The Emperor: [to the Senate] In order to ensure our security and continuing stability, the Republic will be reorganized into the first Galactic Empire, for a safe and secure society which I assure you will last for ten thousand years.

[Senate fills with enormous applause]

Padmé: [to Bail Organa] So this is how liberty dies... with thunderous applause.

When you were young, you know, you had to actually have an injury before something hurts. We'd like to encourage more young people to sign up, partly because since they're healthier, their premiums are actually generally going to be fairly cheap. They can find good options for less than their cable bill, less than their cell phone bill. And it's just part of growing up -- is making sure you're taking care of your body, your health. If you have a young family, you have to make sure that your family's protected with health insurance, as well. This allows you to do it.

When you were young, you know, you had to actually have an injury before something hurts. We'd like to encourage more young people to sign up, partly because since they're healthier, their premiums are actually generally going to be fairly cheap so it doesn't appear to be such a bad thing/burden. They can find good options for less than their cable bill, less than their cell phone bill. And it's just part of growing up -- is making sure you're paying your fair share, in the guise of your health in order to pay for all the care we give our elderly. If you have a young family, you have to make sure that someone else's family is protected with health insurance, as well. This allows us to do it.

Liberals are winning wild praise for their candor in admitting problems with Obamacare. It shows you the level of honesty people have come to expect of our liberal friends. Now, liberals are applauded for not lying through their teeth about something.

What are they supposed to say? This Obamacare website is fantastic! And really, haven't you already read all the magazines in your current doctor's office anyway?

The New York Times has described Obama's repeated claim that you could keep your insurance plan and keep your doctor under Obamacare as a mere slip of the tongue: "Mr. Obama clearly misspoke when he said that."

Misspoke? How exactly does one misspeak, word for word, dozens of times, over and over again?

That wasn't misspeaking -- it was a deliberate, necessary lie. Even Democrats couldn't have voted for Obamacare if Americans had known the truth. It was absolutely vital for Obama to lie about people being able to keep their insurance and their doctors.

Of course, it was difficult for voters to know the truth because every time Republicans would try to tell them, the White House and the media would rush in and call the critics liars.

The White House posted a specific refutation of the "disinformation" about not being able to keep your doctor or insurance plan. That claim, the website said, was being disseminated by Republicans "to scare people."

Their proof consisted of a video of Obama clearly stating, "If you have insurance that you like, then you will be able to keep that insurance. If you've got a doctor that you like, you will be able to keep your doctor."

A video of someone asserting the very fact in dispute does not rise to the level of "evidence," but it was more than enough for MSNBC.

Even when pretending to be critical of Obamacare, liberals lie about the real problems. They tell us they're worried about the percentage of young people signing up for Obamacare. The mix of young and old people in Obamacare is completely irrelevant. It won't help if a lot of young people sign up because their premiums are negligible.


To keep the system afloat, what Obamacare really needs is lots of healthy people, preferably healthy older people. Their premiums are astronomical -- and they won't need much medical treatment.

Premiums are set by your age, not your health. It doesn't matter if you never go to the doctor. Obamacare punishes you for having a healthy lifestyle. The Obamacare tax is a massively regressive poll tax on the middle-aged and the middle class.

Apart from those who are subsidized, everyone pays the exact same amount in penalties or insurance premiums for his age group. It doesn't matter if you don't make as much money as Bill Gates. Any 58-year-old male who doesn't qualify for a subsidy will pay the same Obamacare tax as Gates.

When Margaret Thatcher tried to impose the same tax per person, as a "community charge," there were riots in the street.

Our extremely progressive tax system, where nearly half the country pays no income tax at all, and the other half pays about 40 percent of their income, may not be fair. But most people also don't think it's fair to tax a guy making $80,000 a year the identical amount as one making $80 million a year. That's exactly what Obamacare does.

With Obamacare, the Democratic Party has foisted the most regressive tax possible on America. This ruthless assault on the middle class is all so we can have a health care system more like every other country has.

