Free Republic

The year ahead promises tough gut-check tests for the nation, including domestic and foreign policy challenges likely to determine the fate of the Obama presidency. No domestic issue will have a greater impact on the president — and on the electoral fortunes of both parties — than the success or failure of the Affordable Care Act — better known as Obamacare.Republicans are counting on it to flop spectacularly. It’s their big election bet. The health insurance plan, they believe, will prove a mortal mistake, undermining the Obama presidency and handing the GOP complete congressional power in this fall’s midterm elections.But...

Over at CNN Jonathan Gruber posts the question "when will get the verdict on Obamacare?" The rollout of the Affordable Care Act has been unquestionably rocky, but the rush to judgment was over the top. Critics had their knives out even though little data are available on initial program enrollment and success. It's much too early to declare the program either a failure or a success. Gruber argues that it's too soon to judge Obamacare: For example, when Massachusetts piloted the approach embodied in the ACA, we had very slow enrollment, with only 123 paying customers signing up the first...

The financial position of the U.S. is not just troubled; it is artificially created to fool the people. The nation's budget deficit and debt are exponentially higher than what our politicians say they are. None of the headline figures used as the basis of public discourse have any relevance to the true state of U.S. finances. The government's financial reporting is misleading because our political leaders have subverted the democratic process to advance their personal interests. Adding all of the costs associated with the nation's social-insurance programs to the amounts reflected in the Financial Report shows that over the past...

Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius announced in a new video that 2013 was a superb year for HHS, the Affordable Care Act, and big government's involvement in the heath care industry. In the video, entitled "The 2013 HHS Year in Review," Sebelius explained how great things are going. As melodic acoustic guitars played in the background, she stated: "Our efforts to implement the Affordable Care Act are protecting millions of Americans with new rights and benefits... And by opening up the health insurance marketplace, we've put affordable coverage within reach of millions more Americans. There's new choice...

We the people can nullify Obama’s unconstitutional communist POS by simply refusing to submit. If the majority of the people don’t sign up for it, it dies on the vine. In fact it wouldn’t take anywhere close to a majority. Twenty to thirty percent ought to do it. It's not going to work anyway. Socialism never works. We need to kill if it we want to save our constitutional republic! No surrender, no retreat!! Do not sign away your freedom!! Do not submit to the godless leftist wannabe dictators!! We are the resistance!!

ObamaCare has delivered another sucker punch to the middle class. This time it's sticker shock. Now that most people can get past the tech problems of HealthCare.gov and actually see the real cost of insurance plans available, they are finding that Affordable Care is a big hit to the family budget. And when the family budget gets hit in the solar plexus, guess what happens to consumer spending and the economy?

Supreme Court Halts Contraception Mandate For Religious Groups By M. Alex Johnson and Winston Wilde, NBC News Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor granted a last-ditch plea from Catholic groups Tuesday night to block a birth control mandate in the new health care law for religious organizations, just hours before it was to have gone into effect. The archdioceses of Washington, D.C., and Nashville, Tenn., the Catholic Conference of Michigan and several affiliated groups requested the emergency stay of provisions of the Affordable Care Act that would require companies — regardless of religious beliefs — to provide contraceptives and other abortion-inducing...

Nearly 16,000 Iowans who tried to apply for coverage via the trouble-plagued federal health-insurance website are being told to apply separately through the state Department of Human Services. The Friday afternoon announcement is the latest bout of bad news about the website, which is a key part of the Affordable Care Act. The announcement affects people who entered their information into healthcare.gov and received a notice that they might qualify for Medicaid. The federal computer system was supposed to transfer their applications to a state computer system, but that transfer has been complicated by technical problems. The timing is critical,...

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...