CareSource has named a new person to head its growing operations in Kentucky. The Dayton-based company has named Steve Swart executive director of its Kentucky operations. He was brought aboard the company earlier this year as executive director of its West Virginia operations, where the company is looking to set up a new office as it begins offering health insurance on that state's health insurance marketplace. He will remain head of the company's West Virginia operations, as well. CareSource… Reported by bizjournals 5 hours ago.

DUBLIN--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Research and Markets has announced the addition of the "Personal Accident and Health Insurance Policies and Premiums in the United States to 2019: Market Databook" report to their offering. The "Personal Accident and Health Insurance Policies and Premiums in the United States to 2019: Market Databook" contains detailed historic and forecast data covering policies and premiums in the personal accident and health insurance industry in the United States . This databook pro Reported by Business Wire 4 hours ago.

Enacted in 2008 in response to concerns about potential abuses of the human genome full sequence (completed in 2003), the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA) may the least generally known federal civil rights legislation. This comment provides a brief and incomplete educational overview of GINA. Always contact an experienced attorney in all specific discrimination situations.

GINA (42 U.S.C. Sec. 2000ff) was entitled "An Act to prohibit discrimination on the basis of genetic information with respect to health insurance and employment." However, the legislation prohibits acquiring genetic information as well as utilizing it to discriminate. A 1998 Ninth Circuit federal court decision had found employment discrimination, and a potential privacy violation, when an employer engaged in non-consensual genetic testing based upon the employees' gender and race (Bloodsaw v. Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory). The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) first sued and reached a settlement in 2002 when an employer, Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad, without employee consent, engaged in genetic testing for a rare genetic condition that produces carpal tunnel syndrome as well as screening for diabetes and alcoholism. What was legally uncertain after these cases was whether or not employee consent would validate genetic testing.

GINA became effective in November 2009. The EEOC, in general overview, issued implementing regulations applicable in 2011 and amended record keeping standards in 2012. In the neighborhood of 1,200 GINA claims have been administratively resolved by the EEOC, the majority favorably for the employer. The EEOC has a significant amount of guidance information on its Website.

The overall GINA coverage and exclusions reads much like that related to the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964: 15 or more employees, etc. Health care employers who treat their employees internally must prevent the employee's medical information from being viewed by employment supervisors. Additionally, an employer designating outside providers for physicals or employee medical matters is responsible for their GINA violations. However, a number of court decisions indicate that liability for GINA violations does not extend to individual employees since the statute references employers.

GINA specifically defines what constitutes "genetic" information and a "genetic test." Broadly, GINA protections extend beyond the individual employee to her or his family members, up to a fourth-degree relative according to EEOC regulations. Rather technical distinctions are made between genetic and non-genetic information. Litigation is beginning to occur with somewhat conflicting court decisions concerning what information is or is not covered by GINA.

Typically to the extent that an employer has been appropriately complying with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) record-keeping and confidentiality provisions, the employer will also be in GINA compliance. Allowable HIPPA actions are still lawful, even with the GINA regulations. Of course, consult an experienced attorney concerning all GINA issues. Require a written request, even from the employee, prior to releasing GINA information. It is noteworthy that the ADA considers manifested (currently operative) disabling conditions while GINA considers genetic information that may not have resulted in any manifest conditions.

Much like Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, GINA addresses adverse treatment in hiring, discharging, or otherwise discriminating in employment matters based upon genetic information. However, disparate impact claims, seemingly neutral practices that have a disproportionate impact on a protected group, are not included in GINA. Retaliation against an employee who asserts GINA rights is prohibited. Consequently, it is possible that even an ultimately dismissed employee GINA claim could nevertheless give rise to a retaliation action. As is true in all retaliation situations, one must undertake a cautious response to the initial employee assertion.

GINA states that an employer cannot "request, require, or purchase genetic information with respect to an employee or a family member of the employee." A "willful" state of mind to acquire the information is not required under EEOC regulations. Note that family medical history is "genetic information" and the request by an outsourced provider may trigger an employer's liability. Specified "inadvertent" acquisitions of information are not penalized. Nevertheless, even this information cannot be used as the basis of an adverse employment action.

An employee asserting a GINA violation must timely notify the EEOC with a specific reference to GINA, apart from an ADA notice. The time limit to file a charge is 180 days after the discriminatory event; however, state law may allow a longer time. Potential monetary damages for GINA violations are those established by Section 1981a of the Civil Rights Act (42 U.S.C. Sec. 2000ff-6). These are compensatory damages and punitive damages on a sliding scale based upon the size of the employer. Other relief, such as reinstatement that may be with or without back pay, is available. Costs and fees of the legal action are recoverable but not if a lawsuit is unreasonable or frivolous.

A controversial and unsettled GINA issue involves employers' wellness programs that offer a financial incentive or penalty. Is the wellness program essentially mandatory, given the financial considerations associated with participation? If the program is mandatory, requesting assessment information triggers ADA and GINA protections. The EEOC in late 2015 proposed some regulations concerning this issue. Congressional action to clarify the question is possible. Another developing issue involves forensic testing in the workplace to determine the identity of employee wrongdoers. Likewise, Congress should clarify what investigative behaviors are permissible.

GINA does not apply to several important insurance activities: disability, extended care, or life insurance. There is a mixture of state statutes concerning the use of genetic information in these situations. California includes genetic information as a protected category (like race) in its state civil rights act. Federal action in the foreseeable future seems unlikely. Open legal questions involve the potential for fraud by an applicant for insurance who fails to disclose known material (significant) genetic information and the ability of an insurance carrier to cancel a policy based upon after-acquired genetic information.

While a recent LexisNexis search listed approximately 150 judicial decisions containing the phrase "Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act," the specific situational applications of GINA are still unfolding. Consequently, an employer might appropriately error on the side of caution.

This comment provides a brief and incomplete educational overview of a complex topic and is not intended to provide legal advice. Always consult an experienced attorney in all specific discrimination situations.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 3 hours ago.

MINNETONKA, Minn.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Medica today announced it will bring new competition to the health insurance market for individuals and family members who are Kansas residents under the age of 65. Reported by Business Wire 3 hours ago.

U.S. District Judge Rosemary Collyer ruled Thursday that the Obama administration is illegally spending billions of dollars to reimburse health insurance companies for offering lowered rates for poor people. The state points to a November 2013 decision by President Barack Obama to allow insurance companies to offer people another year of coverage under their existing plans even if those plans didn't meet the requirements set out in the health care overhaul. West Virginia officials said they too support allowing people to keep their health plan, but object that Obama took action without seeking congressional action or inviting comment before any changes took effect. Reported by SeattlePI.com 3 hours ago.

NEW YORK (AP) — Small business owners say it's time the presidential candidates provide concrete details on how they'll tackle key issues including taxes, health care costs and government regulations. Trump, for example, says he'd ask Congress to immediately repeal the health care law that requires companies with at least 50 workers to offer them health insurance. Bloem, the FreeLogoServices.com owner, hopes to learn candidates' proposals for reducing taxes on the sale of a company, and their plans to encourage small business innovation through more government contracts. Brett Randle, CEO of Soulman's Bar-B-Que, a chain of 14 restaurants in the Dallas area, is interested in how the candidates would ease the burden of government regulations, including health care. In 2016, small business concerns are likely to get more attention when it's certain who the Democratic nominee is, says Marc Meredith, a professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania. Small businesses include companies that have anywhere from zero to several hundred employees, and businesses as varied as dry cleaners, tech startups, doctor's offices and franchise restaurants. While many restaurant owners and retailers want to slow the pace at which minimum wages are rising in their cities and states, others say putting more money in workers' paychecks will give them more spending money, something that's good for businesses in general. Reported by SeattlePI.com 3 hours ago.

About a month after UnitedHealth Group Inc. said it was going to stop offering individual health insurance plans in Missouri and Kansas, including those offered through the federal health insurance marketplace, two more health insurance companies may be participating in the marketplace in Kansas. Kansas Insurance Commissioner Ken Selzer announced Thursday that filings with the Kansas Insurance Department show that two carriers will join the marketplace: nonprofit Minnesota-based Medica and Illinois-based… Reported by bizjournals 2 hours ago.

A federal judge ruled the Obama administration doesn’t have the authority to subsidize health insurance companies that offer cost reductions to individuals who purchase plans through the Affordable Care Act’s exchanges. Even though these payments to insurance companies were authorized by the ACA, Congress did not appropriate funds for this purpose. As a result, “no public money can be spent,” U.S. District Court Judge Rosemary Collyer ruled. House Republicans filed the lawsuit challenging… Reported by bizjournals 1 hour ago.

California's health insurance exchange estimates that its Obamacare premiums may rise 8% on average next year, which would end two consecutive years of more modest 4% increases. Reported by CNNMoney 1 hour ago.

