In a repeat of follies reported last year, Covered CA has struggled to supply thousands of consumers with tax forms before the April 15 filing deadline for individual tax returns. That is deepening confusion, uncertainty and fear related to the Obamacare tax penalty taking effect for the first time this IRS season for those who have not signed up for any insurance.

For insurance agents, the woes compounded frustration surrounding the complex and often inadequate interplay between Covered CA and Medi-Cal, the state’s version of Medicare. Medicare was expanded substantially this past year under a provision of Obamacare.

A numbers game

Covered CA executives have had to keep several bureaucratic plates spinning since Obamacare passed its first anniversary in the Golden State last October. Resources and attention were divided among processing enrollments, pushing for new signups and providing qualified exceptions for those the exchange needed to get on the books to keep numbers at or near targets for the original Feb. 15 deadline.

The effort was a partial success. As the Sacramento Business Journal reported, 944,000 enrollees “renewed coverage for 2015 before the end of last year for total enrollment in the individual marketplace of more than 1.4 million.”

Although executives strove to hit a goal of 1.7 million enrollees, they fell back on a fix familiar to Obamacare watchers: create an extension until April 30. Another wave of signups, the Journal reported, were “expected in the current special enrollment period through April 30 for people who claim they were unaware of the new tax penalty for foregoing insurance.”

Crunch time

Whether or not their claims were grounded in fact, enrollees eligible for the April extension faced a less frustrating time filing taxes than those who simply didn’t receive the necessary paperwork from Covered CA. As CBS San Francisco reported, “Covered California now acknowledges at least 4,500 enrollees had not received their tax forms. That’s in addition to the more than 100,000 who received inaccurate forms.” And more residents have begun to discover they need to “file a dispute to get a form and wait up to 60 days, well past April 15th.”

In an interview with KPIX 5 published by CBS, Covered CA spokesperson Dana Howard admitted responsibility for the chaos, but attributed the challenge to an unprecedented type of bureaucratic wire-crossing. “This is the first time that tax forms and taxes have been intertwined with health care,” Howard said.

Californians in the crunch have had to rely on their own resources or those supplied by the media to get a handle on the changes. To help consumers understand what kind of problems they faced, Southern California Public Radio recently offered an explainer breaking down the thicket of mistakes.

“The Covered California errors,” it noted, “revolve around inconsistencies of enrollment in subsidized health insurance plans. For instance, someone may have been enrolled for only three months but the tax form says they were enrolled for six months. (The federal problem was different – it was about incorrect premiums on the forms.)”

But if enrollees didn’t yet receive a postcard from Covered CA, they would have had to catch the error themselves. Potentially, a lot could be on the line.

“Covered California’s mistake matters,” SCPR observed, “because the amount a household owes in taxes will depend on the amount of subsidy they received. And if the form — known as a 1095A — says they received more than they really did, their tax rate will be based on those erroneous figures.”

It remains to be seen how well Californians will be able to avoid another round of confusion after the April 30 enrollment deadline and the 60-day tax delay tick past.

Agents balk

For their part, California insurance agents have amassed grievances of their own. Aside from any troubles they may have with their own, private health care policies, they shouldered the brunt of the work load in signing up enrollees under Obamacare — despite receiving what some claim to be little or no assistance on the other end of the telephone or internet.

Agent-driven signups made up 43 percent of new enrollments in Covered CA, the Los Angeles Times reported, compared to 30 percent who self-enrolled and just 10 percent who relied on a so-called “certified enrollment counselor or navigator.”

One agent told Insurance Business America the signup process had become a “nightmare,” with “non-existent” communication plaguing her interaction with both Covered CA and Medi-Cal.

But the fact that the teams see no trouble in coming up with $850 million apiece seems likely to make San Diego and Oakland voters more opposed to subsidizing billionaire team owners than ever. So does the fact that Walton family member Stan Kroenke, who owns the eager-to-move St. Louis Rams, is preparing to build a $1 billion-plus stadium of his own in Inglewood without public dollars — and with the blessing of city officials who are putting the project on a fast track, bypassing environmental laws.

The deal accepted by Santa Clara County voters in 2010 limiting the subsidies for the 49ers’ new $1.2 billion Levi’s Stadium seemed a good deal at the time; the highest estimate of direct subsidies for the project CalWatchdog.com could find is $156 million. After what’s happened in recent years, that deal doesn’t look so good anymore.

Live sports are gold for TV networks

That’s because the economics of sports have changed since the 49ers’ deal was negotiated. Whether they move or not, the Chargers and Raiders have much less to back up their argument that they would face a “competitive disadvantage” by going without the subsidies that pro teams have traditionally demanded for new stadiums and arenas. They understand that franchise ownership is more beneficial than ever in an era in which live sports are the most consistent way to build a big real-time audience on TV and online.

