| Morning Jolt
. . . with Jim Geraghty August 4, 2014 The Obama Administration's Awesome but Incompetent Covert Op in Cuba Ladies and gentlemen, let's start out our week with the weirdest story in quite a while: WASHINGTON (AP) -- An Obama administration program secretly dispatched young Latin Americans to Cuba using the cover of health and civic programs to provoke political change, a clandestine operation that put those foreigners in danger even after a U.S. contractor was hauled away to a Cuban jail. | | You know you want to come! Get complete info at NRCruise.com. | | | | Beginning as early as October 2009, a project overseen by the U.S. Agency for International Development sent Venezuelan, Costa Rican and Peruvian young people to Cuba in hopes of ginning up rebellion. The travelers worked undercover, often posing as tourists, and traveled around the island scouting for people they could turn into political activists. The Obama administration, doing something to undermine one of the world's last Communist regimes? Although let's face it, whatever Cuba claims to be, it's functionally kleptocratic today. The administration that's been so risk-averse lately apparently once had a giant appetite for risk: In one case, the workers formed an HIV-prevention workshop that memos called "the perfect excuse" for the program's political goals -- a gambit that could undermine America's efforts to improve health globally. You almost want to give the Obama administration an 'attaboy' for the nerve . . . But their efforts were fraught with incompetence and risk, an Associated Press investigation found: Cuban authorities questioned who was bankrolling the travelers. The young workers nearly blew their mission to "identify potential social-change actors." One said he got a paltry, 30-minute seminar on how to evade Cuban intelligence, and there appeared to be no safety net for the inexperienced workers if they were caught. Incompetence? Relying on young people with vague rallying cries of 'social change'? No backup plan? Okay, now that sounds more like the Obama administration we've come to know. "Although there is never total certainty, trust that the authorities will not try to harm you physically, only frighten you," read a memo obtained by the AP. "Remember that the Cuban government prefers to avoid negative media reports abroad, so a beaten foreigner is not convenient for them." Hmm. John Kerry was in the Senate when this program was launched, but it sure sounds like him. In all, nearly a dozen Latin Americans served in the program in Cuba, for pay as low as $5.41 an hour. [Spit-take:] For less than minimum wage? See, I'm willing to raise the minimum wage for American covert operators to $10.10 an hour. What's the Matter with Kansas' 4th Congressional District? Here's how MSNBC interprets what's going on in the GOP primary Kansas' 4th Congressional District: Todd Tiahrt is a proud former member of the House tea party caucus. He claims to have a "100% pro-life voting record," he was a vociferous opponent of the 2009 economic stimulus plan, and he carries an A-rating from the National Rifle Association. By all accounts, the former congressman from Kansas is a doctrinaire tea partier. He's currently attempting to reclaim his old seat from Rep. Mike Pompeo, a Kansas Republican who claims to be the true conservative tea partier in the race and commands endorsements from groups like Tea Party Nation and FreedomWorks. MSNBC is shocked to find disagreement between Tiahrt and Pompeo on the issue of labeling genetically-modified food -- Pompeo wants the feds, and not the state, to have authority for labeling; Tiahrt contends, "Moms want to know what is in their kids' foods. People want to know." Yes, Tiahrt is a "Doctrinaire Tea Partier" . . . as long as you ignore the issue of pork-barrel spending and earmarks. Tiahrt, who served on the House Appropriations Committee from 1997 until he left office, says earmarks directly serve the district. He proudly ticks off a long list of projects that he was able to secure though the process: flood projects for Arkansas City and Augusta, railroad overpasses for downtown Wichita to improve emergency vehicle service, construction of a taxiway at Wichita Mid-Continent Airport, an instrument landing system for the Independence Municipal Airport and millions of dollars over the years to grow the National Institute for Aviation Research at Wichita State University. In his final year in office, Tiahrt sponsored or co-sponsored 39 earmarks totaling $63.4 million to rank 40th out of 435 House representatives, according to opensecrets.org, the website of the Center for Responsive Politics. The biggest earmarks went to McConnell Air Force Base and aviation companies, such as Hawker Beechcraft, Boeing and Cessna, as well as Envision and Wichita State. Tiahrt calls this approach "re-prioritizing the federal government's money."
