Free Republic

For ordinary consumers, the answer varies. A lot of Americans who never had insurance before have indeed been able to find health coverage AND health care, (they're two different things, after all). But a lot of Americas have lost their previous plans, and now they're having trouble finding actual doctors to treat them even under their more expensive coverage. Whether the ACA has actually helped more citizens than it's hurt has turned into a partisan war of statistics. That war will be waged for years to come. While I believe the new law will ultimately hurt more people than it...

Senate lawmakers on Wednesday approved a $10 million financial bailout for Delaware’s three gambling casinos. The Senate voted 14-5 to pass legislation to help the casinos, which say they are struggling with increased competition from neighboring states and have to share too much of their gambling revenue with the state. [...] The change would take effect in July 2015, at an estimated cost to the state of about $10 million annually. To help the casinos until then, lawmakers cobbled together a similar amount of taxpayer money, mostly from unspent funds that are supposed to be used for economic development projects....

“All of the investment banks, up in New York and D.C., they should have gone to jail.”That isn’t a quote from an Occupy Wall Street protester or Senator Elizabeth Warren. That’s a common campaign slogan repeated by Dave Brat, the Virginia college professor who scored one of the biggest political upsets in over a century by defeating Majority Leader Eric Cantor in the Republican primary last night.The national media is buzzing about Brat’s victory, but for all of the wrong reasons.Did the Tea Party swoop in and help Brat, as many in the Democratic Party are suggesting? Actually, the Wall Street...

The nation’s $1.2 trillion — and growing — student debt is reshaping Americans’ economic lives in far-reaching ways, from slowing rates of homeownership to retirement security to choice of specialty for medical students. The consequences of that financial burden on both borrowers and the U.S. economy were the focus of a Senate Budget Committee hearing Wednesday chaired by Sen. Patty Murray. In her opening statement, Murray noted that nearly one-third of young households now carry student debts. Each college graduate owes an average of $30,000. Such a “crushing” load, Murray said, could dog students through their entire financial lives. “A...

The recalls are multiplying, and the bailout stigma remains. You may have noticed that General Motors recalled a lot of vehicles lately. You may not have noticed just how many separate recalls the company announced, 30 since January 1, or just how many vehicles are being recalled — 13.79 million vehicles in the U.S. For perspective, consider that GM sold roughly 2.6 million vehicles in 2012. ... consumer-data research indicates that pickup-truck buyers skew Republican by a margin five to one, according to a 2008 survey. Whether GM wants to admit it or not, the “Government Motors” label did serious...

Today in the Rose Garden, President Obama announced that he’s going to keep a little under 10,000 troops in Afghanistan through 2014, half that number by the end of 2015, and will have all those forces out by the end of 2016. Putting aside the fact that this is the lowest number military advisors estimated was necessary to maintain training and some counterterrorism capability in country over not just one year but several, the decision to halve and then zero out those forces by 2016 is a reminder not only of how seriously unserious this president on strategic matters can...

TEHRAN, Iran – A billionaire businessman at the heart of a $2.6 billion state bank scam, the largest fraud case since the country's 1979 Islamic Revolution, was executed Saturday, state television reported. Authorities put Mahafarid Amir Khosravi, also known as Amir Mansour Aria, to death at Evin prison, just north of the capital, Tehran, the station reported. The report said the execution came after Iran's Supreme Court upheld his death sentence. Khosravi's lawyer, Gholam Ali Riahi, was quoted by news website khabaronline.ir as saying that his client was put to death without any notice.

The Cadillac ELR has been on sale for just five months, but General Motors is now offering dealers a $5,000 incentive to offer test drives in the Chevrolet Volt-based plug-in hybrid. To receive the incentive, dealers have until June 2 to designate ELRs in their current inventory as test vehicles, after which each test car has to log a minimum of 750 test-drive miles. The incentives could be because 1,700 ELR coupes remained unsold in dealer inventories at the end of April. At current sales rates, that’s a 725-day supply, which is almost exactly two years’ worth of cars.

An event held at Washington D.C’s Brookings Institute saw FCA CEO Sergio Marchionne and former National Economic Council head Larry Summers discuss the auto bailout on its five-year anniversary. As always, Marchionne had some colorful commentary, with a one interesting nugget about Fiat. According to Christina Rogers of the Wall Street Journal, Marchionne claimed that the Fiat 500 was only imported to the United States due to the government’s hand, with Marchionne stating “It was a condition assigned to the [bailout] deal” This has previously never been stated in any bailout related discussion – only the Dodge Dart and its...

