. “I don’t know if anything...

About 25,000 Washington residents have enrolled in health plans through the state’s online insurance exchange marketplace during its first two weeks. That figure is nearly triple the 9,500 residents who completed their enrollment during the first week that the exchange, called Washington Healthplanfinder, was open for enrollment. An additional 37,000 people have completed applications to enroll in coverage but have not yet submitted their first payment, which is not due until December. The Washington Health Benefit Exchange, which operates Healthplanfinder, released its latest enrollment figures Monday afternoon.

Question: If Ted Cruz and John Boehner were both on a sinking ship, who would be saved? Answer: America. Harsh? Look around you at what is happening to America and you will see harsh. I am not talking about closed parks and monuments. I am talking about the funds cut to nearly 9 million mothers and young children for food, breastfeeding support and infant formula. That is harsh. Making a war against babies is harsh. And for what? Because Cruz, Republican senator from Texas, has grown so drunk on the sound of his own voice and so besotted with illusions...

If House Republicans get their way in budget talks, White House spokesman Jay Carney may be forced to make good on his pledge to sign up for Obamacare if his private insurance plan is dropped. House GOP leaders have pressed during the government shutdown fight to significantly delay or defund the president's signature healthcare reform laws. But with those efforts failing to take hold, Republicans on Tuesday shifted fears and are seeking to extract a different health care concession: Forcing members of Congress, President Obama and top White House officials to enroll in the law's insurance exchanges without subsidies. Carney...

When Mary Porter enrolled last year at East Central Community College in Rolla, Mo., she landed a job at a fast-food restaurant and worked full-time for minimum wage to pay the bills. Things were looking up for the budding college student, who had grown up a ward of the state’s foster care system. But earlier this year, Porter’s hours were cut. Her employer cited the Affordable Care Act as the reason, she told The College Fix. “Then they told us that they couldn’t afford to pay us health insurance,” said Porter, 22, who is no longer allowed to work more...

The federal website that enrolls Americans in ObamaCare also asks applicants if they want to register to vote, raising questions about why the Obama administration would further complicate an already crash-prone website. Thirty six states are using the federal site – also called exchanges or market places -- to enroll customers in government-mandated health insurance. At least four other states -- California, Connecticut, New York, Vermont and Wisconsin -- also are asking or intend to ask customers if they want to register to vote.

Some health insurance brokers are setting up states that mimic the name and look of the official state exchanges. But the fake sites are easily identifiable because, unlike the official sites, they work. (Snip) The unofficial sites can sell real insurance plans however those plans have not been certified by the government and are therefore not eligible for government subsidies. So if you log on to a health insurance exchange site that seems to be working properly, caveat emptor.

Think you’re exempt from Obamacare’s individual mandate? Good luck proving it. The health law’s least popular component — the requirement to obtain insurance or face a tax penalty — also features a lengthy list of exceptions for people facing certain hardships like foreclosure, domestic violence or homelessness. Members of certain religious sects or Native American tribes also are exempt. But if the online system for getting into Obamacare coverage is rickety, the system for getting out of the mandate doesn’t even exist yet. HHS says it will take another month at least for the administration to finalize the forms. The...

The House's latest plan to raise the debt ceiling and end the government shutdown won't pass the Senate, Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said on Tuesday. “It’s unproductive and a waste of time,” Reid said. “The House legislation will not pass the Senate.” Senate leaders are working on a deal that would end the shutdown, fund the government through Jan. 15 and raise the debt ceiling until February. House Republicans met Tuesday morning to discuss preempting the Senate by passing their own plan to raise the debt ceiling and end the shutdown. The House bill would delay Obamacare's medical device...

The White House appeared to reject a proposal by House Republicans Tuesday morning to end the government shutdown and raise the debt ceiling, calling the proposal "a partisan attempt to appease a small group of Tea Party Republicans." "The president has said repeatedly that Members of Congress don’t get to demand ransom for fulfilling their basic responsibilities to pass a budget and pay the nation’s bills," said White House spokesperson Amy Brundage. The White House also announced that the president and Vice President Biden would meet with House Democratic leaders at the White House at 3:15 Tuesday afternoon. Attendees will...

