Month: May 2017

Categories
Politics

Obamacare repeal continues to confront obstacles

House Republicans on Thursday passed a bill to repeal the Affordable Care Act, but that doesn’t mean the law will be scrapped any time soon.

To win support of conservatives, the GOP leaders added provisions that allow states to gut benefits that insurers must provide and slash spending on Medicaid, which provides care for the needy. (If you’re wondering, the savings will fund a tax cut for people who earn more than $200,000 a year.)

Now the legislation moves to the Senate, where Republicans, who hold 52 seats, can only afford to lose one vote and where Democrats are united in their opposition to repeal.

The math doesn’t favor repeal along lines passed by the House. Among the GOP, Senators Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, Rob Portman, Lindsey Graham, Lisa Murkowski, Cory Gardener, Shelly Moore Capito, Bill Cassidy and Susan Collins all have expressed concerns with the legislation that emerged from the other chamber.

“Although I will carefully review the legislation the House passed today, at this point, there seem to be more questions than answers about its consequences,” Collins said following the House vote.

Unlike House Republicans, senators likely will wait for the Congressional Budget Office to assess what the bill – or any legislation for that matter – will do. When CBO last scored the legislation, it found that repeal of Obamacare would cause 24 million Americans to lose their health insurance over the next decade. Any estimate of the revised legislation that’s remotely close will leave Republicans concerned about the effect of repealing Obamacare on their prospects for re-election.

Elements of the House bill that likely will raise Republican objections in the Senate include the loss of coverage caused by the rollback of Medicaid and concerns that the House did not go far enough to preserve coverage for people with preexisting conditions.

But efforts to restore those protections in the Senate could jeopardize support from conservatives. Sen. John Cornyn, the Senate’s number two Republican, conceded as much following the House vote. “There is no timeline,” he told reporters. “When we get 51 senators, we’ll vote.”

Congress can send only one version of a bill to the president for his signature. So even if the Senate also passes a bill, congressional Republicans almost certainly will be left to negotiate among themselves. That means the Republican leadership in both chambers would appoint lawmakers to a conference committee, which would meet to reconcile the two versions. As the Congressional Research Service explains:

For a conference to reach agreement, a majority of the House conferees and a majority of the Senate conferees must sign the conference report. Once reported, the conference report must be approved by both chambers. Conference reports are privileged and debatable in both the House and Senate, but they may not be amended.

If both chambers approve the conference report, the legislation would be sent to the president for his signature. But for now hurdles remain. “This bill is going nowhere fast in the United States Senate,” Chuck Schumer, the chamber’s top Democrat, said on Wednesday.

Categories
Law

Biological father blocked from asserting paternity: New York appeals court

The biological father of a child cannot establish paternity if he has neglected to assume such a role, a New York appeals court has ruled in decision that fills in the limits of such claims.

It was in the best interests of the eight-year-old child to deny a request by the father for a genetic test where the mother acknowledged that the father was the son’s biological parent, the Appellate Division in Brooklyn decided on April 19.

The court noted that state law gives parents the right to a DNA test to aid in a determination of paternity unless a judge finds that the test would not be in the best interests of the child. The judge at Family Court found that the test would not be in the best interests of the child because the putative father had not participated in his upbringing.

The Appellate Division agreed. Writing on behalf of three of his colleagues, Justice Mark Dillon noted that the father “provided limited financial support for the child and had seen the child only approximately 20 times over the course of the child’s life.”

“The [mother’s] husband, whose name appears on the birth certificate, had assumed the role of the child’s father, providing for the child financially and emotionally and living with the [mother] and their other children as a family unit consistently for the entirety of the child’s life,” he added.

Though the parents agreed that the putative father was, in fact, the child’s biological parent, the Family Court “properly estopped [the father] from asserting a claim of paternity in the child’s best interests.”

Categories
Law

The accusations against the Fyre Festival highlight the extent of the scam

Perhaps the organizers of the disaster known as the Fyre Festival should have booked Steely Dan to play the main stage, considering the accusations of a royal scam being hurled against them by the people who bought tickets.

Consider some of the charges leveled against the promoters by Daniel Jung, who said in court papers filed Sunday that he bought a ticket and airfare to the festival that cost him $2,000:

  • The promoters, Billy McFarland and Ja Rule, “were knowingly lying about the festival’s accommodations and safety, and continued to promote the event and sell ticket packages.”
  • “The festival was even promoted as being on a ‘private island’ once owned by drug kingpin Pablo Escobar—the island isn’t private, as there is a ‘Sandals’ resort down the road, and Pablo Escobar never owned the island.”

  • The promoters “began personally reaching out to performers and celebrities in advance of the festival and warned them not to attend—acknowledging the fact that the festival was outrageously under-equipped and potentially dangerous for anyone in attendance.”
  • The promoters “refused to warn attendees about the dangerous conditions awaiting them on the island. [They] only ‘cancelled’ the event on the morning of the first day—after thousands of attendees had already arrived and were stranded, without food, water, or shelter.”
  • The promoters “represented, among other things, that (1) this event would take place on a private island; (2) the island was previously owned by infamous drug lord Pablo Escobar; (3) all food would be provided, including five-star cuisine; (4) the living quarters would be fully furnished; (5) guests would take private jets from Miami to the festival; and (6) the event would be attended by celebrities and top-level musical talent… all of the representations made by [the promoters] proved to be completely false.”
  • While [Jung] “is aware that [the promoters] have made overtures regarding refunds, Class Members’ damages in being lured to a deserted island and left to fend for themselves—a situation tantamount to false imprisonment—exceed the face value of their ticket packages by many orders of magnitude.”

Jung is asking the court to certify the lawsuit as a class action. The promoters have until May 22 to answer.