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Documents obtained from the Health and Human Services Department through a Freedom of Information Act request show that on the day the Affordable Care Act became law, the agency received fast-track authority to hire 1,814 new high-level employees to put Obamacare into practice, at a likely cost of more than $159 million per year. The hiring request was approved by the Obama administration's Office of Personnel Management despite a government-wide hiring freeze. Judicial Watch, a nonprofit that has told MailOnline it files 'hundreds' of such FOIA requests, showed MailOnline the documents on Thursday. They show that HHS designated the hiring...

IRS employees have a prominent role in Obamacare, but their union wants no part of the law. National Treasury Employees Union officials are urging members to write their congressional representatives in opposition to receiving coverage through President Obama’s health care law. The union leaders are providing members with a form letter to send to the congressmen that says “I am very concerned about legislation that has been introduced by Congressman Dave Camp to push federal employees out of the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program and into the insurance exchanges established under the Affordable Care Act.”

We have a president who loves to give campaign speeches to adoring crowds, but who doesn't seem to have much interest in governing. That was apparent Wednesday, when Barack Obama delivered the first of several promised "pivot to the economy" speeches at Knox College in Galesburg, Ill., where he spoke eight years ago as a newly elected U.S. senator. The hour-long speech started off with some characteristic self-referencing -- he didn't have gray hair then, he noted, or a motorcade -- and ended with a quotation from Galesburg native Carl Sandburg. But in between there was not much in the...

The alleged motivation behind the deceitfully named “Affordable Care Act” is that there are millions of medically uninsured in the US. Of course the appropriate solution would be to address that need without crashing healthcare for the rest of the population. But somehow that approach was overlooked. What if there was a concept by which we could treat those millions, providing them with better care, shorter wait times, less bureaucracy and an improved doctor/patient relationship, all while reducing Medicaid spending by $1 billion or more per state per year? Not only is this possible, but the type of facility which...

Expecting to get a raise next year? It could be eaten up by your health care bill. In an effort to meet the affordability requirement of the Affordable Care Act, which kicks in next year and requires that workers spend no more than 9.5% of their income on premiums, more employers are turning to insurance plans in which premiums vary based on a person’s salary, rather than having all workers pay a flat rate. That way, employees who make more money pay bigger premiums. Some 12% of companies used salary-based premiums in 2012, up from 10% in 2011, according to...

The vast majority of Americans, 81%, say they are aware of the 2010 Affordable Care Act's (ACA's) requirement that most Americans must carry health insurance or pay a fine. Americans who are currently uninsured -- those most directly affected by this requirement -- are much less likely to be aware of the provision, with 56% saying they know about it and 43% saying they are unaware. The results are based on a June 20-24 Gallup poll, which asked a series of questions on the ACA, the comprehensive healthcare reform bill signed into law by President Obama in 2010. Many of...

"It's a morass of regulations and requirements, and everyone's trying to figure out what their exposure is," says Eric Belcher, president and CEO of Cast & Crew Entertainment Services. Adds Mark Goldstein, CEO of Entertainment Partners, which has held 16 seminars to help studios understand ACA: "It's going to be a very big deal." Determining the exact nature of the new laws has been difficult, given that many ACA terms have yet to be worked out. Hollywood productions, for instance, might find it irksome simply trying to categorize employees as full- or part-time, seasonal or variable, and it's important that...

Presumably due the increasing unpopularity of Obama’s controversial “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act” (PPACA), U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary, Kathleen Sebelius, will be responsible for $54 in funding to support a large contingent of health care officials known as, “navigators,” who will be tasked with assisting citizens with the complexity of the 906 page healthcare regulation act. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Minority Leader of the United States House of Representatives at the time, famously justified rushing the bill through Congress at the time as a necessary procedure, because it was necessary to”pass the bill so that you can find...

The Affordable Care Act is So Unaffordable, Members of Congress and Their Aides are Quitting Because They Can't Afford It! BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Ladies and gentlemen, this is truly outrageous. There's a headline in The Politico today: "Obamacare? We Were Just Leaving..." And when I saw the headline, I thought it was gonna be an article about how Democrats are afraid of losing their seats because of all the skyrocketing costs of health premiums and all the other negatives associated with Obamacare. But that's not what this story is about. What this story's about is congressmen worried about themselves. In...

(CNSNews.com) – House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said on Thursday that health insurance premiums will go up under Obamacare because people who did not buy insurance before, and thus had no premium at all, will now be forced to buy insurance. She also urged people to be “optimistic” about Obamacare. “You just see,” Pelosi said. “I mean be optimistic about it. It is a very, very exciting enterprise.”

