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Medicaid, the entitlement program for low-income Americans jointly funded by the state and federal government, represents about 25 percent of state budgets. Federal funding represents more than half (57 percent) of that amount, and that funding is now being threatened by Obamacare. In what seems like déjà-vu all over again, Maine’s Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) is pursuing a lawsuit to prevent this sort of federal coercion. Here’s the scoop: In 2009, the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act (ARRA) offered states stimulus funds if they agreed to a maintenance-of-effort (“MOE”) provision that required them to maintain Medicaid-eligibility standards...

Our social media manager asked our followers on Facebook whether they are better off today than before Barack Obama took office and, more precisely, passed Obamacare. Their answers leave little room for doubt about the negative effects of this president’s horrendous policies: [FB POST] ... So how about you? Are you better off because of Obamacare, or do you agree with 99% of our Facebook followers who say that Obamacare has been “a disaster” for the country and for themselves? Let us know, here in the comment section and on Facebook!

The Daily Caller reports Senate Democrats sent a letter to the Health and Human Services (HHS) Department asking for a reprieve from ObamaCare for small businesses scheduled to be brought under its regulatory umbrella in 2016. Apparently, the group fears it will be “particularly harmful and disruptive” to businesses.The Caller reports that the letter was sent March 12 by Democrat Senators Claire McCaskill, Heidi Heitkamp, Chris Coons, Joe Manchin, Joe Donnelly and Jon Tester, and independent Sen. Angus King. They asked for a two-year deferment: Under the law, employers with 51 to 100 employees will be included in the ACA’s definition of small group market starting...

With all of the new bad news coming out this week from ObamaCare, here’s another horror story about the Healthcare.gov exchange from Utah that exemplifies the incompetence of government bureaucracy. One basic and nearly ubiquitous feature of health care — and indeed of family life — is the birth of children. Health insurance plans have made it simple to add children to family plans for decades, allowing new moms and dads to have the costs of childbirth covered ex post facto, as long as the covered individual notified the insurer within a set period of time, usually 30 days. Now,...

The health insurance market is changing. And the changes are not good. Even before there was Obamacare, most insurers most of the time had perverse incentives to attract the healthy and avoid the sick. But now that the Affordable Care Act has completely changed the nature of the market, the perverse incentives are worse than ever. Writing in Sunday’s New York Times Elizabeth Rosenthal gives these examples: *When Karen Pineman of Manhattan sought treatment for a broken ankle, her insurer told her that the nearest in-network doctor was in Stamford, Connecticut – in another state. *Alison Chavez, a California breast...

Senator Ted Cruz (R., Texas) introduced an “Obamacare Repeal Act” that would repeal the Affordable Care Act “as if such Act had not been enacted.” The text of Cruz’s bill to repeal the 2,700-page law — which spawned another 10,000 pages of regulations — barely runs onto the third page. It comes as Republicans have debated whether to use a procedural tactic that circumvents filibusters known as reconciliation to repeal the legislation. “This repeal bill is pro-growth, pro-jobs, and pro-liberty,” Cruz says in a statement on the bill. “It provides time for Congress to start over, to pass true market-based...

Senate Republicans are preparing a legislative plan of action in case the Supreme Court strikes a major blow against ObamaCare and rules subsidies provided to people on the federal exchange are illegal. GOP senators are confident the justices will rule in their favor, and they want to be ready to act if millions of people lose their subsidies to buy insurance through the healthcare law. “If the Supreme Court were to say the law says what the law says, we would like to be ready with a response to that that makes practical sense for the 5 or 6 million...

WASHINGTON – Republican lawmakers are facing rising pressure from conservative groups and activists to go big – or potentially go home – in their fight against ObamaCare. After taking control of Congress thanks to big victories in the November midterms, Republicans who ran in part on their opposition to the law are starting to roll out legislation undoing pieces of it. But the party is stuck in an internal debate over how far they can really go – risking a potential backlash from the party’s right flank if they don’t go far enough. Tea Party activists say they are frustrated...

Republican leadership has an odd idea for one of its first big policy pushes of this Congress: a change to Obamacare that threatens to make the law worse. The idea, expected to come to a vote in the House on Thursday, is to change Obamacare’s requirement that most employers provide full-time workers with generous health insurance, a rule known as the “employer mandate.” (Or the “employer shared responsibility provisions,” if you prefer Gruber-speak). It sets the definition of full-time work at 30 hours a week. Republicans have been making the case for some time — and no small number of...

Republicans on and off Capitol Hill are rallying behind using a rarely-deployed budget tool next year to dismantle ObamaCare. But the issue of how to use “budget reconciliation” has divided Republicans, with some calling for it to be implemented to overhaul the tax code or to push through major energy reforms. The tool is useful because it could allow newly-empowered Senate Republicans to pass legislation with a 51-vote simple majority rather than the usual 60, greatly increasing the chances of moving legislation to President Obama’s desk. And while Obama is certain to veto anything that tries to roll back his...

