Mandela: A Post-Script on an Inspirational Life

Security Remains a Top Concern Healthcare.gov website. 

The Week Just Past: Let’s Prioritize Jobs!

3 questions the Administration won't answer about Obamacare

Focus on Seniors: If You Like Your Health Plan You Can Keep It??

Rodney: “I’m Listening!”

 “Woe to Our Allies” – Worth Your Close Attention.

Mandela: A Post-Script on an Inspirational Life

Nelson Mandela, who rose from prisoner to President of South Africa by virtue of his inspiring courage and principled dignity, died yesterday at age 95.

Rodney paid tribute to Mandela’s “lifelong commitment to justice and human rights. He was a beacon of freedom for all and his legacy should serve as an example and an inspiration for all of us.  He consistently sought honesty and understanding and passes this life a true champion of peace.”

Security Remains a Top Concern Healthcare.gov website. 

Few decisions made by an individual are as personal and sensitive as their health care choices.  In this context, the Attorneys General of ten states sent a letter this week to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius outlining serious questions about the President’s new healthcare law. “Most troubling,” they wrote, are their concerns about the technology of the healthcare.gov website that puts its users’ intimate personal health information potentially at the finger-tips of hackers.

Read the letter here.

Recommended Reading/Viewing: Matthew Belvedereof CNBCreports “Fixed Obamacare site still not secure, says hacker.” 

The Week Just Past: Let’s Prioritize Jobs!

“I am hearing from many constituents about the ‘sticker shock’ that accompanies many of their new policies and the cancelation (800,000 in New Jersey alone) of their existing coverage.

“And then we learned at mid-week that the President’s healthcare.govenrolled just 29,000 Americans in coverage the first two days of December since the website was reportedly ‘fixed.’  This rate of ‘enrollment’ appears to fall far short of the Administration’s own targets.  That is important because the system needs to be able to handle not only previously uninsured Americans currently trying to sign up, but all the millions of Americans abandoned when their policies were cancelled by the President’s new health care law.

“But, enrollment aside, the new healthcare law continues to be a real drag on current employment and future job creation.  Current workers are seeing their hours cut. Hiring of part-timers is up and full-timers is down!

“As today’s unemployment numbers clearly display, our economy might be growing statistically, but the fact of the matter is that millions of people have simply given up and left the workforce, making this year’s overall unemployment rate look better.

“Congress and the President should be working together – as a top priority - on this front. Yet, the President this week seemed to be acknowledging that his ‘solution’ for economic growth is more of the same: more ‘stimulus’ spending, more government programs, and more government intervention in the private-sector.

“It should be clear that is not the answer.”

Rodney Frelinghuysen

Recommended Reading/Viewing: CNN’s Z. Byron Wolf reported this week on the “3 questions the Obama administration won't answer about Obamacare.”

1.   How many people are on the website?

2.   How many people are signing up?

3.   How broken is the “back end” of the process where people actually enroll?

These appear to be fairly basic questions and one has to wonder why the Obama Administration is not being forthcoming and accountable.  Learn more from Z. Byron Wolf’s report here.

Focus on Seniors: If You Like Your Health Plan You Can Keep It??

The answer to that question is “no” in the Individual Healthcare Market. It is also not so with Employer Sponsored Plans. And, it is not true for many seniors enrolled in the Medicare Advantage program because, under the President’s new healthcare 7.4 million older Americans could be dropped from Medicare Advantage.  

What is Medicare Advantage?

Medicare Part C, also known as Medicare Advantage (MA), provides private plan options to Medicare-eligible beneficiaries. Approximately 14.8 million individuals, 28 percent of all Medicare beneficiaries, are enrolled in Medicare Advantage plans, which include health maintenance organizations, preferred provider organizations, private-fee-for-service plans, and special needs plans. Enrollment in these MA plans has grown over the years from 1.3 million in 1985 to 14.8 million in 2013. Studies have identified the MA program as more effective than the traditional fee for service, particularly among those individuals with chronic conditions.

What is the Issue?

The President’s new healthcare law makes more than $300 billion in reductions to the MA program – a combination of direct cutbacks to the traditional fee-for-service program will also indirectly impact MA plans. Finally, the “new” health insurance tax is estimated to cost each MA beneficiary approximately $3,590 over ten years. While “the majority of cuts have not yet occurred, beginning in 2014 and 2015, 53 percent of the cuts will go into effect, which has the potential to impact beneficiaries.”

What Does this Mean?

Currently 14 million seniors and disabled Americans benefit from the MA program. However, the planned healthcare law cuts to the MA program, will “force insurers to scale back …benefits…or to withdraw their plans entirely from some markets.”  In fact, in 2014 many seniors are expected to lose their existing MA plan. A report issued by the Kaiser Family Foundation reveals that more than 526,000 beneficiaries will be forced to switch to another MA plan or return to traditional fee-for-service.

So more Medicare Advantage cuts are in store, which means fewer services and fewer doctors for seniors.

Rodney: “I’m Listening!”

