Do you want Fries with your McBribe?

indyfromaz|

I doubt the Ministry of Truth will be too happy to report this story.
Remember during the Health Care Debate this was ll about the poor, low wage person who had no health insurance and that the evil company the worked for had to be forced by the employer mandate to be “fair”??

“It will provide more security and stability to those who have health insurance. It will provide insurance to those who don’t. And it will lower the cost of health care for our families, our businesses, and our government”-President Barack Obama
Remember the threats from HHS Secretary Kathleen Sibelius to insurers to not blame ObamaCare for Rate increases?

Sept 30th, Wall Street Journal: McDonald’s Corp. has warned federal regulators that it could drop its health insurance plan for nearly 30,000 hourly restaurant workers unless regulators waive a new requirement of the U.S. health overhaul.
Last week, a senior McDonald’s official informed the Department of Health and Human Services that the restaurant chain’s insurer won’t meet a 2011 requirement to spend at least 80% to 85% of its premium revenue on medical care.
McDonald’s and trade groups say the percentage, called a medical loss ratio, is unrealistic for mini-med plans because of high administrative costs owing to frequent worker turnover, combined with relatively low spending on claims.
Democrats who drafted the health law wanted the requirement to prevent insurers from spending too much on executive salaries, marketing and other costs that they said don’t directly help patients. (Feel good economics )
McDonald’s move is the latest indication of possible unintended consequences from the health overhaul. Dozens of companies have taken charges against earnings—totaling more than $1 billion—over a tax change in prescription-drug benefits for retirees.
So the evil corporate exploiter of low income people had insurance for it’s workers but said they were thinking of dropping it because ObamaCare was going to be too expensive.
The Obama Administration immediately jumped on it : The White House pushed back hard with U.S. Department of Health and Human Services spokeswoman Jessica Santillo claiming: “This story is wrong. The new law provides significant flexibility to maintain coverage for workers.”
Then was a rumor of a back room deal. The Obama Administration denied it.
Well, guess what…
The federal government has granted 30 companies and organizations one-year waivers to exempt them from one of the newly-implemented health care reforms.
Guess who’s one of them?  McDonalds. Gee, that only took a week!!
And it’s a one Year waiver, guess what next year is– Obama’s Re-Election campaign.
Anyone see more waivers and extension coming??
I guess that was “fair”. Some workers are now more “fair” than others.
And after all, it was such a great plan to begin with.
Waiver list: http://www.hhs.gov/ociio/regulations/patient/appapps.html
The biggest single waiver, for 351,000 people, was for the United Federation of Teachers Welfare Fund, a New York union providing coverage for city teachers.
Gee, I thought they were Obama’s Apparatchiks. I guess they didn’t get their bailout money (or maybe they did but turned it around and feed the Democrats Re-election campaigns instead) .
So Obama is kissing up to his Union apparatchiks AGAIN!
At least one was a Health Insurance Company: CIGNA.
The irony I’m sure is lost on the Ministry of Truth.
So how many more waivers are to come? Leaving guess who, to hold the bag?
YOU!!
Rejoice. That’s your Hope & Change for you. Aren’t you happy?
But what’s funnier is all that nashing of teeth and all that rhethoric for nearly two years about non-one losing coverages…
Without the waivers, companies would have had to provide a minimum of $750,000 in coverage next year, increasing to $1.25 million in 2012, $2 million in 2013, and unlimited coverage in 2014.
“The big political issue here is the president promised no one would lose the coverage they’ve got,” Robert Laszewski, chief executive officer of consulting company Health Policy and Strategy Associates, said by telephone. “Here we are a month before the election, and these companies represent 1 million people who would lose the coverage they’ve got.”(Bloomberg)
And the Spin:
“The waivers are about insuring people and protecting the coverage they have until there are better options available to them in 2014,” White House spokesperson Robert Gibbs said today.
Meaning, we’ll cover we’ll exempt you from ObamaCare until 2014 when you’ll drop them anyhow and then the taxpayers will have to pay for them anyhow through the government run health care. Isn’t that peachy!
The bulk of the new health care reforms will go into effect in 2014. At that point, some large employers that drop coverage for their workers will be subject to a fee. Consumers will also have the option of using new state-based health care exchanges to access the individual health care market.
By 2014, insurers will be completely barred from limiting annual benefits. The new regulations are being phased in until then: companies without waivers will have to provide a minimum of $750,000 in coverage next year, $1.25 million in coverage in 2012, and $2 million in 2013.
“HHS is to committed strengthening employer-based coverage for employees and retirees, while building a bridge to a new competitive marketplace in 2014,” HHS spokesperson Jessica Santillo said.
The waiver granted to the United Federation of Teachers Welfare Fund will have the biggest impact in terms of numbers, applying to 351,000 enrollees of the Fund’s supplemental insurance plan. McDonald’s insurance carrier, BCS Insurance, received a waiver to cover 115,000 enrollees.
Gibbs said today that the White House does not perceive the need to grant the waivers as a flaw of the new health care reforms.
“This is about implementing a bill correctly,” he said, to ensure that “as reform ramps up, we protect consumers and don’t put them at the mercy of health insurance companies.”
Gee, I thought that was what ObamaCare was supposed to do right out of the gate, not in 2014.
Oh, that’s right, you don’t want the young, poor, future socialist voters to get mad at you right now. Not to mention your Union apparatchiks.
So what if it’s a bribe. So what if it’s no longer “universal” and for “everyone”.
So now that  the “fair” playing field and “everyone” is covered is out the window.
You will be stuck with the check.
Doesn’t that just make you want to vote for the Democrats!

