Free Republic

The repeal of ObamaCare is the priority of the Republican party, Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) said on Sunday. “There will be a vote on repeal. The president, in the White House, will veto that,” he said of the symbolic gesture offered by GOP lawmakers still unsatisfied with the healthcare legislation. However, Barrasso told NBC’s Chuck Todd on “Meet the Press” that there would also be other bills that strike at other parts of the Affordable Care Act – some of which have gained bipartisan support – including a repeal of the medical device tax and the employer mandate. There is...

Companies with more than 100 full-time employees need to comply or face fines. ... Companies with more than 100 full-time workers must offer affordable health insurance to at least 70% of their staff. This "employer mandate" was supposed to take effect in 2014, but the Obama administration delayed it to this year. And those that don't comply face hefty penalties. Companies will be fined if they don't offer coverage and even just one of their workers gets subsidized insurance on an Obamacare individual exchange. For 2015, the fine is $174 a month times the number of full-time employees (minus 80...

There's a bizarre reason why millions of Americans saw their health plans cancelled in 2013 and, as explained in a new video featuring Robert Graboyes of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, millions more will lose their plans in years to come.

Group asks High Court to affirm the limits on the executive branch’s ability to disregard federal statutes, reaffirm separation of powers (Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that on December 24, 2014, it filed an amicus curiae brief in support of the plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the IRS and the Departments of Health and Human Services (HHS) and Treasury over a decision by the agencies to ignore a key provision of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The lawsuit seeks specifically to prevent the IRS from providing refundable tax credits to individuals who purchase health care coverage through...

Jonathan Gruber, sage of MIT and proud champion of the Affordable Care Act, may well have had the worst year in American public life. His repeated demonstrations of arrogance, contempt for the American people and smug self-satisfaction brought mortification to his party and president. His glib references to the redistributionist aspects of the Affordable Care Act gave the lie to the Democratic Party's dubious claim that the mandate was not a tax, along with the excruciating (to Democrats) acknowledgment that -- presidential oaths to the contrary notwithstanding -- Democrats regard "nontransparency" as their friend. So, all hail the verbally incontinent...

Health care reform advocates who struggled for decades to pass Obamacare left the job half-undone. They failed to sell it. They also underestimated the unrelenting intensity and duration of the opposition that makes the law so vulnerable to legislative and legal challenges even now, nearly five years after its passage. The White House and its allies are trying fresh messaging strategies for 2015 enrollment, including a lower-key sales pitch and narratives from real people who are happy with their coverage. Those success stories didn’t exist before coverage began one year ago. Yet the messaging missteps and rhetorical guerrilla war since...

About seven out of every eight Obamacare insurance customers who enrolled between November 15 and mid-December are poor enough to qualify for taxpayer-funded subsidies designed to lower their monthly premiums. The Department of Health and Human Services reported that number Tuesday, saying it's up from 80 per cent a year ago. Americans who participate in government-brokered medical insurance can get subsidies from the federal treasury if their households earn less than four times the government's official 'poverty' level. That situation describes 64 per cent of all U.S. residents, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. But far more are qualifying, suggesting...

Red Tape: With businesses' one-year reprieve from financial penalties under ObamaCare ending, the horror stories of complying with the costly health care law already are trickling in. The worst is yet to come. ObamaCare Hits Small Business Hard in '15 Starting Jan. 1, employers with 100 or more full-time workers face hefty increases in their health insurance costs as they comply for the first time with the mandate. They must now offer the government's comprehensive coverage — including "free" preventive care — for all employees working 30 or more hours a week, or risk being fined $2,000 per employee per...

The Obama administration announced new rules under Obamacare on Monday that target nonprofit hospitals’ efforts to get paid by their patients.Nonprofit hospitals, which serve a charitable purpose and are often religiously affiliated, will now be subject to strict rules on when and how they can collect payments from customers, thanks to regulations included in the health-care law. As a condition of their tax-exempt status, these hospitals must “take an active role in improving the health of the communities they serve,” Treasury Department deputy assistant secretary for tax policy Emily McMahon wrote in a blog post Monday. Under the new IRS...

Some 87 percent of people who just signed up for Obamacare are getting financial assistance to lower their premiums, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. That is a jump from 80 percent during the last open enrollment period. ... includes more than 3.4 million people who selected a plan in the 37 states that are using the HealthCare.gov platform for 2015 Full Title: Tax dollars at work: 87% of new Obamacare users given federal aid

While states debate expanding their Medicaid programs under Obamacare, they're wrestling with a looming 2017 deadline — when their taxpayers begin paying for the cost of the expansion. Beginning in 2014, states that agree to expand Medicaid to persons with incomes of up to 138 percent of the poverty line will have the federal government pay 100 percent of the cost. But beginning in 2017, the federal share will fall to 95 percent, and it drops to 90 percent in 2020. This has officials — many of them in Republican-dominated states across the country — worried that they will not...

