Free Republic

Obamacare website looks "like nobody tested it," programmer says (CBS News) Healthcare.gov launched more than a week ago, and while millions of Americans have signed into the site, not many have been able to actually sign up for insurance because of glitches with the website. Administration officials implementing the new health care law will be on the hot seat Wednesday as the House Oversight Committee hopes to find out what the problems were. Committee Chairman Darrell Issa told CBS News' Jan Crawford that he plans to ask how the mess surrounding the website could even happen. No one knows how...

New ideas that appeal to old principles - the "Tea Party" compares their motivations are often those of the "Boston Tea Party". Too much government, too little say - but even there the similarities stop.For Obama, it will seriously: When to 17 October enters no agreement in budget dispute, the United States is insolvent. Since 1 October, there is no approved budget, the government of the United States is largely closed. The reason: the U.S. has reached its debt ceiling, but can not set this higher. The culprit is a small group with a big effect: The "Tea Party". This...

Don’t want to become a lifelong statistic of the Democrat Party’s Affordable Care Act? The Citizen’s Council for Health Freedom (CCHF) has created an ObamaCare Exchange Opt-Out form which can be emailed directly to the federal Healthcare.gov website. “I declare that I am opting out of any and all participation in the national Obamacare Exchange system.” And the stated reasons should cause every American to question both the legitimacy of the Affordable Care Act and the true intent of its authors. It begins with the question of privacy: “Without my consent, the Exchange will...

One of the big Democrat talking points about ObamaCare is to bleat that it's "constitutional," blessed by the Supreme Court, and is the "settled law of the land." They never explain how this is supposed to intimidate the nominally free people of the Republican from changing or repealing it - presumably it is meant to be taken as the first law in history that must be obeyed without question, forever, more powerful and permanent than the Constitution itself. But it's not true anyway. Andrew McCarthy at National Review reminds us that, contrary to Democrat rhetoric, ObamaCare was not held constitutional...

HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has been President Barack Obama’s main organizer and cheerleader for Obamacare since its inception. But you know the government-run health care plan is bad when the Secretary of the Health and Human Services Department can’t get anyone from her own state to sign up for it. Today, the office of Congressman Tim Huelskamp revealed that according to one of the insurance providers in Kansas, none of the 356,000 uninsured Kansans successfully signed up for insurance on the much-hyped ObamaCare exchanges the first day. Huelskamp has had his own troubles signing up in the exchanges. The Congressman...

Americans know instinctively that when liberals start talking about deficit reduction that’s it’s just a case of the fantods, as Huckleberry Finn would say. And say what you will about old Huck, but he knew a couple of frauds when he saw them. "Hain't we got all the fools in town on our side?," said Huck Finn's fraudulent king in the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. "And ain't that a big enough majority in any town?" It certainly is enough in DC, but the rest of the US isn't so gullible. No matter what liberal “Wonks” like Ezra Klein say about...

On this day, I make the pledge that when my employer drops my health insurance, I will not join the exchange. When the IRS fines me, I will not pay that fine! When that results in the IRS issuing a warrant for that fine, I will not comply! When they knock on my door to enforce the warrant, I will not answer! Eventually, they will kick in my door to enforce the warrant and at that time many will pay a heavy price! The "tolerant and compassionate left" must be willing to shoot me dead to enforce their utopian dreams!...

The Republicans are colluding with the Democrats to “delay” Obamacare until January 2015 and thereby give the Obama regime a chance to smooth out the wrinkles so it “works right”. The delay will also keep the issue from hurting the rats too much during the coming year's 2014 mid-term election campaign. Do some people actually believe that a "delay" is in any way a "win" for Republicans? In return for giving the rats another year-plus to deepen the roots of their communist healthcare and get it working smoother, the Republicans will cave on the debt ceiling. What a deal. Wow,...

<p>The Senate easily overcame Wednesday’s first hurdle to a fizzling GOP strategy to strip funding for President Obama’s healthcare law in exchange for keeping the government running.</p> <p>Top Republicans are now for a new — more modest — way to chip away at the Affordable Care Act.</p>

Dan Joseph went to the Congressional Black Caucus Annual Legislative Conference to find out why people don’t like ObamaCare. Surprisingly, it isn’t because ObamaCare is predictably causing the cost of healthcare to shoot through the stratosphere: Only racism, ignorance, greed, and a liberal media that is not liberal enough could explain the ingratitude of the American people in the face of such a generous gift from our power-mad moonbat rulers as ObamaCare. Unless it’s because of this:

WASHINGTON (CBSDC/AP) — Sen. Ted Cruz began a filibuster Tuesday with the intent of defunding the Affordable Care Act, known also as Obamacare. The Texas Republican noted while on the Senate floor, “I intend to speak about defunding ObamaCare until I am unable to stand.” Cruz additionally asserted that Democrats are not listening to their constituents in regards to the health care law, which is set to take effect Oct. 1. “I rise today in opposition to ObamaCare in an effort to speak for 26 million Texans and 300 million Americans,” Cruz asserted. “It is time quite frankly to make...