Sleep Tight. Don’t let the IRS bite.

The Politics of Food

As an amateur home cook and a junkie for The Food Network and other Food Shows I take food seriously.
But not like our President and his Food Nazis.
And no, I don’t mean “Seinfeld”.
This is not a comedy.
This is your usual socialist tragedy.
Busy bodies with a moral superiority complex.

You may laugh about the White House assistant chef being appointed “Senior Policy Adviser.” You’ll stop laughing when you realize that those in power really do want to tell you what to eat.
You just can’t cook these things up. The 29-year-old Chicago chef that the Obama family for years paid to be their private cook, Sam Kass, was quietly promoted last month from his job as assistant chef at the White House residence and “food initiative coordinator” to the position of “senior policy adviser for healthy food initiatives.”
The long-suffering American people don’t get to know if an increase in salary is involved, because Kass is on the residence staff rather than the West Wing’s.
But we should know how much the taxpayers are paying this “bald, intense young man” who, according to the New York Times, is “part chef and part policy wonk” and is “reinventing the role of official gastronome in the Executive Mansion.”
He plays golf with the president at Martha’s Vineyard, attends the administration’s child-health briefings, and quizzes senior White House staff about policy.
“Do we have a toxicologist who specializes in colony collapse disorder?” Kass once asked in an e-mail to the Agriculture Department, according to the New York Times story.
Add the fact that Kass isn’t even a formally trained chef and you really start to wonder what’s going on here.
The law lets the president appoint anyone he wants as “senior policy adviser.” But if he wants to be the first president to employ a cook/food czar, he should make that plain to the public — and publish the man’s taxpayer-funded salary, as is the case with other White House policy advisers.
Of course, it all begs the question: Why on earth do the American people need a government-paid “food initiative coordinator”? This administration has been attempting to elevate nutrition to the level of a civil rights issue.
How much harassment is enough in regard to food? New York City has opened the door for every local government to ban trans fats. Then there are the ubiquitous nutrition labels on every food item in supermarkets and fast-food restaurants.
The food nannies are everywhere. Now in the White House, too.
If President Obama really wants to appoint a butcher, baker or candlestick maker to a top White House policy job, we humbly propose a better suggestion: Joe the Plumber. (IBD)
Because it’s such a dire situation, she has convinced her husband’s administration to spend $400 million a year to bring “healthy foods” to low-income neighborhoods and $10 billion to revise a decades-old federal measure that already feeds tens of millions of poor children at school for free.
This culinary revolution no doubt requires a trusted senior policy adviser—like Kass—who is an expert in healthy cuisine. The First Lady refers to her cook as a “partner in crime” and says it’s “just pretty powerful” to see what started out as talk in her South Side Chicago kitchen turn into a major initiative that “hopefully will change the way we think as a country.”
Makes you wonder what Kass, who also doubles as a White House chef, has been putting in the Obama’s food all these years. Incidentally, the “most transparent administration” in history doesn’t want Americans to know how much the famous family cook earns. Although he’s an important administration wonk, Kass’s salary is excluded in the Annual Report to Congress on White House Staff because he’s considered “residence staff” and those salaries don’t need to be disclosed. (Judicial Watch)