And, he says, it wasn't easy to do. Of course, as Mississippi just proved, a lot of deep red parts of our national map still love their pork-barrel spending. The primary is tomorrow. Just Because You're Not Hearing About Obamacare Messes Doesn't Mean Obamacare Isn't Making New Messes (or Exacerbating Old Ones) Hey, remember Obamacare? The New York Times checks in with those who have insurance for the first time: Last week, Salwa Shabazz arrived at the office of a public health network here with a bag full of paperwork about her new health insurance -- and an unhappy look on her face. She had chosen her plan by phone in March, speaking to a customer service representative at the federal insurance marketplace. Now she had problems and questions, so many questions. "I've had one doctor appointment since I got this insurance, and I had to pay $60," Ms. Shabazz told Daniel Flynn, a counselor with the health network, the Health Federation of Philadelphia. "I don't have $60." Mr. Flynn spent almost two hours going over her Independence Blue Cross plan, which he explained had a "very complicated" network that grouped doctors and hospitals into three tiers. Ms. Shabazz, who has epilepsy, had not understood when she chose the plan that her doctors were in the most expensive tier. Another survey indicating that a significant chunk of the uninsured aren't paying any attention to anything: Among those who were uninsured last year and remain uninsured, only 59% were familiar with the new Obamacare marketplaces and 38% were aware of federal subsidies to lower their insurance costs, according to the survey conducted in June by the nonpartisan Urban Institute. About 60% of respondents list cost as the main reason for not having insurance. But 20% say they don't want health insurance or would rather pay the fine for not having coverage. The price tag just keeps growing, well beyond previous estimates: "Between September 2011 and February 2014, the "federally facilitated marketplace" (FFM) saw costs grow from $56 million to $209 million. Meanwhile, the costs for the related data hubs, the so-called 'back office operations,' rose from $30 million to $85 million." Up in Massachusetts, the folks who failed to gets the state's health-insurance exchange running smoothly on time . . . are getting a bunch of raises. Recently, Massachusetts Health Connector executive director Jean Yang doled out raises of $10,000 or more to 11 of the agency's 53 workers. The increases ranged from 15 percent to 24 percent, with another 3 percent on the way in the fiscal 2015 budget if the agency meets goals to successfully re-launch its balky website by November. Yang said the salary increases are needed to retain valued employees and improve performance going forward. This action comes after the embarrassing debacle associated with the state's rollout of its Obamacare website, which has cost taxpayers nearly $1 million in computer fixes and lawsuits and still isn't resolved. Yang is also planning to hire eight more workers, increasing the staff to 61.
The last time we saw Yang she was tearfully testifying on Beacon Hill about the website's failures. The strain on her staff, and the demoralizing effects it had on them, were articulated quite extensively. Indeed, failure is demoralizing. Speaking of Massachusetts, you may have missed this Friday: Former Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) slammed the administration's ObamaCare rollout, calling President Obama's claim that people could keep their insurance plans under the law a "lie." "The rollout was so bad, and I was appalled — I don't understand how the president could have sat there and not been checking on that on a weekly basis," Frank said in an interview with the Huffington Post published Friday. "But frankly, he should never have said as much as he did, that if you like your current health care plan, you can keep it," he continued. "That wasn't true. And you shouldn't lie to people. And they just lied to people." Here's a story of Hartford, Connecticut doctors facing reality on the reimbursement rates: On a recent afternoon at his office in Hartford, Conn., Dr. Doug Gerard examines a patient complaining of joint pain. He checks her out, asks her a few questions about her symptoms and then orders a few tests before sending her on her way. For a typical quick visit like this, Gerard could get reimbursed $100 or more from a private insurer. For the same visit, Medicare pays less -- about $80. And now, with the new private plans under the Affordable Care Act, Gerard says he would get something in between, but closer to the lower Medicare rates. That's not something he's willing to put up with. "I cannot accept a plan [in which] potentially commercial-type reimbursement rates were now going to be reimbursed at Medicare rates. You have to maintain a certain mix in private practice between the low reimbursers and the high reimbursers to be able to keep the lights on," he says. Three insurers offered plans on Connecticut's ACA marketplace in 2014 and Gerard is only accepting one. He won't say which, but he will say it pays the highest rate. "I don't think most physicians know what they're being reimbursed," he says. "Only when they start seeing some of those rates come through will they realize how low the rates are they agreed to." Gerard's decision to reject two plans is something officials in Connecticut are concerned about. If reimbursement rates to doctors stays low in Obamacare plans, more doctors could reject those plans. And that could mean that people will get access to insurance, but they may not get access to a lot of doctors. ADDENDA: Andrew Ian Dodge passed away this weekend after a battle with cancer. He was a Libertarian candidate for U.S, Senate in Maine, former tea-party coordinator, freelance writer, pundit, and lyricist/singer. I don't think I ever met him but we traveled in the same circles of the off-beat conservative blogger and writer realm. His final statement can be found here. RIP. Feel free to interpret the following as excessive self-promotion, or a man simply trying to keep track of where he's supposed to be during the coming week: Monday mornings, a bit after 8 a.m. Eastern, I appear with Tony Katz on WIBC in Indianapolis. Wednesday evening, I'm scheduled to appear on On the Record with Greta Van Susteren on Fox News. Thursday afternoon, I appear with Cam Edwards on Cam & Company on NRA News. Each weekday, schedule permitting, I tape the Three Martini Lunch podcast with Greg Corombos. Don't delay! Sign up today for the NR 2014 Post-Election Caribbean Cruise, and for our spectacular pre-cruise kick-off gala November 8th featuring Ambassador John Bolton and Senators Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio! Learn more here.
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