Local treatment services seeing a rise in teens with head lice; doctors suggest social media photos may be the cause

Miami, Florida (PRWEB) May 13, 2016

As ABC Local 10 news reported recently, head lice, the common childhood condition, is now taking up residence in an older population: teens.

This is thought to be the result of what a Wisconsin pediatrician has called, “social media lice.” As kids pose for smartphone photos and videos, they’re bringing their heads into contact as they try to get the perfect shot. And in that period of contact, head lice are transferring from one head to another.

Said Arie Harel, owner and operator of Lice Troopers, the professional, all-natural lice removal service in Miami, “We’re definitely seeing a shift in the average age of our clients. While we were commonly treating elementary-aged children, significantly more teens and even college students are coming in for treatment. And yes, we think the head-to-head contact that occurs when kids are snapping selfies has a lot to do with it.”

Further complicating the issue is the rise of “super lice,” bugs and nits that have become resistant to standard drugstore treatments and even prescription shampoos. Parents are finding that even after several treatments, the lice continue to pass back and forth.

For this reason, professional services like Lice Troopers rely on a chemical-free combing method to effectively remove the lice from teens’ hair, which is often much longer and thicker than the hair of younger children. Desperate parents, willing to do anything to get rid of the lice as soon as possible, find the cost to be worth it.

Lice Troopers reminds parents and teens that the best way to avoid lice is to maintain your distance and to keep personal items personal. Lice spread via head-to-head contact and through the sharing of personal belongings. That includes lying on the same pillows, sharing hats and using the same towels. And it also includes the head-to-head contact that happens during selfies.

“We’re not going to keep kids and teens from taking the photos and videos,” said Harel. “We’re just hoping we can convince them to put a little distance between their heads.”

Lice Troopers is the all-natural, guaranteed Head Lice Removal Service™ that manually removes the head louse parasite safely and discreetly in child-friendly salon settings, or other chosen location. Providing safe solutions for frantic families, the Lice Troopers team has successfully treated thousands of families nationwide, with services widely recommended by pediatricians and reimbursed by many major health insurance carriers, flexible spending accounts and health savings accounts. Reported by PRWeb 15 hours ago.

As the federal government has decreased its spending over the past few years, the public sector has not contributed much, if anything, to GDP and the US economy's growth.

There is one implemented policy, however, that appears to be helping.

Aneta Markowska, an economist at Societe Generale, broke down just how consumers are spending their money that they have saved since the drop in oil prices.

The largest increase in consumer spending since gas prices have dropped, according to Markowska, has been on healthcare.

"In nominal terms, household spending on healthcare averaged 3.9% between 2010 and 2013," wrote Markowska in a note to clients Thursday.

"It began to accelerate in the first half of 2014 and has averaged at 5.2% since then. Importantly, this pickup in healthcare spending was not driven by higher costs; real spending in this category accelerated from 1.9% in 2010-2013 to 3.9% thereafter."

This would indicate that Americans have been not only been spending more because of increased costs, but also intentionally allocating more of their wallet to the sector.

To match the increased spending, the healthcare sector's labor market has also been booming.

"Employment data also corroborates this: as shown in chart 3, the healthcare sector produced about 240,000 jobs per year between 2010 and mid-2014," said the note. "Since then, it has averaged at 354,000/year and the sector is currently producing about 500,000 jobs annualized."

Now there are a few reasons for the increase, the most notable of which is the passage of the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare. Markowska notes that the growth in real spending closely matches the 4% increase in the number of Americans with health insurance since the implementation of the Affordable Care Act in 2012.

Part of the increased spending no doubt has to do with the number of people spending more on insurance who did not have it before, but also higher spending on drug prescriptions.

This increased consumer spending and labor availability is a net positive for the economy, according to Markowska.

"So, although increased demand for healthcare may have squeezed other forms of spending, it did produce positive economic effects," said the note from Societe Generale.

This is just one piece of Obamacare's impact, there are many other factors going into it and nominal spending on healthcare premiums are certainly worth considering, but according to Markowska, there is reason to believe the bill has been helpful to the US economy.

*SEE ALSO: Even with the nation's largest insurer leaving, Obamacare is nowhere near dead*

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: FORMER GREEK FINANCE MINISTER: The single largest threat to the global economy Reported by Business Insider 10 hours ago.

HealthJoy has developed free online tools to increase transparency and improve the quality of publicly available health insurance plan data.

Chicago, IL (PRWEB) May 13, 2016

HealthJoy has released the first publicly available tools that analyze Obamacare health insurance plans and compare the size of provider networks and prescription coverage. Due to recent federal requirements, insurance companies were required to supply all plan information in a standardized data format (MRF). Despite being available to the public for over 15 months, this data has gone largely unused by individuals and researchers because of inconsistent formatting and the lack of easy-to-use tools.

Over the past six months and with cooperation from a large number of insurance companies, HealthJoy has significantly improved the accuracy of the available data. The company is now releasing these tools for use by the public.· Insurance Company Network Comparison - Want to compare insurance plans in your city, zip code or state? This one-of-a-kind, easy-to-use tool will show you the insurance plan with the most doctors in your area by specialty: https://healthjoy.com/health-plan/coverage/.

· Find a Doctor Tool - Although there are several doctor search tools on the Internet, HealthJoy has released the first one with extensive Obamacare plan information. For more information, visit: https://healthjoy.com/doctor/.

· ACA Plan Data Compliance Checker - This tool, meant for researchers, scans the submitted health plan MRF data. It tracks errors and provides the error location and the type of error encountered. For more information, visit: https://healthjoy.com/aca-data-compliance-checker/.

· Data APIs - For developers or partners who want full access to the dataset for exploration or commercial use, please contact HealthJoy at https://healthjoy.com/contact/.

“Today, HealthJoy uses this data to help its members make better healthcare decisions every day,” said Shanu Kurd, Chief Medical Officer at HealthJoy. “By releasing these tools to the public, we demonstrate HealthJoy’s dedication to helping all Americans become smarter shoppers of health insurance and healthcare.”

About HealthJoy
HealthJoy is your on-demand healthcare expert that helps consumers protect out-of-pocket expenses through better decisions. It uses JOY, a human-supported virtual healthcare assistant, to guide consumers across a wide range of decisions and personally tailored healthcare savings. JOY is supported by a team from both the healthcare and health insurance industries. Over 20,000 users are currently protecting $100 million in out-of-pocket healthcare expenses. HealthJoy is currently available through select partners on iOS, Android and Desktop. For more information visit HealthJoy.com. Reported by PRWeb 8 hours ago.

WASHINGTON - Take Robert Shapiro.

A Harvard-trained economist, Shapiro is the head of a consulting firm called Sonecon. That business card doesn't do it for you? He's got a few more in his wallet:

Senior fellow at the Georgetown University School of Business.

Adviser to the International Monetary Fund.

Director of the Globalization Initiative at NDN, a progressive think tank.

Shapiro, a Democrat, has advised presidents and presidential candidates, and has held powerful government posts. It stands to reason, then, that when he has thoughts on public policy, he can find an outlet ready to publish them.

Recently, he's had ideas on how the government can address the debt crisis in Puerto Rico and how it can end the conservatorship of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac by moving them into the private market. Before that, he had a take on how to deal with Argentina's debt crisis. For all three, he produced academic-looking papers, complete with footnotes and charts.

All three situations have one thing in common: If they were resolved the way Shapiro suggested, a variety of bets placed by a select group of the most politically powerful hedge funds would pay off in a huge way. In the case of Argentina, they mostly have. Fights over how to resolve the other two issues are still raging in Washington.

For this article, we called Shapiro to ask on whose behalf he has been waging these intellectual battles. His answer was surprising in its honesty: He's working with DCI Group, a political dark arts master known to be advocating on behalf of a group of powerful hedge funds that are changing how Washington works.

Shapiro, it turns out, is but one foot soldier in the hedge fund infantry. A review of public documents, tax filings and interviews with people involved finds that in each of the three campaigns, hedge funds have enlisted the same set of lobbyists, political operatives, dark money groups and think-tank experts spanning the political spectrum.

No single document or set of disclosures ties all of these groups together. They don't put out joint press releases, parade themselves around Washington as part of a coalition, or chat together on conference calls. Finding the players in this game, instead, is more a process of deduction. For a group of firms and experts to be working for vulture funds on the issue of Argentine debt is normal Washington practice. (Vulture's meaning here isn't pejorative: it refers to an investment strategy that feeds off of assets the market has left for dead.)

For the exact same people and groups to be working on the next big issue that these funds care about -- the Puerto Rican debt crisis -- could be a coincidence. But now, the hedge funds are focused on a third issue -- government-sponsored enterprise reform, which refers to the effort to establish new housing finance policy in the wake of the federal takeover of lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. And it's the same political firms and the same independent experts that are once again weighing in -- coincidentally, all on the side of the hedge funds.

Maybe it's all coincidence, but let's run the traps either way.

