Free Republic

Jim Jordan makes sense, answering Chris Cuomo's questions.

Senate budget rules are giving opponents of the rollback of the 2010 health care law an easy way to attack Republicans for hypocrisy. Senate GOP may not really want to immunize their own member and staff health plans from their health care policy changes, but because they are seeking to bring their bill to the floor under the expedited budget reconciliation process, they have little choice. Sen. Ted Cruz has already unveiled a fix to nullify the exemption, but that bill would take 60 votes to overcome any filibuster attempts. “While this exemption was included in the Senate health care...

Rep. Eric Swalwell (D., Calif. ) said Sunday on CNN that Republicans would satisfy uneasy voters by strengthening Obamacare, but his fellow panelist Ken Cuccinelli fired back at the notion that the health care program simply needs help. "I think the people are being heard," Swalwell said on "State Of The Union" about the debate over the GOP's health care bill in the Senate. "And I wish we were amplifying these stories two years ago." Swalwell went onto say that those voices would make attempts to repeal Obamacare politically difficult. "It's the people who are coming forward saying, ‘This affects...

More than 400 people have been charged with taking part in health care fraud and opioid scams that totaled $1.3 billion in false billing, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced Thursday. Sessions called the collective action the "largest health care fraud takedown operation in American history" and said it indicates that some doctors, nurses and pharmacists "have chosen to violate their oaths and put greed ahead of their patients."

Vice President Pence on Monday said congressional Republicans should pass a “repeal only” bill if they can’t come to a consensus on legislation to replace ObamaCare. “If they can’t pass this carefully crafted repeal and replace bill — do those two things simultaneously — we ought to just repeal only,” Pence said in an interview with Rush Limbaugh. Pence’s comments echoed those made by President Trump, who last month suggested that he was open to repealing ObamaCare first and developing a replacement plan later. However, White House legislative director Marc Short on Monday said, "we still believe that the bill...

Lingering uncertainty about the fate of the Affordable Care Act has spurred the California legislature to consider adoption of a statewide single-payer health care system. Sometimes described as Medicare for all, single-payer is a system in which a public agency handles health care financing while the delivery of care remains largely in private hands.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell pushes for a limited measure if the GOP's Obamacare repeal fails. McConnell argued that a smaller bill would have to focus on helping private insurance markets. The senator's comments indicate that Republicans may have to negotiate with Democrats over fixes for the health-care system.

President Donald Trump suggested in a tweet that if Republicans remain unable to pass their current healthcare bill, they should immediately repeal and then replace Obamacare. President Trump previously endorsed the Senate healthcare bill, otherwise known as the Better Care Reconciliation Act (BCRA), however, since Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell delayed the vote on the BCRA President Trump has looked into other options. Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) recently suggested repealing and replacing Obamacare in two separate bills, an idea that apparently President Trump might endorse if Republicans remain unable to pass the BCRA. Trump tweeted: "If Republican Senators are unable...

Full Title...................'This bill will do you harm!' Obama blasts Republican Senate's Obamacare repeal as he declares it's 'not a health care bill' but a gift to the rich..................... Barack Obama threw himself into the Senate's health care reform deliberations Said in a lengthy post on Facebook that the GOP bill that was unveiled today is 'not a health care bill' at all - it's a transfer of wealth to the rich Obama's final White House spokesman had said the outgoing president would not immerse himself in the partisan about his namesake law once he departed Former president got involved Thursday...

Valerie Jarrett, former senior advisor to President Obama, said the Trump administration is “abdicating” the United States’ role as the “world leader” and the “beacon of hope” by withdrawing from the Paris climate accord.[snip]“So I think it signals to the world that the United States is not serious about protecting our planet. Now, I don’t know what other way to interpret a decision that I think could be as dramatically negatively impactful as that decision. And what it means is the rest of the world will move forward without us and the United States has always been that beacon of...

Anthem is exiting the ObamaCare marketplace in Ohio, leaving around 20 counties in the state without an insurer willing to sell a health plan in its exchange for 2018. The company cited uncertainty as a reason why it’s exiting the exchanges in all of the state’s counties, particularly the question of whether or not the Trump administration will continue payments to insurers that compensate them for reducing out-of-pocket costs for lower-income enrollees.

