Flap’s Links and Comments for February 28th from 14:29 to 14:32
These are my links for February 28th from 14:29 to 14:32:
- Obama: Flexibility OK, but ObamaCare health care law remains – Anxious to ease deepening political tensions with the states, President Barack Obama on Monday told governors he wants to speed up their ability to enforce his signature health care law on their own terms. But his concession goes only so far: He warned he won't allow states to weaken the law.
He also told them not to vilify their own states' public workers while struggling with spending cuts.
Hosting governors of both parties on his own turf, Obama offered them what they often request: more flexibility as they cope with painful budget dilemmas. Declaring that he would "go to bat for whatever works," Obama supported letting states propose their own health care plans by 2014 — three years faster than the current law allows.
Yet this would be no change to the fundamental requirements of a federal law that has divided the nation and prompted about half the states to try to overturn it through lawsuits. To gain new powers, states would first have to convince Washington that their plans would cover as many people, provide equally affordable and comprehensive care and not add to the federal deficit.
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Maybe the states governors should just run away to Europe or Asia so they do not have to implement this law?
Seriously though, Obama is being disingenuous here as members of his administration earlier in the day told Left-wing supporters that this change to the states would allow more easy implementation of single payer health care systems in the states, including Vermont and Connecticut.
- ObamaCare: On call, officials stress public options in health care shift – Jennifer Haberkorn reports that President Obama's move to allow states flexibility in spending health care funds is the "most significant change" since the law was enacted, and a potential gesture toward critics.
But a source on a White House conference call with liberal allies this morning says the Administration is presenting it to Democrats as an opportunity to offer more expansive health care plans than the one Congress passed.
Health care advisers Nancy-Ann DeParle and Stephanie Cutter stressed on the off-record call that the rule change would allow states to implement single-payer health care plans — as Vermont seeks to — and true government-run plans, like Connecticut's Sustinet.
The source on the call summarizes the officials' point — which is not one the Administration has sought to make publically — as casting the new "flexibility" language as an opportunity to try more progressive, not less expansive, approaches on the state level.
"They are trying to split the baby here: on one hand tell supporters this is good for their pet issues, versus a message for the general public that the POTUS is responding to what he is hearing and that he is being sensible," the source emails. (This CNN story reflects the public presentation.)
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Another ruse by the Obama administration on ObamaCare.
Just repeal this bad legislation