Free Republic

WCNC: NC Small Business Will Be "Hit Especially Hard" By ObamaCare, May Drop Insurance For Workers (June 4, 2014)

The federal government may reimburse doctors for talking to Medicare patients and their families about “advance care planning,” including living wills and end-of-life treatment options — potentially rekindling one of the fiercest storms in the Affordable Care Act debate. A similar provision was in an early draft of the federal health care law, but in 2009, former Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin took to Facebook to accuse President Barack Obama of proposing “death panels” to determine who deserved life-sustaining medical care. Amid an outcry on the right, the provision was stripped from the legislation. Now, quietly, the proposal is headed...

CAMP MEEKER (CBS SF) — A Sonoma County man battling more than a dozen tumors in his body is fighting a new battle with his insurance carrier, who has denied coverage for his treatments. Jeffrey Rusch of Camp Meeker knew the news was bad when an MRI found 20 tumors in his brain. Two days later, a C-T scan at Sutter medical center in Santa Rosa brought another devastating blow, discovering a large tumor in his lungs, and more in his liver and bones. Doctors told Jeffrey he would need to be hospitalized immediately. “My husband was having a lot...

WASHINGTON — President Obama on Thursday will seek to elevate a national conversation about the dangers of sports-related concussions, especially among children and other young athletes, by pushing for more medical research and more money spent on public awareness campaigns. The president will host a daylong summit at the White House that will include researchers, professional athletes, parents, coaches, league officials and sportscasters. Officials said the goal was to use the power of the presidency to accelerate progress on one of the most serious health issues to confront sports in a decade. “Our focus here is on giving parents information...

Denial: Six months ago, Rep. Nancy Pelosi promised Democrats would "stand tall" for ObamaCare. But as November elections near, more Democrats want to pretend ObamaCare never happened. And for good reason. Georgia's Senate candidate, Michelle Nunn, refuses to say whether she would have voted for ObamaCare had she been in Congress in 2010. Ditto Kentucky's Alison Lundergan Grimes and Nebraska House candidate Pete Festersen. Montana's Sen. John Walsh, who is trying to keep the seat he was appointed to in February, wants everyone to know that he was far, far away from Washington when ObamaCare votes were cast, "preparing soldiers...

The Department of Veterans Affairs has yet to confirm that three of its officials will show up to a House hearing Wednesday, with Republicans threatening to subpoena the officials if they don’t appear, The Daily Caller has learned. Three top VA officials have been asked to appear at a hearing of the House Committee on Veterans Affairs, chaired by Republican Rep. Jeff Miller, at 7:30 PM EST Wednesday in Room 334 of the Cannon House Office Building. The hearing will grill the officials on the VA’s obstruction of a committee subpoena for information related to a secret waiting list kept...

On Sunday, President Barack Obama traveled to Afghanistan to do a photo op with the troops amid fallout from the burgeoning Veterans Administration scandal. Announcing his visit, the White House promptly released a list of guests, including the name of the top CIA officer in Afghanistan. That officer is responsible for intelligence and drone warfare. The information was sent to over 6,000 email addresses. Oops. This is not the first time the Obama administration has compromised national security with leaks, either purposeful or inadvertent. SEAL Team Six. After the killing of Osama Bin Laden, the Obama administration steadfastly refused to...

The White House press office canceled the daily briefing with reporters Tuesday, dodging tough questions after the press office mistakenly revealed the identity of the top CIA official in Afghanistan. The official was named in a list of participants of a meeting with President Obama during his brief trip to Afghanistan. After journalists at the Washington Post questioned the White House decision, the press office scrambled to update the list of participants sent to the press pool. On Tuesday afternoon, the White House surprised reporters by canceling the White House press briefing and instead scheduling a press call on President...

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama confessed to feeling a little bit, well, unaccomplished. There was the catapult-armed mannequin that shot three-point baskets, the 18-year-old cancer researcher and the second-grade Girl Scouts from Tulsa, Oklahoma, with their Lego "flood-proof" bridge design. "I'm such an underachiever," Obama said after chatting with Eric Chen at Tuesday's annual White House Science Fair. Chen, a Harvard-bound high school senior from San Diego, won grand prizes at the 2013 Google Science Fair and the Siemens Competition in Math, Science, and Technology for identifying new drug candidates for the treatment of influenza. It's an annual self-deprecating...

Hospital systems around the country have started scaling back financial assistance for lower- and middle-income people without health insurance, hoping to push them into signing up for coverage through the new online marketplaces created under the Affordable Care Act. The trend is troubling to advocates for the uninsured, who say raising fees will inevitably cause some to skip care rather than buy insurance that they consider unaffordable. Though the number of hospitals tightening access to free or discounted care appears limited so far, many say they are considering doing so, and experts predict that stricter policies will become increasingly common....