WASHINGTON — Obama administration officials knew they were on shaky ground in spending billions of dollars on health insurance subsidies without clear authority. But they did not think a long-shot court challenge by House Republicans was cause for deep concern.For one thing, they would be out of office by the time a final ruling in the case, filed in 2014, was handed down. They also believed that a preliminary finding against the administration would ultimately be tossed out. Finally, they figured that President Hillary Clinton could take care of the problem, if necessary.Well, they are out of office, Mrs. Clinton...

The number of health insurers participating in the Affordable Care Act exchanges has declined by 24 percent from 2016 to 2017, according to data from the Kaiser Family Foundation. In 2016, there were 287 insurers who offered insurance on the Obamacare exchanges and in 2017 that number dropped to 218. There were 34 states that saw the number of insurers decline, 15 states have the same amount of insurers from 2016 to 2017 and only one state added an insurer in 2017. Five states, Alabama, Alaska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Wyoming, have only one insurer operating on the exchanges, leaving...

<p>The rift within the Democratic Party was on full display at the California Democratic Party Convention on May 19 in Sacramento, California. Progressives joined members of National Nurses United, protesting the Democratic Party establishment’s refusal to support single payer healthcare system. Rather than follow through with Democratic rhetoric that healthcare is a human right, establishment Democrats have responded to voters by scolding and attacking them.</p>

two years higher than they would be under Obamacare. New data shows just how high the cost has already gotten for people who don't qualify for subsidies now. In the report, eHealth found that individual premiums for insurance plans sold through its marketplace, or exchange, rose to an average of $378 per month in 2017 — an 18 percent increase from 2016's open enrollment season. Since 2014, the average premiums for individual coverage have jumped 39 percent, eHealth found. That year, 2014, was the first for new Affordable Care Act rules mandating designs of insurance plans, which included a set...

Health insurer Aetna Inc said on Wednesday it will exit the 2018 Obamacare individual insurance market in Delaware and Nebraska - the two remaining states where it had offered the plans. Aetna had previously announced plans to exit the individual commercial market in Virginia and Iowa. It has now "completely exited the exchanges," the company said in an emailed statement. The insurer attributed the losses to "marketplace structural issues, that have led to co-op failures and carrier exits, and subsequent risk pool deterioration." Aetna said it had 964,000 individual commercial plan members as of the end of 2016, but that...

Filings have dropped about 50%, from 1,536,799 in 2010 to 770,846 in 2016 (see chart, below). Those years also represent the time frame when the ACA took effect. Although courts never ask people to declare why they’re filing, many bankruptcy and legal experts agree that medical bills had been a leading cause of personal bankruptcy before public healthcare coverage expanded under the ACA. Unlike other causes of debt, medical bills are often unexpected, involuntary, and large. -snip So did the rise of the ACA—which helped some 20 million more Americans get health insurance—cause the decline in bankruptcies? The many experts...

Twitter users concerned about the bill passed the House to repeal and replace Obamacare are sharing their personal health stories on Twitter under the hashtag #IamaPreexistingCondition. The hashtag started to trend hours after Republicans in the House narrowly pushed through the American Health Care Act, which would drastically remake health care in the U.S. By midday Friday ET, it had trended worldwide with about 146,000 tweets so far. Some celebrities joined in.

Giant insurer Aetna said Wednesday it will not sell Obamacare plans in Virginia next year, citing expected financial losses on such plans in 2017. Aetna left open the question of whether it will sell such individual health plans anywhere in the United States. Aetna's decision to exit Virginia in 2018 comes several weeks after it said it would drop out of Iowa's individual market next year. The company was selling Obamacare plans in just two other states this year: Delaware and Nebraska. "Despite significantly reducing our exchange footprint, our individual commercial products could potentially lose more than $200 million in...

Aetna Inc will exit the Obamacare individual insurance market in Virginia and will not offer these plans on or off the online exchange created by the Affordable Care Act, the company said on Wednesday. The company said last month that it would leave Iowa. It is selling these plans in four states in 2017.