President Barack Obama arrives on Air Force One at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar in San Diego.
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President Barack Obama talks with Marine Col. John Farnam after arriving on Air Force One
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President Barack Obama shakes hands upon his arrival at Moffett Field in San Jose.
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First Lady Michelle Obama presents a 2014 National Medal for Museum and Library Service to Mystic Aquarium, of Mystic, Conn., represented by Justin Richard, far left, and aquarium President and CEO Stephen Coan, during a ceremony in the East Room of the White House. The National Medal is the nation’s highest honor given to museums and libraries for service to the community.
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North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, represented by museum Director Emlyn Koster, and Molly Paul, of Raleigh, N.C.,
Brooklyn Botanic Garden, Brooklyn, New York, represented by Chidi Duke, and Library President Scott Medbury
Chicago Public Library Commissioner Brian Bannon (C) and community member Chris Force
The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis President and CEO Jeffrey Patchen, holds the museum’s 2014 National Medal for Museum and Library Service as Spencer Hahn, who had a stroke in-utero, whistles by his mother Erica Hahn and First Lady Michelle Obama
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Museums and libraries are playing an important role in a country that is aiming to provide a top-flight education to its children, Michelle Obama said Thursday as she helped honor 10 institutions from across the U.S. for outstanding community service. “Welcome to a little museum that we like to call the White House,” she said to open an East Room ceremony where she handed representatives of each institution a wooden frame that held their medal and a certificate.
The first lady said the institutions’ programs “help us expand our horizon and connect us to with the rest of the world.” She highlighted such offerings as summer expeditions to excavate dinosaur bones alongside professional paleontologists and opportunities to learn marine biology through the feeding and training of beluga whales. “The work that you do in the summers and throughout the year, quite frankly, is filling a crucial role for our country as we strive to give our young people a world-class education,” Mrs. Obama said.
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Octavia Fellin Public Library, of Gallup, N.M., represented by Maria Elena Reyes, far left, and library Director Mary Ellen Pellington
Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History represented by Ernesto Vargas, far left, and museum Director Michael Mares
Mid-Continent Public Library, of Independence, Missouri, represented by Alicia Moore, and library Director and CEO Steven Potter
Yiddish Book Center, of Amherst, Mass., represented by Peter Manseau, far left, and center Founder and President Aaron Lansky
Las Vegas-Clark County Library District, represented by Avree Walker, a dancer and student at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and district Executive Director Jeanne Goodrich
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In yet another boost to the health care law, some publicly traded hospitals are claiming that provisions in the Affordable Care Act are already increasing their bottom lines. During a call with investors on Wednesday, Community Health Systems CFO Larry Cash claimed that the company has already seen a decrease in self-pay admissions in the states that have expanded their Medicaid programs and predicted that the law would lower those kind of admissions from 8 percent to 4 percent over a three-year period. The CEOs of LifePoint Hospitals and HCA reported similar experiences: in states that expanded their Medicaid programs,
Medicaid admissions grew, while the number of uninsured admissions declined at faster rates than in states that have yet to comply with the Medicaid provisions of the health care law. “So far and as expected, the new health care law has been a net positive for LifePoint with respect to Medicaid expansion,” CEO Bill Carpenter said during the call. “In the seven states where we operate that have expanded coverage, we saw increasing Medicaid and decreasing self-pay volumes. Increases in Medicaid membership and health insurance exchange participation contributed measurably to our results in the quarter.”
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https://twitter.com/hsinnkeeper/status/440917238195814400
First Lady Michelle Obama presents the 2014 National Medal for Museum and Library Service at the White House, May 8
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11:00: First Lady Michelle Obama Presents The 2014 National Medal For Museum And Library Services
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9:30 AM: The President participates in a DNC fundraiser, The Beverly Hilton
11:10: Departs Los Angeles
11:50: Arrives San Diego
1:15: Delivers remarks at a fundraiser for congressional Democrats, private residence
2:30: Departs San Diego
3:50: Arrives San Jose
4:15: Participates in a DNC fundraiser, private residence
6:30: Speaks at a DNC fundraiser, Fairmont San Jose
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Women in the United States saved an estimated $483 million on their out-of-pocket costs for the birth control pill, according to new data from the IMS Institute on Healthcare Informatics. The health care data company found that Obamacare has “dramatically reduced” women’s out-of-pocket costs now that insurers are required to cover preventative care without charging an additional co-pay. Compared to the data from 2012, about 24 million more birth control pill prescriptions were filled without a co-pay in 2013. That means each of the women filling those prescriptions ended up saving an average of $269. Those savings can make all the difference for women who are struggling to afford the reproductive care they need.
According to the IMS Institute’s data, there was 4.6 percent increase in prescriptions for birth control between 2012 and 2013. One of the most common misconceptions about Obamacare’s contraceptive provision is the assumption that women are now getting birth control “for free.” In reality, however, these women are accessing birth control through their private, employer-sponsored health insurance plans. Women do pay for the benefits included in those plans, both by working at their job and by paying a monthly premium. Under Obamacare, the difference is that they don’t have to pay an additional out-of-pocket cost for the preventative health benefits specific to their gender.
