◼ 11 attorneys general challenge legality of Obamacare fix – is nullification possible? - Allen West
Maybe this year is getting off to a good start. Eleven GOP attorneys general are willing to take on the legality of the executive directives in changing status – the so-called fixes to Obamacare. As reported by the Fiscal Times, the Attorneys General say the president is breaking the law because he is making changes without first going through Congress. The group sent a letter yesterday to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius regarding the constitutionality of Obama’s most recent executive action decreeing that insurance companies may continue to offer plans that he previously considered “junk plans” and were cancelled. The letter called the rule change “flatly illegal under federal constitutional and statutory law” and said “the illegal actions by this administration must stop.” Gee, ya think?
◼ It’s a really bad idea for the American people to give up the rule of law in exchange for government goodies. They’ve been doing it for a long time, but ObamaCare is a real gut-check moment for the Republic. There is simply no way to legally justify Barack Obama’s abuses of executive power to modify this twisted “law” on the fly. He has given several orders he simply does not have the legal authority to issue. - John Hayward/Human Events @Doc_o
It fell to eleven Republican Attorneys General to stand up for the rule of law, in letter to the most powerful (and hapless) bureaucrat on Earth...
◼ Led by Patrick Morrisey of West Virginia (no relation), the consortium of AGs protested the changes in a letter to Kathleen Sebelius: HHS does not have the statutory flexibility that it has arrogated to itself for these “fixes,” nor does it have the constitutional power to change statute. - Ed Morrissey/HotAir
◼ Eleven Attorneys General Blast Obamacare Fixes as 'Flatly Illegal' - IJ Review
◼ Re: Comments from the States of West Virginia, Alabama, Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Texas, and Virginia on legal and consumer privacy issues in HHS's proposed Affordable Care Act rule (CMS-9954—P) PDF
◼ OBAMACARE FOUL-UPS LEAD TO CHAOS AT HOSPITALS - John Hayward/Human Events @Doc_o
As expected, it’s chaos in the hospitals, as the disastrous system Barack Obama inflicted on America leaves medical staff uncertain whether patients have valid insurance.....
◼ AP - In California, employees of the state health exchange were still going through some 19,000 paper applications sent in the early days after Covered California launched on Oct. 1, spokesman Dana Howard said. He could not say how many were outstanding.And we’re only three days into this nightmare. Depending on how seriously one takes the Administration’s claims of 2.1 million “enrollees,” and the failure rate for information relayed from the ObamaCare exchanges to insurance providers, we could be looking at 700,000 to 1 million people in coverage limbo. Obviously, most of them haven’t tried seeing a doctor or filling a prescription… yet. A report at The Hill says everyone in the industry is bracing themselves for a “spike” of activity next week, which is when gale-force winds of wackiness will truly begin howling across the fruited plain. Wal-Mart and Walgreens are already offering to hand out a free month of prescriptions, with no upfront cost, to ObamaCare victims… er, customers… through the end of January....
The entire tracking system was “in a sort of chaos” Thursday as consumers tried to use or confirm their new insurance, said Kelly Fristoe, an insurance agent in Wichita Falls, Texas.
“I’ve got pharmacies that are calling in to verify benefits on these new plans that are getting incorrect information,” he said. “I have people that are calling to make their initial premium payment, and they’ve been on hold for maybe three or four hours at a time and then they get hung up on.”
◼ Obamacare signups only covering 10% of uninsured and mostly older, sicker people… - The Right Scoop
