President Barack Obama is having a President George W. Bush moment. Or is Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius having a FEMA Director Michael Brown moment? Actually, it’s both. Days after Hurricane Katrina hit the southern United States in 2005, and well after the world was aware of the scope of the storm’s destruction […]
Obamacare
Posted inNation / World, sj-web
Healthcare.gov site down again; HHS Secretary Sebelius faces grilling
WASHINGTON (AP) — Republicans said Sunday they intend to press Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius on the Obama administration’s troubled launch of healthcare.gov, the online portal to buy insurance — even as the website suffered yet another setback. A component of the online system that has been working relatively well experienced an outage […]
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J. Turner: Small businesses at risk
The impact of Obamacare on small businesses and employees will be dramatic. The cost will be the further denigration of the middle class, which will take the financial brunt of this far-reaching and expensive program. Maine has the oldest population in the union. Those with wealth are moving to Florida or New Hampshire, where there […]
Posted inNation / World, sj-web
Website contractors point fingers at Obama admin.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Contractors who built the web portal for the Obama administration’s health insurance marketplace said Thursday the site’s crippling problems trace back to insufficient testing and changes that government officials made just prior to going live. Who’s to blame? The first congressional hearing into what went wrong dug into issues of website architecture […]
Posted inMaine, sj-web
Federal Obamacare official does little to quell state health care panel’s concerns
AUGUSTA — A committee designed to advise state government on the roll-out of the federal Affordable Care Act met for the second time on Monday but ended up generating far more questions than answers. One of the questions everyone on the Health Exchange Advisory Committee had is how many Mainers have signed up for health […]
Posted inLetters
J. Baird: Washington in a mess
On Channel 13 recently there was a gentlemen, John Joyal from the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, who stated he was upset that he had been “sequestered” after working there for 37 years. I have news for Mr. Joyal — the public is supposed to do as President Obama says. Does anyone doubt me? A headline on […]
Posted inNation / World, sj-web
Obama says there’s ‘No excuse’ for health care signup problems
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama on Monday said there was “no excuse” for the cascade of computer problems that have marred the rollout of a key element in his health care law, but declared he was confident the administration would be able to fix the issues. “There’s no sugarcoating it,” Obama said. “Nobody is more […]
Posted inNation / World, sj-web
Republicans making ‘Obamacare’ their next target
WASHINGTON (AP) — “Obamacare” escaped unharmed from the government shutdown Republicans hoped would stop it, but just as quickly they have opened a new line of attack — one handed to them by the administration itself. While Congress was arguing, President Barack Obama’s plan to expand coverage for the uninsured suffered a self-inflicted wound. A […]
Posted inNation / World, sj-web
Government reopens after 16-day shutdown; Obama accuses Republicans of damaging U.S. economy
WASHINGTON (AP) — In withering day-after criticism, President Barack Obama declared Thursday that the 16-day partial government shutdown was a Republican-provoked spectacle that “encouraged our enemies” around the world. Elsewhere in Washington, and around the country, federal employees simply streamed back to their jobs. National parks reopened. The popular panda cam at the National Zoo […]
Posted inMaine, sj-web
Report: 25,000 Mainers fall into Obamacare coverage gap
About 25,000 poor and uninsured Mainers will miss out on health insurance under the Affordable Care Act because the state refused to expand Medicaid, according to a national study released Wednesday by the Kaiser Family Foundation. Those individuals fall into the “coverage gap,” a health reform law no-man’s land encompassing nearly 5.2 million Americans who […]