“This is going to hurt.”

Squirrels are known for two survival skills: hoarding, and stealing other squirrels’ stashes. h/t BFH on iOTH, who suggests we could substitute “ObamaVoters” for “squirrels” Both skills were on display in Louisiana last Saturday night when an EBT system “glitch” temporarily eliminated card limits. Thanks to the fact that the card holders all have Obamaphones, they advised all their social network friends with EBT cards of this manna from heaven. Soon all the squirrels hustled down to their local Walmart where they were seen hoarding everything from, well, soup to nuts: It was like Christmas…only free! Shoppers abandoned carts at Walmart...

Many Americans shopping for better health insurance deals promised by the two-week-old Obamacare system are instead being slapped with rate shock, including savings-sapping deductibles and co-pays, according to multiple reports from around the country. For some able to get the problem-plagued Obamacare website to work, the so-called “deals” the system is coughing up around the country include $12,600 deductibles, co-pays of up to 40 percent, zero competition, and rate hikes of 260 percent. The huge cost increases that some Obamacare applicants are seeing are feeding the effort in Congress to change the system and delay implementation until January 2014. "This...

Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) on Tuesday cautioned against “spiking the football” on a budget deal, predicting a long slog ahead to convince the GOP conference to go along with any plan. He expressed embarrassment at members of his own party who waged a fight to delay or defund ObamaCare — saying it was doomed to failure from the beginning. “To be candid, it is an embarrassment that we have spent all this time on a rabbit trail leading us to where we are,” he said. “Look, I may not be the best person to be interviewed this morning. We have...

Oh those wacky Tweeters are at it again with: #ObamacareTshirtSlogans. Here are some of the offerings this morning... #ObamacareTshirtSlogans I never said you could keep your doctor If You Like My Health Insurance You Can Keep Paying For It For Me Singlepayer Exemptions for the 1% The best reason to buy Identity Fraud Insurance. You didn't infect that. You can keep your Doctor....except he's retired If It's Good Enough For Your Family, It's Good Enough For....nevermind My grandma went up before a death panel and all I got was this stupid t-shirt Until death do you part Good news: Healthcare...

House Republicans will vote Tuesday on a more conservative version of the Senate fiscal deal that would include a delay of Obamacare's medical device tax and scrapping of subsidies for members of Congress and top Cabinet officials, lawmakers and aides said. The bill would modify an emerging Senate plan crafted by Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and GOP Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.), but retain that deal's extension of the debt ceiling through Feb. 7. It would also keep the Senate measure's plan of funding the government through Jan. 15 and immediately end the shutdown. That's a shift from last weekend,...

A growing consensus of IT experts, outside and inside the government, have figured out a principal reason why the website for Obamacare’s federally-sponsored insurance exchange is crashing. Healthcare.gov forces you to create an account and enter detailed personal information before you can start shopping. This, in turn, creates a massive traffic bottleneck, as the government verifies your information and decides whether or not you’re eligible for subsidies. HHS bureaucrats knew this would make the website run more slowly. But they were more afraid that letting people see the underlying cost of Obamacare’s insurance plans would scare people away.

Senior executives from CGI Federal -- the company that won the Obamacare website contract -- enjoyed high-level access to top Obama administration officials, according to White House visitors' logs. CGI Federal is the U.S. subsidiary of CGI Group, the Canadian company based in Montreal that won the $93 million contract from the Department of Health and Human Services in December 2011 to build Healthcare.gov, the main Obamacare web site. Prior to the official award, senior CGI executives met with top White House officials and attended a number of invitation-only addresses by President Obama.

- FrontPage Magazine - http://frontpagemag.com - Hollywood’s Obamacare ZombiesPosted By Matthew Vadum On October 15, 2013 @ 12:54 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 6 Comments If you’re sick and tired of TV news broadcasts spewing pro-Obamacare propaganda, get ready to be inundated with even more progressive health care proselytizing in the dramas and comedies that follow those news shows.For this you have the left-wing California Endowment to thank. The radical philanthropy is in the news because it is funding Obamacare public outreach efforts.As Newsmax reports, the Obama administration is “turning its focus on prime time television series, using the influential...

