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Seema Verma: Americans ‘Fleeing’ Obamacare Exchanges ‘Sky-High’ Premiums

Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator Seema Verma said Monday that Americans continue to flee the Obamacare exchanges because the “sky-high premiums” are too “unaffordable.”

The CMS released two reports Monday that found that Obamacare enrollment remained steady in both 2018 and 2019, while average 2019 exchange premiums declined by a small degree.

However, Obamacare state exchanges faced significant challenges for Americans that do not qualify for the Obamacare advance premium tax credit (APTC) and must pay the entire health insurance premium themselves. One study found that, between 2016 and 2018, 2.5 million Americans without Obamacare subsidies left the exchanges, which represents a 40 percent drop.

Administrator Verma said that the current exodus proves that Obamacare’s premiums remain too expensive for millions of Americans.

“As President Trump predicted, people are fleeing the individual market. Obamacare is failing the American people, and the ongoing exodus of the unsubsidized population from the market proves that Obamacare’s sky-high premiums are unaffordable,” said Verma in a statement Monday.

The CMS’s Subsidized and Unsubsidized Enrollment Report showcases that the Obamacare exchanges continue to price Americans out of the individual health insurance markets. In 2017, 1.3 million unsubsidized Americans left the exchanges, while another 1.2 million left the market in 2018. Both of these enrollment declines coincide with increases of average monthly premium increases of 21 percent in2017 and 26 percent in 2018.

Americans began to leave the Obamacare exchanges starting in the 2015 to 2016 period for unsubsidized American enrollees. Further, 43 states saw decreases in unsubsidized enrollment from 2016 to 2017, and 47 states saw a decline from 2017 to 2018. In 2018, nine states, including Iowa, Georgia, Nebraska, Tennessee, Virginia, Kentucky, Missouri, Kansas, and West Virginia, lost more 40 percent of their unsubsidized enrollment.

 While Obamacare remains too expensive for many Americans, the Trump administration has pursued healthcare reforms that would offer Americans more affordable alternatives to Obamacare.

The White House released a rule in June that would expand health reimbursement accounts (HRAs) that would allow small businesses to offer health insurance to their employees. The administration estimates that up to 800,000 employers, and more than 11 million workers and family members, will benefit from the healthcare expansion.

The Trump administration also expanded short-term health insurance plans. The Foundation for Government Accountability (FGA) study found that short-term plans could cost 80 percent less than Obamacare “bronze” plans.

Trump’s latest healthcare reform arises as he promised Republicans will become the party of “health care” and that the White House reportedly will release their health care plan in September.

Sean Moran is a congressional reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter @SeanMoran3.

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Poll: 54 Per Cent of Brits Want Brexit ‘By Any Means’, Including Suspending Parliament

54 per cent of Britons want the Prime Minister to deliver Brexit “by any means” necessary, even if he has to temporarily suspend Parliament to stop MPs from cancelling or delaying its October 31st deadline.

Presnted with the statement “The Prime Minister needs to deliver Brexit by any means, including suspending Parliament if necessary, to prevent MPs from stopping it” by polling firm ComRes, 54 per cent of the public signalled their agreement, The Telegraph reports.

By party, respondents who identified as Conservative Party voters backed the statement by an even more decisive 76 per cent, as did a significant 32 per cent minority of Labour voters, and even 25 per cent of voters who back the slavishly europhile Liberal Democrats.

“I would hope that the EU now fully understands the UK’s determination to leave the EU on Oct 31st, no ifs or buts,” commented a spokesman for Boris Johnson.

“We stand ready to negotiate [a new withdrawal agreement],” he added.

Commentators with an incomplete understanding of the British constitution have previously complained that a prime minister causing anti-Brexit legislative action to fail by advising the Queen to prorogue the parliamentary session would violate the principles of parliamentary sovereignty.

However, institutional writers such as A. V. Dicey, atuthor of the seminal Introduction to the Study of the Law of the Constitution, have been clear that parliamentarians “can in accordance with the constitution be deprived of power [when] there is fair reason to suppose that the opinion of the House is not the opinion of the electors.”

Edmund Burke, considered the founding father of British conservative thought and often invoked by EU loyalists suggesting that MPs revoking Brexit would be in line with “Burkean representative democracy”, was similarly clear that “The virtue, spirit, and essence of a House of Commons consists in its being the express image of the feelings of the nation”, and that “It was not instituted to be a control upon the people, as of late it has been taught… It was designed as a control for the people.”

It should be noted that proroguing the parliamentary session would merely stop MPs from preventing the October 31st Brexit already provided for by parliamentary legislation — the European Union (Withdrawal) Act — and would not involve a despotic seizure of power in which Government would be able to rule by decree.

