Happy Thursday folks,
Last night, President Obama used his fluffy, indirect approach to dealing with policy issues by giving interviews for eight local television stations around the country. When giving such interviews, the president is able to dish out criticism to hand-picked audiences.
The president took an opportunity to say in an interview with Baltimore CBS affiliate WJZ, “I don’t know why it is in this town, folks leave stuff until the last minute.” Apparently, golfing with Tiger Woods last weekend does not count as procrastinating.
One area of the administration that is keeping busy though, is the Department of Health and Human Services, who recently ruled “Medicare Advantage plans will face a 2.2 percent payment cut in 2014,” According to The Hill’s Sam Baker. Medicare Advantage plans are private insurance plans for seniors that are subsidized by the government. Along with the $700 billion that Obamacare already allocated out of Medicare, the new cuts will likely prevent insurance companies from offering new plans to seniors and worsen the Medicare budgetary outlook.
A research analyst for Citi said of the cuts: “There’s no way around it. The proposed Medicare Advantage rates for 2014 are really, really bad (Bloomberg Businessweek, 2/19/13). Conservatives have been out in front of warning against the administration’s Medicare choices. A study from last year at the University of Minnesota demonstrates the effects of Medicare Advantage cuts by county. Americans everywhere want to see that Washington doesn’t wait until the last minute, but I don’t think this action is what America’s seniors had in mind.
Seize the day,
Mark Bednar
@MarkBednar
Important Things On Tap For Today
11:25 AM: President Obama records radio interviews with Al Sharpton, Joe Madison, and Yolanda Adams.
12:00 PM: Vice President Joe Biden delivers remarks on gun violence.
1:00 PM: Press Secretary Jay Carney gives press briefing.
Tweet Tweet
@PeterRoskam “In 3 yrs Medicare paid $120M to ineligible individuals including prison inmates. Instead of raising taxes let’s #cutwaste”
@WSJ “A U.S. CEO criticized French habits, saying workforce “gets paid high wages but works only three hours.” http://on.wsj.com/YniOVr”
@Dodgers “.@BlakeGriffin throws on a #Dodgers fitted and down a monster slam — shooting for #OpeningDayLA: pic.twitter.com/zXkX8PmD8Z”
@BloombergTV “#FastFact Discretionary defense spending accounts for 17% of the 2013 U.S. Budget, but will receive 50% of the planned sequestrations cuts”
@Kredo0 “Iran and Cuba increase bilateral ties. Will trade in cigars, oil, and civilian desperation for freedom http://goo.gl/Sqqq1”
On The Radar
Economic Growth
Rising Gas Prices Hurting Chicago Cabbies from Fox Small Business by Gabrielle Karol. “AAA reports that gas prices have risen for the past 33 days; FBN’s Tracy Byrnes says this translates to an increase of 13 cents for the average gallon of gas. It’s not just commuters that are experiencing the pain at the pump, so to speak. Many U.S. small businesses are getting hit in the fallout. FBN’s Jeff Flock visited Chicago’s Carriage Cab company on Tuesday, finding that many of the business’s cabs were stuck in the lot.”
Grassley: Lew Needs To Provide More Details from The Hill by Peter Schroeder. “Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) wants to hold up the nomination of Jack Lew to be Treasury secretary until the nominee expands on several ‘unsatisfactory’ answers. In a statement, the Senate Finance Committee member said he was frustrated by Lew saying he could not recall details pertinent to Grassley’s questions surrounding his time as an executive in the private sector in between the Clinton and Obama administrations.”
The Obama “Recovery:” Less Unemployment But More Dependence from AEI by Nicholas Eberstadt. “A strange and disturbing new social pattern is unfolding before our eyes in America today: growing dependence on government handouts in the face of declining unemployment rates. Though we are now preparing to enter into the fourth year of recovery from our Great Recession, the roster of Americans seeking and obtaining entitlement benefits from our government just seems to keep on going up.”