The band that has gotten together for the big three hedge fund jam sessions includes some unlikely allies: There's DCI Group, the powerhouse lobbying firm. Then there's the Raben Group, operatives whose specialty is working in the progressive space and lobbying Democrats. There's the American Continental Group, a bipartisan lobbying firm. There's 60 Plus and the Center for Individual Freedom, two groups that call themselves part of the conservative movement, but in reality are dark money groups known to run whatever campaign they're paid to run, and that are happy to conceal the source of the funding. All these groups have roughly nothing in common, other than that they all have united in advocacy campaigns that alternately go up against the Argentinian people, Puerto Ricans and the rest of the American public.

Each of these campaigns appears to have been run by or aided by the DCI Group. We say "appears" because DCI is one of Washington's great black boxes -- news articles that involve DCI routinely include a line informing readers that the organization did not respond to a request for comment. This article is no different.

Old Washington hands involved in these particular fights say that nothing they've seen before in politics has prepared them for the mercenary campaigns the hedge funds are now waging.

"There's something about this that's almost more disturbing, because you get an issue that's not particularly a big public issue and people can spend and spend and spend," said a veteran policymaker who found himself on the wrong end of the hedge funds. "And I don't know how anybody can compete with it. And then you start losing the narrative and you see groups on the left get bought out and corrupted -- really corrupted. I don't know what to do about it."

What is being done only exacerbates the situation. Current tax policy allows hedge fund managers to pay billions less every year than competitors who don't get the same advantage. And tax-exempt pension funds -- teachers, nurses, firefighters -- invest heavily in hedge funds, hoping to make up big shortfalls with risky investments. The generous tax policy leaves hedge funds flush with cash, money they've been spreading freely around Washington.

They may have finally gone too far. A backlash is brewing, threatening not just their current bets, but their various tax benefits too. One senior House Republican aide who's worked closely with the hedge funds says that members of Congress have seen enough. "I think on the Fannie stuff, they've hurt themselves," he said. "We're like, fuck em. If they're not you're friends, they're you're enemies."

***

When big banks squared off against merchants such as Walmart in 2011 over the cost of debit card and credit card swipe fees, Washington saw a spending spree and a dirty campaign the likes of which it hasn't seen since. But at least the arguments on both sides of the swipe fees issue made some rational sense.

"This one, I feel just disgusted by it," said one GOP Senate aide who witnessed both.

With the hedge fund battles, a group of rich investors simply picks a side and then spends endlessly to tilt the battlefield to make sure that side wins. And in true Washington fashion, people are annoyed that the sellouts have sold low. As the same Senate GOP aide put it: "Sure, I'll go after a few individuals, and help make Congress dysfunctional, so we can have Donald fucking Trump as our nominee, just so I can make $25,000. That's just sad for our country."Not everybody sells out that cheaply. The Wall Street Journal on Thursday ran a piece on the hedge-fund lobbying around reform of government-sponsored entities, or GSEs.

Last year, The Raben Group, a Washington lobbying firm, offered a minority trade association $25,000 contingent on the association signing its name to an editorial arguing that Fannie and Freddie should be recapitalized and returned to private hands, said Gary Acosta, chief executive of the National Association of Hispanic Real Estate Professionals.

“They said, ‘If you won’t say exactly what you need to say, we’re not going to sponsor you,’” Mr. Acosta said. He said the association declined the offer.

Raben Group founder Robert Raben said the firm frequently matches funding from corporations with nonprofits that share a position but doesn’t ask them to change their stance. He declined to disclose the source of the money offered to the association.

What makes the hedge fund pressure campaign distinctive is the ambivalence, or even nihilism, that lies behind the public policy suggestions. Hedge funds want whatever policy outcome will make their leveraged bet pay off. It makes gauging the merits of a particular policy extraordinarily difficult. The targets of the campaign are largely beside the point: It's not personal, it's just business. Hedge funder Bill Ackman’s very public lobbying and PR campaign against Herbalife serves as the clearest example of the influence strategy deployed by hedge funds. But in that case, Ackman was only taking on a single company, so the damage to potential bystanders was limited. The same playbook applied to entire countries, a commonwealth or the housing industry itself amplifies the threat exponentially.


This one, I feel just disgusted by it.

And it's not ideological, either. If a big group of hedge funds decided to short the health insurance industry, it could easily be in their interests to fund a dark money campaign on behalf of single-payer health care. If they short the big banks, they've now become allies with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.).

It's less far-fetched than it might seem. Today, billionaire hedge fund managers are working the halls of Congress with civil rights groups and affordable housing advocates. The progressive groups have long wanted any GSE reform to include big money to make housing more affordable for the working class. Now that the hedge funds are in the game, the groups suddenly have an additional demand: Make sure any final plan pays out the shareholders (i.e., the hedge funds) handsomely.

The hedge funds bought a mountain of Fannie Mae stock after the government took it over and declared it worthless. The funds are trying to revive the share price by pressuring the government to let Fannie keep its profit and ultimately re-privatize the company. The alliance is understandable: For years, the progressive groups have been outmatched and out-funded, and along come some billionaires willing to back their effort. All these new advocates want is for their property rights to be protected. Why not?

“We knew we were getting in bed with people who wanted to see [Fannie Mae] pay them off,” Potomac Coalition founder Larry Parks told The Wall Street Journal for Thursday's article. “It wasn’t anything we were so ideologically against.”

In Argentina, things didn't work out so well for the folks on the other side of the hedge funds. In 1998, Argentina bucked years of social pressure from the International Monetary Fund and defaulted on its debt. No longer would it have its public policy dictated by international lenders backed by what became known as the Washington consensus -- the notion that the best way for countries to grow was to slash spending, privatize whatever they could, cut taxes and make way for business investment. After defaulting, Argentina negotiated with lenders to resolve the debt, making deals with 93 percent of its creditors. A few American hedge funds held out, and waged a guerrilla campaign to recoup 100 percent of the value of their bonds, even though they bought them for pennies.

It took 15 years, and a pressure campaign against Argentina that linked it to terrorism and other atrocities, but the hedge funds could eventually land a $5 billion payout. It's even reasonable to say the hedge funds helped bring down the Argentine government. Along the way, they blew up the international system of credit, as negotiations between sovereign borrowers and their creditors are no longer possible without 100 percent buy-in from creditors.

In Puerto Rico, the group of hedge funds waging the biggest lobbying campaign own debt that is first in line to be paid off in case of any calamity. (That’s not to say there aren’t other hedge funds that own different sets of Puerto Rican debt lobbying so that they’re the first to be paid; more on them later.) They're now betting that they can stop Congress from rescuing Puerto Rico by amending bankruptcy laws to allow Puerto Rico to cover its basic expenses before paying out the hedge funds.

Betting that Congress does nothing is often a smart wager. If the island government is forced to pay off creditors first, it will have to take those funds from vital programs threatening the livelihoods of people who live there.

In a trip to the commonwealth this week, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew emphasized the human impact that the hedge fund lobbying campaign is already having on Puerto Ricans. “The financial crisis is not just a question of bondholders, but a question of the lives that are being led by 3.5 million Americans who live on Puerto Rico,” Lew said during a visit to an elementary school in the heart of San Juan.

The school, Eleanor Roosevelt Elementary, looked like something out of a Third World country. Children studied in crumbling classrooms with termite-ridden walls, no air conditioning, and inadequate lighting. The only source of cooling from the 80-degree weather outside was fans and open windows. The TVs, laptops, desktop computers all appeared pointless. Teachers said that if they tried to run more than one simultaneously with another classroom, the electricity would go out. Faulty circuit breakers also mean the classroom lights stay off whenever it rains, and since it was drizzling that day, the students sat in the dark.

On the next stop, Lew saw Centro Medico, the primary medical center for the commonwealth and the Caribbean region, and home to the third-largest Level 1 trauma center in the U.S. and its territories. The center is preparing to reduce services by July if no relief comes. Already, a lack of personnel makes it nearly impossible to keep accurate supply inventory for children being treated for cancer or receiving dialysis. “We are hanging by a thread,” explained Dr. Juan Nazario, the hospital's executive director.That's not to say that there isn't lobbying on the other side of these issues. An entirely different group of hedge funds and investment firms want relief for Puerto Rico so that the bonds that they've purchased will be paid in full. Legislation that they support has received the backing of House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and has moved through a favorable committee. On GSE reform, big banks like Bank of America and Citigroup have lobbied for legislation that would eliminate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and replace them with a system of government insurance for bank loans. The banks employ dozens of lobbyists, but do not appear to be engaging in the kind of surreptitious campaign the hedge funds are conducting on the other side.

***

Corporate lobbying is often constrained by the need to play the long game. Sometimes a company, or an entire industry, realizes it needs to take a loss today, but will be back tomorrow to fight again. That can encourage corporate actors to rely more on carrots: Campaign contributions and cushy jobs are in store for staffers and members of Congress who play nice.