There were 60 Democrats in the Senate on Christmas Eve 2009, when they voted in lockstep to pass the Affordable Care Act. Soon there will be 46 Democrats in the Senate, or perhaps 47, if Sen. Mary Landrieu manages to eke out a win in Louisiana. In plain numbers, the post-Obamacare trajectory has not been good for Senate Democrats. The 46 or 47 Democrats in the next Senate are a bit different from the group that passed Obamacare. Sixteen of them took office after the Affordable Care Act was signed into law. They never had to vote for it and...

While Obamacare’s proponents continue to insist that the program presents no threat to Americans’ healthcare, new comments from Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber demonstrate that Obamacare was designed to do just that. Gruber stated: You get a law which said healthy people are going to pay in, it made explicit that healthy people pay and sick people get money, it would not have passed…Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage and basically, you know, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically, that was really, really critical to get this thing to pass. In other words,...

So it turns out there is an Obamacare death panel after all. It has nine members and it operates out of a marble building directly across the street from the Capitol. When the Supreme Court on Friday announced that it would take up another challenge to the Affordable Care Act in March, it delivered the threat of two mortal blows to the signature achievement of the Obama presidency. First, it raised the possibility that the justices, who narrowly spared the law in 2012, will in June come out with a new ruling that would dismantle the law on different grounds....

The bill’s destined to be vetoed, of course, but unless the reconciliation process ends up eating lots of time, there’s really no harm to it. One conservative activist told Politico he’s worried that if the GOP uses the same arcane procedural move to undo O-Care that Democrats used to pass it, Obama will turn around and whine that Republicans are doing the same thing Democrats did when they were in power. But … why would he say that? If he means to imply that reconciliation is a dubious strong-arm tactic, then he’ll be forced to explain why it was okay...

There was strong opposition to Medicare before it went in to effect in 1965, but after that, the health program for seniors quickly became an accepted and even popular part of the U.S. medical system. Supporters of the Affordable Care Act, President Obama’s bold health reform law, often highlight the similarity to Medicare in terms of initial opposition. But Obamacare, as the ACA is known, is hardly catching on like Medicare did (at least not yet). In fact, the law suddenly seems more threatened than at any time since it was passed in 2010, and it’s now possible the whole...

Ted Cruz is still ready to use any means necessary to repeal Obamacare. But even his fellow conservatives aren’t all jumping on board – a sign that the Republican repeal or bust movement is struggling while Obamacare continues to enroll millions of people with health insurance. While Cruz wants to use a draconian budget measure to repeal Obamacare with just 51 votes in the Senate, he looks to be increasingly out on a limb. Utah Republican Mike Lee, a leader in the conservative movement, isn’t sold on the so-called budget reconciliation procedure to gut the law. Rand Paul says he’s...

The administration on Monday said fewer than 10 million Americans will enroll in Obamacare’s health exchanges this go-around, well short of the 13 million target congressional scorekeepers deemed critical to its economics, suggesting another rocky rollout in the law’s second year of full operation. Policy advisers at the Health & Human Services Department estimated that 9 million to 9.9 million people would enroll through the exchanges — or only a slight increase over the 8 million that the administration says were active at the end of the first enrollment period this April. The Congressional Budget Office, which is the government’s...

After repeatedly shifting the deadline for the end of ObamacareÂ’s open enrollment period in past spring, the White House crowed when it determined it had finally reached its goal of enrolling 8 million Americans in Affordable Care Act-associated insurance plans. Few in the press made mention of the administrationÂ’s downward revision of that figure in October from 8.1 to 7.1 million Obamacare enrollees. DonÂ’t expect many in the administration or the media to make much of another revision of the estimated number of projected Obamacare insurance customers for this yearÂ’s open enrollment period. Anticipating slightly less than 6 million...

Here to Stay: Why the New Republican Congress Can't Gut Obamacare BY MAGGIE FOX Republicans may have promised to repeal or at least do a big makeover of Obamacare now that they control both the House and the Senate, but most experts believe it’s lip service only. The 2010 Affordable Care Act is in full force across the country, with internet-based health insurance exchanges up and running, expanded Medicaid in 28 states and strict new requirements for health insurers. Here are five reasons the GOP-led Congress won’t be able to change much. The veto. This is the big one: President...

After sweeping the electoral map on Tuesday, the Republican Party has a clear, historically powerful mandate from the American people: stop Obama and his healthcare takeover.And there’s a clear plan to do just that.In an election night interview with Fox News’ Bret Baier, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz outlined exactly how a Republican majority can begin to deconstruct Obamacare to help those hurt worst by the law.First, use reconciliation to repeal the bill. When Obama vetoes that, then proceed to remove the most onerous portions of Obamacare.For example, codify an add-on to the law stating that people can’t lose their insurance...