Even the private chef of the President is a political hack, for god’s sake!
Yet more “czars” from the “I’m not a socialist!” President.


In a statement released on June 22, the liberal Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) announced it was filing a lawsuit against McDonald’s for marketing toys with their signature Happy Meals. The statement’s creepy hyperbole nearly implied that Ronald McDonald should be featured on an episode of “To Catch a Predator:”

“’McDonald’s is the stranger in the playground handing out candy to children,” said CSPI litigation director Stephen Gardner.
And the Liberal Media just easts it up.
“But would children still be happy with their meal without the joy of a new toy? That’ll be up to kids, and possibly a judge,” chided NBC’s Erika Edwards.
“It’s entirely appropriate and not at all intrusive for city government to take steps to discourage the sale of sugary sodas on city property.”–San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom after he “regulated” the sale of non-diet drinks in city vending machines.

“On its own, popcorn is a low-fat, low-cal, whole grain food,” said Good Morning America’s consumer correspondent Elizabeth Leamy, “but the Center (for Science in The Public Interest) says that the way some movie theaters prepare it, it’s more like eating a rack of ribs with a scoop of ice cream on top.”
UK Daily Mail: Teachers have used ‘Big Brother’ tactics to spy on children’s lunchboxes, it has been revealed. They secretly photographed pupils’ packed lunches over six months and analysed the contents.
Staff awarded marks to the food and then showed their findings to outraged parents, offering them advice on how to improve nutrition.
Education bosses have now put a stop to the scheme in Gloucestershire after discovering the extent of the surveillance.
Nineteen primary schools have been using the ‘packed lunch toolkit’, which was devised by Gloucestershire county council and NHS Gloucestershire.
Contents were taken out of a random sample of lunchboxes and then photographs taken.
Staff rated the contents against set nutritional standards. They looked for high fat, salt and sugary foods as well as fruit and vegetables.
NHS= National Health Service. HHS= Health and Human Services.
Brothers from a different mother?
But Yvette Gayle, whose nine-year-old daughter Renee Dougan attends the school, said she didn’t mind.
‘It might encourage parents to pack a healthier lunch for their kids anyway,’ she said.
Cheryl Ridler, an education co-ordinator at the school, said the scheme has led to ‘a definite improvement in the quality of food’ brought in.
‘All the parents were very positive about it and we did it in a very nice and careful way, and in no way demanding and intrusive,’ she added.
Big Brother smiles upon you Citizen. Rejoice.


Maybe we could have a reality show, showing a Nutritional Intervention or maybe an actual Food Police show, showcasing the worst slovenly, offensive offenders against the public good.
Unfortunately, it is their business, because too many of us have insisted on treating healthcare services as an entitlement rather than a commodity. As a result, we’ve implicitly given government the permission to interfere with anything having to do with “public health,” including our food choices. And for the most part, many people support these dumb food bans because they imagine it’s doing some kind of good. I find it hard to believe that could be true. As the failed war on drugs has taught us, government regulation is no match for the forces of supply and demand.(411mania.com)

And where have we heard of Health Care as an entitlement?
The Left
Who are the Food Police?
The Left.
Funny how that worked out.

