Free Republic

The Obama Administration continues to prioritize political success over people as evidenced in the rollout of the public face of Obamacare: Healthcare.gov. As of the end of February 2014, the Administration had spent $834 million developing a healthcare website that was flawed from the outset and allowed only a few million people to enroll for healthcare coverage, according to a new report by the minority staff of the Senate Finance Committee and the Senate Judiciary Committee. Five days before Healthcare.gov opened last year, President Obama addressed Prince George’s Community College in Largo, Maryland, promising that Obamacare would help the economy,...

Bias: You'd think that a government audit showing how ObamaCare couldn't tell whether millions of enrollees were eligible for the subsidies they're getting would be front-page news. Instead, the press hid it from view. If you wanted to read in the New York Times about these findings — which detailed rampant problems verifying eligibility and income information from millions of ObamaCare applicants — you had to dig 17 pages into the news section. In the Washington Post, the story was on page 11, after stop-the-press-stories like a change in House travel reporting rules and a puff piece on the new...

July 4, 2014 Revenge: Republicans to Strip $341 Million From IRS in Response to Scandals Pete Kasperowicz After months of frustration with the IRS over the targeting scandal and lost emails, House Republicans will exact some revenge next week by passing legislation that cuts the IRS operating budget by $341 million compared to current levels. GOP leaders plan to call up a spending bill for fiscal year 2015 that funds the IRS and other agencies, but singles out the IRS for the targeting scandal and other problems that have surfaced over the last few years. “The committee remains troubled by...

Nevada, buckle up. Over the next few months, you’ll learn how much your health insurance premiums will go up for next year. The early evidence isn’t good — the percentage increase could be in double digits. But that’s nothing compared with what you’ll face in 2017. In May, I released a comprehensive study showing how the Affordable Care Act will likely play out over the next few years. The diagnosis isn’t good. First, the short version. In two years, the ACA’s structural problems will lead to substantial premium increases. Once that happens, Nevadans will likely leave the insurance market in...

(CNSNews.com) – Despite expanded health insurance coverage under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), more people are going to hospital emergency rooms (ER) for treatment because they can’t get an appointment with a primary care physician, according to the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP). “Nearly half of emergency physicians responding to a poll are already seeing a rise in emergency visits since January 1 when expanded coverage under ACA began to take effect,” according to ACEP, which gives overall emergency care in the U.S. “a dismal D+ grade.” In addition, 86 percent “expect emergency visits to increase over the next...

It's no accident that Obamacare has become emblematic of the Obama administration overall, because it exemplifies so thoroughly what Obama represents ideologically and functionally. Obamacare symbolizes government largesse, incompetence, inefficiency, arrogance and heartlessness, a government that knows better than you what is good for you. It epitomizes staggering spending, waste and debt. It typifies a government that is too big for its britches, which is crushing your liberties while telling you that it has your best interests at heart and that you can't live without it. It stands for wholesale dishonesty -- something that is entirely different from what it...

"...we actually put incoming applications aside so we could focus on the ACA related applications that came in over last summer."

Insurance companies operating in New York State's marketplace are expected to ask for double-digit premium hikes next year, according to new filings from the companies. Capital New York reports the average requested increase was 13%. The New York Post reports that number at about 12%. But the bigger insurers are seeking a bigger premium hike — according to Capital, the six most popular plans in New York are requesting an average increase of almost 15%. The Post reports that Excellus Health Plan, which has about 24,000 customers, is requesting a 19.7% hike. MVP Health Plan, which has nearly 33,000 customers,...

Insurance companies that feed into New York’s health exchange system for Obamacare are requesting hikes to patient premiums that are in the double-digits, a New York Post investigation found. The average increase that insurers are considering for 2015 is 12 percent, the newspaper reported. But a large number of these insurers actually want to boost premium payment costs on patients by 20 percent. The rate hikes are curious, the New York Post noted, given the stated goal of Obamacare to rein in runaway medical costs. Insurers, however, blamed the premium increases directly on Obamacare.

A devastating new Health and Human Services (HHS) Inspector General report released on Tuesday reveals that the Obama administration has yet to determine whether 1,295,571 of the over 8 million Obamacare enrollees are U.S. citizens lawfully in the country. The finding, located on page 11 of the report, states that 44% of the remaining 2,611,780 application "inconsistencies" are related to verifying "Citizenship/national status/lawful presence." Another 960,492 application inconsistencies were related to verifying whether subsidy applicants provided accurate income information.

