Heathcare Insurance Expert To Megyn Kelly,"Do You Really Think Insurance Companies Would Want To Cancel 300,000 People On Its Own?"

Robert Laszewski on 'trickle of enrollment' in ObamaCare

Robert Laszewski

 

“I have known no one with a better grasp of what’s going on in Washington than Bob Laszewski—and no one who is more fair, honest, and less partisan.”—C. Everett Koop, M.D.

“No one has a greater knowledge of the Washington health policy scene than Bob Laszewski—political, economic, social, and straight merit dimensions. Bob also has uncanny forecasting powers. And he calls the shots exactly as he sees them, unusual for Washington.”—John McLaughlin, The McLaughlin Group

Robert Laszewski is president of Health Policy and Strategy Associates, Inc. (HPSA), a policy and marketplace consulting firm specializing in assisting its clients through the significant health policy and market change afoot.

Before forming HPSA in 1992, Mr. Laszewski was chief operating officer of a health and group benefits insurer.

Mr. Laszewski also publishes Health Policy and Marketplace Review, a blog focused on health care policy and marketplace activities. (http://www.healthpolicyandmarket.blogspot.com/).

Marketplace Activities

The majority of Mr. Laszewski’s time is spent being directly involved in the marketplace as it comes to grips with the health care cost and quality challenge.

His clients include health insurance companies, casualty insurance companies, HMOs, Blue Cross organizations, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, and physician groups.

HPSA has been involved in the development of organized delivery systems, joint ventures between insurance companies and providers, joint ventures between HMOs and insurance companies, the acquisition and divestiture of blocks of health insurance business, the creation of strategies for workers' compensation carriers to manage their costs in the changing health care delivery market, and the strategic planning of numerous clients as they come to grips with their response to policy and market driven change.

Mr. Laszewski is very active in the purchase and divestiture of health care and insurance businesses having been involved in a number of such transactions in recent years.

Policymaking Activities
Mr. Laszewski has participated extensively in the nation's health care debate, especially on health insurance reform and the impact it will have on existing health insurance programs, the insurance industry, and the evolving role between payers and providers.

Bob Laszewski has written and spoken widely on the subject of health care reform and market change. His media appearances include health care features on ABC, NBC, CNN, PBS, and NPR, as well as on The McLaughlin Group and McLaughlin’s “One on One.” Additionally, numerous articles about his ideas have appeared in the national and trade press and he has been regularly quoted in many newspapers including The Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post.

He has also participated globally having chaired two international meetings recently in Washington, DC on the issue of international prescription drug pricing and the use of medical technology in Europe compared to the U.S.

While in the insurance industry, he participated on a number of Health Insurance Association task forces and committees including: serving as chairman of the Provider Relations Committee, serving on the Board Task Force on Cost Containment and on the working group on the ethics of genetic testing and insurance. He was a founding board member of the bipartisan Alliance for Health Reform as well as a member of the Board of Overseers of the C. Everett Koop Foundation at Dartmouth and the Dartmouth Medical School.

Major health care stakeholders seeking experts to address their meetings regularly seek his opinions. He has offered his perspective on health care reform in testimony before several committees of both the House and Senate of the U.S. Congress.

Mr. Laszewski can be contacted at Health Policy and Strategy Associates, Inc., 806 North Fairfax Street, 201, Alexandria, Virginia, 22314. (703) 727-9517
SOURCE: THE KELLY FILE

Health and Human Services quietly giving unions Obamacare fix Estimated To Be At Least A $600M Payoff

Obama Admin Proposing Tax Exemptions For Some Union Health Plan Obamacare - The Kelly File

Published on Nov 6, 2013

Megyn Kelly and Justin Wilson, Managing Director of the Center for Union Facts, expose the secret $600,000,000 Obamacare Union Bailout perpetrated by Kathleen Sebelius and this administration.

 

Wake The Hell Up America Your Republic & Freedom In Grave Danger!

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Health and Human Services quietly giving unions Obamacare fix

The Obama administration has found a way to give unions relief from an Obamacare tax nearly three weeks after Republicans rejected a Democratic push to include the labor carve-out in the latest budget deal.

The Department of Health and Human Services quietly released a final rule last week that includes an intention to exempt some union insurance plans from a substantial new tax known as the reinsurance fee.

As part of Obamacare, the tax was supposed to be levied against all insurance plans to share the risk for insurers taking on the sickest patients next year.

But unions, which were among the strongest supporters of the Affordable Care Act when it passed in 2010, had pressed the administration for changes to the law, arguing that the measure is harmful to insurance plans accessed by more than 15 million union members and would raise costs.

Before last week, unions were upset that the Obama administration had failed to grant them a carve-out even after delaying a requirement that all businesses with 50 employees or more offer health insurance or pay steep fines to 2015.

In July, union leaders -- including Teamsters President James Hoffa -- wrote a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., warning of “nightmare scenarios” for millions of workers if the law is not changed to accommodate labor health plans.

“Congress wrote this law; we voted for you,” they wrote. “We have a problem; you need to fix it.”

