In an announcement late Tuesday from the Treasury Department, the administration said it has heard requests from business groups for additional time to comply and will grant another year.

The health law requires companies with 50 or more workers to offer affordable coverage to their employees or face potentially large fines if just one worker ends up getting taxpayer-subsidized insurance.

Continue Reading...

O'Reilly got particularly angry when talking with Fox News analyst Juan Williams, calling Chief Justice John Roberts' opinion that the backers of Proposition 8 had no standing to appeal the case "just absurd."

Williams argued that in cases like Prop 8 and Obamacare, Roberts "made a decision based on what he thought was in the political best interest of the Court."

"That's not his job!" O'Reilly exploded. "That's not his job, Juan!"

Here's the video. The interview with Williams begins at around 4:25:

Continue Reading...

Kaiser Health's story also notes that during the media push for Massachusetts' similar healthcare law, "the campaign was advertised during Red Sox games at Fenway Park. That marketing is widely credited with helping build public acceptance." Once again in the healthcare field, the federal government is just following Mitt Romney's lead.

Continue Reading...

During and immediately after the election many employers in the low-income service sector warned about dire effects the Affordable Care Act would have on employment and prices. The jerry-rigged, patchwork healthcare reform Obamacare tries to mend America’s long-standing coverage gaps with a variety of tools, including expanding Medicaid, establishing state-based exchanges supported by public assistance, and granting small businesses (25 or fewer employees) subsidies to provide insurance for their employees. But larger businesses (50 employees or more) are incentivized to provide coverage with a stick: Pay a $2,000 fine per employee who works more than 30 hours and lacks insurance.

Continue Reading...

The science on whether fetuses can feel pain (let alone masturbate) is pretty dubious, which is something one might expect the congressman, Texas Rep. Michael Burgess, to know, considering the fact that he's an OB-GYN and a proud member of the GOP Doctors Caucus. But a look at the caucus's roster reveals he has plenty of company from other lawmakers with controversial thoughts on science and women's health.

Continue Reading...

From Kaiser:

Although nearly a quarter of Americans say they don’t know their view on the “health reform law”, the public is more opinionated when asked about “Obamacare”: the share offering no opinion drops to 11 percent, and the shares expressing both favorable and unfavorable views of the law rise when this term is used. Democrats show the biggest change in favorability with the alternate question wording – 73 percent say they have a favorable opinion of “Obamacare” compared to 58 percent who say the same for the “health reform law.”

Overall, 35 percent of the public said they have favorable view of the "health reform law" and 42 percent had a favorable view of "Obamacare." The inverse had the same effect, though, with 43 percent saying they have an unfavorable view of the "health reform law" and 47 percent saying they have an unfavorable opinion of "Obamacare."

Continue Reading...

There has been a lot of coverage about the potential for fast food chains and other employers to cut the hours of some of their employees to under 30 a week in order to avoid having to offer them health coverage. To the extent that employers do cut back hours, it will accelerate a long-trend toward part-time low wage work; part-timers increased from 17 percent to 22 percent of the workforce just from 2007 to 2011.

Continue Reading...

"Take a look at what's going on with the HHS mandate," Ryan told the Faith and Freedom Coalition's Road to the Majority Conference this morning. "Obamacare says that if you believe in the social teaching of your church, if you disagree with abortifacients -- with abortion inducing drugs -- it doesn't matter. You, if you're a church or a charity or a hospital, you have to buy health insurance that offers your employees these things that are in contradiction to your beliefs. This is what the federal government is demanding."

Last year, this issue exploded on the right when the Department of Health and Human Services released draft guidelines that would require most employers to provide health insurance that covers birth control without co-pays. But the rules made specific exemptions for religious employers like churches, and under pressure from the Catholic Church and others, the administration reviewed the rules and added exceptions to allay concerns.

Continue Reading...

The governor made a name for herself on Fox News and at national gatherings of conservatives like CPAC as a kind of uber-Tea Partyer, who eats scorpions for breakfast, wags her finger in the president's face at lunchtime, signs strict anti-immigration bills into law in the afternoon, and gives the Tea Party flag the same legal protections as the Star-Spangled Banner by bedtime.

Continue Reading...

It’s a nice sentiment. It’s also wrong. No politician in California is more invested than Brown in taking a very specific position – demanding restraint in allocating post-recession surpluses to attend to human needs. This pro-austerity pose, a defining characteristic of Brown’s entire political career, now threatens the pace of recovery in the nation’s largest state, the perception of the federal healthcare overhaul, and the lives of hundreds of thousands of Californians.

Continue Reading...

All of this is to say, I empathize with the urge to duck a fight. They’re ugly things, fights. But despite what you’ve heard, there’s the personal and then there’s the political, and they’re not always one in the same. A conflict-averse person is OK; a conflict-averse politics is not.

