RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.nationalreview.com/node/369891/print

In his State of the Union address Tuesday night, President Obama repeated one of the biggest lies behind the Affordable Care Act (ACA), and it wasn’t that you could keep your health-care plan or your current doctor. In fact, most people don’t even know it’s a lie.

That became obvious when he received a standing ovation after saying it: “Because of this law, no American can ever again be dropped or denied coverage for a preexisting condition like asthma, back pain, or cancer.” The president and his supporters keep pretending that, before the ACA, an insurance company could drop individual policyholders, when in reality it could not.

Comes as a shock, doesn’t it? But the truth is that for decades there have been safeguards in our health-insurance system to protect people just like the physician’s assistant, Amanda Shelley, mentioned by the president.

Before 1996, if you purchased individual health insurance through a broker, you would have been offered a “guaranteed renewability” option. This would guarantee that your policy could not be canceled if you developed an expensive and chronic condition. The insurance company would also have to renew the policy on its anniversary date without charging a higher premium because of the chronic condition. This option was so popular that, by 1996, 75 percent of people buying individual health insurance also bought the guaranteed-renewability option.

Then, in 1996, Congress passed the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). Among HIPAA’s many mandates was the requirement that all individual insurance plans have guaranteed renewability. It also prohibited all group health-insurance plans sold to businesses from denying coverage to individuals because of preexisting conditions.

And so, for the past 18 years, all insurance companies have been legally forbidden from dropping an individual policyholder who developed a chronic illness and have not been able to raise anyone’s rate because of it.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/369869/enforcement-then-amnesty-immigration-mark-krikorian President Obama’s State of the Union address all but ignored immigration, so as not to further complicate Speaker Boehner’s efforts to get the House GOP to pass an amnesty and increases in immigration. In furtherance of those efforts, House Republicans will discuss immigration this afternoon at their annual retreat on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. The […]

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/obamacares-insurance-company-bailout?f=puball Last Thursday, Moody’s rating agency downgraded its outlook for the health-insurance industry from stable to negative, blaming ObamaCare. Few will shed any tears for insurance companies – but John Q Public is about to get clobbered again, thanks to a taxpayer bailout of the insurers written into the ObamaCare law. Section 1342 of the […]

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/a-very-cold-reality It’s not as if those in the Northeast have not experienced bone-chilling cold or that it is predicted to extend from the Midwest down into our southern States. There may possibly be a snow storm that will require the National Football League to reschedule the Sunday, February 2nd Superbowl at the MetLife stadium in […]

http://www.dianawest.net/Home/tabid/36/EntryId/2759/So-Thats-Why-Bush-Wanted-to-Prevent-Israel-From-Attacking-Iranian-Nukes.aspx The Washington Post’s Walter Pincus has extracted some other items of interest from Robert Gates’ book, Duty (noted earlier here). These include the forgotten fact that the Bush administration discussed withdrawing the “surge” in Iraq even as it was getting underway, much as the Obama administration would do more emphatically vis a vis Afghanistan. […]

NO URL: SYDNEY WILLIAMS IS AN E-PAL WHO IS DEVELOPING A BLOG….I AM FORTUNATE TO GET HIS DAILY POSTINGS….RSK

More than anything, the State of the Union is a chance to see and be seen. Even those on the Republican side of the aisle vie for seats on the aisle, so their constituents can see them shaking hands with the President they have vowed to oppose. It is an opportunity for this President to use the soaring rhetoric, which is his greatest strength, and to bask in the applause of those who fervently admire him, as well as from those who despise him, but who do not to appear small-minded.

The Constitution, in Article II, Section 3 states: “He [the President] shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient.” The founders would be appalled at the imperial extravaganza that annual message now entails. In the last few decades this event, of a republican country, has assumed the trappings of the royal Court at Versailles in the years just preceding the French Revolution.

Mr. Obama is fond of his voice, so he speaks for a long time, giving little consideration to the overweight and out-of-shape Congressional members and others who are required by custom to be there, and who must leap from their seats every minute or so, exhausting themselves as though they had been in a spinning class. They look like the teenage girls who once did the same thing for Frank Sinatra and the Beatles. The difference is that the girls’ enthusiasm was real, while what we see from our comfortable seats in our homes is often feigned.

We live in a in a pluralistic country. New York State, with a population of about 19.6 million people encompasses people from across the political, economic, social and religious spectrums. Governor Cuomo acted like an elitist and nativist when he said that “extreme conservatives who are right-to-life, pro-assault-weapon, anti-gay…have no place in the state of […]

Moral Obtuseness Baroness Catherine Ashton, the European Union’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Vice President of the European Commission, issued a statement on January 27 marking international Holocaust Remembrance Day. It was commendable that the EU at all chose to note the day, but what Ashton said on its behalf was surreal. She managed […]

http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2014/01/29/obamas-sotu-remarks-and-irans-negotiations-jihad/?singlepage=true

Note: Andrew Bostom’s forthcoming monograph, Iran’s Final Solution for Israel, will be published next month.
During last evening’s (January 28, 2014) State of the Union speech, President Obama not only claimed “American diplomacy” had somehow “halted the progress of Iran’s nuclear program,” he peevishly threatened,

[L]et me be clear: if this Congress sends me a new sanctions bill now that threatens to derail these talks, I will veto it.

His comments represented the apotheosis of a surreal tragicomedy of U.S. diplomatic failure that has unfolded over the past two months.

Less than three weeks after the November 24, 2013 announcement of an interim agreement between Iran, the U.S., and five other world powers, during an interview which aired December 11, 2013, Iranian Middle East analyst Mohammad Sadeq al-Hosseini, provided a candid assessment of the negotiations. El-Hosseini, a former political advisor to both Iran’s alleged reformist ex-President Khatami, and the Khatami regime’s erstwhile Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance, Ata’ollah Mohajerani (also deemed a “moderate”), underscored the ancient Islamic doctrinal bases for the contemporary Iranian theocracy’s geo-politics. Invoking the armistice “Treaty of Hudaybiyya” agreement between Muhammad and the 7th century pagan Quraysh tribe of Mecca, which Islam’s prophet-warrior unilaterally abrogated as soon Muhammad’s jihadist forces achieved the military superiority needed to vanquish his Meccan foes, el-Hosseini declared:

http://pjmedia.com/andrewmccarthy/2014/01/29/the-gop-and-social-issues-another-perspective/ On the question whether the Republican Party ought to de-emphasize social issues, I find myself more in the Bryan Preston camp than in Roger Simon’s. That’s ironic because, though I’m drawn to the logic of Bryan’s “Where do the surrenders end?” argument, the brute fact is: the political divide in the country has almost […]