Free Republic

Who says government health care doesn’t work? There is a government health plan that is available to a small number of individuals. The risk pool consists of a few dozen people, all of whom work in one building in downtown Washington. If they need a check-up, the doctor comes up to their office for a house call. If they need a prescription, the medicine is delivered to their desks. If they need to see a specialist, they are taken by government transport to one of the best hospitals in the world. If they need surgery, a special suite is available....

With Obamacare coverage beginning in earnest on Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal reports that thousands of people for which Obamacare plans will block some health care access are rushing to get medical tests and procedures done before their pre-ACA coverage is eliminated. Those who were receiving medical care before being forced to sign up to a new plan on HealthCare.gov will, in many cases, be locked out of hospitals and prevented from seeing doctors who they had typically used. The WSJ contends that about 70% of new plans are more restrictive in the range of doctors and hospitals available to...

The White House used a Sunday morning statement to admit that only 1.1 million people have used the federal Obamacare website to sign up for the president’s healthcare network by Christmas Day. [Snip] The total reported signups are at least 3 million fewer than the 5 million people whose health-insurance policies were cancelled prior to Christmas by President Barack Obama’s ambitious tax-and-healthcare scheme. [Snip] The short statement didn’t provide critical details about the claimed sign-ups. The plan claimed 1.1 million people have “enrolled,” but did not say what the “enrolled” term means. A person is not insured until he or...

Next month, the Missouri Senate will consider a bill which would effectively cripple the implementation of the Affordable Care Act within the state. Following the lead of South Carolina, where lawmakers are fast-tracking House Bill 3101 in 2014, and Georgia, where HB707 was recently introduced by Rep. Jason Spencer, Missouri State Senator John T. Lamping (R-24) pre-filed Senate Bill 546 (SB546) to update the Health Care Freedom Act passed by Missouri voters in 2010. It passed that year with more than 70% support. SB546 would ban Missouri from taking any action that would “compel, directly or indirectly, any person, employer,...

A primary rationale of ObamaCare's insurance reforms limiting age-rating and precluding pricing based on health status has been to ensure that people will be able to afford health coverage when they need it most. An IBD analysis finds that middle-class households in their late 50s and early 60s could spend 25% or more of their income on health care — before their deductible is exhausted and ObamaCare's benefits kick in. Covered California's shop-and-compare tool shows that a 58-year-old couple in Los Angeles County with $65,000 in income buying a bronze plan would have to spend $19,400, including $9,400 in premiums...

On the First day of Obamacare, Obama gave to me, A canc-elled insurance pol-i-cyyyy. On the Second day of Obamacare, Obama gave to me, Too large premiums, And a canc-elled insurance pol-i-cyyyy. On the Third day of Obamacare, Obama gave to me, Huge deductibles, Too large premiums, And a canc-elled insurance pol-i-cyyyy. On the Fourth day of Obamacare, Obama gave to me, Identities stolen, Huge deductibles, Too large premiums, And a canc-elled insurance pol-i-cyyyy. On the Fifth day of Obamacare, Obama gave to me, New death pann-ellllls.... Identities stolen, Huge deductibles, Too large premiums, And a canc-elled insurance pol-i-cyyyy. On...

Those signing up for private health care coverage on the ObamaCare exchanges may be in for an unpleasant surprise -- they'll have insurance, but they might have trouble getting the doctor to see them. Just as with Medicaid, analysts warn that if payments get too low, many doctors might start refusing to see patients. That will leave more and more patients jockeying to see fewer and fewer doctors. They emphasize, then, that having health insurance won't necessarily translate into access to health care.

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.”

Two Republican lawmakers in Colorado plan to introduce a proposal that would make it easier for residents to opt out of ObamaCare by creating a tax deduction to offset the federal penalty for not purchasing health insurance.

Our view: The O'Malley administration has made progress on its Obamacare website, but the question of whether to scrap it remains unanswered. Since Gov. Martin O'Malley declared that the state's health insurance exchange website was functional for most users, anecdotal reports have been mixed. Some people report continued problems with frozen screens and other glitches that have bedeviled the site; others say they were finally able to enroll with relative ease. (clip) That said, the pace of enrollments is still far too low. If the exchange is able to replicate its best weekday and weekend performance during every one of...