But because the hedge funds are fighting over a different bet each time -- Argentina today, Fannie and Freddie tomorrow -- the most bang for the buck may come from a run of negative TV ads in key congressional districts, or targeted campaigns against leading members of Congress on the wrong side.

Or even against staffers. In the midst of the debate over how to restructure Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in early 2014, Jim Millstein was sitting down on Capitol Hill with Michael Bright, an aide to Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), who was working on the legislation. Millstein, like other hedge-fund titans lobbying on the bill, had a set of structural recommendations he thought the Senate should take up.

Millstein was worth listening to: While a top Treasury Department official, he had overseen the successful restructuring of AIG after the government bailout. But Millstein had an extra recommendation: The Fannie Mae shareholders needed to be paid out -- shareholders like Millstein.

The aide told Millstein he didn't see why shareholders, who bought Fannie stock for pennies when the government had already bailed it out, needed a windfall. The meeting turned tense. "Don't worry kid, you're about to get yours," Millstein said, according to a Democratic committee staffer later briefed on the episode. Bright, reached for comment, declined to speak for this article.

A week or so later, the conservative Free Beacon dropped a story headlined, "Banker Who Helped Crash Housing Market Helped Crafting Mortgage Reform."

The headline was absurd -- Bright had been a low-level trader at Countrywide Financial Corp. right out of college, hardly in a position to blow up the housing market. But the facts didn't matter. With the story in print, political operatives could now put the claim on the airwaves, and for cover source it back to the Free Beacon, a neat trick since the same operatives may well have been the ones who fed it to the Beacon. Two weeks later, the 60 Plus Association, a conservative dark money group, put out an attack ad repeating the allegation that "a former Countrywide financial executive is even helping craft the legislation." The ad ran in North Carolina, Virginia and Idaho, targeting specific lawmakers involved in the legislation.

 
 

The aggressive tactics appear to have included ethics complaints, too. Campaign for Accountability, a watchdog founded by former employees of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, filed complaints against Corker, the leading Republican sponsor of housing reform legislation with Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.). The complaints, filed in November, allege Corker engaged in suspicious stock trades.

The next month, Campaign for Accountability called for a Department of Justice probe of former Obama administration officials David Stevens, Michael Berman and Jim Parrott for allegedly breaking revolving-door laws banning them from lobbying their former offices. Stevens is the former Federal Housing Administration official under Obama who left to head the Mortgage Bankers Association. Berman and Parrott both worked at the Department of Housing and Urban Development as it shaped housing policy before leaving for the private sector.In February, National Legal and Policy Center, a conservative ethics watchdog group, filed a complaint against Stevens over the same revolving-door laws. Stevens is a leading proponent of the Warner-Corker legislation. 

Then, in March, Campaign for Accountability filed another complaint against Corker over omissions of large assets from his financial disclosure reports.

It's not possible to prove that hedge fund money is driving these complaints. But let's work backward again. Campaign for Accountability is run by operatives from the group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW. Last year, CREW took $40,000 from Herbalife, which was under assault from hedge funder Ackman. CREW pushed back, filing an ethics complaint against Ackman. When the $40,000 donation came to light, CREW promised to return it, citing the appearance of a conflict of interest.

CFA doesn't release information on its donors, former CREW honcho Melanie Sloan, who now does some work with CFA, said the group doesn't take hedge fund money. But CFA itself might not even know if it takes hedge fund money: If a hedge fund gives to a foundation, which gives to a civil rights group, which then gives to CFA, it can be hard to track.

Either way, the Raben Group immediately circulated the complaints against Corker and Stevens around Washington by email. People close to Corker said they believe the ethics complaints were motivated by the hedge fund lobbying campaign. (Of course, the complaints might also have merit; in fact, both things could be true at the same time.)

When he was on the Hill pushing for GSE reform, Millstein had company. Michael Waldorf, with Paulson & Co., has been in the Senate to lobby on the GSE bill, as has Chris Katopis of the Association of Mortgage Investors, and Shawn Smeallie of American Continental Group, which works for DCI and Paulson, according to congressional sources.

Julie Chon, a former Democratic Banking Committee staffer, a top aide to Chairman Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), left the committee for Perry Capital Management, run by big-time Hillary Clinton donor Richard Perry. In early April, Chon organized a Clinton fundraiser that Senate banking staffers co-hosted. But at the height of the battle over Corker-Warner, she was a fixture on Capitol Hill -- though she does not appear to have registered as a lobbyist.

"She wasn't even shy that she was advocating for a payout," said one of the former colleagues Chon lobbied in the Senate. As she'd roam the Senate halls, she'd cheerily greet staffers with a line that is such a perfect combination of talking point, banality and sarcasm that it could have been written by the creators of HBO's "Veep.""Just here trying to defend our property rights," she'd repeat.

***

The American people, of course, are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights. Political hedge funds, though, aren't leaving things in God's hands alone. For that, there's the DCI Group.

The DCI Group most famously built its reputation doing the dirty work of the tobacco industry. That long-running operation involved funding "experts" who would question the medical science around smoking, and targeting individual advocates and lawmakers. It pioneered the use of shadow groups that concealed the true source of funding for the campaign, and can be seen as a blueprint for the hedge fund campaigns.

According to the lobbying disclosure records that do exist, DCI Group hired the Raben Group, American Continental Group and others to lobby on the Puerto Rico issue. American Continental Group is Paulson's personal lobby shop, and also has a political intelligence arm heavily active in Argentina. Political intelligence differs from traditional lobbying in that its practitioners are not required to register their activities (thanks Eric Cantor) and it is not focused on influencing policy, but rather on learning in advance about upcoming policy changes or investigations, so that companies or hedge funds can get a jump on trades and business decisions.

DCI also ran a lobbying campaign against the Puerto Rican government on behalf of Doral Financial, a now-bankrupt Puerto Rican bank, and BlueMountain Capital. They brought Shapiro on board and hired Liberty International Group, a lobbying firm of former Rep. Connie Mack (R-Fla.).

Back in 2007, DCI was instrumental in killing legislation that would have regulated Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, a doomed effort that may have prevented the lenders from melting down. It earned $2 million from Freddie Mac for its work.

DCI was also part of American Task Force Argentina, the hedge-fund backed effort that battled Argentina over its default. Raben Group’s Robert Raben and Shapiro led the task force, and Shapiro's consulting firm was paid at least $450,000. While there are no public filings today, the group is helping run the Fannie hedge-fund operation, according to DCI managing partner Justin Peterson, who has privately talked about DCI's work. Shapiro, too, said he was working with DCI for his housing policy work.

All that work, even if it's behind the scenes and unregistered, has to leave a trace. Here are two Facebook posts, one from late 2014 and another from early 2015, that have DCI organizing Fannie-related press events on the Hill for Investors Unite, a group of investors united to get a payout.
Former DCI lobbyist Douglas Davenport is also on the hedge fund payroll, registered on behalf of both American Task Force Argentina and the Puerto Rican bondholders.

The same lawyer has suited up for all three causes, too. Matthew McGill represents the hedge fund BlueMountain, which owns some $400 million worth of Puerto Rico debt. He successfully persuaded a judge to throw out a Puerto Rico law that stood in the way of the hedge funds. "Now we have a real negotiation where the bargaining power is essentially even," McGill said afterward. BlueMountain also employed DCI Group in 2014 and 2015 on the Puerto Rico debt fight.

McGill represents Perry Capital in its shareholder lawsuit related to Fannie and Freddie. He participated in at least one PR event with Investors Unite, a Fannie-fighting group that DCI also represents.

And finally -- or, firstly -- McGill represented NML Capital, a subsidiary of Elliott Management, the hedge fund connected with GOP megadonor Paul Singer, in the lawsuit against Argentina, along with Aurelius Capital Management. That lawsuit allowed the hedge funds to extract billions from the Argentinian people. It came after the years-long slash-and-burn campaign run from the  American Task Force Argentina -- a lobbying coalition of Covington & Burling, DCI Group and the Raben Group.

Rob Shapiro, meanwhile, doesn’t appear on any lobbying reports or disclosures, but he was publicly attached to a pressure campaign that DCI Group ran on behalf of Doral Financial. The bank, which the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. took into receivership on Feb. 27, 2015, was suing the island government over a disputed $229 million tax refund. A website DCI Group created -- Doral Puerto Rico Facts -- promoted Shapiro’s study on the island’s debt problems. But it wasn’t just the bank that wanted to get the money back. Its hedge fund creditors wanted to get paid.

Who is paying who isn't always easy to tell. Take the paper by Shapiro and Elaine Kamarck, touted as the independent views of officials from both the Obama and Clinton administrations, that comes to the conclusion that the hedge funds ought to be paid dollars for the shares of Fannie Mae they bought for pennies.