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EXCLUSIVE: Sandy Berger, Joins Bill Clinton, Al Gore and Larry Summers from the Clinton Administration, All Connected to Epstein’s Express and/or Epstein’s Orgy Island!!!

Yesterday we reported that Clinton and Obama economist and the former President of Harvard, took numerous flights on Jeffrey Epstein’s jet. He even flew on Epstein’s jet to Epstein’s infamous ‘Orgy Island’ ten days after his marriage in 2005.

Today we can report that another Clinton elite creep, former Clinton National Security Advisor, took a flight on the Epstein Express from Epstein’s ‘Orgy Island’ as well.

Yesterday we uncovered that creepy former President of Harvard, Larry Summers, flew numerous times on Jeffrey Epstein’s jet and even flew to Epstein’s so called ‘Orgy Island’.

Flight logs from the previous Epstein trial show that Larry Summers flew a couple times on the ‘Epstein Express’ to Epstein’s now infamous ‘Orgy Island’! According to flight records released from the Epstein case, Summers took four trips on Epstein’s Jet. On one trip he took his newlywed second wife, Elisa New, to Epstein’s Island for their Honeymoon in 2005.

Today we can report that the same flight records show that former President Bill Clinton’s National Security Advisor, Sandy Berger, flew on Epstein’s jet from his ‘Orgy Island’ as well.

Berger was also famous for being charged with stealing documents from the National Archives but stuffing them in his clothes to protect President Clinton and himself from actions related to Osama Bin Ladin.  US News reported about Berger –

It’s been almost eight years since Clinton-era national security adviser Sandy Berger smuggled classified documents out of the National Archives that detailed his boss’s efforts to thwart terrorist threats to the millennium celebrations. The crime cost Berger $50,000, 100 hours of community service, his security clearance, and his law license. But the agents who went after him haven’t forgotten. “It weighs on you,” says Archives Inspector General Paul Brachfeld.

And now they’ve made Berger the poster boy for a new anti-theft initiative. The outreach to archivists includes a slide show that pictures Berger and three other smugglers under the headline: “To Catch a Thief.” What’s more, Brachfeld now has an archival recovery team assigned to work theft cases. “Those acts I don’t think can be re-created today,” he tells our Caitlin Huey-Burns.

Still, the Berger episode gnaws at Brachfeld because the former top official abused his privileges and because Berger’s actions might have robbed the 9/11 Commission of key details related to its probe of the terror plot. Brachfeld says Berger was given “unique privileges” just “because he was Sandy Berger.” But, he adds, that kind of special treatment will never again be provided. “Those unique privileges were rescinded, in terms of it wasn’t going to happen again,” says Brachfeld.

He notes that the 9/11 Commission report, which also looked at the Clinton administration’s handling of terrorism, could have been compromised. “We all know what 9/11 meant to the country, and his treating those records in such a manner will always leave, in my mind, a cloud over whether or not the 9/11 Commission got full production of the records that they requested, and that to me is extremely serious and an affront to all Americans.”

The misdemeanor to which Berger admitted took place in late 2003. “It was a terrible experience for me,” Brachfeld says. “I was going after big game.” He adds: “It was very disquieting to me that somebody that was a household name in Washington, somebody that was a trusted person, somebody that you hope would be a good steward of the records and would be responsive to the 9/11 Commission, treated the records in the opposite manner. So you know, you lose faith. It’s a success in terms of getting him to admit to the crime in some degree. But at the same time, it’s sad.”

Berger was not only a crook, he was a creep!

We’ve identified a documented flight for Berger FROM Epstein’s Island (NOTE: There are NO Epstein flight records for Berger TO Epstein’s ‘Orgy’ Island.)

On September 24, 2005, Berger flew from TIST (Cyril E King Airport, St Thomas, US Virgin Islands) to TEB (Teterboro Airport, Bergen, NJ).

Also accompanying Berger on this flight out was a Tatiana “Simanova/Simonova” (sp)

Former President Bill Clinton on the Epstein Express 27 times, mostly with underage girls.  One sex slave from the island says she met Al Gore, Clinton’s VP, when she was underage.  Clinton’s Treasury Secretary,  Summers, flew on the Epstein Express to Orgy Island on his honeymoon and his National Security Advisor, Berger, flew from Orgy Island on the Epstein Express.

Was the entire Clinton Administration a gang of creeps?

Via Paul Blum

 

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Cuccinelli: Public Charge Standard Has Existed for Almost 140 Years — New Rule Intended to ‘Give Meaningful Effect’

During an appearance on Monday’s broadcast of Fox News Channel’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” acting U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Ken Cuccinelli explained to fill-in host Mark Steyn how the new green card rule his agency issued earlier in the day was an effort to bolster existing law.

