Free Republic

Medi-Cal patients are swamping California emergency rooms in greater numbers than they did before the Affordable Care Act took effect, despite predictions that the health law would ease the burden on ERs. Emergency room visits by people on Medi-Cal rose 75 percent over five years, from 800,000 in the first quarter of 2012 to 1.4 million in the last quarter of 2016, according to data recently released by the state’s Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development.

U.S. Democrats took to the Senate floor on Monday to throw a spotlight on behind-the-scenes efforts by the Republican majority to repeal former President Barack Obama's healthcare law, known as Obamacare.In a series of floor motions, inquiries and lengthy speeches, Democrats criticized the closed-door meetings that Republicans have been holding to craft a replacement for Obamacare, formally known as the Affordable Care Act. They called for open committee hearings and more time to consider the bill before a Senate vote, which Republicans say could come in the next two weeks, although a draft bill has yet to emerge publicly.Lacking the...

Snarky Colbert. I guess he forgot about "we have to sign it to see what's in it"

Health Reform: "In many ways, it's working better than anticipated." That's how President Obama described ObamaCare in March 2015. The latest enrollment report shows just how wildly wrong he was. The latest official count shows that 10.3 million are enrolled in the ObamaCare exchanges. That's down from the 12.2 million who were reported to have selected an ObamaCare plan this year, which means that nearly 2 million people (16%) signed up for coverage and then failed to make a payment on it. It also means that there are 800,000 fewer ObamaCare enrollees now than there were a year ago. And...

Last week, the U.S. House of Representatives crafted a partisan compromise bill that endorsed and reinforced the Affordable Care Act, or ObamaCare. This was done notwithstanding claims to the contrary by President Donald Trump and the House Republican leadership, who want us to believe that this bill, if it becomes law, will effectively repeal and replace ObamaCare. ObamaCare is a stool with four problematic legs. The constitutional leg is the premise that the federal government has the lawful power to regulate the delivery of health care. The legal leg is the premise that the federal government is obliged to provide...

Last week, while most of Washington obsessed over the self-serving cavils of a cashiered federal bureaucrat, Senate Republicans focused on a project much nearer to the hearts of the voters — repealing Obamacare. And the GOP made significant progress in that effort. The Senate parliamentarian ruled that repeal can be passed via reconciliation and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell fast-tracked the process by invoking “rule 14,” which permits the Senate to skip laborious committee hearings that Democrats planned to use for protracted grandstanding. Meanwhile, moderate Republicans are coming around ...... The ruling by the Senate parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, was crucial to...

Valerie Jarrett, former senior advisor to President Obama, said the Trump administration is “abdicating” the United States’ role as the “world leader” and the “beacon of hope” by withdrawing from the Paris climate accord.[snip]“So I think it signals to the world that the United States is not serious about protecting our planet. Now, I don’t know what other way to interpret a decision that I think could be as dramatically negatively impactful as that decision. And what it means is the rest of the world will move forward without us and the United States has always been that beacon of...

Fake news has replaced responsible journalism. It’s hard to know what to believe. It wasn’t long ago that supermarket tabloids like National Enquirer were considered fake news. Now it seems the Enquirer and TMZ may be more reliable sources of accurate news than the New York Times or Washington Post. Government agencies aren’t immune from the fake news trend either. The Congressional Budget Office describes itself as, “Strictly nonpartisan; conducts objective, impartial analysis; and hires its employees solely on the basis of professional competence without regard to political affiliation.” I’ll bet most newspapers and television news networks say the same...

At some of the raucous town hall meetings this year, indignant constituents would tell their representatives that if it weren’t for ObamaCare they’d be dead. Actually, if it weren’t for modern medicine they’d be dead; ObamaCare is merely a payment system, (and a rather rickety one). The Left and their “useful idiots” at the town halls seem to be throwing up death itself as though it were some unthinkable tragedy, as though it should never happen. And if death does happen, it’s somebody else’s fault, probably a Republican. Is it in the national interest for government to keep all of...

not sure the posting policy of the post star- but the gist of the story is that cuomo is threatening to punish businesses that don't abide by the current affordable care act even if President Trump repeals obamacare- He is also going to tell regulators to prohibit insurers from 'discriminating' against customers “We will not stand idly by as ultra-conservatives in Washington try to roll back the progress we have made to expand access to quality, affordable health care, putting our most vulnerable New Yorkers at risk,” Cuomo said. “These aggressive actions will make certain that no matter what happens...