Neither Shapiro nor Kamarck are housing finance analysts or experts. Kamarck isn't even an economist -- her work is in the field of political science, studying election and turnout trends. The paper itself offers a rather stunning giveaway: The three pillars of housing finance have long been Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae. In the Shapiro-Kamarck paper, Ginnie Mae is twice referred to as "Ginny Mae." Anybody can make a mistake. But nobody with a housing policy background would do that twice.

"It would be like somebody claiming to be writing as a progressive journalist and calling it The Huffington Globe. It just gives away the game," said one policymaker who read the paper.

When we asked Shapiro who was funding his work on the GSEs, he said it "was sponsored by a low-income housing coalition.” The report thanks The Potomac Coalition, an African-American business and advocacy group. The Potomac Coalition's Parks told The Wall Street Journal that his group indeed did pay for the paper, but that "Fannie and Freddie shareholders suggested the authors." Parks added, in the Journal's paraphrase, "the contents of the paper were drafted and negotiated by the authors, his group, shareholders and their lobbyists."

Shapiro said he hasn't been otherwise very active in the housing policy fight. “That’s all I did, and I haven’t taken any other role and I’m very proud of that analysis because it would provide more funding for low-income housing than any program in American history,” he said.

But what about the Fix Fannie & Freddie website, which exists to promote the study?

“I don’t have a website about fix Fannie and Freddie,” Shapiro said. “It’s not my website. That’s not true.”

The website specifically says it is "sponsored by Sonecon," which is Shapiro’s consulting firm. Just above that, it says, "About Dr. Shapiro."
Shapiro asked for the web address so he could check it out himself. But he was having a hard time finding it, so he read it back. "F-A-N-N-Y ..."

"No, F-A-N-N-I-E," we told him, which unlocked his path to the site with his company's name on it.

“Well, I will tell you it is not sponsored by me," Shapiro said when he found it. He then added a new admission about the link to DCI. "But, I have worked with DCI on this. I’m not surprised that they’re promoting the study and myself and Dr. Kamarck.”

Laura Barron-Lopez contributed reporting from Puerto Rico; Matt Fuller added reporting from Washington. For more stories like this, sign up to get Ryan Grim's newsletter.

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With transition relief ending to the employer mandate for small businesses in 2016 (and their larger brethren in 2015 – though still classified as small businesses by the SBA) and the rise of employment costs, small businesses which account for ~70% of new private sector jobs and 50% of existing employment, are set to face a whole new level of costs.

 

As reported today, with insurance costs skyrocketing, employers are set to face a massive loss.  If we take ZH’s reported $500/month increase on top of these stats, we see that the average family insurance plan sits at around $1,950 a month now.  Of that, employers are going to be set to pay about half, or $975 a month.  At fifty employees that’s $50,000 monthly, or $600,000 annually.  This sits in stark contrast to the operating environment before the legislation was passed when “employers offered health insurance voluntarily”.

 

Even if, arguendo, there were other federal or state laws mandating insurance, the cost has risen sharply in the last years leaving both employers and employees saddled with a larger bill – a $500 net raise per month is $3000 more expensive, yearly, per employee for small businesses; at 50 people that’s a $150,000 spend. – or three full time employees.

 

Most importantly, at the end of the day the administration moved the onus of responsibly from the person to the employer.  And notably, it’s not a cost employers can pass on to funding entities – so it’s going to have to be borne by consumers by way of price increases, or by cutting costs (human capital). 

 

Note, we've dissmissed the U.S. Treasury report that 96% of employers were exempted from these provisions as somewhat misleading: a random sample of the data provided by the SBA has 3x *more people working* in the 100+ firm size than the 0 - 20 person firm size (notably, 20 - 99 is clumped together and is therefore unintelligible in this analysis).

[Fundist Small Business Loans]

  Reported by Zero Hedge 4 hours ago.

WASHINGTON -- Transgender individuals gained new legal protections against discrimination by health insurance companies and medical providers under a regulation published Friday.

The health care rules stem from anti-discrimination provisions in the Affordable Care Act, designed to prevent unfair treatment based on sex, gender identity and sexual orientation. They are the latest step President Barack Obama has taken to extend civil rights protections for transgender people.

Most recently, the Obama administration has challenged a North Carolina law mandating individuals use public bathrooms that correspond with the gender they were assigned at birth, and notified public schools they risk losing federal funds if they impose similar requirements on students.

Under the new regulations, transgender people are guaranteed equal treatment by insurers and medical providers, and will have the right to make civil rights claims against those that deny them coverage or necessary care because they are transgender. That includes forbidding health insurers from categorically excluding treatments related to gender transitions, although it doesn't mandate those procedures be covered.

The rules will take effect in 60 days and apply to any health care provider or health insurance company that receives federal funds, and to state Medicaid agencies and the Obamacare health insurance exchange marketplaces.

"Today’s announcement is a key step toward realizing equity within our health care system and reaffirms this administration's commitment to giving every American access to the health care they deserve," Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell said in a press release. 

Advocates for the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer communities praised the new rules.

"LGBT people have too often faced healthcare systems that provide inequitable and hostile treatment. This new and important regulation will address many of these disparities and is critical to help end discrimination against transgender and gender nonconforming people in healthcare and insurance," Human Rights Campaign President Chad Griffin said in a press release.

Historically, transgender people have faced extraordinary barriers to health insurance and medical treatments. 

Some health insurance companies refuse to cover treatments related to transitioning, such as hormone therapy and mental health services, and some medical providers deny treatment to transgender people. A 2015 survey revealed that more than 40 percent of female-to-male transgender people have experienced discrimination in the health care system.
 

LGBT people have too often faced healthcare systems that provide inequitable and hostile treatment.
Human Rights Campaign President Chad Griffin


Under federal law, sexual orientation isn't what's called a "protected class" -- meaning it's still legal to discriminate against people for being gay. While the new regulations don't change that, they offer limited protections for LGBT people by barring discrimination based on "sex stereotyping," which is when someone is treated differently because that person doesn't behave ways consistent with their perceived gender identity (for example, discriminating against a man because he has "feminine" characteristics).

Broadly, the rules prohibit discrimination based on sex; pregnancy, childbirth and related conditions; gender identity; and sex stereotyping. Patients also gain the right to make a civil rights complaint when they believe discrimination has occurred.
Health insurance companies can't refuse anyone's business, deny claims for services covered by their plans, charge more for care or otherwise discriminate in their treatment of customers based on sex and those other considerations. Likewise, physicians, hospitals and other medical providers must provide equal access to health care services to everyone, regardless of sex or gender identity or sex stereotyping.

Because the rules apply to health care companies that do business with the federal government, they will cover the vast majority of insurers and medical providers. These entities also may not discriminate in employment based on these criteria. 

The Affordable Care Act prohibits health insurance companies and medical providers from discriminating against patients based on sex. Prior to publishing a draft version of the regulation in September, the administration contended protections for transgender people were inherent in the ACA's statutory language. But the administration took explicit action at the urging of advocates for transgender people.
What the regulations don't do is require health insurance companies to cover any specific treatments or procedures, including gender confirmation surgery. But the rules mandate that insurers cover a service for a transgender person when they cover it for any other patient. For example, if a policy pays for women to receive hormone therapy during menopause, it also must pay for a transgender person to get the same treatment as part of transition.

Similarly, the regulation requires insurers and health care providers to allow access to medical care irrespective of a transgender person's identity or gender assigned at birth. For instance, female-to-male transgender individuals can't be refused a medically necessary pelvic exam. 

The regulation does not include a new exemption for religious reasons, but doesn't undo preexisting exemptions, according to the Department of Health and Human Services.

In addition to the new protections based on sex, the regulation strengthens anti-discrimination guarantees for people with disabilities, and requires insurers and health care providers to make reasonable accommodations for patients with limited English proficiency. 

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 3 hours ago.

A recent survey of refugees living in Colorado provides new evidence of their integration and contributions to American society and the economy. The report finds that after four years of life in the United States, 75 percent of refugees were "highly integrated," and nine in ten worked for more than thirty hours per week.

In light of the recent scrutiny of the refugee programs, recognizing the contributions of refugees and their positive integration outcomes is critical to determining admissions numbers moving forward.

The Colorado survey studied nearly all Burmese, Bhutanese, Somali, and Iraqi refugees that arrived between January 2011 and March 2012. Colorado's State Refugee Coordinator, Kit Taintor, said, "these refugees are integrating, they are finding jobs with higher wages, they are able to do things like move from a rented apartment into a home."

Additionally, the survey detailed that just five percent of refugees remain in the "low-integration" range after four years in the United States.

Researchers posited this group primarily consists of stay-at-home mothers and refugees over 55 years old, because stay-at-home mothers lack the social interactions found in school or employment and older individuals have a harder time learning a new language and finding permanent work. Both lead to increased isolation, which hinders integration.

