90DayFinancier

My friend in new York says "don't sneeze on my arm and call it a spring rain! "
The office did not move to Kansas to provide any benefits to the taxpayer or their customers.  Mick Mulvaney bragged about half of the staff quiting when the 33 day notice was given as proof that he is "draining the swamp". 
It is the same radical Tea Party/Freedom caucus agenda where they didn't have the votes to defund it or  stop it so they sabotage government.  "We can't stop it so we will wreck it"
It is the same thinking that gave an anti public school activist the head of Education and the EPA to a coal executive. 
 
I think these folks will be surprised when Nov 2020 rolls around.
 
 

The Whistle Blower has been made irrelevant to the process by the fact that several people with first hand knowledge have described the President's attempt to shake down a foreign country. 
 
If the house is on fire, you don't have a committee meeting to determine who pulled the alarm.
 
Republican talk points need to pivot to something relevant. The hearings are going to go forward. 

FYI - Here is a recent article that just came out about the healthcare requirement and how many people are scrambling at the moment:
 
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-immigration-insurance/trump-rule-on-health-insurance-leaves-immigrants-companies-scrambling-for-answers-idUSKBN1XA1G6
Trump rule on health insurance leaves immigrants, companies scrambling for answers
OCTOBER 31, 2019 / 6:10 AM / UPDATED 2 HOURS AGO
Kristina Cooke, Mica Rosenberg

LOS ANGELES/NEW YORK (Reuters) - Nearly a decade after receiving U.S. citizenship, Guatemalan-born Mayra Lopez thought she had cleared all the hurdles for her parents to join her in the United States.
 
Then on Oct. 4 U.S. President Donald Trump changed the rules she and others had been complying with: Trump signed a proclamation requiring all prospective immigrants to prove they will have U.S. health insurance within 30 days of their arrival or enough money to pay for “reasonably foreseeable medical costs.”
 
The new requirement, part of Republican Trump’s hard-line policies on immigration, goes into effect on Nov. 3 and prospective immigrants are scrambling to figure out how to get the necessary coverage, navigating a complex healthcare bureaucracy that has, for the most part, not previously catered to those who are not yet in the country.
The administration gave scant detail about how the new requirements would be implemented beyond a bullet-point list of the types of insurance plans that would be accepted.
 
A State Department notice on Oct. 29 said consular officers will verbally ask immigrant visa applicants to identify a specific health insurance plan, the date coverage will begin, and “other information related to the insurance plan as the consular officer deems necessary,” but gave the public only two days to comment on that plan instead of the usual several months.
 
Lopez, 40, who works as a family assistant in California, and many others are finding few options exist for them.
 
Lopez received a letter for her parents’ appointment to be interviewed on Nov. 25 at the U.S. embassy in Guatemala. Near the top it read: “inability to meet this requirement will result in the denial of the visa application,” according to the letter seen by Reuters.
She immediately called her own insurer, Kaiser Permanente, but she said she was told her parents, both in their 60s with no serious health problems, would not be eligible because they did not have U.S. social security numbers and even if they did, it would cost more than $1,600 a month to cover both of them, according to interviews with Lopez and her attorney.
 
Lopez then called five other insurers and began to panic when they all told her variations on the same thing, she said.
 
Tony Barrueta, a Senior Vice President at Kaiser Permanente, said in a statement that a social security number is not required to apply for Kaiser Permanente coverage, but the company may request that information.
 
Barrueta said the company acknowledges the complexity of the proclamation and other recent actions “and the confusion they may have created for many immigrants and their families.” He said they were continuing to educate their front-line staff on how to address questions.
 
California’s health insurance marketplace, Covered California, said “consumers must be lawfully present in order to apply for coverage.”
 
Many prospective immigrants seeking to enter the country legally, including those who do not have lawyers, may not be aware of the new requirements and could end up being denied, immigration advocates said.
 
When asked about the concerns, a State Department official repeated the guidelines in the proclamation, which are posted on the department’s website.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
 
COVERAGE GAPS

Long term-plans on the state insurance marketplaces are not available to immigrants before they are in the country lawfully, according to the eligibility requirements outlined in the Affordable Care Act (ACA), Democratic President Barack Obama’s signature health care legislation.
 
The proclamation does not accept subsidized health plans, meaning immigrant applicants would be barred from using income-based subsidies for the purchase of individual coverage, a main tenet of the ACA.
 
Short-term insurance plans are banned in four states and 20 others limit their duration to less than 364 days, the amount of time required by the proclamation, according to the Commonwealth Fund, a nonprofit research group.
 
Even where they are available, short-term plans often have large gaps in coverage and can have exclusions for pre-existing conditions, said Pennsylvania Insurance Commissioner Jessica Altman.
 
