Free Republic

Republicans have tried more than 70 times over the past 15 years to weaken or kill Obamacare. But their campaign keeps backfiring. The sweeping tax and spending bill President Donald Trump signed this summer got his party closer to that goal than ever before. Though never marketed as a repeal, it unraveled much of the law and is expected to eventually push millions of people who gained insurance since the Affordable Care Act’s passage off the rolls. Even that legislative achievement is proving politically fraught. As the partial government shutdown stretches into its second week, the White House and a...

“Mr. Trump has promised working-class tax cuts and protection for working-class social insurance, such as Medicaid,” Hawley wrote. “But now a noisy contingent of corporatist Republicans — call it the party’s Wall Street wing — is urging Congress to ignore all that and get back to the old-time religion: corporate giveaways, preferences for capital and deep cuts to social insurance.” Hawley has consistently spoken up about his opposition to the House plan to use Medicaid cuts to pay for the party-line megabill. The House Energy and Commerce Committee has been charged with finding at least $880 billion in federal spending...

Contrary to Marjorie Taylor Greene’s claim, most of the Obamacare subsidies are not expiring, for good or for ill.Into the debate on extending the Biden administration’s Covid subsidies for health coverage stepped Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga. In an X post Monday evening, Greene claimed that “when the tax credits expire this year my own adult children’s insurance premiums for 2026 are going to DOUBLE, along with all the wonderful families and hard-working people in my district.” She went on to repeat the claim that premiums would “DOUBLE” — with all caps in the original — two other times in...

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) touted Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s (R-Ga.) call to extend Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies, as he doubled down on his opposition to funding the government without addressing the expiring tax credits. In remarks on the Senate floor Tuesday, the Democratic leader read aloud from part of a social media post in which Greene said she’s “absolutely disgusted” that health insurance premiums could double if the ACA subsidies expire at the end of the year, breaking with her party on an issue at the center of the government shutdown standoff.“I’m going to go against everyone...

While the shutdown is needless, the Democrats are rightly concerned about healthcare cost coverage. MEDICAID EXPANSION FAIRNESS What I’m thinking of is to slightly and generally increase the state Medicaid expansion share to 5% plus the highest rate of state income tax. Right now, California pays for Medicaid expansion at 10% and rakes in 13% income tax from doctors. That would make Medicaid expansion cheaper for no income tax red states like Florida and Texas. To help fund likely Medicaid expansion to states like Texas and Florida, the state Medicaid shares (traditional & expansion) would increase annually starting in 2028...

The industry’s blame game will not end the US national health care nightmare. The shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was met by many people online with a morbid sense of inevitability. The often callous nature of the US health care system has long been a point of wide discussion, with evidence piling up that the way the country provides medical services is costly in both money and human life. The health industry’s executives — insurers, pharma, even hospitals — have become popular villains. The killing of a human being is morally repugnant — full stop. But many people still...

As a nature-loving physical therapist in Boulder, Colo., Colin O’Banion shops at farmers markets, grows organic squash in his backyard and thought he could never vote for Donald J. Trump.But during the pandemic, he said, he and his wife became social outcasts when they refused Covid-19 vaccines for themselves and their three sons. Tuning in to alternative health podcasts, he became convinced that the country’s public health establishment was corrupt, and that the only antidote was the upheaval being promised by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as he teamed up with Mr. Trump. “That’s what brought me on board,” Mr. O’Banion,...

Can anybody help me find a picture of pajama boy from the healthcare commercials, please?

For over a decade, I’ve been helping politicians talk about health care and the Affordable Care Act. But in the past weeks the health care system hit me like an avalanche consuming a mountain. In the blink of an eye, I went from someone who thought they understood the minutiae to realizing all the Beltway smarts in the world couldn’t prepare me for this journey. In 2010, as a staffer working for House Democrats, I crafted messaging as we attempted to make some of the most expansive changes to our health care system in a generation. There was hand-wringing, whipping,...

The number of people who signed up for health insurance through HealthCare.gov jumped by 40 percent compared to last year, President Biden said on Friday. “Right now, four out of five folks who sign up for health insurance through the Affordable Care Act can get healthcare coverage for $10 a month or less. These lower rates were set to expire on Jan. 1 of this coming year, but instead we were able to extend them,” Biden said during remarks addressing business and labor leaders.

