Free Republic

A federal judge said Monday that Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) cannot challenge the Obamacare policy that lawmakers and their staff obtain health insurance through the exchanges. The ruling could prove ominous for House Republicans as they prepare to file suit against the Obama administration, also against Obamacare. That suit would focus on a different issue, the president’s delay of the employer mandate. Judge William C. Griesbach, a George W. Bush appointee, said that Article III of the Constitution prevents Johnson’s lawsuit from moving forward and suggests that any remedy must come from Congress. He said that the Wisconsin Republican cannot...

Politicians here have not even figured out how yet to implement their new law requiring us to pay for everybody else’s health care, and already people are clamoring to legalize drugs that are, at the very least, hazardous to their health. The good people of Colorado and Washington state can now buy and smoke pot without violating state laws. The movement to do so is spreading among other states like a hot tropical virus through a detention facility on the Mexican border. I, for one, have never really cared one way or the other if people choose to smoke pot....

Want to know what’s happening with Obamacare? Good luck finding out. The White House recently adopted a new approach for updating Americans on the country’s most consequential law. I call it the “needle in a haystack” method: Bury the announcement in hundreds of pages of regulations and hope no one finds it. The White House tried a test run several weeks ago. Hidden in the midst of a 436 page regulatory update, and written in pure bureaucratese, the Department of Health and Human Services asked that insurance companies limit the looming premium increases for 2015 health plans. But don’t worry,...

Halbig is one of four cases challenging subsidies the Obama administration is issuing through health-insurance Exchanges established by the federal government under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The PPACA says those subsidies are authorized only through Exchanges “established by the State.” The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit could issue a ruling in Halbig at any time. First, a few words on statutory interpretation. Contrary to what Jost claims, neither I nor anyone else “presumes that ‘an Exchange established by the State under section 1311’ cannot include a fallback Exchange established on the state’s behalf by...

A new report from the Commonwealth Fund claims 20 million Americans “gained coverage under the Affordable Care Act as of May 1.” But a closer look at that number reveals it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. First, the authors, Dr. David Blumenthal, president of Commonwealth, and Vice President Sara Collins, get to the 20 million by adding together 1 million young adults who gained coverage under a parent’s policy, 8 million consumers who selected a marketplace plan, 5 million who purchased directly from an insurer, and 6 million who enrolled in Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program....

Wow. A reputable poll shows that the public believes Barack Obama is the worst president since World War II. Worse than Richard M. Nixon, driven from the presidency by Watergate? Much. Worse than Jimmy Carter, for decades the very symbol of the feckless chief executive? Loads. Worse than George W. Bush, still a lightning rod on the left and a symbol of disappointment on the right? Definitely. These startling poll results set loose the predictable reaction: A flurry of told-you-so nods on the right and a fusillade of this-tells-us-nothing assertions on the left. For once, they're both right. Obama is...

President Obama’s old Harvard Law professor, Laurence Tribe, said that he “wouldn’t bet the family farm” on Obamacare’s surviving the legal challenges to an IRS rule about who is eligible for subsidies that are currently working their way through the federal courts. “I don’t have a crystal ball,” Tribe told the Fiscal Times. “But I wouldn’t bet the family farm on this coming out in a way that preserves Obamacare.” The law’s latest legal problem is that, as written, people who enroll in Obamacare through the federal exchange aren’t eligible for subsidies. The text of the law only provides subsidies...

WMBF in Myrtle Beach, SC, reported Wednesday on the growing trend of businesses hiring only part-time workers, due to an inability to afford Obamacare. This situation leaves workers without healthcare and without a full-time income or other benefits. Local staffing agencies say more small business are starting to hire more part time employees. Not because there is more full time work, but as WMBF reporter Mandy Noell found out, it's because they can't afford to have more full time employees. Obamacare places requirements for health care benefits that many small businesses just cannot afford to pay. As a result, they...

Buried in a largely overlooked government audit of the Obama-Care exchanges is a finding that casts still more doubt on the reliability of the 8 million enrollment number commonly cited by the administration and the press. In a section titled "Other Issues," an inspector general report released last week found that the HealthCare.gov marketplace couldn't show it had been reconciling its monthly enrollment numbers with insurance companies.