House conservative, just before meeting: Income verification provision in Senate deal 'especially bad'…House conservative: 'We are setting a precedent whereby a president can refuse to discharge his Article II duty to take care…'…that the laws be faithfully executed but then can turn around and offer to enforce the law as a 'compromise.''Conservative predicts there will be 'broad opposition' inside House GOP conference…

In a few minutes, House Republicans will meet in the Capitol’s basement. The chief topic of conversation: the emerging Senate deal. But before the meeting even begins, House conservatives are bashing it behind the scenes, and they’re pushing the leadership to reject the compromise. A flurry of phone calls and meetings last night and early this morning led the consensus among the approximatley 50 Republicans who form the House GOP’s right flank. They’re furious with Senate Republicans for working with Democrats to craft what one leading Tea Party congressman calls a “mushy piece of s—t.” Another House conservative warns, “If...

The technical troubles with Obamacare’s exchanges are bad enough that even supporters are turning critical. The Washington Post’s Ezra Klein, a longtime champion of the health law, has declared the launch so far a “failure” and a “disaster.” Former White House press secretary Robert Gibbs is asking whether anyone will be fired over the botched rollout. But here’s the thing: The serious problems that have gotten the most attention so far may only be the beginning of the headaches for the exchanges. Right now, the most visible problems are concentrated on the user end, in the registration and enrollment process....

The Obama administration has made headway against an online bottleneck that jammed enrollment for the president's healthcare reform, but new technical problems greeted users on Monday. Three weeks after the launch of new health insurance plans under Obamacare, users were able to create accounts for themselves and begin the process of enrolling. "Today was the first day that we got all the way to the last screen. But then an error screen popped up saying the site would be down for 72 hours," Zahran said.

Aetna's CEO gave a harshly critical review Monday of the federal government's Obamacare marketplace, saying, "There's so much wrong, you just don't know what's broken until you get a lot more of it fixed." Asked on CNBC's "Squawk Box" if he knew that the rollout of Healthcare.gov would be problematic, the insurer's CEO, Mark Bertolini, said his giant company's role as an alpha tester for the system gave it a sense of how many problems the health insurance marketplace faced on the eve of its launch. "We were pretty nervous as we got further along," Bertolini said. "As they started...

Sen. Mark Pryor ((D-Ark.) said he expects the Senate and White House to announce a deal Tuesday that could pass the upper chamber by Wednesday. Pryor said he and a group of a dozen lawmakers drafted the framework — which Senate leadership based their deal on — with the intent of gaining as many as 80 votes to put pressure on the House to act. “It should have bipartisan support in the House,” he said. “And one of the goals we really set out in our group is we said look we don’t want 60 votes. We wan to get...

A woman named Laura told me yesterday she was at the Market Basket in Salem, N.H. The woman in front of her took one EBT card from her designer purse, tried to run it through and failed. She shrugged and pulled out a second one. That one didn’t work either, so she took out a third card and tried that. When it didn’t work, she pulled out a wad of cash that would choke a horse, all 50s and 100s, and paid cash.

Nicolle Wallace is the perfect MSNBC kind of Republican: the kind who isn't sure if she opposes Obamacare. On today's Morning Joe, Joe Scarborough was seeking to make the point that while Republicans are divided over tactics, they are ideologically united in opposition to Obamacare. To demonstrate his thesis, Scarborough asked Wallace whether she supports Obamacare, taking it for granted that she would express her opposition. Amazingly, Wallace hesitated, said she "wasn't sure anymore," then quoted her husband who had asked "what do we hate about it?" She eventually did admit to not supporting Obamacare, on the grounds that the...