Despite reports following the shutdown debacle, Sen. Ted Cruz has only begun to fight Obamacare. "......................The Obamacare wars of 2013 already seem quaint. Telling conservatives that a funding bill was “the last chance” to kill the law was great for fundraising. It was true, as Cruz repeatedly said, that subsidies could make the law more popular. But reports of Cruz’s ultimate defeat were written too soon. Last week, to little fanfare, his office released a helpful list of probable constitutional problems with Obamacare. Just in case any lawyers wanted to look into that.

With the approach of the new year, when health insurance policies under President Obama’s new health care law are set to begin, there is wide skepticism among both the insured and uninsured about how the law will affect them and the nation as a whole, according to a New York Times/CBS News poll. The poll found that just one-third of uninsured Americans expect the law, the Affordable Care Act, to improve the nation’s health care system, while the same proportion think the law will help them personally, according to the poll. Overall, there is no consensus among uninsured Americans on...

Yesterday, Judge Brian Cogan of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York, not only struck down Obamacare's contraception mandate as applied to religious non-profit organizations, but also sent a strong signal that federal courts were losing patience with President Obama's many stitches of executive power. Previous courts had ruled against President Obama's contraception mandate as applied to for-profit entities (see Sebelius v Hobby Lobby), but this was the first court to hold that participating in Obama's scheme to provide free birth control is a substantial burden on the free practice of religion (specifically the Catholic...

When I won my primary for U.S. Senate in 2010, upsetting many in Washington, D.C., I began my speech that night by declaring, "We've come to take our government back." Since that election, I've fought hard to stop the reckless spending, rein in our massive deficit, repeal ObamaCare and protect our God-given liberties. But I'm only one man, and to truly take our government back, to truly pull Obama's radical agenda up by its roots, it's going to take more principled men and women who are willing to stand up and fight for our conservative values in Washington. That's why...

"....Already reeling from criticism over his flawed promise that people who like their health care plans will be able to keep them, Mr. Obama risks further erosion of his credibility if people believe his health care law is cutting into job-based plans they figured were safe...

If there's been one inexorable trend coming out of the HR departments of major employers, it's been the steady erosion of worker pay and benefits. Razor-thin raises, defined benefit pensions replaced by 401(k) plans, shrinking healthcare--if you've been on a big company's payroll, you know the drill. Expect the trend to continue or even pick up steam, because employers have an ideal scapegoat right now: the Affordable Care Act. It looks like the blame-Obamacare game is having some effect. According to an AP poll released over the weekend, three-quarters of those with private or employer-based insurance think the Affordable Care...

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration said Saturday that it reduced the error rate in enrollment data sent to insurance companies under the new health care law, even as insurers said that the government’s records were still riddled with mistakes. The quality of the data is important; it could affect the ability of people to get medical care and prescription drugs when they go to doctors’ offices and pharmacies starting next month. For each person who signs up, the government is supposed to send information electronically to an insurance company in a standard format known as an 834 enrollment transaction. In...

Singled out for criticism is U.S. Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick (R-Bucks). Democrats are telling the constituents of a Pennsylvania Republican that repealing the Affordable Care Act “would take health care away from 657,000 children in Pennsylvania with preexisting conditions.” No, it wouldn’t. That number comes from an Obama administration estimate for all children living in Pennsylvania, under 18, with some kind of preexisting condition. It’s not an estimate of how many had gained coverage because of the law’s preexisting condition protections. Or an estimate of how many would lose their insurance if the law were repealed.

(Yoo-hoo, Rick Perry...) As desperation mounts at the White House, Dear Leader -although he hasn't killed his uncle yet- is sinking to new depths of lawlessness in flailing attempts to salvage his 'signature' piece of legislation, the misnomer Affordable Care Act (and the entire Obama legacy).  The latest stunt involves all but forcing insurers to cover (cheaply or free, and at a financial loss) those without HC coverage who haven't been able to get anything out of 'state exchanges' due to the ongoing healthcare.gov debacle. But it seems South Carolinians have decided they've had their fill: If the ACA nullification bill -which has...

Four state representatives announced today that they are introducing legislation to block Obamacare in Georgia. State representative Jason Spencer (R-Woodbine), with three other representatives, will hold a press conference on Monday, Dec. 16 to discuss the proposal. In a press release, Rep. Spencer explained the bill’s goal: The bill’s main thrust is to prohibit state agencies, officers and employees of the state from implementing any provisions of the Affordable Care Act, leaving implementation entirely in the hands of the federal government, which lacks the resources or personnel to carry out the programs it mandates. Michael Boldin of the Tenth Amendment...