Take Obamacare, for example. With its full implementation inching ever closer to the here and now, there’s a rising chorus of anxiety on the Left, and glee on the right, over what’s looking like a rocky transition. Time will tell, of course, but if these fears prove justified, the Democrats’ recurrent fear of conflict will be in large part to blame.

Continue Reading...

Seizing on the Benghazi tragedy, IRS probe, and whatever else they can get their claws into, today’s Republicans on Capitol Hill and the outraged echo chamber at Fox News are vultures of the breed Sam P. Jones saw in the political world of his day. The fresh meat they have no taste for is what we might call productive reform legislation, which their diversionary tactics prevent from being put front and center. The vultures feed instead on rotten issues like abortion (how many babies did Planned Parenthood kill today?) or dismantling Obamacare before it can do good, put government in a positive light, and lead to further reform of a system that is stacked in favor of private insurance companies.

Continue Reading...

From CNN:

The survey indicates that 35% oppose the health care law because it's too liberal, with 16% saying they oppose the measure because it isn't liberal enough.

The wide partisan divide over the law remains. Nearly three quarters of Democrats say they favor the Affordable Care Act. That number drops to 16% among Republicans.

Continue Reading...

It was a very self-congratulatory affair, as each senator congratulated every other senator for their great legislative skill, their deeply held principles and their impressive civility. The markup deliberations were "courageous," Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said, in reference to a bunch of people, mostly old dudes, carefully deciding exactly how awful they had to make an immigration bill before it could pass a Congress full of bigots, cynical fake-bigots and wingnuts. Even Ted Cruz was sort of civil as he hectored the committee for not passing his amendments, most of which were designed to ruin the bill. Everyone who opposes the bill, and those proposed amendments designed to sink it, had to say that they deeply wanted immigration reform to happen, it's just that they defined reform as "no citizenship plus a bigger fence." (Also everyone referred to the bill's authors as the "group of eight" and not a "gang.")

Continue Reading...

“I don’t know what the issues will be next year. If I were predicting what’s likely to be the biggest issue in the 2014 election, I think it would be Obamacare,” he said on Meet The Press, the Washington Post reports. “I think it’s coming back big-time.”

Continue Reading...

Former Justice Sandra Day O'Connor recently expressed regret that the court had taken up the case at all, and Stevens said he was "pleased to hear" about O'Connor's shift. The liberal Stevens wrote the dissent in that case.

Continue Reading...

It began with tweets by Republicans:

[embedtweet id="335116680499974144"]

[embedtweet id="335097469962682368"]

[embedtweet id="335115056721317888"]

[embedtweet id="335118484482695168"]

[embedtweet id="335121258423386112"]

[embedtweet id="335120630779359232"]

But then the White House started trolling them:

[embedtweet id="335104215863132160"]

The hashtag, which began trending, also inspired some political pundits to get in on the joke:

[embedtweet id="335118202113761280"]

[embedtweet id="335107475634278401"]

[embedtweet id="335099983093178368"]

[embedtweet id="335098244176674816"]

But even ultra-conservative Republican Rep. Steve Stockman knew where to draw the line:

[embedtweet id="335120430815932416"]

Continue Reading...

Obama’s popularity seems destined to slide downhill as his second term unfolds, even if polls taken just before this latest political moment show that Obama’s core supporters are still with him. Looking beyond this week’s accusatory headlines, there are a handful of single issues that will resonate among key Democratic constituencies and big-picture economic issues that seem destined to push Obama’a ratings down. He may not end his presidency in the low 20s like George W. Bush. But it’s not a stretch to say that Obama’s 51 percent approval ratings last week may be the best that he will see this term.

Continue Reading...

This time around, House Republicans are fueled by the IRS scandal, because of the agency's role in distributing funds from the law. The Washington Post reports:

Continue Reading...

The president will specifically target women and young people, groups that backed him overwhelmingly during his presidential campaigns. During a Mother's Day-themed event at the White House on Friday, Obama will promote the benefits of the law for women, including free cancer screenings and contraceptives, and ask moms to urge their uninsured adult children to sign up for the health insurance "exchanges" that open this fall.

The exchanges are the centerpiece of the landmark overhaul of the nation's health insurance system. Three years after it became law, the measure widely known as "Obamacare" remains controversial, with GOP lawmakers resolving anew to overturn it and many Americans unsure how they'll be affected.

White House advisers acknowledge they struggled in explaining the complex law to the public when it passed in 2010. Now, with the final components being implemented, Obama allies see a fresh opportunity to sell the American people on the merits of measures that will be central to the president's legacy.

Continue Reading...