The irony is rich. President Obama told Maryland college students just days before the launch of his healthcare "marketplace" that it would take just a few keystrokes to compare prices and policy details. "Don't take my word for it, go on the website," Obama told a crowd at Prince George's Community College in Largo, MD, five days before the launch. "See for yourself what the prices are. See for yourself what the choices are and then make up your own mind. That's all I'm asking." But the bureaucrats in his administration clearly weren't listening. They created a website that is...

Will the Floridians who have enrolled for Obamacare please stand up? Nearly two weeks after the federal government launched the online Health Insurance Marketplace at healthcare.gov, individuals who have successfully used the choked-up website to enroll for a subsidized health insurance plan have reached a status akin to urban legend: Everyone has heard of them, but very few people have actually met one. The Miami Herald searched high and low for individuals who completed enrollment for a subsidized health plan through the marketplace. As of Friday, however, only a smattering of success stories had emerged in news reports.

<p>A growing consensus of IT experts, outside and inside the government, have figured out a principal reason why the website for Obamacare’s federally-sponsored insurance exchange is crashing. Healthcare.gov forces you to create an account and enter detailed personal information before you can start shopping. This, in turn, creates a massive traffic bottleneck, as the government verifies your information and decides whether or not you’re eligible for subsidies. HHS bureaucrats knew this would make the website run more slowly. But they were more afraid that letting people see the underlying cost of Obamacare’s insurance plans would scare people away.</p>

1. So far, the Affordable Care Act's launch has been a failure. Not "troubled." Not "glitchy." A failure. But "so far" only encompasses 14 days. The hard question is whether the launch will still be floundering on day 30, and on day 45. 2. According to Bob Laszlewski, those problems aren't resolved. 3. What didn't the White House know and when didn't they know it? 4. One thing has gone abundantly right for the Affordable Care Act: The Republican Party. Their decision to shut down the government on the exact day the health-care law launched was a miracle for the...

Last week, CNN's Wolf Blitzer made waves when he opined that the ongoing problems with ObamaCare might be reason to delay the program. "They had three years to get this ready," he said. "If they weren't fully ready, they should accept the advice Republicans are giving them, delay it for a year, get it ready and make sure it works." Blitzer later said he was only referring to the ObamaCare exchange website. But as the rollout continues, there's increasing evidence that an across-the-board delay would make sense — even to supporters of the law.

1.) The Washington Post’s Ezra Klein “So far, the Affordable Care Act’s launch has been a failure,” Klein wrote in a Monday post entitled, “Five Thoughts on the Obamacare disaster.” “Not ‘troubled.’ Not ‘glitchy.’ A failure. But ‘so far’ only encompasses 14 days. The hard question is whether the launch will still be floundering on day 30, and on day 45.” 2.) Comedian Jon Stewart “We’re going to do a challenge. I’m going to try and download every movie ever made and you are going to try to sign up for Obamacare — and we’ll see which happens first,” Stewart...

WASHINGTON, October 14, 2013 – If the fact that the Obama Administration has blocked aging veterans from visiting the World War II memorial and denied death gratuity benefits for fallen warriors doesn’t seem to indicate contempt for our military, how about this most recent story? Army First Lieutenant Clint Lorance, a 28-year-old combat leader in the 82d Airborne Division from Celeste, Texas was recently found guilty of two counts of murder in Afghanistan and sentenced to 20 years in Ft. Leavenworth. The story of First Lieutenant Lorance has not been covered by a single major media source. anip n little...

Americans who want to honor and reflect upon the memory of the crew and passengers who perished aboard United Flight 93 on Sept. 11, 2001 will find that the federal government has blocked the road four miles down from the open-air memorial near Shanksville, Pa. CNSNews.com photographed the spot of the road closure this past weekend. The steel barrier blocking vehicles from passing says: “Because of the federal government shutdown, this National Park Service facility is closed.” …

This morning I talked to someone who successfully signed up for Obamacare — with great difficulty, but she did succeed in the end. Since New Jersey is one of the states that defaulted to a fed-run exchange, this shows that people are starting to trickle through. I know, one example — but the plural of anecdote is data.Oh, and she was very happy with the low cost.

