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In the hospitals, we see the consequences. While the poor and the illegal immigrants get absolutely free care, the middle-class patients are collapsing financially under the strain of their deductibles and their lost income from their time off work, not to mention the additional stress of their illness. In our clinics, sick patients are choosing to forego testing, medicines, and surgery that they need solely because of cost. Instead they are living with their illnesses, often with cheap antibiotics as a means of delaying the inevitable. To make matters worse, the patients getting their health care for free will ask...

Sticker shock is around the corner for many Americans with government-brokered medical coverage, as insurance companies are beginning to apply their first-year costs to next year's premiums. In the case of Florida, some consumers will pay as much as 23 per cent more when their plans are renewed in the fall, according to the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation. Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2716851/Obamacare-rates-2015-23-cent.html#ixzz39aDNsRvB Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

Obamacare plans have shrunk payments to physicians so much that some doctors say they won’t be able to afford to accept Obamacare coverage, NPR reports. Many of the eight million sign-ups in Obamacare exchanges nationwide already face more limited choices for physicians and hospitals than those in the private insurance market. But with low physician reimbursement rates, the problem could get even worse. For a typical quick patient visit, Dr. Doug Gerard, a Connecticut internist, told NPR a private insurer would pay $100 while Medicare would pay around $80. But Obamacare plans are more likely to pay closer to $80,...

On a recent afternoon at his office in Hartford, Conn., Dr. Doug Gerard examines a patient complaining of joint pain. Gerard, an internist, checks her out, asks her a few questions about her symptoms and then orders a few tests before sending her on her way. For a typical quick visit like this, Gerard could get reimbursed $100 or more from a private insurer. For the same visit, Medicare pays less — about $80. And now, with the new private plans under the Affordable Care Act, Gerard says he would get something in between, but closer to the lower Medicare...

Some people want you to suspend your imagination and your memory regarding what the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) actually states in terms of who can receive subsidies for their health insurance. Of course, as usual, when you have right on your side, truth does not matter. But we will explain why the subsidies disbursed from the federal exchange fails the test of what is right. As you know by now, there were two rulings issued in a Court of Appeals that were diametrically opposed to each other. The issue revolves around whether the federal exchange (operating in 36 states)...

Many of you probably heard about the “Halbig” decision, in which a federal court struck a blow against Obamacare by ruling that the IRS was wrong to arbitrarily grant subsidies for health insurance policies purchased through a federal exchange. And why did the judges rule against the IRS? Well, for the simple reason that the Obamacare legislation specifically says that subsidies are only available for policies purchased through exchanges set up by state governments. My Cato colleague Michael Cannon explains: The PPACA authorizes the IRS to issue health-insurance tax credits only to taxpayers who purchase coverage “through an Exchange established...

The cost of providing free taxpayer-funded coverage to Bay Staters unable to sign up for Obamacare because of Massachusetts’ disastrous website problems has soared to $173 million, according to a new Patrick administration report. Some 251,280 Bay Staters are now on the free transitional coverage — basically Medicaid — marking an increase of about 50,000 people since April that one watchdog found alarming. “There should be a red siren going off for state budget writers and taxpayers about the cost of this, and yet there seems to be very little alarm,” said Joshua Archambault of the Pioneer Institute. “There will...

The group seeking to invalidate the Affordable Care Act’s subsidies to Americans purchasing health insurance through federally run state marketplaces is asking the Supreme Court to take up the case early. The Competitive Enterprise Institute, the conservative group funding challenges to the IRS rule allowing subsidies to flow to state exchanges, announced Thursday that it was asking the Supreme Court to intervene. The challengers argue that the Affordable Care Act only allows subsidies in exchanges set up by states – an interpretation that could lead to millions of people being unable to afford coverage. Owing largely to Republican resistance, only...

Florida’s largest Obamacare exchange health insurer is boosting its premiums by 17.6 percent, a staggering increase for hundreds of thousands of Floridians. Florida Blue, the Blue Cross Blue Shield insurer in Florida, has the largest market share of any insurer operating on the state’s Obamacare exchange. The company cited higher health costs than expected due to an older customer base which is using more health services than they’d prepared for, according to Kaiser Health News. Patrick Geraghty, Florida Blue’s CEO, had previously warned that the company was under “tremendous financial pressure” and that they’d be seeking significant hikes.