The cheapest Obamacare health insurance plan will cost a family $20,000 per year. Americans will be forced to purchase the plan or face the Obama IRS. CNS News reported: In a final regulation issued Wednesday, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) assumed that under Obamacare the cheapest health insurance plan available in 2016 for a family will cost $20,000 for the year. Under Obamacare, Americans will be required to buy health insurance or pay a penalty to the IRS. The IRS’s assumption that the cheapest plan for a family will cost $20,000 per year is found in examples the IRS gives...

It’s not a stretch to suggest that Americans are over medicated. In 2011 doctors across the nation wrote an astounding four billion medical prescriptions, amounting to an average of 13 prescriptions for every man, woman and child in the United States. In the next few weeks the American Psychiatric Associations is releasing their updated fifth version their Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5); the so-called ‘bible’ of psychiatric diagnoses. The new manual promises to take mental illness and the use of prescription drugs to a whole new level. You may not be considered “crazy” or “mentally ill” today,...

Despite his strong opposition to the portion of the new health care law that requires employers, including those with religious affiliations to cover birth control in employee health plans, the Archdiocese headed by Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York has been quietly paying for birth control for more than a decade. According to a report in The New York Times, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York has "reluctantly and indirectly" been paying for health plans that cover birth control and "voluntary pregnancy termination" for thousands of its unionized employees for more than ten years – a position that could...

If Republicans were writing a movie script for next year’s congressional elections, the working title might be “2014: Apocalypse of Obamacare.” The plot: The rollout of President Barack Obama’s health care law turns into such a disaster that enraged voters rebuke him by rewarding the GOP with undisputed control of Congress. But there’s a risk for Republicans if they’re wrong and the Affordable Care Act works reasonably well, particularly in states that have embraced it. Republicans might be seen as obstinately standing in the way of progress. …

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has gone, hat in hand, to health industry officials, asking them to make large financial donations to help with the effort to implement President Obama’s landmark health-care law, two people familiar with the outreach said. Her unusual fundraising push comes after Congress repeatedly rejected the Obama administration’s requests for additional funds to set up the Affordable Care Act, leaving HHS to implement the president’s signature legislative accomplishment on what officials have described as a shoestring budget. Over the past three months, Sebelius has made multiple phone calls to health industry executives, community organizations...

Government: With the passage of health care reform and the ongoing boom in federal hiring, it's becoming increasingly clear that America is now run by a new, privileged class of bureaucrats. For those who remember the old Soviet Union, it was a grim place — at least for average citizens. But not so for those in government. Contrary to the official ideals of equality and a classless society that the ruling communist regime espoused, the USSR created a privileged class of party members inside government — the nomenklatura. This semipermanent bureaucracy earned higher incomes, got better health care, ate better...

I believe we are moving toward two different health systems. Which tier do you think you will be in? In one system, patients will be able to see doctors promptly. They will talk to physicians by phone and email. They will have no difficulty scheduling needed surgery. If they have to go into a hospital, a "hospitalist" (who reports to them and not to the hospital administration) will be there to make sure their interests are looked after. They may even have an independent agency that reviews their medical records, goes with them when they meet with specialists and gives...

MADISON — Federal health bureaucrats know applying for health insurance through the federal health care exchanges won’t be easy. If it were, there wouldn’t be the need for tens of thousands of taxpaye- backed “navigators,” new positions that soon will be created to help steer consumers through the rough waters of Obamacare. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services will provide Wisconsin with $829,300 in navigator grant funds as part of the $54 million HHS set aside nationally for one year’s worth of navigators. There is $1.7 million more available for community health centers through HHS. Republicans on the...

From The White House web site: http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/Facts-Are-Stubborn-Things/ "There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out there, spanning from control of personal finances to end of life care. These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation. Since we can’t keep track of all of them here at the White House, we’re asking for your help. If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov." Yes, you read that correctly. The Orwellian White House wants to silence the opposition...

The woman who ran the Internal Revenue Service's tax-exempt organizations division has been promoted, and now heads the agency's health-care office, ABC News reported. Sarah Hall Ingram was commissioner of the embattled IRS office from 2009 to 2012, roughly the period that the agency is accused of singling out Tea Party and conservative groups for extra scrutiny, based on nothing but their political bent. As a firestorm grows around the IRS, Ms. Ingram quietly left the tax-exempt office and was made director of IRS Affordable Care Act Division...