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President Obama was in Century City on Wednesday night to accept a serious award from the USC Shoah Foundation — but his warmup act, comedian Conan O’Brien, still wasn’t over what Angelenos were calling Wednesday’s #Obamajam on major routes around town. “As a resident of Los Angeles, I’m furious about what you do to traffic when you visit this city,” O’Brien said to laughter at the 20th anniversary gala of USC’s Shoah Foundation. “What the hell? I know you left Washington six hours ago, but I left Burbank seven hours ago.”
“Now I mean this with the greatest respect, Sir, but do you have to physically come here? We love you. This town loves you. You’ve got our vote. You’re good. Audience, what do you say to – next time we give President Obama a Los Angeles award, we mail it to him? And then we fly down the 405,” the comedian said. As the president laughed, O’Brien added that “Skype works” and that if he insisted on continuing to come to Los Angeles, he owed everyone a ride home on his helicopter.
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President Obama is presented with the USC Shoah Foundation’s Ambassador for Humanity Award by movie director Steven Spielberg at the USC Shoah Foundation’s 20th anniversary Ambassadors for Humanity gala in Los Angeles
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Things continue to get tough for the Obamacare dead-enders, those increasingly lonely opponents whose only comeback against the flow of good news about the Affordable Care Act is to conjure up absurd arguments against it (I mean you, Cato’s Michael Cannon) or, if all else fails, make stuff up. That latter effort was put in the grave Wednesday by a panel of health insurance spokespersons summoned to Washington by the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. The committee, fans will recall, recently issued an utterly bogus report claiming that of all enrollees on the federal ACA website, only 67% had paid their first month’s premiums. That’s important because health insurance coverage isn’t official until the first payment is made.
As we reported, experts jumped all over the figure, pointing out that it overlooked that the payment deadline for a huge percentage of enrollees hadn’t been reached by the cut-off date for the committee’s survey, April 15, and that the due date for many others hasn’t been reached to this day. The giant health insurer Wellpoint says the payment ratio of enrollees whose premium date has already passed is “ranging up to 90 percent.” –Health Care Service Corp., which operates Blue Cross/Blue Shield plans in Illinois, Montana, Oklahoma and Texas, says its payment ratio on exchange plans ranges from 85% to 88% for policies with effective dates from Jan. 1 through March 1. On policies effective April 1, the ratio was 83%. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Government, one of Washington’s most reliable deficit scolds, on Tuesday issued an analysis acknowledging that the ACA has helped to bring down projections of federal healthcare spending from 2011 to 2021 by $900 billion.
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Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan pledged on Thursday to find more than 200 schoolgirls abducted by Islamist rebels, as the hostage crisis overshadowed his opening address to a major conference designed to showcase investment opportunities in Africa’s biggest economy. Speaking at the World Economic Forum (WEF) being hosted in the capital Abuja, Jonathan thanked foreign nations including the United States, Britain, France and China for their support in trying to rescue the girls, who were kidnapped from a secondary school on April 14 by Boko Haram.
France became the latest nation to offer help on Wednesday, saying it was boosting intelligence ties with Nigeria and sending security service agents there to tackle Boko Haram, the militant group which claimed the mass kidnapping. With more than 4,000 troops operating between Mali to the west and Central African Republic to the east, Paris has a major interest in preventing Nigeria’s security from deteriorating and has warned that Boko Haram could spread north into the Sahel. In the latest big Islamist attack in Nigeria, 125 people were killed on Monday when gunmen rampaged through a town in the northeast near the Cameroon border.
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The U.S. Treasury Department booked a $114 billion surplus in April, the largest for that month since 2008, according to the latest estimates from the Congressional Budget Office released Wednesday. For the first seven months of this fiscal year, which began on Oct. 1, the CBO estimates the country has racked up a $301 billion deficit, which is $187 billion lower than it was for the same period last year. Federal coffers saw a 7% increase in individual income taxes and payroll taxes, a 15% increase in corporate income taxes, and a 37% increase in money paid to Treasury by the Federal Reserve.
Meanwhile, overall spending fell by 2%. Areas that saw the biggest drops included unemployment benefits and homeland security (both down 31%), agriculture (down 12%) and defense spending (down 5%). Much of the drop in overall spending is attributable to bigger payments from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to Treasury. According to the weird accounting rules of the federal budget, those payments are counted as “negative” spending.