Dan from Squirrel Hill's Blog Wikipedia’s article on Obamacare is a heavily censored, utopian puff piece that ignores Obamacare’s real world problems Wikipedia’s Obamacare article ignores almost every single criticism of Obamacare that has been reported on by the news, and of the few that it does mention, it severely understates the problem. Some of these criticisms did get added to the article, but they were deleted.So, some crazy person suggested, on the article’s talk page, that a few specific criticisms be added to the article, such as the healthcare.gov website not working, the large number of employers who have switched...

Democrats may think they've won, but the nation will lose if warnings about spending, debt go unheeded. If congressional negotiators fail to raise the debt ceiling and reopen the government, voters will blame House Republicans, but it's the president and fellow Democrats that are behaving like teenagers by wanting to spend irresponsibly. Studies by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office and Medicare and Medicaid actuaries indicate if Washington continues spending and borrowing as current law requires, then all Americans, and not just the wealthy, will be paying higher taxes and more on private health care. Federal spending on Social Security and...

....... But while both Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, and Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader, praised the progress that was made in the Senate, it was already clear that the most conservative members of the House were not going to go along quietly with a plan that does not accomplish their goal from the outset of this two-week-old crisis: dismantling the president’s health care law. “We’ve got a name for it in the House: it’s called the Senate surrender caucus,” said Representative Tim Huelskamp, Republican of Kansas. “Anybody who would vote for that in...

Not set-up for copy-and-paste, must read at source.

Nothing says “patriot” like waving around the Battle Flag of the Confederacy in front of the White House.I’m still trying to wrap my head around this scene: Yesterday, in Washington, a group of angry white people—it was billed as the “Million Vet March” but numbered in the hundreds, maybe the thousands, and who knows how many were actual veterans—led by Tea Party-aligned Texas senator Ted Cruz and former half-term Alaska governor Sarah Palin, marched on the Lincoln and World War II memorials, tearing down the barricades and demanding that President Obama reopen these sites, which, of course, are closed because...

The technical disasters of the Obamacare exchange debacle over the past two weeks are not an accident, but rather a way to disguise the costs of healthcare plans and weed out people who don’t qualify for a federal subsidy, Forbes reports. Tech experts examining the Obamacare federal health exchange, Healthcare.gov, are becoming increasingly convinced that the traffic bottlenecks and site crashes experienced over the first two weeks were not by accident, wrote Forbes. An HHS spokesperson recently told The Wall Street Journal that implementation of a feature enabling users with the option to preview premiums was delayed as a way...

On his radio show Monday morning, Bill Press took on this weekend’s Million Vet March by denouncing the participants as “idiots” who’ve been used by “right-wing organizations” to protest against their own best interests. Ultimately, he said, they shouldn’t be following people like Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), they should be expressing public odium towards him. “Absolutely drives me crazy,” Press said of Sunday’s protest activities. “Here’s what wrong with it,” he continued, “Those three idiots leading the protests, but they’re not the dumbest ones. The dumbest ones there are the idiots that are protesting. These are people, they call them...

A growing consensus of IT experts, outside and inside the government, have figured out a principal reason why the website for Obamacare’s federally-sponsored insurance exchange is crashing. Healthcare.gov forces you to create an account and enter detailed personal information before you can start shopping. This, in turn, creates a massive traffic bottleneck, as the government verifies your information and decides whether or not you’re eligible for subsidies. HHS bureaucrats knew this would make the website run more slowly. But they were more afraid that letting people see the underlying cost of Obamacare’s insurance plans would scare people away. HHS didn’t...

President Barack Obama is solely responsible for the current government shutdown. He used the Republican opposition to his health care plan to manipulate them into a situation he could exploit. He wants to use his media sheep to make the Republicans look bad so he can pursue his goal of gaining dictatorial control over the budget process. He wants the type of power the British monarchy lost centuries ago. I wouldn't trust former President Thomas Jefferson with the type of control over the federal debt that Obama wants. Jefferson was not only a more honorable man than Obama, he may...