Steyn shared his own travails with the U.S. immigration system with regards to proving he would not be a charge on the public purse and questioned what today’s announcement changed. According to Cuccinelli, up until now, existing law has been ineffective and required such action.

“Well, it’s actually been around, Mark, for almost 140 years,” he said. “So it wasn’t new to you. They didn’t make it up just for you. You shouldn’t feel singled out. But I will say, for the last couple of decades, because of the guidance issued after the 1996 version of this law, it’s been ineffective. And so, the rule we issued today, a public charge rule, is intended to once again give meaningful effect to the public charge standard. And what that is in ordinary English for people watching, is basically that we try to avoid having immigrants come through our process, come to our country, or become green card holders, who are likely in the future to become welfare-dependent. That is what this rule is about.”

Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor

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Former German General Blasts Merkel on Open Borders, Joins Populist AfD

Former three-star general Joachim Wundrak is running for mayor of Hanover for Alternative for Germany (AfD) after expressing contempt for Chancellor Angela Merkel’s open border policies.

Wundrak, a former member of Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party, has accused the German leader of facilitating mass migration, which he has labelled an “anti-German” policy, Swiss newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung reports.

In an interview with the paper, Wundrak said that he chose to leave the CDU in 2017, saying Merkel could not recognise what she could have done differently during the height of the migrant crisis in 2015.

He said that joining the populist, anti-mas migration AfD in 2018, shortly after he retired as a general in the Luftwaffe, came at a risk, saying: “Anyone who confesses to supporting the AfD is bullied and marginalised. They also get into the focus of Antifa.”

The alt-left extremist Antifa group have repeatedly targetted AfD politicians, advocating for assassinations and even allegedly taking credit for a brutal attack on AfD politician Frank Magnitz earlier this year in Bremen.

Wundrak noted that Merkel’s CDU could lose the confidence of the German armed forces, the Bundeswehr, saying: “The AfD is the only party that fully supports the Bundeswehr.”

“The support of the AfD is likely to be even greater in police circles than among the soldiers,” he added.

“The comrades in the police experience the aberrations of German politics on the street every day. They are at the front.”

While the AfD is routinely painted as extremist by other political parties and the press, Wundrak said he had not experienced any extremism after joining and said the party platform was in line with the CDU’s platform from 2003.

On the subject of Ms Merkel, Wundrak said: “Merkel has sworn an oath to Germany, but she already has a problem talking about a German people. She prefers to speak of ‘population’. Many German politicians struggle to profess their own nation.”

“The protection of one’s own borders is no longer a priority goal. Germany is giving more and more sovereignty to the EU, the European Central Bank, to supranational organisations. I do not agree with this. The nation-state is the primary form of organisation for Germany. Where structures become too big, an undemocratic spirit quickly arises,” he added.

Follow Chris Tomlinson on Twitter at @TomlinsonCJ or email at ctomlinson(at)breitbart.com

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Hungary Announces Investigation into Social Media Censorship in Europe

Hungarian Justice Minister Judit Varga has announced that she will be starting an investigation into censorship of political views on social media in Hungary and across Europe.

The Hungarian minister made her announcement on social media platform Facebook over the weekend, saying she would be creating a “working group” within the ministry to “investigate the possibilities for a legal environment to ensure the transparency of social media service providers – both on EU and national level.”

“Originally their job would not be to influence societal processes and elections by censoring comments on an ideological basis, however, if they had done it once they shall accept the necessity of the regulation and follow the rules of democracy,” she added.

The announcement comes only a month after Emmanuel Macron’s government announced it would be taking the opposite view and would look to force search engines and social media networks to censor “hate speech” in France.

The measure, which was passed in early July, would see large fines for internet companies who do not remove offending material within a 24-hour period.

The European Union has also pushed for censorship of “hate speech” on social media in recent years, including proposing a similar law to the French legislation in September of last year.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government has also demanded social media companies remove “hate speech” and introduced fines of up to 50 million euros for companies which violate the policy.

Social media censorship has been a major issue in the United States with President Donald J. Trump looking to use various agencies, including the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), to potentially regulate online censorship through an executive order.

A leaked draft of the executive order, entitled “Protecting Americans from Online Censorship,” would allow the FCC to change how social media companies are treated under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act which allows tech companies to censor lewd or questionable content.

Follow Chris Tomlinson on Twitter at @TomlinsonCJ or email at ctomlinson(at)breitbart.com

 

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Rudy Giuliani on Epstein’s Death: “What Happened Here is Mind-Boggling, It’s impossible to Happen” (VIDEO)

Former New York City Mayor and Trump Attorney Rudy Giuliani joined America’s Newsroom on Tuesday to discuss the death of Jeffrey Epstein at the MCC in Manhattan.