Despite these groups, three-fourths of refugees surveyed were rated highly integrated within four years. Six in ten refugees were fluent in English, and nine in ten were working more than 30 hours per week.

Most refugees, seven in ten, reported that they were employed at a level commensurate with their education-- implying they found the right fit for occupation quickly.

In regards to barriers to employment, refugees claiming they "couldn't find job" went from 55 percent in year one to just 5 percent in the fourth year.

Of those surveyed, two-thirds spend time with people of a culture, ethnic group, language, or religion different from their own. Seven in ten can readily access information about other cultures, ethnic groups, languages, and religions. And eight in ten celebrate American holidays.

Seventy-five percent attend celebrations or events for other cultures, ethnic groups, languages, and religions.

Survey participant Leela Tinsina left Bhutan when he was 14, and lived for two decades in a refugee camp. Having lived in Colorado for five years, Leela calls America his home, where he works for a Colorado non-profit organization, and where he and his wife, who works in the healthcare industry, just bought a home and are raising two boys.

Tinsina said, "I feel very proud and honored to be in this country." He considers his move to America his second life and said, "I want to say thank you to the American people, and the American government." The successes for individuals like Leesa are impressive, considering that they spent years of their lives fleeing violence and persecution in their home countries.

Of course, progress is still needed. The survey found that one-fourth of refugees do not have health insurance. Twenty percent still cannot speak English, and four in ten still lack confidence in their language skills.

The Colorado study showcases integration progress from refugees as they spend more time in the United States. Improved policies can further facilitate integration, especially amongst the groups that struggled to learn English.

Further studies like this one, which survey and share what works best for successful refugee integration and where we need further investment, are necessary to ensure our refugee resettlement program continues to transform refugees into fully functioning American citizens.

While transitioning to a new country is exceptionally difficult, refugees make great strides annually and by the fourth year make it difficult to ascertain the difference between a refugee from Iraq or a native born American citizen. After a full decade, we can expect those gaps to be even slimmer.

The results are clear: Colorado refugees are integrating soundly into American society.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 1 hour ago.

Heartland Institute Experts Comment on Latest Obamacare Court Ruling

Chicago, Illinois (PRWEB) May 13, 2016

U.S. District Court Judge Rosemary M. Collyer on Thursday ruled the Obama administration violated the U.S. Constitution by funding the Obamacare subsidy program when the House of Representatives declined to fund it. The subsidies, a key element of the Affordable Care Act, are meant to allow low-income Americans afford health insurance under the program. The judge said she is saying implementation of her decision pending an appeal "by either party." (Collyer's decision: Civil Action No. 14-1967; United States District Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. Original case, House v. Burwell from September 9, 2015 )

The following statements from health care policy experts at The Heartland Institute – a free-market think tank – may be used for attribution. For more comments, refer to the contact information below. To book a Heartland guest on your program, please contact New Media Specialist Donald Kendal at media(at)heartland(dot)org and 312/377-4000 or (cell) 847/877-9100.

“It’s about time for the administration to be required to follow the law. What arrogance to spend money that has not been appropriated and that we don’t even have! But the court has stayed the decision – and the people who are getting the unlawful subsidies already feel entitled to them. What next? Will the appeals court rule that Congress is irrelevant? Or will Congress make itself irrelevant by appropriating the money?”

Jane M. Orient, M.D.
Executive Director
Association of American Physicians and Surgeons
Policy Advisor, Health Care
The Heartland Institute
janeorientmd(at)gmail(dot)com
520/323-3110

“Two cheers for federal district Judge Rosemary Collyer for her decision in House of Representatives v. Burwell! Why not three?

“Although rightly called ‘a needed check on the White House’s authority’ and, by House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady, ‘a critical step in protecting Congress’ power of the purse from an administration that has repeatedly ignored a fundamental principle of our Republic: the separation of powers,’ the decision permits unauthorized White House spending to continue pending appeal.

“Given the makeup of the D. C. Circuit, which will hear the appeal, and the propensity of Chief Justice Roberts of the U.S. Supreme Court to invent ambiguities where they don’t exist in order to save what the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia rightly suggested should be called “SCOTUSCare,” don’t necessarily expect this one to last.

“Still, the only thing necessary for ignorance or evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing, and Judge Collyer has at least struck a much-need blow for common-sense statutory construction and a proper respect for constitutional separation of powers.”

David L. Applegate
Policy Advisor, Legal Affairs
The Heartland Institute
media(at)heartland(dot)org
312/377-4000

“Appropriately, the court grounded its rebuke of the Obama administration’s illegal funding of the Affordable Care Act by supplying an ad hoc primer on the U.S. Constitution. The opinion’s first pages read with such clarity, one is almost embarrassed to read them – embarrassed the administration has so obviously twisted its own signature law to contravene the eighth-grade civics of the Constitution. “The court recognized the administration’s attempt to capitalize on the very flaws in Obamacare the administration has tried to explain away. Such dodging and weaving should be expected from the sausage-makers that, as Judge Collyer notes, produced the Affordable Care Act behind closed doors. “The administration’s failed attempt to justify raiding the U.S. Treasury may be more artful than the Affordable Care Act itself, but it is just as ineffective.”

Michael Hamilton
Managing Editor, Health Care News
Research Fellow
The Heartland Institute
mhamilton(at)heartland(dot)org
312/377-4000

The Heartland Institute is a 32-year-old national nonprofit organization headquartered in Arlington Heights, Illinois. Its mission is to discover, develop, and promote free-market solutions to social and economic problems. For more information, visit our Web site or call 312/377-4000. Reported by PRWeb 2 hours ago.

Conservatives took a break from funding pray-away-the-gay camps to express concern over the danger posed to children by gender-neutral bathrooms. Donald Trump tapped a climate denier as an energy adviser, raising the shocking possibility that his policy prescriptions aren't fact-based. And Trump regularly pranked journalists on the phone, reminding them that if their refrigerator is running, they better build a wall around it to keep it from taking American jobs. This is HUFFPOST HILL for Friday, May 13th, 2016:

*OBAMA EITHER PROTECTING OR ENDANGERING KIDS -- DEPENDS ON WHOM YOU ASK* - Richard Perez-Pena and Jack Healy: "*The Obama administration’s directive Friday on the use of school bathrooms and locker rooms by transgender students intensified the latest fierce battle in the nation’s culture wars*, with conservatives calling it an illegal overreach that will put children in danger and advocates for transgender rights hailing it as a breakthrough for civil rights. The policy drew a swift backlash from conservative politicians, groups and parents. In Texas, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick appealed to local school boards and superintendents not to abide by the administration’s directive, noting that there were just a few weeks left in the school year and time over the summer to fight the policy with legislation or legal action. 'We will not be blackmailed,' he said. 'I believe it is the biggest issue facing families and schools in America since prayer was taken out of public schools,' Mr. Patrick, a Republican, said at a news conference. 'Parents are not going to send their 14-year-old daughters into the shower or bathroom with 14-year-old boys. It’s not going to happen.'" [NYT]

*ADMINISTRATION INSTITUTE NEW PROTECTIONS FOR TRANSGENDER PATIENTS* - Jeffrey Young: "Transgender individuals gained new legal protections against discrimination by health insurance companies and medical providers under a regulation published Friday. The health care rules stem from anti-discrimination provisions in the Affordable Care Act, designed to prevent unfair treatment based on sex, gender identity and sexual orientation. They are the latest step President Barack Obama has taken to extend civil rights protections for transgender people. Most recently, the Obama administration has challenged a North Carolina law mandating individuals use public bathrooms that correspond with the gender they were assigned at birth, and notified public schools they risk losing federal funds if they impose similar requirements on students. *Under the new regulations, transgender people are guaranteed equal treatment by insurers and medical providers*, and will have the right to make civil rights claims against those that deny them coverage or necessary care because they are transgender. That includes forbidding health insurers from categorically excluding treatments related to gender transitions, although it doesn’t mandate those procedures be covered." [HuffPost]

*A reminder from history*: "[B]eing transgender has nothing to do with being a sexual predator preying on children in bathrooms (plenty of cisgender men have that covered) — but it’s not new. It goes back decades, and it has been used to discriminate against an entirely different group of people: African-Americans. Jump back to 1961, for example, to a report that the Louisiana State Advisory Committee issued to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights... 'Don’t wait for your daughters to be raped by these Congolese,' Leander Perez, a leader of the White Citizens’ Council of Louisiana, told a crowd of 5,000 gathered at a meeting in New Orleans. 'Do something about it now.'" [HuffPost's Jen Bendery]

*WE'VE REACHED THE POINT WHERE WE'RE ASKING THE JERKY BOYS FOR COMMENT* - Foreign intelligence services are really going to have a field day with this commander-in-chief. Sam Levine: "*Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump denied on Friday that he ever used a false name to pose as a spokesman for himself — something he had been widely known to do for years*. During a telephone interview on the 'Today' show, Trump responded to a Washington Post report detailing Trump’s attempts to call reporters using the false names John Barron or John Miller. The Post obtained a recording from one call with 'Miller' that sounds an awful lot like Trump discussing his divorce with Marla Maples. Trump denied it was him in the recording and called it a 'scam.' 'I don’t know anything about it,' he said. 'You’re telling me about it for the first time and it doesn’t sound like my voice at all. I have many, many people that are trying to imitate my voice and you can imagine that and this sounds like one of these scams, one of the many scams. Doesn’t sound like me.'" [HuffPost]

Like HuffPost Hill? Then pre-order Eliot's book's, The Beltway Bible: A Totally Serious A-Z Guide To Our No-Good, Corrupt, Incompetent, Terrible, Depressing, and Sometimes Hilarious Government.

