Free Republic

Those Americans who didn’t get health insurance last year could be in for a rude awakening when the IRS asks them to fork over their Obamacare penalty — and it could be a lot more than the $95 many of them may be expecting. The Affordable Care Act requires those who didn’t have insurance last year and didn’t qualify for one of the exemptions to pay a tax penalty, which was widely cited as $95 the first year. But the $95 is actually a minimum, and middle- and upper-income families will actually end up paying 1 percent of their household...

One of the primary health insurance companies in Nebraska and Iowa is folding, after federal grants and loans were cut off in mid-December. The lack of emergency loan money has put CoOpportunity Health Care on the ropes, according to the Iowa Insurance Commission. Policy holders are scrambling to switch to one of the only two remaining health insurance companies in Nebraska – Coventry or Blue Cross/Blue Shield.

The leader of the agency charged with the ObamaCare rollout is stepping down after five years on the job. Marilyn Tavenner, administrator of the Center for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS), announced her departure Friday, which will take effect next month. "It is with sadness and mixed emotions that I write to tell you that February will be my last month serving as the administrator for CMS," Tavenner wrote in an email to staff. Tavenner is leaving after five turbulent years overseeing the agency. Her tenure included the disastrous rollout of the government’s HealthCare.gov website as well as, most recently,...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Not only do more Americans have health insurance, but the number struggling with medical costs has dropped since President Barack Obama’s health care law expanded coverage, according to a study released Thursday. The Commonwealth Fund’s biennial health insurance survey found that the share of U.S. adults who did not get needed care because of cost dropped from 43 percent in 2012 to 36 percent last year, as the health care law’s main coverage expansion went into full swing. The proportion of people who got treatment but had problems paying their bills also dropped, from 41 percent in...

Politifact was right to name President Obama’s “If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor” proclamation as its 2013 “Lie of the Year.” Yet, they missed out on another whopper of a fib a few years earlier in 2009. At the Heritage Foundation’s Conservative Policy Summit in Washington, DC on Tuesday, Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ), a pro-life warrior who has been involved in the movement for 42 years, exposed President Obama’s misleading statement about his signature legislation: “On Sept 9, 2009 in a joint session of Congress, Obama said in his health care reform, under our plan, no...

President Obama signed a memorandum Thursday granting paid leave for federal workers after the birth of a child. But the rest of what he wants requires Congress to pass legislationWashington — President Obama is announcing several initiatives Thursday aimed at helping working parents. One was achieved by executive action: Thursday morning, the president signed a memorandum that grants federal workers six weeks of paid leave after the birth or adoption of a child, plus the right to six additional weeks of unpaid leave. The directive also applies to federal workers caring for ailing family members. Beyond that, Mr. Obama needs...

King v. Burwell, the court case that will determine if Obamacare’s language about federal subsidies and their availability on exchanges “established by the state”, will be heard in oral arguments at the Supreme Court on March 4, with a decision to come down later this year. The Obama White House is apparently so confident that they’ll win the case that they’re not preparing any back-up plan in case the Supreme Court wrecks the structure of their signature legislation. As Politico’s health care newsletter wrote this morning:Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) says that at a roundtable discussion with congressional leaders he asked...

In the coming weeks, Americans will embark on the painful process of filing their tax returns. While this annual ritual leaves most people confused, depressed and overwhelmed, many will be faced with the additional step this year of paying hundreds or thousands of dollars if they chose not to purchase health insurance under ObamaCare for 2014. Under the individual mandate required by the president’s new health care law, Americans for the first time must pay the higher of two penalties if they are uninsured and did not enroll in ObamaCare last year—either $95 per adult and $47.50 per child under...

KALAMAZOO, MI -- Planned Parenthood Mid and South Michigan is closing its Battle Creek clinic, citing "increasing competition and declining patient demand" as a result of the Affordable Care Act. The last day of operation will be Jan. 31. Spokeswoman Desiree Cooper said the need for Planned Parenthood's health-care services has declined because of the ACA, which has greatly improved access to subsidized contraceptives and women's health-care services. The ACA requires insurances plan to provide women with an annual physical and contraceptives without a deductible or co-pay. That means women who formerly were reliant on Planned Parenthood for services and...