Until now, the United States has had the highest survival rates in the world for heart disease, cancer and diabetes. Cancer comparisons are the most useful because all Western countries keep careful records for this disease.

For all types of cancers, European men have only a 47.3 percent five-year survival rate, compared to a 66.3 percent survival rate for American men.

European women have only a 55.8 percent chance of being alive five years after being diagnosed with any type of cancer, compared to 62.9 percent of American women.

American survival rates for breast, prostate, thyroid and skin cancer are higher than 90 percent. Europeans do not have a 90 percent survival rate for one of those cancers.

The European rates are even worse than they sound because many cancers are not discovered until the victim's death -- twice as many as in the U.S. All those cancers were excluded from the study.

Canadian cancer survival rates aren't much better than the European rates -- and they've been able to sneak into to the U.S. for treatment! Women in the U.S. have a 61 percent survival rate for all cancers, compared to a 58 percent survival rate in Canada. Men in the U.S. have a 57 percent survival rate compared to 53 percent in Canada.

That's why your insurance premiums have to go through the roof and your Obamacare tax is the same as Bill Gates'. So across the world, we'll all be equal, dying of cancer, heart disease and diabetes as often as everyone else.

It's not that Obama doesn't believe in American exceptionalism; it's that he wants to end it.

But the reality is more complicated. The federal government has historically made payments to hospitals to cover the cost of uninsured patients seeking free medical care in emergency rooms, as federal law mandates that hospitals must care for all patients regardless of their ability to pay.

Because the Affordable Care Act’s authors believed they’d forced all states to implement the Medicaid expansion, Obamacare vastly cut hospital payments, the Associated Press reports.

The Supreme Court ruled that states could reject the Medicaid expansion in 2012, as part of the decision that upheld Obamacare generally. Since that decision, the Obama administration has so far instituted 28 unilateral delays and changes to the health care law’s implementation without congressional approval, Fox Business reports.

From verifying eligibility for subsidies to enforcing employer requirements, the Obama administration has already taken a hacksaw to the health care reform law, but it has made no changes to the provision raising problems for half the nation’s hospitals.

While the feds wait for financial pressure to force states to act, several state governments have been taking things into their own hands. Some have criticized these moves as “hospital bailouts.”

ALAMEDA COUNTY (KPIX 5) — California’s health care exchange promised potential customers they would have enough physicians to choose from. But some new enrollees, including an Alameda County woman, are discovering that their doctor choices are extremely limited.

Julia Turner is surprised that she even has to search for a doctor. When she signed up for a policy through Covered California late last year, her long-time physician was listed as participating in her Blue Shield plan. It turned out; however, that he is not accepting patients with her Blue Shield policy, purchased on the Covered California exchange.

When Turner called around to find someone else to treat her, she got more frustration. “The only doctors accepting new patients are urgent care clinics,” Turner told KPIX 5 ConsumerWatch.

None of the doctors are located in the city in which she lives. Instead, Turner said, “They are in areas of East Oakland that have a lot of violence.”

When KPIX 5 contacted all of the 41 doctors on the list Blue Shield provided to Julia, it found only four of the doctors were actually accepting new adult patients, and only one of them was board certified.

The California Department of Managed Health Care said there is no law that requires the insurer’s provider list to be accurate. However, state law does require insurers to have an “adequate” network of doctors. That means there must be at least one doctor for every 1,200 enrollees within 15 miles of their home.

But many enrollees, in both Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans purchased on the exchange said they are struggling to find even one doctor willing to take new patients due to what are now being call “narrow networks.”

But the reality is more complicated. The federal government has historically made payments to hospitals to cover the cost of uninsured patients seeking free medical care in emergency rooms, as federal law mandates that hospitals must care for all patients regardless of their ability to pay.

In 2009, Senator Kay Hagan (D-NC) promised North Carolinians who depend on Medicare that she was going to “protect Medicare” and that they would “not see a drop in their Medicare coverage.”


