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A top Obama administration lawyer defending last year's healthcare law ran into skeptical questions Wednesday from three federal judges here, who suggested they may be ready to declare all or part of the law unconstitutional. And in an ominous sign for the administration, the judges opened the arguments by saying they knew of no case in American history where the courts had upheld the government's power to force someone to buy a product. "I can't find any case like this," said Chief Judge Joel Dubina of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. "If we uphold this, are there any limits"...

A prominent Democrat is trying to change the public’s perception of “ObamaCare,” a term many in the party view as derogatory shorthand for the new healthcare reform law. Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) says he’s had enough of Republicans using “ObamaCare” to disparage the healthcare overhaul. The second most senior lawmaker in the House has gone so far as to hand out buttons with the words “I [heart symbol] ObamaCare” as part of his campaign to rehabilitate a moniker he thinks Democrats should be proud of. “The fact that a healthcare bill is named after a first-term president who does...

Democrats will often get irritable when some clingy philistine refers to Obamacare as "socialized medicine." It's simply not a precise phrase for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. In any event, it's not socialized yet, you ignoramuses! Progress doesn't happen overnight. No worries, though, recent signs portend that Obamacare will give us the state-run plan we proles deserve. A new study published in McKinsey Quarterly claims that in 2014, the provisions of Obamacare will induce 3 in 10 employers to "definitely or probably" stop offering health coverage to their employees. And we can only assume the companies have had...

According to testimony at a recent hearing of the House Oversight health care subcommittee, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. Obamacare) doesn’t actually grant the Department of Health and Human Services the authority to exempt employers from the law’s annual minimum health care coverage requirements. The Daily Caller reports: Language granting HHS that power was never in the original law. Instead, through new rules and regulations, HHS gave itself the power last summer using a broad interpretation of certain parts of the law.The annual limit requirement waivers exempt recipients for one year from having to increase the amount...

The Daily Caller has learned the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has hired Melinda Beeuwkes Buntin, an Obama administration official who has been key in implementing parts of Obamacare thus far and a large donor to Democrats and liberal groups, to work in its Health and Human Resources (HHR) Office. As CBO’s deputy assistant director of HHR, Buntin is expected to assist with the Office’s prime directive, providing “objective, nonpartisan, and timely analyses to aid in economic and budgetary decisions on the wide array of programs covered by the federal budget.” It may be difficult for Buntin to provide such “objective”...

The fundamental flaw with ACOs is the Big Brother approach of controlling costs by dictating how physicians may practice. Doctors may decide they'd rather be 'accountable' to their ACO paymasters rather than patients. A product of last year's massive health-care reform law, ACOs represent the latest government attempt to control escalating health costs. Set to take effect next January, they will use financial carrots and sticks to "encourage" doctors and hospitals to merge into large Accountable Care groups, where they'll give care to Medicare patients according to government "cost effectiveness" guidelines. These ACOs would be rewarded for spending less than...

Hear that? It's the escalating cry of American employers and workers trying to hold on to their health care benefits in the age of stifling Obama health insurance mandates: Gangway! Gangway! Save me! Waive me!Obamacare refugees first began beating down the exit doors in October 2010. As I've documented since last fall, waiver-mania started with McDonald's and Jack in the Box; spread to Dish Networks, hair salon chain Regis Corp and resort giant Universal Orlando; took hold among every major Big Labor organization from the AFL-CIO to the CWA to the SEIU; roped in the nationalized health care promoters at...

The Republican Presidential campaign is off to a slow start, but judging by the last week not slow enough. First Mitt Romney defends his ObamaCare prototype in Massachusetts, and now Newt Gingrich has decided to run against House Republicans on Medicare. They must be loving this at the White House

On Friday evening the Department of Health and Human Services posted on its website 221 newly approved waivers from various provisions of ObamaCare, and for some reason, chose to forego issuing a press release celebrating the occasion. That brings the total to 1,372 businesses and 7 entire states that have now received exemptions from the law, while the rest of America bears its full oppressive weight, as many plaintively plea: Where’s MY Waiver? The waiver fiasco presents a significant problem for ObamaCare’s supporters in that while many Americans are still largely unaware of many of its most burdensome provisions, as...