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The founder and CEO of Subway says a minimum wage increase wouldn’t be such a bad thing for his stores and workers and believes it should be changed so that wages rise automatically with inflation. “I’m not concerned,” CEO Fred DeLuca said on Wednesday when CNBC asked him about minimum wage hikes. “Over the years, I’ve seen so many of these wage increases. I think it’s normal. It won’t have a negative impact hopefully, and that’s what I tell my workers.” DeLuca’s support is noteworthy in part because of the size of his business. Subway has the most locations of any fast food chain. While a majority of small business owners support a $10.10 wage hike, major corporations of that scale typically oppose raising wages. DeLuca had previously warned that raising the minimum wage too rapidly would be a “bad idea” that could damage businesses, while acknowledging that “minimum-wage workers deserve to make more.”
At the time that he offered that warning in 2013, President Obama was proposing a minimum wage hike from $7.25 to $9 an hour. Since then, Obama has joined congressional progressives in calling for a $10.10 hourly minimum, which would nearly recoup the purchasing power low-wage workers have lost to inflation over the past 40 years. In the 15 months since DeLuca criticized proposed wage hikes as too rapid, low-wage worker strikes have spread from a handful of New York fast food stores to a hundred cities in all parts of the country, ratcheting up the pressure on lawmakers to act on wages. On Wednesday, workers announced plans for strikes in 150 U.S. cities and protests in 30 other countries across six continents.
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With April’s updated projections from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), spending on major federal health care programs (Medicare, Medicaid, and the Affordable Care Act’s exchange subsidies) has now been revised downward by $900 billion, or 0.4 percent of GDP, cumulatively from 2011 through 2021, just since their March 2011 projections. Buoyed by a 23 percent drop in the cost of Medicare Part D and a 15 percent decline in the projected costs of the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) new coverage through Medicaid and the exchanges, this remarkable slowdown has been a bright spot amidst an otherwise still dim fiscal outlook.
Another interesting comparison is to look at how much federal health care spending has changed since before the enactment of the Affordable Care Act. The last pre-ACA CBO baseline was in March 2010 and projected net spending on Medicare and Medicaid at $1.34 trillion in 2020. The April 2014 baseline, though, actually estimates spending on those programs plus the ACA’s exchange subsidies in 2020 will be $70 billion lower than before the ACA was even enacted, at $1.27 trillion.
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Not everyone viewed the introduction of Obamacare as cause for national celebration, but that doesn’t mean history won’t remember it as such. Time has a habit of changing the perception of presidential initiatives. The Gettysburg Address may be the most iconic speech made in America, but not everyone shared that sentiment in 1863. Far from being revered as an affirmation on human equality, Lincoln’s words were roundly criticized by the Democrats of the day, while the Chicago Times described the president’s efforts as “silly, flat and dishwatery utterances.” While seemingly difficult to imagine, decades from now history will note that the Affordable Care Act symbolized one of the great presidential efforts to fight inequality in America. Long forgotten will be today’s headlines of a temperamental website, deadline delays and mixed messages about keeping existing plans. Instead, it will be heralded that Barack Obama made a superior healthcare service available to the masses.
With more than 7 million enrolled, Obamacare is here to stay. Regardless of future modifications, of which there will be many, affordable healthcare has been instituted in the United States, dragging millions away from the threat of imminent bankruptcy and terminal illness. Obama will be appreciated as the first black president who also made healthcare a reality for everyone. It will define his legacy, with his political missteps whittled from his narrative. Republicans are on the wrong side of history, but their obstructionism will fade from public consciousness. We like to think that a time will return when the nation supported the conviction of its leader. But great achievements aren’t born from support from the masses, they happen when someone risks derision to surpass the status quo.
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How liberal are President Obama’s judges? A new study by two political scientists tries to answer that question. Robert Carp and Kenneth Manning examine about 50,000 federal judicial opinions between 1932 and 2013, including 683 by Obama’s district court appointees, and code each opinion as liberal or conservative. Overall, Obama’s judges basically resemble nominees of other Democratic presidents — except on decisions about economic or labor regulation. There, Obama’s judges are the most liberal of any president studied (going back to John F. Kennedy). Note that the study only includes district court judges, not Supreme Court judges:
Note particularly the difference between Obama and Clinton’s judges — Obama’s made 66 percent liberal decisions, compared to 54 percent for Clinton’s. Carp and Manning code these opinions based on whether the judges sided with businesses. “In the area of government regulation of the economy, liberal judges would probably uphold legislation that benefited working people or the underdog,” they write. “A typical case might be a dispute between a labor union and a company — a worker alleging a violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act, or a petitioner challenging the right of a government regulator to circumscribe his activity.”
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First Lady Michelle Obama speaks at an awards ceremony in the East Room at the White House, May 8, 2013 in Washington, DC. The First Lady presented the 2013 National Medal for Museum and Library Service to 10 institutions from across the country.
On This Day – May 8, 2009: “A temporary White House staffer, Carlton Philadelphia, brought his family to the Oval Office for a farewell photo with President Obama. Carlton’s son softly told the President he had just gotten a haircut like President Obama, and asked if he could feel the President’s head to see if it felt the same as his.” (Photo by Pete Souza)
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MoooOOOooorning – Happy Thursday!
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