For years, Republicans savaged Democrats for supporting the Affordable Care Act, branding the law — with some rhetorical license — as a government takeover of health care. Now, cast out of power in Washington and most state capitals, Democrats and activist leaders seeking political redemption have embraced an unlikely-seeming cause: an actual government takeover of health care.

It's finally official. The Affordable Care Act is a public-policy flop of epic proportions. That's the only possible conclusion from the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Kansas City announcement last week that it will drop out of many markets in Kansas and Missouri. The firm lost $100 million under the Obamacare insurance exchanges from 2014 to 2016. This is another body blow to the government-insurance system Barack Obama created in 2010. Blue Cross is one of the biggest health insurers in the nation, and now 25 more counties in these states will have no insurer left. Nearly every news...

When Aetna, the health insurance giant, announced this month that it was pulling out of the Affordable Care Act's insurance exchange in Virginia in 2018, President Trump responded on Twitter: "Death spiral!" When Humana announced plans to leave all the health law's marketplaces next year, the president chimed in, "Obamacare continues to fail." Left unremarked on was a big reason for the instability: The Trump administration and Congress are rattling the markets. The administration's refusal to guarantee payment of subsidies to health insurance companies, the murky outlook for the Affordable Care Act in Congress and doubts about enforcement of the...

As things get dicier in the White House, it’s a comfort to know we still have competent leadership in the House. Remember, although an earlier version of the AHCA would have reduced the deficit by $150 billion over 10 years according to CBO, Ryan and his team refused to wait for CBO’s score of the amended version that passed the House a few weeks ago. And because they didn’t, they ended up holding a Rose Garden ceremony for a bill that might end up being defective under parliamentary rules. Gross malpractice, if the new score is bad:

two years higher than they would be under Obamacare. New data shows just how high the cost has already gotten for people who don't qualify for subsidies now. In the report, eHealth found that individual premiums for insurance plans sold through its marketplace, or exchange, rose to an average of $378 per month in 2017 — an 18 percent increase from 2016's open enrollment season. Since 2014, the average premiums for individual coverage have jumped 39 percent, eHealth found. That year, 2014, was the first for new Affordable Care Act rules mandating designs of insurance plans, which included a set...

For Linda Dearman, the House vote last week to repeal the Affordable Care Act was a welcome relief. Ms. Dearman, of Bartlett, Ill., voted for President Trump largely because of his contempt for the federal health law. She and her husband, a partner in an engineering firm, buy their own insurance, but late last year they dropped their $1,100-a-month policy and switched to a bare-bones plan that does not meet the law’s requirements. They are counting that the law will be repealed before they owe a penalty. “Now it looks like it will be, and we’re thrilled about that,” Ms....

Mitch McConnell has put the Senate Obamacare Repeal and Replace Bill in the leadership of Ted Cruz. McConnell has appointed a GOP Working Group led by Cruz to write a Repeal and Replace Bill. This process bypasses the Senate Committees. This new Senate Bill will go directly to the Senate floor for a vote.

As Senate Republicans prepare for their turn in the health-care meat grinder, it increasingly appears that the question of preexisting conditions will be toughest to address. This is an issue so fraught with emotion as to cry out for some straight talk. First, let’s be clear about whom we’re talking about when the conversation turns to preexisting conditions: people who are already sick or at high risk of becoming sick. Insurance is — or should be — about managing risk. We buy coverage to protect us against events that are unlikely to happen but would carry a catastrophic cost...

Guy has written extensively on the death spiral of Obamacare. From rising premiums, loss of insurance, and health care companies feeling the financial squeeze, President Obama’s health care overhaul is crumbling. In North Carolina, Blue Cross Blue Shield, which is the state’s largest insurer that offers Obamacare plans to all of its 100 counties, says the financial losses have been immense. CEO Brad Wilson told The News and Observer in February of 2016: “In year one [2014], five percent of our ACA customers consumed $830 million in health care costs. That’s how much money went out of our door to...

More American voters approve of the Affordable Care Act now than they ever did under the previous administration, which enacted the law — even as support is slipping for the GOP alternative that Republicans are now shepherding through Congress.A new Morning Consult/POLITICO poll shows that 50 percent of voters strongly or somewhat approve of Obamacare, while 42 percent disapprove of the 2010 health law. On the other hand, 38 percent of voters say they approve of the American Health Care Act, versus 44 percent who disapprove of the GOP measure meant to replace the ACA.House Republicans narrowly passed an...