Trump has tested the boundaries of established policy, aiming to fulfill his 2016 campaign pledge to curb both legal and illegal immigration, including a yet to be constructed wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. Immigration rights lawyers and civil liberties groups have challenged his policies in court, sometimes with success.
“This order overrides about 100 years of law that has always promoted the ability to live with your immediate family members and targets people in a way that Congress didn’t intend,” said Jesse Bless from the American Immigration Lawyers Association.
“Congress has made rules that has allowed people to come in based on self sufficiency not wealth or health.”
 
On Wednesday, seven U.S. citizens petitioning for their family members and immigrant advocacy groups filed a lawsuit in Oregon seeking to halt the proclamation.
The proclamation appears squarely focused at limiting family-based migration, which the President has repeatedly derided as “chain migration,” said Xiao Wang, co-founder of the immigration firm Boundless.
 
The administration issued a rule earlier this year that would limit legal immigration by expanding who could be found to be a “public charge” and barred from residency. The measure has been temporarily halted by federal courts.
 
FAMILY REUNIFICATION DELAYS

Some immigration lawyers are telling their clients to consider rescheduling their visa interviews until there is more clarity about how the new health insurance rules would be implemented – potentially delaying family reunification.
 
Some other wealthy countries, such as Germany, require people applying for visas and residency to provide proof of health insurance. But those countries do not have the same healthcare costs and insurance system as the United States.
 
The Trump proclamation said it aims to stop healthcare providers and taxpayers from bearing “substantial costs in paying for medical expenses incurred by people who lack health insurance or the ability to pay for their healthcare.” It cited data that “lawful immigrants are about three times more likely than United States citizens to lack health insurance.”
 
Healthcare policy experts say immigrants use the U.S. system less often than Americans. According to an analysis by Leighton Ku, Director of the Center for Health Policy Research at George Washington University, recent immigrants without insurance accounted for less than one-tenth of 1% of U.S. medical expenditures in 2017.
 
Sometimes having short-term plans that provide only limited coverage can be as costly to the healthcare system as not having insurance at all, Pennsylvania’s Altman said.
 
The Trump administration has expanded short-term health plans and made them renewable, which experts say undermines the ACA.
 
Rajeev Shrivastava, the chief executive of VisitorsCoverage, which sells travel insurance policies to U.S. visitors and immigrants, said online search traffic for immigrant plans on his website increased by 150% after the proclamation.
He said the new policy “creates an opportunity” for insurance companies to develop plans for incoming immigrants, though some are waiting for more clarity from the government.
 
For U.S. citizens married to immigrants who have been living in the country without legal status there are additional considerations. Jorge, 45, has been in the United States for almost 20 years and is married to a U.S. citizen. He has been granted a so-called unlawful presence waiver that would allow him to leave and apply to become a legal resident without facing a multi-year bar.
 
His visa interview in Colombia is scheduled for later this year. At least 10 insurers have told him he cannot apply unless he can prove he is in the country legally, Jorge said. He also does not qualify for travel insurance, he said, because he is currently in the United States.
 
“This has been very stressful,” said Jorge, who spoke to Reuters on the condition that his last name not be used.
 
One option available to him, a short-term health insurance plan that offers limited coverage, is only available for six months in Illinois and the proclamation requires coverage for 364 days. He bought it anyway.
 
Reporting by Kristina Cooke in Los Angeles and Mica Rosenberg in New York; Editing by Grant McCool
 

Latest on this topic from Natl Law Review. The guidance is underlined below
 
https://www.natlawreview.com/article/new-presidential-proclamation-requiring-health-care-immigrant-visa-applicants
 
New Presidential Proclamation Requiring Health Care for Immigrant Visa Applicants Effective November 3, 2019
Monday, October 28, 2019 On Oct. 4, President Donald Trump signed a new “Presidential Proclamation on the Suspension of Entry of Immigrants Who Will Financially Burden the United States Healthcare System,” which goes into effect Nov. 3 and affects most immigrant visa applicants. This Presidential Proclamation is separate from the Public Charge Rule, which is on hold in the U.S. due to a court injunction, and its implementation at U.S. Consulates has been delayed by the Department of State.
According to the new Presidential Proclamation, with very small exceptions including refugees and asylees, applicants for immigrant visas will need to present evidence to the consular office “to the consular officer’s satisfaction” at the time of their immigrant visa interview that they will be covered by approved health insurance within 30 days of entering the U.S. or that they have enough financial means to pay for “reasonably foreseeable medical costs.” The Presidential Proclamation asserts that “lawful immigrants are about three times more likely than United States citizens to lack health insurance.”
The DOS has updated its website with instructions on how they will be implementing the new rules for all immigrant visa applicants with interviews on or after Nov. 3 (See https://travel.state.gov/healthcare). The Department of State has advised that inability to meet this requirement will result in the denial of the visa application and further indicated on its website that “Officers will review the medical and financial documentation that is already part of the applicant’s case file and may request additional information or documentation as needed.” Therefore, prior to the visa interview, applicants may wish to review costs and eligibility requirements for approved health insurance plans or consider how they would pay for the reasonably foreseeable medical costs of any current medical condition they may have.
Approved health insurance, as indicated in the Presidential Proclamation, includes employer-sponsored health plans, including retiree plans; unsubsidized health plans offered in the individual market within a State; short-term, limited duration health plans effective for a minimum of 364 days or until the beginning of planned, extended travel outside the United States; catastrophic plans; coverage by a family member’s health plan; U.S. military health plans, including TRICARE; visitor health insurance plans with adequate medical coverage for a minimum of 364 days or until the beginning of planned, extended travel outside the United States; medical plans under the Medicare program; any other health plan with adequate coverage as determined by the Secretary of Health and Human Services. For individuals over the age of 18, approved health insurance does not include coverage under the Medicaid program
 