Rudy said, “What happened here is mind-boggling. It is impossible to happen.”

Rudy added, “This argument over whether he was on suicide watch or not is like, silly. Because if he wasn’t on suicide watch he should have been ‘on watch.’ The guy was a high risk prisoner. Wasn’t he? He’s a guy where there are probably 50 very important people who had a motive to kill him. We don’t even know who they are. I’m not acknowledging that any of the people named. But it’s true there are some people who are in a lot of trouble because of Epstein.

Via America’s Newsroom:

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America’s Marxist Fever

America is burning with repulsive Marxist fever which has reached a scorching level. Like sharks circling mad in bloody waters, the mainstream media, academia, the Democrat Party, and its American supporters are engulfed by Marxist fever and stirred into a daily frenzy devoid of logic and truth, ready to impeach our president and deport anybody who is not a Democrat Socialist.

The social/racial justice warrior activists are determined to replace the “evil capitalism” they suddenly detest and reject, with “equitable, classless, non-racist, and socially just socialism/communism.” They have no idea what socialism and communism really are but that is of no consequence—they just want their promised “free stuff.”

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WaPo Gives Four Pinocchios to 2020 Dems Who Say Michael Brown Was Murdered

The Washington Post Fact-Checker gave its harshest rating of Four Pinocchios to a pair of Democratic presidential candidates who claimed black teenager Michael Brown was murdered in 2014 by a white policeman.

Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) and Kamala Harris (D., Calif.) both tweeted last Friday—which was the fifth anniversary of Brown’s death in Ferguson, Missouri—that Brown had been murdered by Officer Darren Wilson. However, Wilson was not indicted for a crime, and the Obama administration Justice Department issued an 86-page investigative report concluding there was no credible evidence that Wilson wasn’t telling the truth that he killed Brown in self-defense.

Reporter Glenn Kessler wrote Warren and Harris willfully ignored the Justice Department’s findings and furthered the false narrative that Brown died with his hands up begging Wilson not to shoot: "Hands Up, Don’t Shoot."

"Harris and Warren have ignored the findings of the Justice Department to accuse Wilson of murder, even though the Justice Department found no credible evidence to support that claim," Kessler reported. "Instead, the Justice Department found that the popular narrative was wrong, according to witnesses deemed to be credible, some of whom testified reluctantly because of fear of reprisal. The department produced a comprehensive report to determine what happened, making the senators’ dismissal of it even more galling."

Witnesses supported Wilson’s description of events that Brown tried to take his gun in a scuffle after he had robbed a store. After Brown punched Wilson several times, he ran off and ignored Wilson’s calls to stop. Witnesses then said Brown turned around and ignored Wilson’s repeated instructions to stand down, charging at the policeman. One witness said they would have shot sooner:

Witness 103, a 58-year-old black man: The witness "saw Brown punching Wilson at least three times in the facial area, through the open driver’s window of the SUV. Witness 103 described Wilson and Brown as having hold of each other’s shirts, but Brown was ‘getting in a couple of blows.’ Wilson was leaning back toward the passenger seat with his forearm up, in an effort to block the blows. Then Witness 103 heard a gunshot and Brown took off running."

[…]

Witness 104: "Wilson did not fire while Brown momentarily had his hands up. Witness 104 explained that it took some time for Wilson to fire, adding that she ‘would have fired sooner.’"

Witness 102: "Wilson only fired shots when Brown was coming toward Wilson. It appeared to Witness 102 that Wilson’s life was in jeopardy. … Witness 102 said he wanted to ‘bring closure to [Brown’s] family,’ so they would not think that the officer ‘got away with murdering their son.’"

Witness 105: "She explained that she was coming forward because in speaking with her neighbors, she realized that what they believed had happened was inconsistent with what actually happened. She further explained that she had not been paying attention to media accounts, and had been unaware of the inaccuracies being reported."

The Fact-Check noted there was pressure in the neighborhood to not tell the truth about what happened. The "Hands Up, Don’t Shoot" mantra that arose from the killing was dubbed one of the Post‘s biggest "Pinocchios" of 2015. Left-wing Washington Post writer Jonathan Capehart acknowledged it was "built on a lie."

Liberal explainer site Vox also dinged Warren and Harris for their tweets, in less stark terms.

"The evidence, including a report released by President Barack Obama’s Department of Justice, says otherwise," reporter German Lopez wrote.

Left-wing billionaire Tom Steyer also referred to Brown’s death as a murder, although his tweet didn’t fall under the Post‘s purview.

MSNBC host and civil rights activist Al Sharpton referred to Brown’s death as a "murder" in a tweet promoting his coverage over the weekend. MSNBC and CNN did not cover Warren and Harris’s false tweets.

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