The teleprompter is still hot from all the Obama spit unleashed in his latest sincerely passionate denial that his administration knew anything, anything at all, about what is merely the latest scandal to rock the president, this time surrounding the Veterans Affairs fiasco, and already a brand new scandal is taking shape, this one Obama however will not be able to sweep as easily under the rug. The LA Times reports that the "Obama administration has quietly adjusted key provisions of its signature healthcare law to potentially make billions of additional taxpayer dollars available to the insurance industry if...

It's easy: Let the banks fail and give the money to American taxpayers instead Are you still angry that Washington forced Main Street to bail out Wall Street during the Great Recession? Timothy Geithner can live with that. In his new book, Stress Test: Reflections on Financial Crises, the former Obama Treasury secretary insists government needed to stop the panic by whatever means necessary. During a five-alarm inferno, the thinking goes, it's smarter to focus on extinguishing the blaze than punishing the arsonists. And to Geithner, dissenters are misguided purveyors of "Old Testament vengeance" and "moral hazard fundamentalists." Geithner is...

Obamacare's defenders have responded to charges that the law creates a system of bailouts for health insurers by arguing that the bailouts may not actually be bailouts. After all, the law's risk corridors create a system of symmetrical payments in which insurers that spend somewhat more than expected on health claims get paid by the administration, but those spending somewhat less than expected must pay in. In theory, it all balances out, with some insurers paying in and others getting paid. And it's even possible that, overall, insurers will pay in more than they are paid. Possible, yes, but far...

The EU’s institutions “bullied” Ireland into a bailout, a senior former adviser to the European Commission’s president said on Wednesday (7 May). In an interview with Irish network RTE, Phillipe Legrain accused the Commission and the Frankfurt-based European Central Bank (ECB) of having sided with France and Germany in insisting that Irish taxpayers were left solely responsible for the €64 billion debt burden held by its banks, a move he described as “unjust and unbearable”. […] “I think the bullying came from Germany because German banks were exposed a lot to Ireland, and from the European Commission which aligned itself...

Notwithstanding some mixed poll results, outside of Detroit most Michigan voters probably regard a proposed partial state bailout for the city as unfair, given they played no role in the fiscal malpractice that landed the city in federal bankruptcy court. Also, other local officials may be nervous that details in the proposal potentially giving a bigger financial "haircut" to the city's lenders will mean higher borrowing costs for their own communities' infrastructure needs in the future. Reflecting these concerns, it is likely most out-state legislators — especially Republicans — are less than eager to cast a roll call vote on...

The U.S. government lost $11.2 billion on its bailout of General Motors Co, more than the $10.3 billion the Treasury Department estimated when it sold its remaining GM shares in December, according to a government report released on Wednesday. The $11.2 billion loss includes a write-off in March of the government's remaining $826 million investment in "old" GM, the quarterly report by a Treasury watchdog said.

Treasury Secretary Jack Lew will visit bankrupt Detroit this week to highlight the Obama administration's "continued commitment to the city's revitalization and explore ways to promote job creation and economic growth," according to an advisory his department released on Monday. --snip-- "I have urged President Obama to examine all options for executive action to help the city of Detroit overcome its fiscal challenges, and I am pleased that he is seeking to take positive action," said Representative John Conyers, a Democrat from Michigan. "I will be discussing further legislative options with my colleagues in Congress."

Washington - Even when Sylvia Mathews Burwell was in her early 30s, friends speculated that she might return to her native Hinton, W.Va., and run for governor someday. After all, she had been a Rhodes scholar, and her mother — who later became mayor of Hinton, pop. 2,600 — had driven her daughter’s interest in politics. So far that has not happened, but plenty of other things under two presidents have. On Friday, President Obama is to nominate Ms. Burwell, currently director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, to take over one of the largest and most...

Enrollment for the president's health care law has grown to 7.5 million Americans, the Obama administration announced Thursday, handing President Barack Obama and the Democrats bigger coverage numbers to tout in the face of election-year attacks. Sebelius said she expects the figure to continue to grow. The original number already exceeded expectations, a surprise success after a disastrous roll-out and welcome news for Democrats who've been forced to defend their support for the unpopular law derided by critics as "Obamacare." Democratic senators took turns Thursday praising the robust sign-up numbers.

Eric Cantor ‏@GOPLeader 1h I thank Secretary Sebelius for her service. She had an impossible task: nobody can make Obamacare work.

Put another way, Kathleen Sebelius has resigned and “Senior Administration Officials” are telling the media it is because of healthcare.gov. You do not have a celebration event last week to celebrate 7 million sign ups and have Sebelius there to get credit then this week throw her under the bus because of a screw up that happened last October. They have been standing with her since last October. They stood with her when the President’s polling was nosediving and throwing her under the bus could have stopped the bleeding. They are doing so now. Sebelius actually resigned last week and...