 
According to Law360, two Senate Democrats have urged President Trump to stop this proclamation from going into effect. Like the Public Charge Rule, the Presidential Proclamation may become the subject of litigation. However, as of the publication of this blog post, the Presidential Proclamation is still scheduled to go into effect on Nov. 3, and applicants should be prepared to bring to the interview evidence that they will be covered by approved health insurance upon arrival in the U.S. or that they have enough means to pay for “reasonably foreseeable medical costs.” As such, applicants may seriously consider carrying a copy of their recent bank statements showing enough income to cover medical costs in the U.S. or a copy of their health insurance card and information about their health insurance policy confirming that their plan provides adequate coverage.
As we are still unsure how consular offices will be handling the new rule, and it is solely at the U.S. Consular Officer’s discretion to determine if the applicant has enough financial means to pay for any “reasonably foreseeable medical costs” or that the applicant will in fact be covered by a health insurance within 30 days of arriving in the U.S., immigrant visa applicants are well-advised to consider carrying evidence of coverage with them, even if they think they might be exempt from this rule.
Co-Author Bianca Pipala is Not admitted to the practice of law.
 

These people are insane, and cruel. 
One should not play with the emotions in this manner. The state department needs to get their act together. A very sad day for Americans.
 

Thank goodness for true patriots like this whistleblower.  He's exposed yet more of Trump's bottomless corruption.  Impeachment is a slam dunk.

"Denying that government by the people is the only legitimate form of rule, they are asserting that legitimate rule flows from right-minded persons in the country’s institutions, elections notwithstanding."
 
What a waste of time reading this alt-right drivel.  
 
The "people" are guided by the constitution.  Trump's going to learn that the hard way.
 
 
 

Latest on this topic from Natl Law Review. The guidance is underlined below
 
https://www.natlawreview.com/article/new-presidential-proclamation-requiring-health-care-immigrant-visa-applicants
 
New Presidential Proclamation Requiring Health Care for Immigrant Visa Applicants Effective November 3, 2019
Monday, October 28, 2019 On Oct. 4, President Donald Trump signed a new “Presidential Proclamation on the Suspension of Entry of Immigrants Who Will Financially Burden the United States Healthcare System,” which goes into effect Nov. 3 and affects most immigrant visa applicants. This Presidential Proclamation is separate from the Public Charge Rule, which is on hold in the U.S. due to a court injunction, and its implementation at U.S. Consulates has been delayed by the Department of State.
According to the new Presidential Proclamation, with very small exceptions including refugees and asylees, applicants for immigrant visas will need to present evidence to the consular office “to the consular officer’s satisfaction” at the time of their immigrant visa interview that they will be covered by approved health insurance within 30 days of entering the U.S. or that they have enough financial means to pay for “reasonably foreseeable medical costs.” The Presidential Proclamation asserts that “lawful immigrants are about three times more likely than United States citizens to lack health insurance.”
The DOS has updated its website with instructions on how they will be implementing the new rules for all immigrant visa applicants with interviews on or after Nov. 3 (See https://travel.state.gov/healthcare). The Department of State has advised that inability to meet this requirement will result in the denial of the visa application and further indicated on its website that “Officers will review the medical and financial documentation that is already part of the applicant’s case file and may request additional information or documentation as needed.” Therefore, prior to the visa interview, applicants may wish to review costs and eligibility requirements for approved health insurance plans or consider how they would pay for the reasonably foreseeable medical costs of any current medical condition they may have.
Approved health insurance, as indicated in the Presidential Proclamation, includes employer-sponsored health plans, including retiree plans; unsubsidized health plans offered in the individual market within a State; short-term, limited duration health plans effective for a minimum of 364 days or until the beginning of planned, extended travel outside the United States; catastrophic plans; coverage by a family member’s health plan; U.S. military health plans, including TRICARE; visitor health insurance plans with adequate medical coverage for a minimum of 364 days or until the beginning of planned, extended travel outside the United States; medical plans under the Medicare program; any other health plan with adequate coverage as determined by the Secretary of Health and Human Services. For individuals over the age of 18, approved health insurance does not include coverage under the Medicaid program
 
