Free Republic

A new Gallup survey seems to suggest that majority of Americans now back government-run health care. That, at least, is what Gallup’s headline about its poll says: “Majority in U.S. Support Idea of Fed-Funded Healthcare System.” The mainstream press eagerly ran with the story. The Washington Post, for example, headlined its piece: “Poll: Most Americans want to replace ObamaCare with single-payer — including many Republicans.” The ABC News headline blared “Poll Says Majority of Americans Prefer ‘Medicare For All’ Health Care,” and the story led by saying that “A growing number of Americans now support the idea of federally funded...

What exactly has birthed the Pajama Boy aristocracy — our overclass of pretentious, inexperienced, and smug 30-something masters of the universe? Prolonged adolescence? Affluence? The disappearance of physical chores and muscular labor? The collapse of traditional liberal education and the triumph of the therapeutic mindset? Disdain for or ignorance of life outside the Boston–New York–Washington corridor? Political correctness as a sort of careerist indemnity that allows one to live a sheltered and apartheid existence? The shift in collective values and status from production, agriculture, and manufacturing to government, law, finance, and media? The reinvention of the university as a social-awareness...

TRICARE should admit wrongdoing and pay past due amounts to the UVP states It is no secret that America’s veterans are getting the shaft. We have seen these troubling headlines: A fatal wait: Veterans languish and die on a VA hospital’s secret list Veteran dies after setting himself on fire outside New Jersey VA clinic The stories behind these and similar headlines reveal that America has not lived up to its promise to “care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and orphan.” In fact, military families, specifically the children of military families, face similar...

The largest increase in consumer spending since gas prices have dropped, according to Markowska, has been on healthcare. "In nominal terms, household spending on healthcare averaged 3.9% between 2010 and 2013," wrote Markowska in a note to clients Thursday. "It began to accelerate in the first half of 2014 and has averaged at 5.2% since then. Importantly, this pickup in healthcare spending was not driven by higher costs; real spending in this category accelerated from 1.9% in 2010-2013 to 3.9% thereafter." This would indicate that Americans have been not only been spending more because of increased costs, but also intentionally...

AMY MOSES and her circle of self-employed small-business owners were supporters of President Obama and the Affordable Care Act. They bought policies on the newly created New York State exchange. But when they called doctors and hospitals in Manhattan to schedule appointments, they were dismayed to be turned away again and again with a common refrain: “We don’t take Obamacare,” the umbrella epithet for the hundreds of plans offered through the president’s signature health legislation. “Anyone who is on these plans knows it’s a two-tiered system,” said Ms. Moses, describing the emotional sting of those words to a successful entrepreneur....

Charlie Rose and three of Barack Obama’s former speechwriters had a good laugh Monday night while joking about the president’s infamous, oft-repeated false promise that under Obamacare, “if you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan.” Obama said dozens of times in the run-up to the Affordable Care Act’s signing and enactment that no Americans who liked the insurance plan they had would lose it under the Affordable Care Act. In reality, millions of policies were canceled because of the law’s regulations, and Obama was forced to apologize to the American people. The infamous remark...

New London mayor Sadiq Khan has told US presidential hopeful Donald Trump that he doesn’t want to be an “exception” to Trump’s proposed ban on Muslims entering the US. Khan accused Trump of having an “ignorant view of Islam” that could make Britain and the US less safe. “This isn’t just about me,” said Khan, after Trump suggested he might allow the new mayor into the US if he becomes president. “It’s about my friends, my family, and everyone who comes from a background similar to mine, anywhere in the world.” The mayor of London made the comments after Trump...

A month after slithering into the ceiling of Washington’s Tacoma General Hospital, a white ball python is back with its owner. Sources say a visitor brought the snake to the hospital in a cat carrier full of stuffed animals. After the owner went home, he realized his python had escaped and notified the hospital, according to KCPQ. Hospital workers said they didn’t think anything of it because they see strange things happen all the time. The snake was found, “when it came out of the ceiling ventilation on April 30,” said Marce Edwards with MultiCare Health System. Edwards confirmed that...

Insurers -- who might not be allowed the huge rate increases they need to stay solvent --- are looking to save money by eliminating so-called Bronze-level plans. Fierce Health Player reports on an Inside Health Policy (subscription only) warning from earlier this week: One problem, according to the article, is risk adjustment--as CMS data indicate bronze is the only metal level for which insurers of all sizes in the individual and group markets had to pay into the program. Federal officials are considering some changes to the risk adjustment program, which some say unfairly penalizes smaller insurers. Already, filings show...

UnitedHealth is withdrawing from most of the 34 ObamaCare Exchanges in which it currently sells, citing losses of $650 million in 2016. A recent Kaiser Family Foundation report indicates UnitedHealth’s departure will leave consumers on Oklahoma’s Exchange with only one choice of insurance carriers. Were UnitedHealth to exit all 34 states, the share of counties with only one or two carriers on the Exchange would rise from 36% to 52%, while the share of enrollees with only one or two carriers from which to choose would nearly double from 15% to 29%. The Obama administration dismissed the news as unimportant. A spokesman professed...