But in 2010 Kay Hagan voted to slash Medicare Advantage to pay for ObamaCare. (H.R. 4872, CQ Vote #72: Motion agreed to 56-42: R 0-40; D 54-2; I 2-0, 3/24/10, Hagan Voted Yea)


In North Carolina 463,159 seniors depend on Medicare Advantage plans (28% of all Medicare enrollees).


According to America’s Health Insurance Plans, in North Carolina, seniors on Medicare Advantage plans experienced cost increases and benefit cuts of an estimated $50-60 per month as a result of this year’s 6 percent cut to the program due to ObamaCare.


Now, as North Carolina seniors are being crushed under the weight of ObamaCare and as her own poll numbers plummet, Kay Hagan admits in a letter to Centers for Medicare & Medicaid that she cut Medicare for seniors after promising North Carolinians that they wouldn’t “see a drop in their Medicare coverage”


Hagan’s letter reads: “We write to raise serious concerns about the Medicare Advantage (MA) 2015 rate notice and the impact further cuts may have on the millions of individuals enrolled in the program,” the senators write. “We are strongly committed to preserving the high quality health plan choices and benefits that our constituents receive through the MA program. Given the impact that payment policies could have on our constituents, we ask that you prioritize beneficiaries’ experience and minimize disruption in maintaining payment levels for 2015.”

Three day care centers in Charleston, W. Va. are citing costs related to Obamacare as part of the reason they are closing down. Fox affiliate WVAH-TV reports that 40 workers are employed by the centers and will find themselves out of a job.

Kanawha County, which operates the centers, said they had lost $65,000 since the start of the school year as a result of expensive repairs and “concerns about added costs because of the Affordable Care Act.”

The county will work with parents to find replacement centers for their children. It will also help employees find new jobs within the district.

Three day care centers in Charleston, W. Va. are citing costs related to Obamacare as part of the reason they are closing down. Fox affiliate WVAH-TV reports that the 40 workers employed by the centers just decided to spend more time with their families, paid for with Food Stamps!

Julie Boonstra, a cancer patient who was kicked of off her health plan due to Obamacare, lashed out at Rep. Gary Peters (D., Mich.) on Saturday after lawyers for his campaign demanded that Michigan broadcasters cease airing ads featuring her story.

Boonstra, a Michigan resident, was diagnosed with leukemia five years ago. She was recently kicked off of her healthcare plan due to regulations passed as part of President Barack Obama’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which Peters voted in favor of.

After relating her story publicly in an ad produced by the advocacy group Americans for Prosperity (AFP), Peters dispatched lawyers to prevent the spot from running on local television stations.

Boonstra, who says she is now struggling to pay out of pocket for her rising healthcare costs, told the Washington Free Beacon she is stunned by Peters’ efforts to censor her story.

“I’m appalled. I’m appalled as a mom, as a woman, and as a cancer patient, as someone living with cancer … who has stood before this nation to say, ‘I cannot afford that out of pocket expense,’” said Boonstra, who said she was given a 20 percent chance of surviving her disease. “As a Michigan resident, to silence my voice, I’m absolutely appalled.”

Peters, who is running for a seat in the Senate, instructed his legal counsel earlier this week to demand that stations stop running the AFP ad until additional evidence of the cancer victim’s claims could be produced.

With no other options, she bought the plan and was approved on Nov. 22. Because by January the plan was still not showing up on her online Humana account, however, she repeatedly called to confirm that it was active. The agents told her not to worry, she was definitely covered.

Then on Feb. 12, just before going into (yet another) surgery, she was informed by Humana that it would not, in fact, cover her Sandostatin, or other cancer-related medications. The cost of the Sandostatin alone, since Jan. 1, was $14,000, and the company was refusing to pay.

The news was dumbfounding. This is a woman who had an affordable health plan that covered her condition. Our lawmakers weren't happy with that because . . . they wanted plans that were affordable and covered her condition. So they gave her a new one. It doesn't cover her condition and it's completely unaffordable.