 
According to Law360, two Senate Democrats have urged President Trump to stop this proclamation from going into effect. Like the Public Charge Rule, the Presidential Proclamation may become the subject of litigation. However, as of the publication of this blog post, the Presidential Proclamation is still scheduled to go into effect on Nov. 3, and applicants should be prepared to bring to the interview evidence that they will be covered by approved health insurance upon arrival in the U.S. or that they have enough means to pay for “reasonably foreseeable medical costs.” As such, applicants may seriously consider carrying a copy of their recent bank statements showing enough income to cover medical costs in the U.S. or a copy of their health insurance card and information about their health insurance policy confirming that their plan provides adequate coverage.
As we are still unsure how consular offices will be handling the new rule, and it is solely at the U.S. Consular Officer’s discretion to determine if the applicant has enough financial means to pay for any “reasonably foreseeable medical costs” or that the applicant will in fact be covered by a health insurance within 30 days of arriving in the U.S., immigrant visa applicants are well-advised to consider carrying evidence of coverage with them, even if they think they might be exempt from this rule.
Co-Author Bianca Pipala is Not admitted to the practice of law.
 

My friend in new York says "don't sneeze on my arm and call it a spring rain! "
The office did not move to Kansas to provide any benefits to the taxpayer or their customers.  Mick Mulvaney bragged about half of the staff quiting when the 33 day notice was given as proof that he is "draining the swamp". 
It is the same radical Tea Party/Freedom caucus agenda where they didn't have the votes to defund it or  stop it so they sabotage government.  "We can't stop it so we will wreck it"
It is the same thinking that gave an anti public school activist the head of Education and the EPA to a coal executive. 
 
I think these folks will be surprised when Nov 2020 rolls around.
 
 

It certainly is possible to have unsubsidized plans. The income is going to be a big factor here. Most people are going to have income too high to even get the tax credits. https://www.healthcare.gov/apply-and-enroll/income-too-high-for-tax-credit/ As I've always pretty much said, the plans on the exchange are literally almost the same plans you can buy from the insurance company directly. You can of course cost compare, but savings in the form of the subsidy happens in few cases.

Watch this space officially being challenged in Oregon federal court!
 
 

Funny some of your comments come right from radical right conspiracy theory sites. I am not saying there is any connection, just noting the coincidence.

My friend in new York says "don't sneeze on my arm and call it a spring rain! "
The office did not move to Kansas to provide any benefits to the taxpayer or their customers.  Mick Mulvaney bragged about half of the staff quiting when the 33 day notice was given as proof that he is "draining the swamp". 
It is the same radical Tea Party/Freedom caucus agenda where they didn't have the votes to defund it or  stop it so they sabotage government.  "We can't stop it so we will wreck it"
It is the same thinking that gave an anti public school activist the head of Education and the EPA to a coal executive. 
 
I think these folks will be surprised when Nov 2020 rolls around.
 
 

I'm amused that the anatomically accurate term for a mammary gland is caught by the no-no filter but "boobs" and "boobie" are all cool. You stay you, VJ. You stay you. 

Sweet Satan, that Fox News article... I won't touch some clearly factual errors in the reporting in there (e.g., it is incorrect to say -- though it is often repeated, and incorrectly -- that Mueller found no evidence of conspiracy between Trump and Russia, but rather that there was insufficient evidence to support a prosecution). There's actually precious little "news" about the ruling at all -- most of it is about the impeachment inquiry itself. The story is about -- or should be about -- why the court ruled as it did. What is important to note is that this is a procedural issue, not a substantive one, and the article does point to that. The reason is to give the DOJ more time to bring its case that the materials should not be disclosed. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/court-temporarily-blocks-release-of-mueller-grand-jury-materials/ar-AAJyjDi?li=BBnb7Kz
 

I give him a lot mercy rep points

From what I observed, You are like a Rainman version of Shakespeare.

Somehow, I remain unconvinced. 

You are missing the point, the transcript of the conversation is not fully public because serious omissions are in the transcript. Ergo: the transcript as released cannot exhonrate the Pres. 

Erdogan's no good for Turkey 

From what I observed, You are like a Rainman version of Shakespeare.

THANKS, I GOT IT.

Erdogan's no good for Turkey 

It seems explicit for the excluded classes:
Applicants for K fiancé(e) visas and other aliens entering the United States without an immigrant visa, including lawful permanent residents, refugees, and asylees.