The AFL-CIO adopted a resolution at its September convention that it would seek a union exemption from the reinsurance fee, along with ACA tax credits for low-income members.

Deep into a rule governing Obamacare issued last week, HHS included language that the administration will propose exempting “certain self-insured, self-administered plans” from the law's reinsurance fee in 2015 and 2016, Kaiser Health News first reported Wednesday.

The oblique reference applies to some union plans that act as their own insurance company and claims processor.

An HHS official said the exemption is only in the proposal stage.

“We intend to solicit comments from interested parties and the general public about whether to permit such a limited exemption when we issue the proposed rule,” the official said.

During last month's budget negotiations aimed at re-opening the government and avoiding a default on the nation's debt, Reid pushed a similar union fix in exchange for Republicans winning a provision that would require a minimum income level for receiving some Obamacare subsidies.

But many conservative Republicans considered the union fix an overreach on the part of Democrats and rejected it during final negotiations on the budget deal.

In mid-September, a group of 21 Republican senators led by Sens. Lamar Alexander, Tenn., and Orrin Hatch, Utah, urged the administration not to give unions an unfair Obamacare fix.

The senators sent a letter to Office of Management and Budget Director Sylvia Burwell urging her “not to authorize the release of any regulations that will create a special carve-out that benefits union workers at taxpayers' expense.”

Read More: Here

Megyn Kelly's Exclusive Interview With DOJ Whistleblower J. Christian Adams

PART 2


PART 3


PART 4

Bartle Bull reacts to former DOJ attorney on Black Panther case

J. Christian Adams provided some additional insight through an article with Pajamas Media:

Soon after his confirmation, Attorney General Eric Holder labeled us a nation of cowards, a people supposedly unwilling or afraid to discuss race. Based on my experience as an attorney at the Civil Rights Division at the Justice Department, Holder has far more to fear from that discussion than do the rest of us.

If we had that frank, truthful discussion about race, we’d learn that the Obama administration doesn’t believe some civil rights laws protect every American. The Bush Civil Rights Division was willing to protect all Americans from racial discrimination; during the Obama years, the Holder years, only some Americans will be protected. Americans have a right to know and judge the racial policies of the administration they elected in 2008.

The dismissal of the voter intimidation lawsuit against armed New Black Panthers in Philadelphia is the most prominent example of this hostility toward race-neutral enforcement of civil rights laws. But that dismissal is far from the only manifestation of the beliefs infesting the Department. Many other cases and decisions — some of which I will detail below — are in question and deserve scrutiny.

On Election Day 2008, armed men wearing the uniforms and jackboots of the New Black Panther Party were posted in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, at the entrance to a polling site. They brandished a weapon and intimidated voters. After the election, the Civil Rights Division at the U.S. Department of Justice brought a voter intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party and these armed thugs. I, and other Justice lawyers, obtained an entry of default after the defendants ignored the case against them.

Before a final judgment could be entered, however, our superiors ordered dismissal of the claims.

Congress has sought answers from the Department about why the Black Panther case was dismissed. The Department has repeatedly claimed the “facts and law” did not support the case — which of course is false. Others have speculated about a White House involvement. But I believe the best explanation for the corrupt dismissal of the case is the profound hostility by the Obama Civil Rights Division in the Justice Department towards a race-neutral enforcement of civil rights laws.

This hostility was — and is — on open display within the Department of Justice.

Example after example exists where this dirty little secret manifested itself within the Department and affected Department policy.

Attorney General Holder and his political appointees have traveled the country claiming that they have “reopened” the Civil Rights Division. The Civil Rights Division is “back in business,” they announce, without a sniff of media scrutiny. In time, statistics and other information will present truth to this lie, as the Bush Civil Rights Division had a more robust civil rights agenda than the Obama Civil Rights Division. During the Bush years, the Civil Rights Division brought more cases in many areas of the law, particularly voting rights.

Race-neutral enforcement of civil rights law is a principle nearly all Americans agree with. Equality before the law has been cherished since the founding, and a bloody Civil War sacrificed generations of treasure and life to enshrine race equality into constitutional law.

Two obvious examples of the Obama administration’s hostility toward race-neutral enforcement of the civil rights laws:

The Department recently filed a brief supporting the use of race-based preferences at the University of Texas. Holder’s DOJ wants Texas to be able to give extra admissions credit to the skin color of certain college applicants. Of course some races won’t get the benefit of these racial preferences, while the political allies of the administration will.

In New Haven, Connecticut, the Holder Justice Department took the side of those who wanted to racially discriminate against white and Hispanic firefighters seeking promotion. Not surprisingly, the Supreme Court rejected the position of the Civil Rights Division. (It is no accident, incidentally, that senior Department attorney Steven Rosenbaum was involved in the formation of the Department’s racially biased approach in New Haven, just as he was involved in the dismissal of the New Black Panther case when he was acting deputy assistant attorney general, a political position in the Civil Rights Division.)

It wasn’t always this way.

Read more of his article here.

UPDATE 7/10/10

Gaziano of the Civil Rights Commission: Obama Appointee, 'Never bring another lawsuit against a black'