The nation’s biggest health insurer has decided to stop selling coverage on public insurance exchanges in two states for next year, but consumers shouldn’t take this as an early warning that a mass exodus is brewing from a key element of the Affordable Care Act’s coverage expansion.Analysts say these exchanges may be improving for insurers after a difficult start. However, they also expect insurers to continue leaving some unprofitable markets as the coverage expansion heads toward its fourth year. UnitedHealth Group Inc. said it will not sell coverage on exchanges in Arkansas and Georgia for 2017, and it is continuing...

Health Reform: ObamaCare enrollees are sicker than those covered before the law. Backers see this as good news, because it means those needing coverage are getting it. It’s actually a sign of an impending death spiral.

In the latest report to undercut President Obama’s “If you like your health care plan, you can keep it” promise, the Congressional Budget Office projects millions of workers will leave employer-sponsored health plans over the next decade because of ObamaCare. Some will opt to go on Medicaid, but others will be kicked off their company plans by employers who decide not to offer coverage anymore, according to a new CBO report titled, “Federal Subsidies for Health Insurance Coverage for People Under Age 65: 2016 to 2026.” “As a result of the ACA, between 4 million and 9 million fewer people...

Three years ago, on the eve of Obamacare’s implementation, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projected that President Obama's centerpiece legislation would result in an average of 201 million people having private health insurance in any given month of 2016. Now that 2016 is here, the CBO says that just 177 million people, on average, will have private health insurance in any given month of this year—a shortfall of 24 million people. Indeed, based on the CBO's own numbers, it seems possible that Obamacare has actually reduced the number of people with private health insurance. In 2013, the CBO projected that,...

The slow-motion implosion of Obamacare continues with the newest report from the Congressional Budget Office foreseeing up to 9 million Americans losing their employer-based insurance coverage over the next decade because of spiking premiums. The Washington Times: Obamacare insurance premiums will leap 6 percent a year over the next decade, and companies will drop millions of employees from their health plans as insurers and employers calibrate their offerings for the new marketplace, the Congressional Budget Office said Thursday. The health law will continue to steadily grow in both cost and coverage, working toward President Obama’s goal of expanding those with...

We have been covering the consumption tax, pardon, endless spending black hole that is Obamacare for over a year, so we doubt it will come as a surprise to anyone that in 2015 healthcare was the second biggest use of US consumer funds, soaking up a record $1.9 trillion in real dollars, and more importantly for US economic "growth", the single biggest source of incremental spending by nearly a factor of two. Incidentally, with spending on healthcare (courtesy of the Supreme Court's Obamacare tax) soaring, while outlays on the traditionally most consumption-intensive category, housing and utilities, going nowhere for the...

This is the kind of case the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia liked to sink his judicial teeth into -- whether the federal government can compel a religious entity like the Little Sisters of the Poor to violate their religious beliefs and acquiesce to the ObamaCare contraceptive coverage mandate. As LifeSite News reported on Wednesday’s hearing: This week, the U.S. Supreme Court heard the case of the Little Sisters of the Poor, a 175-year-old religious order of women who have vowed their lives to care for the elderly poor.

Once again, Chelsea Clinton is being used by her mother’s campaign to propose outlandishly expensive proposals in health care and attack other Democrats, while providing deniability for Hillary. Yesterday, Obamacare was characterized by Chelsea as imposing “crushing costs,” a clear slam of President Obama’s signature legislative achievement, something that could cost votes if Hillary made such a statement. Chelsea’s proposed remedies include “executive action” (evidently Hillary has a pen and a phone, just like Obama) or Congressional action to extend “tax credits” or other support. Grab your wallets, and prepare for Obamacare to get even more expensive for taxpayers....

The congressional budget office has revised its Obamacare enrollment target for 2016 downward by a million people. This is the second such downgrade the CBO has issued in 2016. The Hill reports: About 12 million people are now expected to have ObamaCare coverage by the end of 2016, according to the nonpartisan budget office. Just three months ago, the office had predicted that 13 million people would have coverage.The latest enrollment estimate is an even steeper drop from the CBO’s estimates from 2015, which predicted 21 million people would have marketplace coverage by this time. The enrollment after the end...

The little boy who watched Obama sign Obamacare into law is no longer a boy. He’s a teenager and he’s changed his gender to female. The church of liberalism reigns supreme! Marcelas Owens watched Obama sign Obamacare into law six years ago. Right Wing News reports via CNN: Marcelas Owens … was the chubby 11-year-old African-American boy who stood next to President Barack Obama as he signed Obamacare into law at a White House ceremony on March 23, 2010. He was the miniature health care activist in the black vest dwarfed by powerful lawmakers in a famous photo of...