When Emmanuel Obeng-Dankwa is worried about making rent on his New York City apartment, he sometimes holds off on filling his blood pressure medication. “If there’s no money, I prefer to skip the medication to being homeless,” said Obeng-Dankwa, a 58-year-old security guard. He is among a majority of adults in the U.S. who say that health care is not handled well in the country, according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. The poll reveals that public satisfaction with the U.S. health care system is remarkably low, with fewer than half of Americans...

With the latest HHS report about Obamacare coverage, the Biden administration doesn’t want to let facts get in the way of a good narrative.In the “lies, d-mned lies, and statistics” category comes a report the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released Saturday, in conjunction with a Zoom call from presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama promoting Obamacare.The report wants you to believe more than 30 million people obtained coverage because of Obamacare. But the Biden administration knows that number isn’t true. So instead of discussing people “newly insured” by the law, it talks about those who were merely...

Pro-lifers living in half of the United States have very few options for health care under Obamacare. A new report from the Charlotte Lozier Institute, Family Research Council and The Heritage Foundation found that 69 percent of the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, health plans in 24 states and Washington, D.C. cover elective abortions. More specifically, in seven of those states and D.C., pro-lifers have no options; all of the plans offered on the Obamacare exchange cover elective abortions, according to the report. They are: Alaska, California, D.C., Hawaii, Maine, Massachusetts, New York and Vermont. These plans are subsidized by...

The Department of Health and Human Services has finalized a rule that repeals Obamacare policy relating to access to abortion and gender identity. The new rule will define “sex discrimination” in terms of a person’s biological sex, rather than gender. The Obamacare rule defined “sex discrimination” as including discrimination regarding gender identity, which the rule defined as “one’s internal sense of gender, which may be male, female, neither, or a combination of male and female.” Anyone who requires a list to define their gender needs help — badly.Under the new policy, hospitals can decline to perform “gender transition surgery” as...

Attorney General William Barr made a last-minute push Monday to persuade the administration to modify its position in the Obamacare dispute that will be heard at the Supreme Court this fall, arguing that the administration should pull back from its insistence that the entire law be struck down. ... Barr and other top advisers have argued against the hard-line position for some time, warning it could have major political implications if the comprehensive health care law appears in jeopardy as voters head to the polls in November. According to four sources familiar with the meeting, Barr argued for modifying the...

Former President Barack Obama is defending the Obamacare law as election season heats up and as the Supreme Court prepares to hear a legal challenge about a court ruling that invalidated his signature domestic legislation. “It’s been 10 years since we passed the Affordable Care Act. With your help, it’s the closest we’ve ever come to universal coverage in America,” Obama said in a 90-second video produced by his allies at Protect Our Care, a project of the well-heeled left-wing group Sixteen Thirty Fund.“There are people alive today because of what you did,” he said, without substantiating the claim. CORONAVIRUS...

The Supreme Court has agreed to hear an appeal case on the Affordable Care Act (ACA), commonly known as Obamacare, that could potentially invalidate the entire law. On Dec. 15, 2018, a Texas judge ruled that Obamacare’s individual mandate was unconstitutional. Judge Reed O’Connor agreed with the plaintiffs who argued that the lack of a penalty invalidated the “individual mandate” provision of the law, and if that part of the law was now invalid, then the whole law was. Democratic states and the House of Representatives appealed the decision, and the case made it all the way up to the...

The Supreme Court agreed on Monday to decide a lawsuit that threatens the Obama-era health care law, but the decision is not likely until after the 2020 election. The court said it would hear an appeal by 20 mainly Democratic states of a lower-court ruling that declared part of the statute unconstitutional and cast a cloud over the rest. Defenders of the Affordable Care Act argued that the issues raised by the case are too important to let the litigation drag on for months or years in lower courts and that the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New...

When the health reform debate began more than a dozen years ago, most public health advocates touted the need for universal coverage. By the time Congress passed the Affordable Care Act (ACA), however, it had become predicated on also making care accessible for people with pre-existing conditions.  Obamacare allowed people with chronic illnesses to buy health coverage at rates no higher than their healthy neighbors. This feature has always been popular. Americans feel sympathy for those who were penalized for conditions like high blood pressure, high cholesterol and heart disease. Less healthy individuals often paid higher premiums to compensate for...

As a conservative, you might want to stay mad at the insurance companies, because they are still gaming the system to make even more money off of Obamacare.  Right now, they are supporting legislation that will help health insurance companies to make even more money while harming doctors, patients and service providers. The lead trade group for health insurers, America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), were critical in helping to get Obamacare passed. They loved the idea of the federal government mandating that all Americans be forced to purchase their product. Healthcare Finance reported on March 23, 2012, “in March 2009,...