Rodney held another in his ongoing series of Telephone Town Hall Meetings this week, calling thousands of residents in the Essex County portion of the 11^th Congressional District for an unscripted, unscreened conversation about issues of concern to them. While the predominant issue was the roll-out of the President’s new healthcare law and its effects on existing coverage for area residents, constituents also brought up law enforcement and environmental matters and engaged in a discussion on the ‘bipartisanship” and the “checks and balances” in the federal government.  

Rodney’s Teletown Hall Meetings in additional areas of his District will continue in the weeks ahead.  As he told residents this week: “I’m listening!”

Recommended Reading: Charles Krauthammer reflects in today’sWashington Post about the Obama Administration’s handling of three potential crises overseas: Ukraine’s retreat into the arms of Russia, the U.S. wooing of Iran and China’s unilateral expansion of its airspace over disputed islands and waters in the western Pacific.

Woe to U.S. allies

By: Charles Krauthammer

Three crises, one president, many bewildered friends.

The first crisis, barely noticed here, is Ukraine’s sudden turn away from Europe and back to the Russian embrace.

After years of negotiations for a major trading agreement with the European Union, Ukraine succumbed to characteristically blunt and brutal economic threats from Russia and abruptly walked away. Ukraine is instead considering joining the Moscow-centered Customs Union with Russia’s fellow dictatorships Belarus and Kazakhstan.

This is no trivial matter. Ukraine is not just the largest European country, it’s the linchpin for Vladimir Putin’s dream of a renewed imperial Russia, hegemonic in its neighborhood and rolling back the quarter-century advancement of the “Europe whole and free” bequeathed by America’s victory in the Cold War.

The U.S. response? Almost imperceptible. As with Iran’s ruthlessly crushed Green Revolution of 2009, the hundreds of thousands of protesters who’ve turned out to reverse this betrayal of Ukrainian independence have found no voice in Washington. Can’t this administration even rhetorically support those seeking a democratic future, as we did during Ukraine’s Orange Revolution of 2004?

A Post online headline explains: “With Russia in mind, U.S. takes cautious approach on Ukraine unrest.” We must not offend Putin. We must not jeopardize Obama’s precious “reset,” a farce that has yielded nothing but the well-earned distrust of allies such as Poland and the Czech Republic whom we wantonly undercut in a vain effort to appease Russia on missile defense.

Why not outbid Putin? We’re talking about a $10?billion to $15?billion package from Western economies with more than $30?trillion in GDP to alter the strategic balance between a free Europe and an aggressively authoritarian Russia — and prevent a barely solvent Russian kleptocracy living off oil, gas and vodka, from blackmailing its way to regional hegemony.

The second crisis is the Middle East — the collapse of confidence of U.S. allies as America romances Iran.

The Gulf Arabs are stunned at their double abandonment. In the nuclear negotiations with Iran, the U.S. has overthrown seven years of Security Council resolutions prohibiting uranium enrichment and effectively recognized Iran as a threshold nuclear state. This follows our near-abandonment of the Syrian revolution and de?facto recognition of both the Assad regime and Iran’s “Shiite Crescent” of client states stretching to the Mediterranean.

Equally dumbfounded are the Israelis, now trapped by an agreement designed less to stop the Iranian nuclear program than to prevent the Israeli Air Force from stopping the Iranian nuclear program.

Neither Arab nor Israeli can quite fathom Obama’s naivete in imagining some strategic condominium with a regime that defines its very purpose as overthrowing American power and expelling it from the region.

Better diplomacy than war, say Obama’s apologists, an adolescent response implying that all diplomacy is the same, as if a diplomacy of capitulation is no different from a diplomacy of pressure.

What to do? Apply pressure. Congress should immediately pass punishing new sanctions to be implemented exactly six months hence — when the current interim accord is supposed to end — if the Iranians have not lived up to the agreement and refuse to negotiate a final deal that fully liquidates their nuclear weapons program.

The third crisis is unfolding over the East China Sea, where, in open challenge to Obama’s “pivot to Asia,” China has brazenly declared a huge expansion of its airspace into waters claimed by Japan and South Korea.

Obama’s first response — sending B-52s through that airspace without acknowledging the Chinese — was quick and firm. Japan and South Korea followed suit. But when Japan then told its civilian carriers not to comply with Chinese demands for identification, the State Department (and FAA) told U.S. air carriers to submit.

Which, of course, left the Japanese hanging. It got worse. During Vice President Biden’s visit to China, the administration buckled. Rather than insisting on a withdrawal of China’s outrageous claim, we began urging mere nonenforcement.

Again leaving our friends stunned. They need an ally, not an intermediary. Here is the U.S. again going over the heads of allies to accommodate a common adversary. We should be declaring the Chinese claim null and void, ordering our commercial airlines to join Japan in acting accordingly, and supplying them with joint military escorts if necessary.

This would not be an exercise in belligerence but a demonstration that if other countries unilaterally overturn the status quo, they will meet a firm, united, multilateral response from the West.

Led by us. From in front.

No one’s asking for a JFK-like commitment to “bear any burden” to “assure the...success of liberty.” Or a Reaganesque tearing down of walls. Or even a Clintonian assertion of America as the indispensable nation. America’s allies are seeking simply a reconsideration of the policy of retreat that marks this administration’s response to red-line challenges all over the world — and leaves them naked.