Does somebody keep forwarding you this newsletter? Get your own copy. It's free! Sign up here. Send tips/stories/photos/events/fundraisers/job movement/juicy miscellanea to huffposthill@huffingtonpost.com. Follow us on Twitter - @HuffPostHill

*SEE YOU IN CLEVELAND, DONALD!* - Michael Calderone: "*Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, which has barred more than half a dozen news organizations from attending events, won’t be able to similarly restrict press access when the candidate accepts his party’s nomination in July*. 'If a Trump employee told me that I had to credential or had to blacklist someone, I would not listen,' Robert Zatkowski, director of the House Periodical Press Gallery, told The Huffington Post. For over a century, the congressional press galleries have facilitated the credentialing process for Republican and Democratic conventions alike. 'The parties have designated the galleries to credential the media because we’re an impartial arbitrator,' Zatkowski said. 'This is what we do on Capitol Hill.' Zatkowski said no one from the Trump campaign, or any other, has urged the galleries to deny credentials for July’s Republican National Convention. That should come as a relief to some of the news organizations that have been barred from Trump’s rallies and speeches. The Trump campaign’s severe restrictions on the media have been unprecedented, including denying press credentials, at times, to The Huffington Post, BuzzFeed, Politico, Fusion, Univision, The Des Moines Register, National Review and Mother Jones." [HuffPost]

*Gotta play to the swing voters in West Virginia*: "Republican presidential contender Donald Trump has asked one of America’s most ardent drilling advocates and climate change skeptics to help him draft his energy policy. U.S. Republican Congressman Kevin Cramer of North Dakota - a major oil drilling state - is writing a white paper on energy policy for the New York billionaire, Cramer and sources familiar with the matter told Reuters. Cramer was also among a group of Trump advisers who recently met with lawmakers from western energy states, who hope Trump will open more federal land for drilling, a lawmaker who took part in the meeting said." [Reuters]

*Worth it*: "[Trump's] disdain for the press can be traced back to the days when he was a mainstay on the cover of New York City tabloids. At Trump’s 44th birthday party in 1990, Village Voice reporter Wayne Barrett, who had been writing muckraking stories on him for over a decade, was arrested and put in jail for defiant trespass...While he doesn’t remember how big a fine he ultimately paid, he said two things stuck in his mind from the evening. One is the sensation of being handcuffed..The other is his bloody cellmate, whom he said masturbated for hours on end. 'He never came, that I can tell you' Barrett said. 'And he didn’t stop trying.'" [BuzzFeed's Christopher Massie]

*HOUSE NOT LOVING TRUMP, BUT ABSOLUTELY HATING HILLARY* - And that's just the way it is. Matt Fuller and Daniel Marans: "Speaker Paul Ryan isn’t the only House Republican doing some soul-searching on Donald Trump. Republicans are learning that squaring their positions on issues like debt, Social Security and Medicare with those of the presumptive GOP nominee requires some contortions more complicated than Trump’s combover. But the key to supporting a nominee whose positions — depending on the day and the issue, of course — seem so antithetical to the GOP’s is this: you focus on the alternative. 'He’s 10 times better than Hillary,' Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) told The Huffington Post. Massie, who’s actually a delegate at the GOP nominating convention in July, said none of the people on the 'Never Trump' bandwagon are proposing an alternative. “So I’m presuming they’re for Hillary,' he said. Asked how he could support Trump, House Freedom Caucus Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) launched into an explanation that began: 'Here’s what I know about the likely Democrat nominee.'" [HuffPost]

*Libertarian presidential candidate John McAfee*: ""What else? Okay: I am married to an ex-prostitute. And until I was 38 years old, I took more drugs than any human on the planet. But I’m 70. Good lord, cut me some slack.” [WaPo's Dave Weigel]

*PUERTO RICO DEBT DEAL CLOSE* - Laura Barron-Lopez: "Lawmakers are close, really close, to dropping legislation that would form an oversight board to help Puerto Rico restructure $70 billion in debt that it cannot pay. The commonwealth defaulted May 1 on a roughly $400 million debt payment and if Congress doesn’t act soon, the island will default again on a much larger sum of $2 billion. Rep. Rob Bishop (R-Utah), chair of the House Natural Resources Committee, told reporters on Friday that the bill would be released today but left some room for another delay. The bill was initially scheduled to be unveiled Wednesday, but negotiators weren’t ready. 'If it doesn’t drop today I will be the most surprised person in the world'” Bishop said. Asked what the ultimate holdup was given his apparent readiness to introduce the text, he said both Democrats and Republicans continue to be hung up on 'words.'" [HuffPost]

*BECAUSE YOU'VE READ THIS FAR* - Here's a ticklish bat.

*COMFORT FOOD*

- What might happen if you went back and time and killed your grandfather.

- Making a rap out of Snoop Dogg's parody of modern rappers.

- Jupiter may be responsible for life on Earth.

*TWITTERAMA*

@SaveYouAClick: friday the 13th is when u tweet fire tweets w typos and ppl take ur internet jokes as serious so basically like any other day online

@tripgabriel: The Trump tax rate story buried the fake spox, who eclipsed the racist butler who overtook the tax hike gaffe. Thus does Trump win the news.

@DavidMDrucker: Area candidate on his policy proposal suggestions: 'It was just a mission statement.'

*Got something to add? Send tips/quotes/stories/photos/events/fundraisers/job movement/juicy miscellanea to Eliot Nelson (eliot@huffingtonpost.com) or Arthur Delaney (arthur@huffingtonpost.com). Follow us on Twitter @HuffPostHill (twitter.com/HuffPostHill).*

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 41 minutes ago.

A federal ruling Thursday, prompted by House Republicans, would raise the out-of-pocket costs for health care for millions of people in the United States, many who now finally have health insurance for the first time in their life.

The ruling is yet another attack on the health care law by conservatives who want to destroy Obamacare, even if it means blocking families from getting the care they need.

Going to the doctor when you or your child is sick isn't something that can be put off until you can afford it. After rent, food, utilities and other bills, many families simply can't cover the cost of health care. The Affordable Care Act provides subsidies to insurance companies so low-income families don't have to make a choice between food and a doctor visit.

The judge's decision - and just the fact that the House would even bring this lawsuit - shows how deeply disconnected conservatives are from the struggle many families face, even with the ACA, in paying for health care. It is painfully obvious that conservatives in the House are determined to take medical care away from families.

Republicans have been steadily hammering away at the Affordable Care Act, spending untold millions on lawsuit after lawsuit. The Obama Administration has signaled that it will quickly appeal the judge's ruling, which has been stayed until after appeal.

A Gallup poll last year showed that one in three people in the U.S. say they, or a family member, has delayed medical care because of the cost.

People of color and women especially, struggle to afford quality health care, even with health insurance, because of the high cost of premiums and deductibles, according to recent research by the Alliance for a Just Society.

Under the ACA, the government pays insurance companies to reduce customers' out-of-pocket costs, allowing low-income people to get medical attention when they need it, without delay.

In her decision, Judge Rosemary Collyer says the Obama administration went too far by using taxpayer money to help low-income families with medical costs without a vote from the House of Representatives. It's probably not surprising to read that Collyer was appointed to the bench by George W. Bush.

On the other hand, the Obama administration argues that the Affordable Care Act provides the money and it's not necessary to go back to Congress each year for approval. But Collyer writes in her decision: "That is Congress' prerogative."

It's dangerous to leave the health and the lives of families up to the political whims of Congress. If the ruling stands, that's exactly what would happen. It would spell financial ruin - or worse - for millions of families.

Fred Azcarate, a co-executive director of People's Action, has decades of experience as an organizer and leader around health care and other social and economic justice issues. He shares my frustration that House Republicans are so willing to spend taxpayer money to limit access to medical care.

Azcarate has led national mobilizations exposing waste in the health insurance industry and worked on many rounds of health care reform alongside labor and community organizations nationwide.

"At a time when so many working families are struggling to pay out-of-pocket costs for health care, it is outrageous that Republicans would block the federal government from lowering costs for families," said Azcarate.

"The House Republicans are so politically intent on wrecking the Affordable Care Act that they don't care if they take families down with it," he said.

