Free Republic

Minnesota's Democratic governor said Wednesday that the Affordable Care Act is "no longer affordable," a stinging critique from a state leader who strongly embraced the law just a few years ago. Gov. Mark Dayton made the comments while addressing questions about Minnesota's fragile health insurance market, where individual plans are facing double-digit increases after all insurers threatened to exit the market entirely in 2017. They follow cost concerns and criticism nationwide, including President Bill Clinton saying last week that the law was "the craziest thing in the world" before he backtracked.

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has no system in place to prevent fraud when individuals apply for tax credits under Obamacare, according to the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA). The IG said in an audit released Tuesday that the IRS has no plan to manage, monitor, or mitigate fraud risk when processing premium tax credits available under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). “The ACA Program has not yet completed a fraud mitigation strategy,” the audit found. “It is important for the IRS to thoroughly consider fraud threats and risks that could impact new ACA systems.”

**SNIP** The expanded hardship exemption, for instance, "opened a major can of worms," wrote analyst James Capretta on the Weekly Standard blog. "The administration said for months that the mandate would not be waived for anyone, even those with canceled policies, and it vowed a veto of any delay legislation coming out of Congress. Now the rules have been changed, and some families who have committed to pay thousands of dollars in insurance premiums will feel very personally betrayed by an untrustworthy administration." They join millions of others who are reeling from massive premium increases under this onerous law. Over...

ObamaCare’s benevolent promise to help control and curtail healthcare-related costs is already going magnificently bust; why not just extend the consequences of heightened compliance costs and pricey taxes to an entirely other but equally indispensable economic sector while they’re at it, right? As the Federal Drug Administration so munificently explains, part of ObamaCare’s overall purpose is to help provide Americans with all of the tools they need to lead healthier lives (with a universal healthcare system that requires society to absorb the costs of individuals’ daily health-related decisions, what choice do they have but to butt into those decisions?) —...