Linda Rolain passed away at her Las Vegas home on Monday Her family had joined two lawsuits against the State of Nevada and the company that set up its troubled online software, Xerox She had tried to enroll in the state's health exchange in November and after numerous issues, finally paid in January for coverage to start in March But when she went to get treatment, there was no record of her name and she finally received an insurance card in May She underwent surgery in mid-May but struggled to recover Robert Rolain, who lost 60 pounds due to stress,...

WASHINGTON — Federal officials can’t resolve 85 percent of 2.9 million “inconsistencies” on applications for ObamaCare even after nine months of trying, according to new data provided by the administration. Most of the problems involve certifying citizenship and income, key components of the national health plan. But some of the problems are downright nutty. One unidentified state-run marketplace cited situations in which infants and young children were “erroneously identified as incarcerated, according to federal data,” the inspector general for the Health and Human Services Department revealed Tuesday. Just 425,000 problematic applications have been resolved out of 2.9 million that states...

Accountability: Two new audits reveal failures in ObamaCare on a scale even we didn't think possible, with unresolved discrepancies, rules violations and technology problems that expose taxpayers to massive overpayments. In the first of a series of ObamaCare audits, the Health and Human Services inspector general found 2.9 million "inconsistencies" in applications submitted to the federal HealthCare.gov exchange in the first five months of open enrollment. In other words, the Social Security numbers, income, family size, citizenship or other information applicants provided didn't match existing government data. Some 1.3 million of the problems involved citizenship, and an additional million involved...

The inspector general for the Department of Health and Human Services released a report highlighting problems verifying eligibility for federal health insurance subsidies under the Affordable Care Act.Here are five issues the IG found in place as of Feb. 23:1. Fraud could be significant. The audit found the federal government has been unable to resolve 2.6 million out of 2.9 million “inconsistencies” in the information provided by people who applied for health care subsidies. In other words, it could not verify the data provided by people seeking subsidies.2. Most inconsistencies were about citizenship and income. The vast majority of the...

The Supreme Court on Tuesday confirmed that its decision a day earlier extending religious rights to closely held corporations applies broadly to the contraceptive coverage requirement in the new health care law, not just the handful of methods the justices considered in their ruling. The justices did not comment in leaving in place lower court rulings in favor of businesses that object to covering all 20 methods of government-approved contraception....

Time to check in on the Healthcare.gov quagmire, where health department officials are facing 2.6 million "inconsistencies" — places where information submitted on an application failed to match government records — that were supposed to be resolved months ago. Income and citizenship status are causing the most problems, followed by employer-sponsored minimum coverage, Social Security number, non-employer sponsored minimum coverage, incarceration status, and Native American status. All these factors affect an applicant's eligibility for insurance and subsidies. The department expected some applicants would have problems with their applications, either due to errors or deliberate lies, and it budgeted 90 days...

Two new reports from the Health and Human Services Department's Inspector General say the new federal healthcare insurance market is having trouble verifying whether people are eligible for the health insurance they are receiving, or the federal subsidies that help them pay their premiums. One of the two Health and Human Services inspector general reports found 2.9 million inconsistencies in the federal marketplace. It said the federal marketplace was unable to resolve 2.6 million of them because the Centers of Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) system for determining eligibility was “not fully operational.” The reports looked at the exchanges between...

No line in bioethics is ever fixed. Rather, the push to eradicate the boundaries that keep medical professionalism tied to Hippocratic values (sniffed at as “paternalism” by many in the field) continues unabated, with new boundary lines created, consolidated, and then moved again into ever-more extreme territory.Some call this, the “slippery slope.” Case in point: Suicide by starvation, known as VSED (voluntary stop eating and drinking). Not only do bioethicists say doctors should participate in this method of suicide by palliating the pain starvation and dehydration causes, but also DO IT FOR THE PATIENT if they stated they wanted to...

A mountainous backlog of Medi-Cal applications is well into its third month, but California officials have provided little information about how and when the largest such bottleneck in the nation might be cleared. Not only has application processing been delayed, the state has also fallen behind in sending final notifications to enrollees, officials confirmed. Meanwhile, many low-income people who qualify for Medi-Cal are showing up at community clinics and costly emergency rooms as they have in the past. Others are putting off care. The holdup in Medi-Cal approvals has led to financial uncertainty for many of California's community health clinics,...

Frustration and legal challenges over the network of doctors and hospitals for Obamacare patients have marred an otherwise successful rollout of the federal healthcare law in California. Limiting the number of medical providers was part of an effort by insurers to hold down premiums. But confusion over the new plans has led to unforeseen medical bills for some patients and prompted a state investigation. More complaints are surfacing as patients start to use their new coverage bought through Covered California, the state's health insurance exchange. "I thought I had done everything right, and it's been awful," said Jean Buchanan, 56....