53% of Americans have an unfavorable opinion of Obamacare, up 8% since last month. This is the largest unfavorable opinion of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in the survey’s four year history, a poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation finds. Only 37% of people actually have a favorable opinion of the law. Obamacare lost favorability with women, whites, and those in the low and middle income brackets, along with other groups—including Democrats. …

The bad news in California: If you liked your plan and/or your doctor, many of you couldn’t keep either if you had an individual-market plan. The worse news in California: If you liked your premiums, you definitely couldn’t keep those. In the first year of ObamaCare, premiums rose in the Golden State anywhere from 22% to 88% from the previous year — even as insurer networks narrowed so much that consumers had a tough time finding a provider at all: The cost of health insurance for individuals skyrocketed this year in California, with some paying almost twice what they...

<p>Washington (CNN) – Sen. Ted Cruz on Tuesday forcefully argued that Obamacare is not here to stay and pledged that he would continue working to dismantle the health care law in 2014 and 2016.</p> <p>“I think those elections should be about many, many things,” the Texas Republican said, listing jobs and growth as examples. “But they should be about repealing every bloody word of Obamacare.”</p>

A key appeals court on Tuesday ruled that despite including a tax, Obamacare doesn’t violate the Constitution’s requirement that all tax bills originate in the House of Representatives, giving the Obama administration another health care win. The three-judge panel of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia said that the Obamacare tax was “incidental” to the primary purpose of the Affordable Care Act, so it isn’t a revenue-raising measure as envisioned by the Constitution. “Some exercises of the taxing power are not subject to the Origination Clause,” the unanimous panel concluded. The issue had been in...

And it is precisely because of Gruber’s intellect and profound familiarity with the PPACA that his attempts to explain away his past statements are not credible. Gruber’s first attempt was, in essence, “Dude, I flaked.” He said his comments were the verbal equivalent of a “typo” — a “speak-o,” as he called it. Then another recording from 2012 emerged in which Gruber said exactly the same thing to a different audience. This was not a “speak-o.” It was part of a presentation Gruber had given multiple times.

The Obama administration on Tuesday will publish a proposed rule that would give thousands of temporary and seasonal government workers access to the government’s health care program, even though current law would appear to prohibit them from using that program. The rule from the Office of Personnel Management would let these federal workers sign up for coverage under the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program, and also allow some of them to enjoy a government contribution to their insurance premiums. Both steps would be done through OPM’s proposed regulation, and not through an act of Congress. The proposed rule indicates that...

UNKNOWN QUESTIONER:“Um, you mentioned the Health Insurance Exchanges for the States. And it’s my understanding that if the States don’t provide them, that the Federal Government will provide them.”M.I.T. economics Prof. Jonathan Gruber:“Yeah, so these Health Insurance Exchanges —once you go on MA-HealthConnect.org and CRS [is] in Massachusetts—will be these new shopping places. And they’ll be the place that people go to get their subsidies for health insurance. “In the law it says [that] if States don’t provide them, the federal backstop will. The Federal Government has been sort-of slow in putting in this backstop, I think partially, because they...

The Obama administration will continue handing out Obamacare subsidies to federal exchange customers despite a federal court’s ruling Tuesday that the subsidies are illegal. A D.C. Court of Appeals panel ruled Tuesday morning that customers in the 36 states that didn’t establish their own exchange and use HealthCare.gov instead cannot be given premium tax credits, according to the text of the Affordable Care Act itself. (RELATED: Federal Court Takes Down Obamacare: Subsidies In Federal Exchange Are Illegal) But the White House said in response that it will continue handing out the billions of taxpayer dollars in subsidies. White House press...

A federal appeals court on Tuesday dealt a setback to the Affordable Care Act, ruling that premium subsidies provided through the federal health exchange in 36 states are invalid under the writing of the law.Here's the practical effect of the ruling, if it withstands the rest of the legal process: More than 5 million, generally low-income Americans who received tax credits through the federal exchange to purchase health insurance would see their premiums explode.Avalere Health, an independent healthcare firm, released an analysis last week showing that individuals who received premium subsidies for health insurance would see a premium hike of about...

Obamacare’s supporters have long insisted that it is the “law of the land,” implicitly suggesting that it is immutable and permanent. Evidently, it hasn’t occurred to these people to mention that to their dear leader. His Majesty, Barack I, obviously thinks of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act as a collection of royal decrees, any one of which may be altered at his pleasure. Thus, in a proclamation issued last week through the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, His Highness declared that all U.S. territories are now exempt from most of PPACA’s morass of rules and regulations. Neither...

As WSJ reports, last week's geopolitical chaos and distraction was ideal for a news dump, and the White House didn't disappoint: On no legal basis, all 4.5 million residents of the five U.S. territories were quietly released from ObamaCare. It seems the costs of healthcare soared in these five territories due to uneconomic mandates - which woul dhave been a disaster PR-wise for the administration and so, under cover of catastrophe, WSJ reports all of a sudden last week HHS discovered new powers after "a careful review of this situation and the relevant statutory language," that enabled them to 'selectively...