[his] words were entered as testimony at the European Parliament's Civil Liberties Committee in Brussels on Monday.

Jesselyn Radack of the US Government Accountability Project (GAP) and a former whistleblower and ethics adviser to the US Department of Justice, read Snowden's statement into the record.
[...snip...]
"The surveillance of whole populations, rather than individuals, threatens to be the greatest human rights challenge of our time. The success of economies in developed nations relies increasingly on their creative output, and if that success is to continue, we must remember that creativity is the product of curiosity, which in turn is the product of privacy.

"A culture of secrecy has denied our societies the opportunity to determine the appropriate balance between the human right of privacy and the governmental interest in investigation. These are not decisions that should be made for a people, but only by the people after full, informed, and fearless debate. Yet public debate is not possible without public knowledge, and in my country, the cost for one in my position of returning public knowledge to public hands has been persecution and exile. If we are to enjoy such debates in the future, we cannot rely upon individual sacrifice. We must create better channels for people of conscience to inform not only trusted agents of government, but independent representatives of the public outside of government."

more...

uhhhmmm... "trusted agents of government"?

I guess I shouldn't be surprised that there are people who don't know that these are the same thing, and are reacting to the "Obama" part of "Obamacare," but it just demonstrates how poorly the administration and Democrats sold the legislation once it was signed into law.

Why Obama just gave in to the label - vanity? - and didn't stick to referring to it as the ACA is a mystery to me.

`Course a lot of things about this are a mystery to me, and I guess there's little point in asking why this or that was or wasn't done, because things are what they are and now we have to deal with them.

I get why it would make finding the right plan easier if one can see all of them in one place, but I don't know why the plans on the exchange are not the same plans available if one goes directly through any given insurance company.  Why are subsidies only available through an exchange?  To me, this smacks of segregating/herding the poor, the sick and the too-young-for-Medicare-too-well-off-for-Medicaid into groups that ultimately may receive a lower quality of care and service for not that much less money.  Are certain hospitals and doctors going to become known for only dealing with "those" people?

So, here's a question: what do you think happens next if this whole exchange/subsidy thing doesn't work?  If people report not being able to get the care they need, even with "affordable" insurance?  Are changes made?  

I guess it's too soon to know, but I'm not sure that if I were someone who didn't have insurance, and wasn't happy about the availability of the doctors and other providers I wanted to see, I wouldn't just take my chances, and wait to see how this whole thing plays out.  If they do levy fines, I expect people to fight them on the basis of not being able to get what they need, from their choice of providers.

Right now, even if their campaign of public vandalism ended at this very moment, the Republicans would still have three-quarters of a loaf because the status quo ante would be a federal budget at (or beneath) the spending levels mandated by The Sequester. Given that, what possible reason do the Republicans -- or, at least, those Republicans who are currently driving the strategy now -- have not to keep the government shut down not only through the upcoming debt ceiling fight, but for most of the rest of Barack Obama's term?

[snip]

This [people realizing they can live with a lot less government] is the unspoken subtext of what the vandalism is all about. This is the real motivation behind all the tricornered hats and the incantations about liberty and all the conjuring words that have summoned up the latest crisis in our democracy. Corporate money is the power behind all of it, and that corporate money has but one goal -- the creation of a largely subjugated population and a workforce grateful for whatever scraps fall from the table. To accomplish this, the corporate money not only had to disable the institutions of self-government that are the people's only real protection, it had to do so in such a way that the people expect less and less of the government and, therefore, less and less of each other, acting in the interest of the political commonwealth. (The dismantling of organized labor is a sideshow to the main event in that the goal there was to cripple organized labor's political power within the political institutions so that there would be no countervailing force that could be brought to bear against the destruction of its power in the workplace.) For all the endless bloviation about the dead-hand of government, what the vandals in Washington are shooting for right now is a subject population whose tattered freedoms depend on the whimsical ethics of the American corporate class. This is the really deep game being played here, and they're more than halfway to winning it.

This had occurred to me, as well - that at some point, the GOP would begin to argue that, "see, we didn't really need this and this and this - we're getting along just fine without them - and look at how much money this is saving us!"

Meanwhile, will they care that all these federal workers not getting paid is going to have a negative effect on the economy?  I'm guessing they think they can blame the Democrats and use it to their advantage, but even assuming there are enough reasonably sentient voters who see this for the BS that it is, it won't undo the damage.  And people already teetering on the edge, who managed to claw their way back to reasonably solid ground, are going to be tumbling into the hole again.  