During the initial open enrollment period, the Obama administration released monthly enrollment reports that — even if they were exasperatingly incomplete and/or doctored in what data they chose to reveal — gave us at least some sort of idea of what was going on with the president’s crowning legislative achievement. Now that the Obama administration has that alleged 8 million sing-ups number to tout, however, they evidently no longer feel the need to even keep up the pretense of releasing regular reports on the law’s progress. As Politico reports (paywall): The Obama administration has quietly decided to halt its...

(CNN) -- Not even a week after the ruling in the Trayvon Martin trial, President Barack Obama couldn't wait to stand before the White House press corps and "speak to an issue that obviously has gotten a lot of attention," as he said last July. Yet it took Obama more than a month to address the crisis where 40 veterans allegedly died while waiting months for treatment at a Phoenix Veterans Administration hospital. Congress has held hearings on the grave matter since April and called Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki among other witnesses to testify. But Obama just got around...

REDWOOD CITY, Calif. — Each morning around 6, Mary Ellen Snodgrass swallows a computer chip. It’s embedded in one of her pills and roughly the size of a grain of sand. When it hits her stomach, it transmits a signal to her tablet computer indicating that she has successfully taken her heart and thyroid medications. “See,” said Snodgrass, checking her online profile page. With a few swipes she brings up an hourly timeline of her day with images of white pills marking the times she ingested a chip. “I can see it go in. The pill just jumped onto the...

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama celebrated when sign-ups for his health care law topped 8 million, far exceeding expectations after a slipshod launch. Most Americans, however, remain unimpressed. A new Associated Press-GfK poll finds that public opinion continues to run deeply negative on the Affordable Care Act, Obama's signature effort to cover the uninsured. Forty-three percent oppose the law, compared with just 28 percent in support. The pattern illustrates why the health care law remains a favored target for Republicans seeking a Senate majority in the midterm elections.

A South Side pastor who is highly visible in Chicago’s black community endorsed Republican candidate Jim Oberweis on Thursday in his bid to unseat U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin. The Rev. Corey Brooks, pastor of New Beginnings Church of Chicago, said some Democrats had taken the African-American vote for granted and that black voters shouldn’t rule out candidates simply because of their party affiliation. Brooks, who is known as the “rooftop pastor” because he once slept for three months atop a shuttered motel to protest violence, cited Oberweis’ views on education and job creation as well the state senator’s visits to...

"Healthcare is changing. And not for the better. Behind all the pretty pictures on billboards showing a world where everyone "Thrives" there is a sinister reality. As local hospitals and clinics are gobbled up by giant corporations, the theme is cut costs (by which they mean your care) and raise their profits."

Anyone out there still believe that the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) has anything to do with improving health care, or making it affordable? The original claim was that ACA was all about getting those poor uninsured people insured. As I have stated many times, had they done this, it would have been admirable, and would have had my support. Except, that was never the goal, and besides, they were far too stupid to accomplish that anyway. Instead, the ACA has become a massive crony capitalism boondoggle whose only beneficiaries are the usual suspect health care parasites—in this case largely health...

he Obama administration has quietly adjusted key provisions of its signature healthcare law to potentially make billions of additional taxpayer dollars available to the insurance industry if companies providing coverage through the Affordable Care Act lose money.. The move was buried in hundreds of pages of new regulations issued late last week. It comes as part of an intensive administration effort to hold down premium increases for next year, a top priority for the White House as the rates will be announced ahead of this fall's congressional elections. Administration officials for months have denied charges by opponents that they plan...

Seeking to minimize the pain caused by his signature domestic accomplishment, President Obama has flagrantly rewritten Obamacare numerous times since it was first enacted in 2010. And unless Republicans make a stand this September, Obama will flagrantly break the law again, this time costing American taxpayers billions in illegal insurance company bailouts. This past October, millions of Americans began receiving cancellation notices from their health insurance companies informing them that, despite Obama's crystal clear promise to the contrary, they would not be able to keep their current health insurance plan. Politifact would go on to label this broken Obama promise...

(CNSNews.com) - The total number of disability beneficiaries in the United States rose from 10,981,423 in March to 10,996,447 in April, setting a new all-time record, according to newly released data from the Social Security Administration. The number of Americans receiving disability benefits continues to exceed the populations of Greece, Tunisia and Portugal, and is approaching the population of Cuba, which according to the CIA World Factbook is 11,047,251. The 10,996,447 total disability beneficiaries includes 8,942,232 disabled workers, 153,475 spouses of disabled workers, and 1,900,740 children of disabled workers. None of those individual categories of beneficiaries set a record in...