For the 2014 season, TV networks paid more than $5.5 billion to the NFL. After some league and player pension expenses are paid, the rest of the TV money and other revenue is divvied up among the 32 teams. The $188 million each team got in 2014 was up at least 20 percent from 2013.  Teams are likely to get even more money in coming years. In October, when DirecTV renewed its contract with the NFL, it increased its annual payment from $1 billion to $1.5 billion.

The National Basketball Association and Major League Baseball are enjoying similar huge gains in TV rights payments. Teams in those sports benefit both from national TV fees and local deals with cable companies.

Cable TV bills swell due to sports fees

This double revenue stream explains why the Dodgers sold for a record $2.15 billion in 2012 and the Clippers sold for a record $2 billion in 2014.

Only franchises in the New York City metropolitan area are likely to do better than the 20-year, $3 billion deal the Lakers struck with Time Warner Cable in 2011 to build two regional cable TV networks around the team; and the 25-year, $8.5 billion deal the Dodgers signed with Time Warner in 2013 to set up a dedicated cable channel built on the team’s preseason and regular-season games.

These TV costs, of course, are passed along to consumers via sky-high cable TV bills — something Californians already complain about. When residents put two and two together and realize that pro sports are already hitting their pocketbooks in their cable bills, they may be even less enthusiastic about conveying money to billionaire team owners to help build stadiums.

For these reasons and more, Levi’s Stadium could be the last publicly subsidized pro sports stadium in California.

They call it “net neutrality,” but it should be called “government takeover.”

Republicans in Congress, now controlling both the Senate and the House, say they will stop it. It’s an early test of whether they are determined to enact the small-government rhetoric that brought them campaign victories last November.

This has direct implications for California because of our overwhelming dependence on a largely unregulated and prospering Internet for our economy.

According to the Wall Street Journal:

The FCC spent most of 2014 drafting the new rules for how broadband Internet providers manage their networks, and it plans to vote on a final rule in February. Shortly after the midterm elections, President Barack Obama called on the FCC to impose the strongest possible rules on providers by classifying broadband as a utility, which would make it subject to much greater regulation. The rules are designed to protect net neutrality—the principle that all Internet traffic should be treated equally.

What is it with Democrats and controlling the Internet? Aren’t they supposed to be the party of social liberation? Isn’t that what the Internet does?

Internet freedom

I remember back in the late 1990s it was Rep. Christopher Cox, R-Irvine, whose Internet Tax Freedom Act kept Democrats from taxing progress. I wrote numerous editorials at the Orange County Register backing his legislation, which passed, and became a foundation of America’s internet prosperity. (Cox was less fortunate later when he was the head of the SEC during the 2008 economic meltdown.)

And as the indispensable Glenn Greenwald has pointed out, the Obama administration, including possible next president Hillary Clinton when she was secretary of state, has waged a continuous war on Internet freedom.

Wall Street:

Concern about the rules is playing into Republican efforts to rein in what they say is regulatory overreach by the Federal Communications Commission.

Dissension over the Internet rules is so rancorous that it could end up impeding progress on technology policy areas where there is potential for agreement, such as cybersecurity and the allocation of wireless spectrum, according to telecom lobbyists and congressional aides.

‘The News Twisters’

The GOP should consider abolishing the FCC. Since it was established in 1934, supposedly to promote a diversity of views, the FCC has done the opposite, stifling health public discourse.

If you’re old enough, you remember the dominance of the three TV network news shows — ABC, CBS and NBC — plus later PBS, in the 1960s and 1970s. They all broadcast the same “bias,” as detailed in such books as “The News Twisters,” in 1971 by Edith Ephron.

In 1972 she wrote a sequel, “How CBS Tried to Kill a Book: An Expose of the Campaign by CBS to Kill The News Twisters,” on how the network worked to protect its control over American minds.

The Internet broke that all down, providing a global free-for-all that has advanced liberty. It all happened so fast the FCC and other regulators couldn’t react fast enough.

We’ll soon find out if the FCC is successful now in stifling our freedoms.

global warming = global warming

global cooling = global warming

climate change = global warming

more hurricanes = global warming

fewer hurricanes = global warming

war = peace = global warming

freedom = slavery = global warming

ignorance = strength = global warming

By John Seiler

A state government employee posted thousands of times on the Sacramento Bee’s Web site during work hours. Taxpayers subsidized his cyber-goldbricking.

CBS News just ran a story on it with interviews of Lance Izumi, our colleague at the Pacific Research Institute, CalWatchDog.com’s parent think tank.

Unfortunately, there’s no embedding of the video. But click here for the CBS site to watch it.