Free Republic

When Maryland business owner Thomas Kunkel first learned about the Affordable Care Act, he was excited about the prospect of the new health care law. “From the small business standpoint, it was actually one of the first times I felt like a bit of a social program might actually benefit a small business,” he told The Daily Signal. “Usually it’s the opposite.” Kunkel owns Full House Marketing and Print in Edgewood, Maryland, and employs 21 full-time workers and up to 10 part-time employees. While he doesn’t provide them with health insurance, Kunkel cuts his workers a monthly check through a...

The Department of Health and Human Services insists that the Affordable Care Act not only expanded health insurance to many more Americans, but it also "made everyone's insurance better." But some Republicans are asking, what good is the health insurance if sky-high deductibles mean you never get to use it? The Democrats' Affordable Care Act is a mandate -- "not to get care, but to get coverage," Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) said on Tuesday. "And many people are finding the coverage is not at all of value to them because they can't get care. Either...their doctors don't take Obamacare or...

Insurers on the New York health exchange are requesting rate hikes averaging in excess of 17%, with UnitedHealthcare going as high as a whopping 45.6%. UnitedHealthcare has already announced that they would exit most of the Affordable Care Act state exchanges in which they operate in 2017, New York being one of the few exceptions. The biggest health insurer in the country announced that it lost $475 million on the ACA exchanges last year and could lose another $500 million this year. They explained that states in which they would continue to serve – like New York – would be...

Truncated title. Full title: Obama Admin Rule Forces Hospitals, Doctors Accepting Federal Funds to Provide Gender Transition Services and Abortions The Obama administration is capping off a week of forcing Americans to accept gender ideology as normal with a final rule on Obamacare’s nondiscrimination policies in healthcare. The rule will require physicians, hospitals, insurers, and other healthcare entities that receive federal funds — such as Medicare and Medicaid — to include gender transition treatments and even abortion among their services for the alleged sake of “equity.” The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued the final rule on Obamacare’s...

Reports continue to flow in of big ObamaCare premium spikes that will hit exchanges around the country in 2017. Insurers are seeking an average 27% rate hike in Oregon; 21% in Maine; 18% in Virginia; and 18% in Florida. But if the premiums don’t shock you, the deductibles very well might. Not only are bronze deductibles rising as high as $7,150 in 2017, from a maximum of $6,850 this year, but silver deductibles of $6,000 or more are becoming commonplace. In fact, Centene (CNC), one of the most aggressive exchange competitors when it comes to pricing, is planning to roll...

Health-insurance customers in a growing number of mostly rural regions will have just one insurer’s plans to choose from on the Affordable Care Act’s exchanges next year, as some companies pull out of unprofitable markets. The entire states of Alaska and Alabama are expected to have only one insurer on the health law’s signature online marketplaces next year, according to state regulators. The same is expected to be true in parts of several other states, including Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Arizona and Oklahoma, state regulators said. So far, more than 650 counties appear on track to have just one insurer on...

The Maryland Health Connection is the state's Obamacare Marketplace. Monday, an agency press release noted that Maryland "has cut by 40 percent the number of Marylanders who were eligible for private insurance coverage when the state marketplace began three years ago." However, the breakdown of that statistic reveals that only 165,000 out of more than one million sign-ups are non-Medicaid enrollments. When the exchange opened three years ago, an estimated 405,000 people were eligible for private coverage. Three years later, that number has fallen to 240,000. But the press release notes that including Medicaid over one million have been enrolled...

Amy Moses and her circle of self-employed small-business owners were supporters of President Barack Obama and the Affordable Care Act. They bought policies on the newly created NY state exchange. But when they called doctors and hospitals in Manhattan to schedule appointments, they were dismayed to be turned away again and again with a common refrain: "We don't take Obamacare," the umbrella epithet for the hundreds of plans offered through the president's signature health legislation. Though their insurance cards look the same as everyone else's the plans are often very different from those provided to most Americans by their employers....

The largest increase in consumer spending since gas prices have dropped, according to Markowska, has been on healthcare. "In nominal terms, household spending on healthcare averaged 3.9% between 2010 and 2013," wrote Markowska in a note to clients Thursday. "It began to accelerate in the first half of 2014 and has averaged at 5.2% since then. Importantly, this pickup in healthcare spending was not driven by higher costs; real spending in this category accelerated from 1.9% in 2010-2013 to 3.9% thereafter." This would indicate that Americans have been not only been spending more because of increased costs, but also intentionally...

Despite bitter resistance in Oklahoma for years to President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul, Republican leaders in this conservative state are now confronting something that alarms them even more: a huge $1.3 billion hole in the budget that threatens to do widespread damage to the state’s health care system. So, in what would be the grandest about-face among rightward leaning states, Oklahoma is now moving toward a plan to expand its Medicaid program to bring in billions of federal dollars from Obama’s new health care system. What’s more, GOP leaders are considering a tax hike to cover the state’s share...