The recent successes of the Affordable Care Act pose a challenge for the right, at least in theory. The more “Obamacare” works effectively, and the more Republican predictions are discredited, the more difficult it should be for conservatives to deny what is plainly true. And yet, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) doesn’t seem to mind. The Texas Republican delivered some predictable red meat at the Heritage Action Conservative Policy Summit yesterday, taking aim at the health care law he loves to hate. Obamacare, he asserted, has wrought “devastation.” He called it a “train wreck” that has cost millions of Americans their...

The Supreme Court on Monday rejected a 2-year-old legal challenge to a central provision of ObamaCare from a conservative doctors group. The case, which was led by the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, sought to strike down the law’s individual mandate, which fines individuals who fail to purchase health insurance.

The reason your insurance premiums have skyrocketed during the past year is that Obamacare requires all health plans to provide “free” annual wellness visits and 15 associated preventive services for which they cannot charge the patient a copayment. According to a key architect of PPACA, however, “the annual physical exam is basically worthless.” Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, last heard from claiming that he wants to die at 75 in order to avoid becoming a burden on society, writes in the New York Times that “screening healthy people who have no complaints is a pretty ineffective way to improve people’s health.” The...

More than half of the 2014-2015 enrollment period for the Affordable Care Act, best known as Obamacare, is in the books, and the enrollment figures on the surface look very encouraging. To be clear, Obamacare is about more than just enrollment figures. For one thing, in order for the health reform law to be successful, it'll need people that enroll to actually continue paying their premium. This is the only way that medical care costs get spread out over a greater swath of the public, which is needed to control medical care cost inflation. However, between April and mid-October,...

Russell Wilson and Richard Sherman appear in a new government video flacking for Affordable Care Act-brokered medical insurance plans But the NFL provides one of the best health insurance plans in America with tiny deductibles and millions in payouts Some Obamacare plans have family deductibles as high as $12,700, causing some policyholders to avoid treatment and stay sick Sherman has a four-year $56 million contract, while Wilson earns a paltry $2.4 million but is expected to sign a $100 million deal in the off-seasonTwo Seattle Seahawks mega-stars are flacking for Obamacare, but they won't need government-brokered medical insurance themselves –...

Harvard not only educated the president but has steadfastly supported not only him and even his more controversial policies, until now. “For years, Harvard’s experts on health economics and policy have advised presidents and Congress on how to provide health benefits to the nation at a reasonable cost,” Robert Pear reported in The New York Times on January 5, 2015. “But those remedies will now be applied to the Harvard faculty, and the professors are in an uproar.” “Members of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, the heart of the 378-year-old university, voted overwhelmingly in November to oppose changes that...

Turns out there’s no free lunch, even if you’re among those lucky few dining at the Harvard Faculty Club. The New York Times is feasting on the delicious uproar created by Harvard professors who are now outraged to be hit with higher health care costs as a result of ObamaCare. I hardly know where to start on this one. Perhaps with the fact that the article appears in the New York Times? I will let that one go for the moment. Here’s what’s clear: Health care costs at Harvard are going up. Immediately. And they are rising directly as a...

Back in 09–when Obamacare advocates castigated those who worried that Obamacare would lead to rationing–Jonathan Gruber said get the law passed first, then refuse treatment later. From the Daily Caller story: “Let’s get the people covered and then let’s do cost control,” [Gruber said] Gruber also said that the only way to control costs is to effectively deny treatment. “The real substance of cost control is all about a single thing: telling patients they can’t have something they want. It’s about telling patients, ‘That surgery doesn’t do any good, so if you want it you have to pay the full...

WASHINGTON — For years, Harvard’s experts on health economics and policy have advised presidents and Congress on how to provide health benefits to the nation at a reasonable cost. But those remedies will now be applied to the Harvard faculty, and the professors are in an uproar....... In addition, some ideas that looked good to academia in theory are now causing consternation. In 2009, while Congress was considering the health care legislation, Dr. Alan M. Garber — then a Stanford professor and now the provost of Harvard — led a group of economists who sent an open letter to Mr....

House GOP seeks to change Affordable Care Act full-time work definition from 30 hours to 40House Republicans will hold a vote this week to change Obamacare’s definition of full-time work from 30 hours a week to the traditional 40, setting up an early test to see how many Democrats are willing to buck President Obama and his signature overhaul now that they are in the minority. It’s part of the early agenda taking shape on Capitol Hill, where the GOP in both the House and Senate is planning votes on issues that have earned bipartisan support before, but which stalled...

link only: http://www.usatoday.com/longform/news/nation/2015/01/01/middle-class-workers-struggle-to-pay-for-care-despite-insurance/19841235/