Tag Archives: GAO

What We Know And Don’t Know About Obamacare

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The White House spent billions last year on efforts like this to promote Obamacare enrollment. How will they do this year? [Credit: Washington Post]

The White House spent bil­lions last year on efforts like this to pro­mote Oba­macare enroll­ment. How will they do this year? [Cred­it: Wash­ing­ton Post]

If you are a law­ful res­i­dent of the Unit­ed States and you lack health insur­ance today, it’s almost cer­tain­ly your fault.  You can’t blame your employ­er, the gov­ern­ment or the insur­ance com­pa­nies.  It’s on you.

That is the last­ing achieve­ment of Oba­macare, whose sec­ond open enroll­ment peri­od began yes­ter­day. Gone are the days when peo­ple with pre-exist­ing med­ical con­di­tions could not find afford­able cov­er­age.   Whether the ends of this achieve­ment, which are unde­ni­ably good, jus­ti­fy the means its sup­port­ers employed to win its enact­ment remains a mat­ter of con­tro­ver­sy. Con­tin­ue read­ing →

Tales From The House al Qaeda Built

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Turmoil at the Department of Homeland Security, an agency established in response to the 9/11 attacks, continued last night when Secret Service Director Julia Pierson resigned under fire. [Credit: cbc.ca]

Tur­moil at the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty, an agency estab­lished in response to the 9/11 attacks, con­tin­ued last night when Secret Ser­vice Direc­tor Julia Pier­son resigned under fire. [Cred­it: cbc.ca]

The house al Qae­da built — a sprawl­ing new head­quar­ters for the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty, an agency cre­at­ed in response to the Sep­tem­ber 11 attacks — was sup­posed to open next year.

It’s just a bit behind sched­ule.  Its open­ing is now slat­ed for 2026, 21 years after plan­ning began. Con­tin­ue read­ing →

NSA Surveillance: Insulting Our Intelligence?

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Michael Corleone warned his brother-in-law not to insult his intelligence. Does the government insult ours when it defends its snooping activities? [Credit: Rotten Tomatoes]

Michael Cor­leone warned his broth­er-in-law not to insult his intel­li­gence. Does the gov­ern­ment insult ours when it defends its snoop­ing activ­i­ties? [Cred­it: Rot­ten Tomatoes]

“Improp­er pay­ments” by the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment totaled an esti­mat­ed $115.3 bil­lion in 2011, accord­ing to a report pre­pared by the Office of Man­age­ment and Bud­get (OMB), but the government’s own watch­dog agency doesn’t believe those esti­mates.  The Gov­ern­ment Account­abil­i­ty Office (GAO), which exam­ined the OMB analy­sis, thinks the num­ber of mis­spent fed­er­al dol­lars is much high­er. Con­tin­ue read­ing →

WH Surrenders to Political Reality on Private Medicare Plans

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Photo of seniors (500x500)

The Oba­ma Admin­is­tra­tion sur­ren­dered to polit­i­cal real­i­ty yes­ter­day, grant­i­ng a pro­gram that seniors love and that it loathes a reprieve from what would have been dev­as­tat­ing cuts.

Con­tin­ue read­ing →