The fate of the elderly, the sick and the disabled depends on the findings of President Obama's proposed panel that will recommend savings for financially doomed Medicare. There is a dirty secret about health care that President Obama hopes will escape the headlines. In his newly released plan to "reform" Medicare as part of overall deficit reduction, Obama has punted actual cost-cutting and instead proposed a panel - the Independent Payment Advisory Board - to recommend savings for the financially doomed program. Translation: Welcome to the world of rationing. The board, which was an original part of Obamacare (remember the...

A three-judge federal appeals panel comprised of two Obama nominees and a Clinton nominee will hear arguments later this morning in two lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of the national health care law. The makeup of the U.S. Fourth Circuit of Appeals panel is crucial, because in lower court rulings so far, Democratic judges have upheld the law while Republican judges have declared it unconstitutional. The judges on the panel will be Obama nominees James A. Wynn, Jr and Andre M. Davis, who will sit on the panel along with Clinton nominee Diana Gribbon Motz.

Supreme Court Rejects Virginia Request for Review of Health Care Law

The Supreme Court on Monday took no action on Virginia’s request that it immediately review the nation’s health-care overhaul law.

Dem lawmaker says Supreme Court may nix individual mandate By Daniel Strauss - 03/23/11 01:53 PM ET On the one-year anniversary of the historic healthcare reform law, at least one Democratic congressman disagrees with his party’s prevalent opinion and believes the U.S. Supreme Court may well strike down the law’s individual mandate as unconstitutional. Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) doesn't see the debate over the Obama administration's healthcare reform law going away anytime soon, and concedes that things may go unfavorably for the law, at least in part, when challenges to it eventually reach the Supreme Court. 
 In a conference...

Karl Rove group sues administration over health reform waiversBy Julian Pecquet - 03/23/11 10:27 AM ET A conservative organization with ties to Karl Rove sued the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) on Wednesday to gain access to documents detailing how the department decides who can get waivers from the healthcare reform law. Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategies (Crossroads GPS) says the suit was prompted by the department's failure to respond to a Jan. 7 request for documents under the Freedom of Information Act. The organization is seeking "any and all memoranda, guidance, directives, instructions and other documents … relating...

President Barack Obama, several Cabinet secretaries and Democratic congressional leaders are due to fan out across the country this week to again defend the health care law that was jammed through Congress on a party-line vote and signed by the president one year ago today. This coordinated PR campaign and excessive eagerness to convince Americans about the law’s benefits betray its serious flaws — namely, higher-than-expected costs, a wave of complex new regulations and a chilling effect on economic growth and job creation. During the health care debate, Americans were promised this “reform” would lower costs. Instead, costs are rising....

Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz is backpedaling on his support for Obama’s health care law. The coffee giant CEO said in a statement that the way the bill is written under the current guidelines, the pressure on small business because of the mandate is “too great.” Martha MacCallum spoke to Douglas Holtz-Eakin, former director of the Congressional Budget Office and president of the American Action Forum about Schultz’s statement and the impact to small business owners.

Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, told CNSNews.com today that the health-care law that President Barack Obama signed last March is a “platform” for building a single-payer health care system in the United States. During a newsmakers program at the National Press Club on Monday, Conyers said that after discussing the issue with Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D.-Ohio) he voted for the health-care law because he saw it as a necessary "platform" for building toward a single-payer health-care system in the United States. Speaking with CNSNews.com after the event at the National Press Club, Conyers...

Patients are demanding doctors' orders for over-the-counter products because of a provision in the health-care overhaul that slipped past nearly everyone's radar. It says people who want a tax break to buy such items with what's known as flexible-spending accounts need to get a prescription first. The result is that Americans are visiting their doctors before making a trip to the drugstore, hoping their physician will help them out by writing the prescription. The new requirements create not only an added burden for doctors, but also new complications for retailers and pharmacies. "It drives up the cost of health care...

Minnesota Republican Michele Bachmann called Friday on President Obama to apologize for his landmark health care overhaul, which she called “legislative fraud of the highest order.” A White House spokesman declined to comment. Her congressional office issued two statements several hours apart, both lamenting that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act – ObamaCare in GOP parlance – locks in some $105 billion in future spending to expand health care coverage, set up insurance exchanges, and pay for the nuts and bolts of the new health care law. Such “advance appropriations,” Bachmann said, make it difficult for current and future...