A part-time Lewisville 911 operator helped deliver a baby over the phone last week. The call came in July 1 from the Motel 6 in Lewisville, where a man told dispatcher Meredith Lutz his "baby mama's" water had broken on the bed, and she was going into labor. The situation escalated quickly, though, as just moments later the man asked Lutz “the baby’s coming out right now, what do I do?” "It turns out she was already crowning, and the baby came before the call even ended,” said Lutz. Utilizing an on-screen manual in the call center and the help...

Thom Throp is a Kingsport insurance agent who's sold over sixty Affordable Care Act plans. Like thousands of others, he logged on with great interest to read a story from The Tennessean newspaper about a Maryville couple forced to separate after 33 years of marriage so the wife could keep health insurance. "We are in a situation in trying to get as many people covered as possible. People are falling in the proverbial crack," Throp said. (snip) So if expanding Medicaid isn't the answer, then what is? Throp tells us, even in a tight economy, that couples like the Drains...

States are now releasing their preliminary 2015 Obamacare premiums, which means price hikes could become another negative talking point right before the midterm elections. The difference between now and previous moments of bad health care PR is that Democrats insist they're getting ahead of it this time. But even then, there are a number of other issues coming up: the left's increasing aversion to the employer mandate, questions about how young and healthy this year's enrollees are and, as always, whether the Affordable Care Act is actually affordable. As Politico noted Monday, the White House's "internal health care enrollment outreach...

"...we actually put incoming applications aside so we could focus on the ACA related applications that came in over last summer."

A devastating new Health and Human Services (HHS) Inspector General report released on Tuesday reveals that the Obama administration has yet to determine whether 1,295,571 of the over 8 million Obamacare enrollees are U.S. citizens lawfully in the country. The finding, located on page 11 of the report, states that 44% of the remaining 2,611,780 application "inconsistencies" are related to verifying "Citizenship/national status/lawful presence." Another 960,492 application inconsistencies were related to verifying whether subsidy applicants provided accurate income information.

Most Americans say their view of Obamacare will play a role in how they vote in upcoming congressional elections—but don't count on that guaranteeing that a particular political party is slam dunk winner this fall. A new Bankrate.com poll released Wednesday revealed that Obamacare-motivated voters are not necessarily heavily Republican or Democratic. It also revealed sharply decreasing support for outright repeal of the still-controversial health-care reform law. Most of those people, 44 percent of all respondents, said the health-care law would be a major factor in their decision, while 24 percent said it would play a minor role. Out of...

WASHINGTON — Federal officials can’t resolve 85 percent of 2.9 million “inconsistencies” on applications for ObamaCare even after nine months of trying, according to new data provided by the administration. Most of the problems involve certifying citizenship and income, key components of the national health plan. But some of the problems are downright nutty. One unidentified state-run marketplace cited situations in which infants and young children were “erroneously identified as incarcerated, according to federal data,” the inspector general for the Health and Human Services Department revealed Tuesday. Just 425,000 problematic applications have been resolved out of 2.9 million that states...

The Supreme Court on Tuesday confirmed that its decision a day earlier extending religious rights to closely held corporations applies broadly to the contraceptive coverage requirement in the new health care law, not just the handful of methods the justices considered in their ruling. The justices did not comment in leaving in place lower court rulings in favor of businesses that object to covering all 20 methods of government-approved contraception....

Two new reports from the Health and Human Services Department's Inspector General say the new federal healthcare insurance market is having trouble verifying whether people are eligible for the health insurance they are receiving, or the federal subsidies that help them pay their premiums. One of the two Health and Human Services inspector general reports found 2.9 million inconsistencies in the federal marketplace. It said the federal marketplace was unable to resolve 2.6 million of them because the Centers of Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) system for determining eligibility was “not fully operational.” The reports looked at the exchanges between...

In a strong dissent on the so-called Hobby Lobby case Monday morning, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg sharply disagreed with the deciding justices in language so harsh Justice Anthony Kennedy felt the need to respond in his own concurring opinion. “In a decision of startling breadth, the Court holds that commercial enterprises, including corporations, along with partnerships and sole proprietorships, can opt out of any law (saving only tax laws) they judge incompatible with their sincerely held religious beliefs,” Ginsburg wrote. “In the Court’s view, RFRA demands accommodation of a for-profit corporation’s religious beliefs no matter the impact that...

How does everyone think the SCOTUS is going to rule on Hobby Lobby. Unfortunately, I predict they'll vote on behalf of ObamaCare against HL.