AMY MOSES and her circle of self-employed small-business owners were supporters of President Obama and the Affordable Care Act. They bought policies on the newly created New York State exchange. But when they called doctors and hospitals in Manhattan to schedule appointments, they were dismayed to be turned away again and again with a common refrain: “We don’t take Obamacare,” the umbrella epithet for the hundreds of plans offered through the president’s signature health legislation. “Anyone who is on these plans knows it’s a two-tiered system,” said Ms. Moses, describing the emotional sting of those words to a successful entrepreneur....

The Obama administration unveiled two broad initiatives Friday aimed at combating discrimination against transgender Americans in schools and health-care coverage, affirming the president’s goal of elevating transgender protections to one of the central civil rights issues of his presidency. The moves, both of which had been in the works for years, prompted an immediate backlash from conservatives who disparaged the measures as government overreach. […] Hours after directing public schools nationwide to allow transgender students to use the bathroom of their choice, the administration issued a second directive prohibiting health insurers from denying transgender Americans coverage and services based on...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pkqn6wsrUfs

It seems that federal officials have worked overtime to undermine public trust. Benghazi, the IRS abuses, the “fast and furious” gun-running fiasco, the solar power boondoggles, and the seemingly endless implementation problems of the Affordable Care Act—all these scandals have common themes: arrogant and abusive bureaucracy, double dealing, lame excuses, and legal hairsplitting. The outrages listed above can be placed squarely at the doorstep of the White House. But one scandal is truly bipartisan: How key administration and congressional officials connived to create, under cover of the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, special health insurance subsidies for members...

After raising its premiums for coverage on the Obamacare exchange by 36.3 percent for 2016, the state's dominant health insurer is heralding another increase of the "same order of magnitude" for 2017. BlueCross BlueShield claims it lost more than $150 million in 2015 when its rates were among the lowest in the land. But the 36.3 percent increase for 2016, the largest of any state, brings Tennessee rates to just about the national average. So how on Earth can costs be going up so exponentially to justify such a rate increase on the part of a nonprofit insurance company whose...

White House spokesman Josh Earnest taunted congressional Republicans Thursday in spite of a major court ruling against Obamacare, saying “they’ve been losing this fight for six years.” The Hill reports: In a major ruling, Judge Rosemary Collyer, an appointee of President George W. Bush, said the administration does not have the power to spend money on “cost sharing reduction payments” to insurers without an appropriation from Congress. Collyer’s decision doesn’t immediately go into effect, however, so that the administration can appeal it. A reporter asked Earnest at the outset of the briefing how “problematic” this was for the law overall....

A federal judge delivered a blow to the Obama administration and the president’s signature health care law Thursday in a lawsuit mounted by the House of Representatives. But the lawsuit’s future could be impacted further by November’s elections. U.S. District Judge Rosemary Collyer sided with the House in a case challenging how the Obama administration has been funding payments to insurers through Obamacare’s cost-sharing subsidies. Collyer, appointed by President George W. Bush, is allowing the program to continue, pending an appeal from the Department of Justice.

Humana wasn't kidding when it hinted last week of big premium hikes for 2017 in those ObamaCare markets where it remains. This year, the nation's fifth-largest insurer offers the cheapest bronze and silver plans in Michigan's largest market, including Detroit. But Humana has filed for a 50% premium hike for its low-cost silver plan. Meanwhile, Humana wants a 38% premium increase for its lowest-cost bronze plan. So far only Oregon, where insurers are requesting an average 27% premium hike, and Virginia, where insurers want an 18% hike, are the only two states to make all rate filings available.

The shrinkage of employee retirement resources in the US has been well documented, as employers shift more risk onto their workers. Less so is the rate at which employers have been eliminating healthcare benefits for retirees. As the Kaiser Family Foundation recently reported, retiree health coverage is becoming an endangered species. "Employer-sponsored retiree health coverage once played a key role in supplementing Medicare," observe Tricia Neuman of the foundation. "Any way you slice it, this coverage is eroding." The chances of reversing this trend, plainly, are nil. But it's important to keep an eye on it, if only as a...

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has launched a campaign against Catholic hospitals, charging that the health of patients-- especially women-- may be endangered by the US bishops' health-care directives. Noting that Catholic institutions account for one of every six hospital beds in the US, the ACLU remarks that Catholic institutions are generally forbidden to perform abortions and sterilizations or to euthanize patients: procedures that the ACLU defines as forms of "health care" Thus the ACLU report concludes that "health care" is not always available at US hospitals because of Catholic teachings. "When hospitals prevent doctors from providing care, the...