And with Comedy comes Tragedy.
And her it is folks.
The reason why the Food Police are coming to get you.
You’re too Fat!!!, and that’s a negative impact on ObamaCare.
So we can’t have that.
If the government gets to decide who lives and who dies, they get to decide what you eat as well.
It’s for your own good, after all.
Rejoice.


Obesity Rating for Every American Must Be Included in Stimulus-Mandated Electronic Health Records, Says HHS

(CNSNews.com) – New federal regulations issued this week stipulate that the electronic health records–that all Americans are supposed to have by 2014 under the terms of the stimulus law that President Barack Obama signed last year–must record not only the traditional measures of height and weight, but also the Body Mass Index: a measure of obesity. The obesity-rating regulation states that every American’s electronic health record must: “Calculate body mass index. Automatically calculate and display body mass index (BMI) based on a patient’s height and weight.”
The law also requires that these electronic health records be available–with appropriate security measures–on a national exchange.
The new regulations are one of the first steps towards the government’s goal of universal adoption of electronic health records (EHRs) by 2014, as outlined in the 2009 economic stimulus law.  Specifically, the regulations issued on Tuesday by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Dr. David Blumenthal, the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, define the “meaningful use” of electronic records. Under the stimulus law, health care providers–including doctors and hospitals–must establish “meaningful use” of EHRs by 2014 in order to qualify for federal subsidies. After that, they will be subjected to penalties in the form of diminished Medicare and Medicaid payments for not establishing “meaningful use” of EHRs.
Section 3001 of the stimulus law says: “The National Coordinator shall, in consultation with other appropriate Federal agencies (including the National Institute of Standards and Technology), update the Federal Health IT Strategic Plan (developed as of June 3, 2008) to include specific objectives, milestones, and metrics with respect to the following: (i) The electronic exchange and use of health information and the enterprise integration of such information.‘‘(ii) The utilization of an electronic health record for each person in the United States by 2014.”
Under this mandate in the stimulus law, Secretary Sebelius issued a regulation–developed by Dr. Blumenthal–that requires that all EHRs keep track of a person’s Body Mass Index (BMI) score. Body Mass Index is a ratio between a person’s weight and height, and is used to determine whether or not someone is overweight or obese. It is the preferred method of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for measuring obesity.
Michelle Obama has made dealing with the problem of childhood obesity the main theme of her term as First Lady.

According to the CDC,  “BMI provides a reliable indicator of body fatness for most people and is used to screen for weight categories that may lead to health problems.”
A person’s BMI score is used as a tool to screen for obesity or excessive body fat that could lead to other health problems. While it does not actually measure body fat directly, according to CDC, the BMI scores generally correlate with a person’s body fat percentage.
The new regulations also stipulate that the new electronic records be capable of sending public health data to state and federal health agencies such as HHS and CDC. The CDC, which calls American society “obesogenic” – meaning that American society itself promotes obesity – collects BMI scores from state health agencies every year to monitor obesity nationwide.
“Electronically record, retrieve, and transmit syndrome based public health surveillance information to public health agencies,” the regulations read.
With the spread of electronic health records, the CDC apparently will be able to collect such data more efficiently and with greater accuracy because the electronic record keeping systems can send the data automatically, eliminating the need for government – both state and federal – to keep, send, and process physical records.

So how long until the BMI Tax or mandatory “health education”??
So you want that Big Mac, well, there’s a 20%  surcharge Tax and we have to record how many of them you have and when you have reached your limit you will not be allowed to eat it anymore until such time as the National Coordinator’s guidelines for your better health says so.
How far off is that?
Not far enough for my tastes.
But that’s why I was so vehemently against the whole thing to begin with.
But what do I know, I’m just a “racist” “teabagger” “idiot” who wants what’s bad for you, at least according to the Left and it’s Media pit bulls.
Have that Big Mac now, because in a few years it will be banned or so heavily regulated and taxed it will cost you $20 for just one and it will have to be registered with the HHS.
And if your BMI says you can’t have it, well, the Food Police will coming knocking on your door to “educate” you Citizen.
Just you wait and see.
Big Momma Michelle is watching you…