In April, the Internal Revenue Service issued new regulations under the Affordable Care Act that change the way hospitals demonstrate “community benefit.” Among other changes, the new regulations requires hospitals to charge uninsured patients a rate that not more than the “amounts generally billed” to patients with insurance coverage.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/05/19/heres-why-hospitals-set-high-prices/

National Review Cover Shows Hillary Playing Fiddle During Benghazi Attack (PHOTO)

TOM KLUDT 10:52 AM EDT, FRIDAY MAY 17, 2013

The latest issue of the conservative National Review depicted a caricature of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton playing a fiddle with the U.S. compound in Benghazi, Libya burning behind her — an allusion to the Roman Emperor Nero, who is said to have "fiddled while Rome burned."



http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/national-review-cover-shows-hillary-playing-fiddle-during

You want a scandal? Here’s a scandal.

By Jonathan Bernstein, Published: May 13, 2013

Want a real Washington scandal — one worse than the (phony) Benghazi scandal and the (apparently real, but apparently limited) IRS scandals combined? Try the continuing, and possibly accelerating, obstruction of executive branch nominees by Senate Republicans.

Don’t think it’s a scandal? It’s pretty basic: Republicans, by abusing their Constitutional powers, are — deliberately, in several cases — preventing the government from carrying out duly passed laws.

The New York Times yesterday highlighted two of the more recent ways that Republicans have manipulated loopholes in Senate rules to delay confirmation of Secretary of Labor nominee Thomas Perez and Environmental Protection Agency nominee Gina McCarthy. It’s worth stepping back and realizing: what’s happening here is that Republicans are delaying these nominations beyond their eventual insistence that almost all nominees must get 60 votes. In other words, they’re filibustering on top of their own filibusters.

That’s just two examples. There are numerous others; again, with virtually all nominees required to have 60 votes, one can accurately say that Republicans are filibustering every nomination. But perhaps the worst are the “nullification” filibusters, in which Republicans simply refuse to approve any nominee at all for some positions — the National Labor Relations Board, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau — because they don’t want those agencies to carry out their statutory obligations.

more...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2013/05/13/you-want-a-scandal-heres-a-scandal/