No development in U.S. healthcare over the last three decades has imperiled us more than the idea that we benefit from physician oversight of life events and circumstances that are not inherently medical. At its most intrusive, this process, called medicalization, creates a clinical conundrum out of the mere act of living and posits medical solutions for things (such as how to live a healthier lifestyle) that frequently benefit more from individual concentration and perseverance than professional intervention. We are thus bearing witness to tortuous reformation of what it means to be a physician in America: a formerly independent and...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Being uninsured in America will cost you more in 2015. It's the first year all taxpayers have to report to the Internal Revenue Service whether they had health insurance for the previous year, as required under President Barack Obama's law. Those who were uninsured face fines, unless they qualify for one of about 30 exemptions, most of which involve financial hardships. Dayna Dayson of Phoenix estimates that she'll have to pay the taxman $290 when she files her federal return. Dayson, who's in her early 30s, works in marketing and doesn't have a lot left over each...

HONOLULU (AP) - Warning from President Barack Obama to congressional Republicans: I have a veto pen and, come January, I won't be afraid to use it. Continue reading Since taking office in 2009, Obama has only vetoed legislation twice, both in fairly minor circumstances. But with Republicans set to take full control of Congress next year, Obama is losing his last bulwark against a barrage of bills he doesn't like: the Senate. "I haven't used the veto pen very often since I've been in office," Obama said in an NPR interview airing Monday. "Now, I suspect, there are going to...

The Affordable Care Act may become even more of a nightmare with Hillary Clinton in the White House, says Betsy McCaughey, chairwoman of the Committee to Reduce Infectious Deaths and former lieutenant-governor of New York. "Hillary could make it worse," McCaughey said Friday on "The Steve Malzberg Show" on Newsmax TV, referencing Clinton's attempt to launch a heathcare plan when her husband, Bill Clinton, was president. "Hillarycare back in November 1993, all 1,362 pages of it . . . was far more coercive than Obamacare." For example, said McCaughey, a medical doctor, Clinton's plan was far more rigid than President...

California's health exchange is violating the law by canceling private coverage for up to 95,000 people because they might qualify for Medi-Cal, the state's insurance commissioner says. At issue is health insurance for some of the poorest Californians whose incomes aren't high enough to even qualify for subsidized policies in the Covered California exchange. The state marketplace is notifying thousands of policyholders that their federal premium subsidies for Obamacare coverage will end Dec. 31 and their private health plan won't be renewed starting in January. Instead, these people will be put into Medi-Cal, the state's Medicaid program for low-income residents....

New rules being proposed by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services will give that agency enormous new powers over consumers who use the healthcare.gov website to purchase their insurance. The proposed rules would allow CMS to automatically renew consumers' policies every year if they don't visit the website to do it themselves. Without any knowledge of an individual's health care situation, their financials, or anything else that might affect what kind of policy they may need, the government wll choose and force you to pay for a policy that they think works best for you.

Jeb Bush left the Florida governor’s office in January of 2007, after eight years of service. Three months later, he joined the board of a hospital company that had been pillaging government health programs and abusing patients, in Florida and around the country, for most of the years he sat in the governor’s office. Apart from a very generous compensation package, why did Bush sign on with such a tarnished company? And will whatever explanation he now offers hold up under the microscope of a presidential campaign? Tenet Healthcare Corp. is a national for-profit hospital company with a sordid history....

The shocking news Wednesday that Governor Peter Shumlin (D-VT) has abandoned plans to introduce his long promised single-payer health care system to the Vermont Legislature in 2015 was a huge victory for conservative new media. As observers on the ground in Vermont confirmed Thursday, Breitbart News led the way. “Governor Shumlin would not have reversed course without Breitbart News and Michael Patrick Leahy exposing the Gruber factor and bringing the story to front of the public discussion in Vermont,” Darcie Johnston of Vermonters for Health Care Freedom told Breitbart News on Thursday. “Breitbart News and Michael Patrick Leahy’s laser focus...

Jonathan Gruber felt little constraint in making the various statements that have been trumpeted by conservative media because most of what he said was completely unremarkable in health policy circles. Here are some of the health care truths that few people want to hear. Employer Benefits Are Not a Gift from Benevolent Bosses Every penny spent on your benefits is a penny taken out of your wages. The richer the benefits, the less money you take home every week. Companies think in terms of total compensation. A good accountant might be worth $78,000 a year to a company. The company...