When U.S. Rep. Cory Gardner (R-Col.) got the word that he could opt out of Obamacare or keep his current health-care plan — which you might be surprised to learn is a private plan — he took a road some might say is less traveled…and then hit a big pileup:(Credit: Twitter via Twitchy) He breaks it down a bit more:(Credit: Twitter via Twitchy) Instead of heading down a woe-is-me path, Gardner harnessed his unfortunate news to get a conversation going about what’s happening to people’s health-care plans in the wake of

Republican Sen. Rand Paul says President Barack Obama’s health care law probably can't be defeated or gotten rid of. And he’s suggesting there is little he and other congressional Republicans can do to stop the law from taking effect. …

House Republicans survived a key test vote Thursday on their plan to keep the government running while trying to halt the health care law, defying a veto threat from President Obama and inching closer to a shutdown showdown with Senate Democrats. Top Republicans say their party’s strategy is unlikely to succeed and not worth shutting down the government, but some rank-and-file lawmakers said they have to draw a line now and use the leverage of the spending bill to end the president’s signature achievement.

Obamacare is before the U.S. Supreme Court again. On Thursday, Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) lawyers filed the first viable petition for Supreme Court review involving Kathleen Sebelius’ HHS Mandate, which requires employers to provide abortion-related insurance coverage, even if those employers have a religious objection to abortion. Section 1001 of the Affordable Care Act (ACA, or Obamacare) requires all large employers to offer “preventive services” to their employees or face enormous financial penalties. With President Obama’s approval, Sebelius issued a regulation that defined preventive services to include access to birth control, including those that cause abortions after conception. The regulation...

Fast food restaurant owners, reportedly including McDonald’s and Dunkin’ Donuts, are lobbying Congress for Obamacare changes apparently because when it comes to the Affordable Care Act, they’re not lovin’ it. The industry wants the Obamacare-installed definition of full-time work to be increased from 30 hours to 40. A website called 40hoursisfulltime.com has been launched to support to effort. The Affordable Care Act requires large employers to provide health insurance coverage to every full-time worker, although the employer mandate has been postponed for one year. Employers around the country — particularly but not limited to the restaurant industry — are retrenching...

If you’re between the ages of 18 and 34, the Obama administration is gearing up to hit you with a hard sell like you’ve never seen before. Lady Gaga, Jennifer Hudson, Amy Poehler and other celebrities are pressing you to sign up for insurance under the Affordable Care Act. Health Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is handing out hundreds of millions in grants to get people to buy, and pressing companies to spend their own money too. It has to be a hard sell, because it’s a bad deal for you: The system needs you to pay through the nose to make...

International Business Machines Corp. plans to move about 110,000 retirees off its company-sponsored health plan and instead give them a payment to buy coverage on a health-insurance exchange, in a sign that even big, well-capitalized employers aren't likely to keep providing the once-common benefits as medical costs continue to rise. The move, which will affect all IBM retirees once they become eligible for Medicare, will relieve the technology company of the responsibility of managing retirement health-care benefits. IBM said the growing cost of care makes its current plan unsustainable without big premium increases. IBM's shift is an indication that health-insurance...

UVa eliminates health insurance for working spouses of employees Coverage will end Jan. 1 in a move that officials hope will save “millions of dollars.” by DEREK QUIZON | The (Charlottesville) Daily Progress Thursday, August 22, 2013 CHARLOTTESVILLE — The University of Virginia will no longer provide insurance coverage to the working spouses of its employees, a move university officials hope will save “millions of dollars.” Starting Jan. 1, employee spouses who have health insurance coverage under their employers cannot get coverage under UVa’s plan. If the spouse is covered under a plan defined by the Affordable Care Act as...

“While it may seem that this is still a political debate, the debate is really over,” Sebelius said, reminding the audience that the law was passed by Congress, signed into law, ruled constitutional by the Supreme Court, and President Obama was re-elected “overwhelmingly.”