Health care for all is a right - not something subject to Congressional prerogative or Congressional whim.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 23 hours ago.

Submitted by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

Earlier this week, Ryan Grim and Paul Blumenthal published a blockbuster piece in the Huffington Post, titled: The Vultures’ Vultures: How A New Hedge-Fund Strategy Is Corrupting Washington.

It details the* secretive world of the dark money groups representing mercenary hedge funds* in their insatiable quest for more and more money. In many ways, it’s merely a microcosm of America in 2016. A culture in which ethics has become so irrelevant, it isn’t even a nuisance; it simply never factors into the equation.

The first few paragraphs set the stage perfectly:



WASHINGTON – Take Robert Shapiro.

 

A Harvard-trained economist, Shapiro is the head of a consulting firm called Sonecon. That business card doesn’t do it for you? He’s got a few more in his wallet:

*Senior fellow at the Georgetown University School of Business.*

 

*Adviser to the International Monetary Fund.*

 

*Director of the Globalization Initiative at NDN, a progressive think tank.*

 

*Shapiro, a Democrat, has advised presidents and presidential candidates, and has held powerful government posts. It stands to reason, then, that when he has thoughts on public policy, he can find an outlet ready to publish them.*

 

Recently, he’s had ideas on how the government can address the debt crisis in Puerto Rico and how it can end the conservatorship of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac by moving them into the private market. Before that, he had a take on how to deal with Argentina’s debt crisis. For all three, he produced academic-looking papers, complete with footnotes and charts.

 

*All three situations have one thing in common: If they were resolved the way Shapiro suggested, a variety of bets placed by a select group of the most politically powerful hedge funds would pay off in a huge way. In the case of Argentina, they mostly have. Fights over how to resolve the other two issues are still raging in Washington.*

 

*For this article, we called Shapiro to ask on whose behalf he has been waging these intellectual battles. His answer was surprising in its honesty: He’s working with DCI Group, a political dark arts master known to be advocating on behalf of a group of powerful hedge funds that are changing how Washington works.*



If you want to get a sense of what’s motivating Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders voters, it’s a desire to take people like Robert Shapiro, remove them from the halls of power, and toss them into a cardboard box on the street. *Of course, that won’t be happening any time soon, but that’s what a lot of people want.*

What follows are some additional excerpts from the piece, which I strongly suggest you read in full.



Shapiro, it turns out, is but one foot soldier in the hedge fund infantry. A review of public documents, tax filings and interviews with people involved finds that in each of the three campaigns, *hedge funds have enlisted the same set of lobbyists, political operatives, dark money groups and think-tank experts spanning the political spectrum.*

 

The band that has gotten together for the big three hedge fund jam sessions includes some unlikely allies: There’s DCI Group, the powerhouse lobbying firm. Then there’s the Raben Group, operatives whose specialty is working in the progressive space and lobbying Democrats. There’s the American Continental Group, a bipartisan lobbying firm. There’s 60 Plus and the Center for Individual Freedom, two groups that call themselves part of the conservative movement, but in reality are dark money groups known to run whatever campaign they’re paid to run, and that are happy to conceal the source of the funding. *All these groups have roughly nothing in common, other than that they all have united in advocacy campaigns that alternately go up against the Argentinian people, Puerto Ricans and the rest of the American public.*

 

Each of these campaigns appears to have been run by or aided by the DCI Group. We say “appears” because DCI is one of Washington’s great black boxes — news articles that involve DCI routinely include a line informing readers that the organization did not respond to a request for comment.* This article is no different.*

*Old Washington hands involved in these particular fights say that nothing they’ve seen before in politics has prepared them for the mercenary campaigns the hedge funds are now waging.*

 

*“There’s something about this that’s almost more disturbing, because you get an issue that’s not particularly a big public issue and people can spend and spend and spend,” said a veteran policymaker who found himself on the wrong end of the hedge funds. “And I don’t know how anybody can compete with it. And then you start losing the narrative and you see groups on the left get bought out and corrupted — really corrupted. I don’t know what to do about it.”*



It’s so bad, even the critters in Congress are disgusted by it.



And it’s not ideological, either. If a big group of hedge funds decided to short the health insurance industry, it could easily be in their interests to fund a dark money campaign on behalf of single-payer health care. If they short the big banks, they’ve now become allies with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.).

 

In Puerto Rico, the group of hedge funds waging the biggest lobbying campaign own debt that is first in line to be paid off in case of any calamity. (That’s not to say there aren’t other hedge funds that own different sets of Puerto Rican debt lobbying so that they’re the first to be paid; more on them later.) *They’re now betting that they can stop Congress from rescuing Puerto Rico by amending bankruptcy laws to allow Puerto Rico to cover its basic expenses before paying out the hedge funds.*

 

Betting that Congress does nothing is often a smart wager. *If the island government is forced to pay off creditors first, it will have to take those funds from vital programs threatening the livelihoods of people who live there.*



Here’s an example of how they threaten Congressional aides.



Or even against staffers. In the midst of the debate over how to restructure Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in early 2014, Jim Millstein was sitting down on Capitol Hill with Michael Bright, an aide to Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), who was working on the legislation. Millstein, like other hedge-fund titans lobbying on the bill, had a set of structural recommendations he thought the Senate should take up.

 

Millstein was worth listening to: While a top Treasury Department official, he had overseen the successful restructuring of AIG after the government bailout. But Millstein had an extra recommendation: The Fannie Mae shareholders needed to be paid out — shareholders like Millstein.

 

The aide told Millstein he didn’t see why shareholders, who bought Fannie stock for pennies when the government had already bailed it out, needed a windfall. The meeting turned tense. *“Don’t worry kid, you’re about to get yours,” Millstein said,* according to a Democratic committee staffer later briefed on the episode. Bright, reached for comment, declined to speak for this article.

 

*The DCI Group most famously built its reputation doing the dirty work of the tobacco industry. That long-running operation involved funding “experts” who would question the medical science around smoking, and targeting individual advocates and lawmakers. It pioneered the use of shadow groups that concealed the true source of funding for the campaign, and can be seen as a blueprint for the hedge fund campaigns.*



Of course it did.



*Back in 2007, DCI was instrumental in killing legislation that would have regulated Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, a doomed effort that may have prevented the lenders from melting down. It earned $2 million from Freddie Mac for its work. *

 

DCI was also part of American Task Force Argentina, the hedge-fund backed effort that battled Argentina over its default. Raben Group’s Robert Raben and Shapiro led the task force, and Shapiro’s consulting firm was paid at least $450,000. While there are no public filings today, the group is helping run the Fannie hedge-fund operation, according to DCI managing partner Justin Peterson, who has privately talked about DCI’s work. Shapiro, too, said he was working with DCI for his housing policy work.

 

McGill represented NML Capital, a subsidiary of Elliott Management, the hedge fund connected with GOP megadonor Paul Singer, in the lawsuit against Argentina, along with Aurelius Capital Management. That lawsuit allowed the hedge funds to extract billions from the Argentinian people. It came after the years-long slash-and-burn campaign run from the  American Task Force Argentina — *a lobbying coalition of Covington & Burling, DCI Group and the Raben Group.*



Well, well, well, will you take a look at that. Who do we find amongst hedge fund mercenary groups? None other than Covington & Burling. That’s right, the law firm that Eric Holder worked at before spinning through the revolving door into government, just in time to serve as Obama’s attorney general in order to protect bank executives from prosecution.

Recall what we learned in the post, Cronyism Pays – Eric “Too Big to Jail” Holder Triumphantly Returns to His Prior Corporate Law Firm Job:



*After failing to criminally prosecute any of the financial firms responsible for the market collapse in 2008, former Attorney General Eric Holder is returning to Covington & Burling, a corporate law firm known for serving Wall Street clients.*

 

*The move completes one of the more troubling trips through the revolving door for a cabinet secretary. Holder worked at Covington from 2001 right up to being sworn in as attorney general in Feburary 2009. And Covington literally kept an office empty for him, awaiting his return.*

 

*The Covington & Burling client list has included four of the largest banks, including Bank of America, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo. *



For more information on one of the most shameless cronies and fraudsters in American history, see:

Must Watch Video – “The Veneer of Justice in a Kingdom of Crime”

The U.S. Department of Justice Handles Banker Criminals Like Juvenile Offenders…Literally

Eric Holder Announces Task Force to Focus on “Domestic Terrorists”

Eric Holder and the DOJ Have Spent Millions of Taxpayer Dollars on Unreported Personal Travel

Elizabeth Warren Confronts Eric Holder, Ben Bernanke and Mary Jo White on Bankster Immunity

Even Washington D.C. Insiders Admit Eric Holder is a Bankster Puppet

Eric Holder Claims Emails Using Words ‘Fast and Furious’ Don’t Refer to Operation Fast and Furious Reported by Zero Hedge 20 hours ago.