Maybe the only thing that gets their attention is if Wall Street starts to go sideways again - if their portfolios begin to lose value, maybe that brings them somewhere in the same zip code as their senses.

The Tea Party leaders who are driving this movement couldn't care less what damage they're causing, nor, what the general public thinks. Every one of them, thanks to the magic of redistricting, are in rock solid districts, so, what the country-wide opinion is doesn't matter to them. They are safe.

They also understand that they can never be a National Party (they know the Presidency is unattainable) but, like a commenter here said yesterday, look how successful they've been being in the minority. For years now, they've been concentrating on State, and local, offices. So, with State-wide dominance, a Right-Wing Supreme Court, and a rabid, cohesive, cabal running The House, who needs the Presidency?

No, these people are not simply an "opposition" Party, advocating for a certain set of political beliefs. They are traitors, willing to sacrifice the great majority of citizens in order to do the bidding of the 1%. And, this is not, simply, the  conclusion of a wide-eyed, Left Wing, Anarchist; some very smart political thinkers I know have come to the same conclusion.

At the core, their strategy is brilliant. They have coalesced a nucleus of imbecilic, sociopathic, racists who are more than willing to sacrifice their own family's interests in order to institutionalize the concept that minorities, seniors, and the poor are sub-human. And, as such, they are the ultimate "takers," who deserve the results that their policy of "planned obsolescence" will deliver.

The 1% have shown that they don't need a healthy, vibrant middle class in order to accumulate record profits. We are a Global economy, after all. And, with that in mind, if we look at the dynamics of the current turmoil, the strategy of chaos and destruction makes a lot more sense.

If only WS would just cooperate with the memo.
S&P (.07%)
DOW (.39%)
NASDAQ (.08%)

A bit better than one third of a percent is the most any of the major markets are down.  WTF, it's like they wrote the headlines last week and didn't bother to actually check the markets.

I find this kind of hype/scare intolerable because it's simply not true in any sense of the word and so easily verified.  

For the in-network providers:  The in-network deductible and out of pocket max are subject to to cost-sharing subsidies.  The out of pocket max is capped at $6250.

For out-of-network providers:  The deductible is not affected by cost sharing subsidies and can be quite large, in the realm of $10,000/$12,000 per person.  In addition, out of pocket maximums are not capped by the law and can be UNLIMITED.  And in the plans in my state, the caps are UNLIMITED (Completely unlimited for Blue Cross, unlimited for families for Blue Shield).

It sounds fine.  Just see an in-network provider!  But when you consider that almost all of the hospitals in Seattle are out of network providers for Exchange plans, including the trauma center (Harborview) that accident victims are typically taken or flown to, this is a serious problem.  (See my other posts for the list).

Bottom line: If you have an emergency and need to go to an out-of-network ER (which is most of the ERs in Seattle), your costs, even when insured, ARE NOT CAPPED.  This is worse than any individual market plan has ever been in our state in the 10 years I've been on the individual market.  

So not only does Obamacare do very little to solve that problem of write-downs from people visiting emergency rooms, it will likely actually INCREASE them.  Ask me if you have questions.

It seemed like a timely stroke of bipartisanship: the White House announced Monday, on the eve of a government shutdown, that President Obama would nominate a top adviser to Republican Mitt Romney's campaign to an administration position.

Obama intends to nominate Lanhee J. Chen -- the policy director on Romney's 2012 presidential campaign who, yes, repeatedly attacked Obama's Social Security plans -- to the Social Security Advisory Board, which advises the president as well as the Congress on Social Security policy.

Search for your physician. If you are interested in understanding which health plans a particular doctor participates in, please visit https://providersearch.crisphealth.org - a new service sponsored by Maryland Health Connection. For the time being, doctors and other providers are not yet available in Maryland Health Connection; therefore, if you choose to search for them on the website, you will receive a message that "no doctors are found" message.

and

The application's built in calculator may underestimate total out-of-pocket costs in some cases. Remember that if you are eligible for reductions in cost sharing, only silver plans will qualify. So a bronze plan might cost less in premium, but more in total out of pocket cost. We expect this to be fixed in the very near future, so if you would prefer, please check back in the next several weeks.