Immigration
Senators In Immigration Talks Mull Federal IDs For All Workers from The Wall Street Journal by Danny Yadron. “Key senators are exploring an immigration bill that would force every U.S. worker—citizen or not—to carry a high-tech identity card that could use fingerprints or other personal markers to prove a person’s legal eligibility to work. The idea, signaled only in vaguely worded language from senators crafting a bipartisan immigration bill, has privacy advocates and others concerned that the law would create a national identity card that, in time, could track Americans at airports, hospitals and through other facets of their lives. The lawmakers haven’t committed to the “biometric” ID card, and are wary of any element that might split the fragile coalition of Democrats, Republicans and outside organizations working toward agreement on a broad overhaul of immigration laws.”
Supreme Court Denies Retroactivity To Immigrant Legal Rights Ruling from The Washington Post by Robert Barnes. “A 2010 Supreme Court ruling that lawyers fail their immigrant clients by not advising them of the deportation consequences that come with pleading guilty to certain crimes does not apply retroactively, the court ruled Wednesday. By a 7 to 2 vote, the court closed the door to Chicagoan Roselva Chaidez and thousands of others who, before the court’s 2010 ruling in Padilla v. Kentucky , pleaded guilty to crimes only to learn later that the decision made them eligible for removal from the country.”
Health Care
Group Releases List Of 90 Medical “Don’ts” from The Washington Post by Sandhya Somashekar. “It is the second set of recommendations from the American Board of Internal Medicine Foundation’s “Choosing Wisely” campaign, which launched last year amid nationwide efforts to improve medical care in the United States while making it more affordable. The recommendations run the gamut, from geriatrics to opthalmology to maternal health. Together, they are meant to convey the message that in medicine, “sometimes less is better,” said Daniel Wolfson, executive vice president of the foundation, which funded the effort.”
Final Health Benefit Rules Clarify Some Confusion from NBC News by Maggie Fox. “Beginning in 2014 under the law, all new small group and individual market plans will be required to cover 10 Essential Health Benefit categories, including mental health and substance use disorder services, and will be required to cover them at parity with medical and surgical benefit.”
Private Equity Firms Look To Invest In Hospital Leadership from Fierce Health Finance by Ron Shinkman. “A new player has broken onto the mergers and acquisitions deal-making scene: private equity firms. Although they have long powered deals in other sectors, they traditionally remained on the sidelines when it came to the regulation-heavy, margin-thin hospital market-until now. The spark of this activity is simple: The healthcare industry is exiting a period of business decline, rapidly growing and enjoying new value.”
Of Golf Carts And Doctors: A Retirement Community Builds Its Very Own Health Insurance Plan from The Washington Post by Sarah Kliff. “It’s a specially tailored pitch intended for a unique audience, as UnitedHealth announced Wednesday a partnership with the Villages, the country’s largest retirement community, located in central Florida, to create a private Medicare plan that will exclusively serve its 93,000 residents. The new partnership reflects some larger trends in the health-care industry: It will attempt to tamp down on health-care costs by making a large investment in primary care. Unlike traditional insurance models, where full hospital beds generate the most revenue, the whole idea is to keep patients out of the hospital altogether.”
X-Factor
White House Dismisses North Korea Video Showing Obama, Troops In Flames from The Washington Post by Felicia Somnez. “The White House on Wednesday shrugged off a new North Korean web video depicting President Obama and U.S. troops in flames, arguing that anti-American propaganda is less worrisome than the totalitarian state’s ‘continuing defiance of its international obligations.’ Asked at Wednesday’s press briefing about the video, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney told reporters that he had read about it but hadn’t seen it.”
This & That
Brooklyn Bride-To-Be Lost Her Engagement Ring On The Subway- And Got It Back Two Months Later from the New York Post by Jennifer Fermino.
D.C. Invited To Bid For Super Awesome And Devastatingly Expensive Sporting Event from DCist by Benjamin R. Freed.
Homeless Man Sues Parents For “Too Little Love” from the New York Post by Jennifer Bain and Josh Saul.
The Only Thing You Need To Read About The Playstation 4 from Buzzfeed by John Herman and Joseph Bernstein.
Alessandra Ambrosio & Anja Are Back At It For London Fog! from Perez Hilton.