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WASHINGTON (AP) — Not only do more Americans have health insurance, but the number struggling with medical costs has dropped since President Barack Obama’s health care law expanded coverage, according to a study released Thursday. The Commonwealth Fund’s biennial health insurance survey found that the share of U.S. adults who did not get needed care because of cost dropped from 43 percent in 2012 to 36 percent last year, as the health care law’s main coverage expansion went into full swing. The proportion of people who got treatment but had problems paying their bills also dropped, from 41 percent in...

Dan from Squirrel Hill's Blog Here are 300 reasons why Democrats and unions that support Obamacare want exemptions for themselves By Dan from Squirrel HillPosted on September 24, 2013. Updated on October 3, 2014.As the author of this blog post, I place it into the public domain. Anyone may freely copy it in any part or in its entirely, without asking my permission, and without paying any money. I do ask you please cite a link to http://danfromsquirrelhill.wordpress.com/2013/09/24/obamacare-59/I ask you to please show this list to as many people as possible. Sunshine really is the best disinfectant. I can’t stop Obama...

Are you ready for Round Two? In a little more than a month, the federal Health Insurance Marketplace will swing open its virtual doors and let the masses in. Hopefully, things will go a little smoother than last year. I love Obamacare, but last year's open enrollment process was a mess. Personally, it only took me four applications, three online profiles and two attempts to verify my income before it was all said and done. However, I had it good. I have a friend who lost her employer-sponsored coverage midway through the year and is currently in health insurance hell:...

Earlier this year, supporters of the federal healthcare law known as ObamaCare enthusiastically celebrated reaching its signup goal, with reported enrollment topping eight million Americans. In the months since, however, there has been a noticeable dearth of updates regarding the relative success of the law since its famously rocky implementation. If a recent Investor’s Business Daily report is any indication, there might be good reason for the Obama administration’s silence. **SNIP** Another barometer of public sentiment comes from enrollment numbers reported by individual states. Washington, for example, is the only state that waited until enrollees had paid their first month’s...

Dan from Squirrel Hill's Blog Here are 296 reasons why hypocrite politicians and unions that support Obamacare want exemptions for themselves By Dan from Squirrel HillPosted on September 24, 2013. Updated on July 27, 2014.As the author of this blog post, I place it into the public domain. Anyone may freely copy it in any part or in its entirely, without asking my permission, and without paying any money. I do ask you please cite a link to http://danfromsquirrelhill.wordpress.com/2013/09/24/obamacare-59/I ask you to please show this list to as many people as possible. Sunshine really is the best disinfectant. I can’t stop...

Nearly twice as many people are expected to drop out of Colorado’s state-run health care exchange in the coming years than originally projected, leading to nearly $2 million lost in associated fees for the financially embattled program over the next two years. Connect for Health Colorado originally projected that 13 percent of enrollees will either leave the exchange in fiscal 2015 or fail to pay their bills, but now they project the figure to be as high as 24 percent, according to the Denver Post. If that’s the case, the exchange will lose out on about $1 million in fees...

More than one-fifth of the popu-lation of the United States was receiving Medicaid benefits before the passage of The Affordable Care Act (ACA). The ACA expanded eligibility to adults under the age of 65 who have income up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level. As originally written, the ACA relied on two provisions intended to entice and prod states to expand their Medicaid programs. So far, about half of the states have expanded their programs. The carrot enticing states to expand their programs is the generous federal participation. This year, the federal government will cover 100% of the...

WASHINGTON — One of the latest Obamacare pitches to get young adults to sign up for health insurance starts out with a mother's kitchen note reminding her grown son to enroll. "Mom, you know I can't afford it," the young black man protests, as he sits down at a kitchen table next to a bespectacled woman with a laptop computer linked to the U.S. federal enrollment website, HealthCare.gov. "But for the first time you can," she replies reassuringly. "You go to the HealthCare.gov website, compare quality plans and you could get help paying for it."

Just cause they've signed up for Obamacare doesn't mean they're covered. Around one in five people who picked health insurance policies on the state and federal exchanges last year haven't paid their first month's premiums, according to insurers polled by CNNMoney. These folks will likely see their policy selection canceled and they'll be left uninsured. Some 2.1 million people signed up for a plan in time for their coverage to start January 1, according to the Obama administration. But with the payment deadlines stretching until January 31 at the latest, anywhere between 12% and 30% of those folks still haven't...

Last week the liberal documentary-maker Michael Moore prompted indigestion across the progressive wonk community by pronouncing Obamacare “awful.” In a New York Times op-ed, he bemoaned the way the president’s law preserved the health insurance industry rather than replacing it with a Medicare-for-all style single-payer system. The good news, Moore conceded, is that the previously uninsured (and often previously uninsurable) can get finally get coverage. The bad news is that their coverage will often be lousy and pose an enormous financial burden. He ended by calling for activists to lean on state politicians in an effort to beef the law...

**SNIP** “You could get a bad plan or incorrect plan, a plan other than the plan you picked, a plan where the premium was wrong,” said Tim Jost, a professor of law at Washington and Lee University. “You could end up with a plan that didn’t cover all the members of your family.” The Obama administration has repeatedly refused to say how many problems related to 834s still exist. But according to Bob Laszewski, the 834s problem is endemic of a broken backend at the federal exchange. The administration may have fixed many of the problems that the public encounters...

Let’s recap: If you like your insurance policy, you can keep it. No, wait. If you liked your policy, it was probably worthless anyway. Scratch that. If your junk policy was canceled and you still want it, you can keep it. Er, get it back. Whatever. **SNIP** The only prohibition is that the president not fail to execute the law owing to his opposition to a policy. Obviously, this is not the case here. As a political matter, it is also obvious that Obama is merely trying to right his own sinking ship, especially after Bill Clinton’s undoubtedly heartfelt advice...

'Substandard" and "cut-rate" is what President Obama calls the health plans that millions of Americans have lost, even though they wanted to keep them. Backpedaling on his promise that "if you like your plan, you can keep your plan," Obama is now telling Americans another whopper: The insurance they can get on ObamaCare exchanges is a better deal. Don't believe him.

Fresh questions about whether the White House deceived Americans with claims they could bypass the broken HealthCare.gov website by using the phone or mailing in an application provoked an exasperated response Monday from White House press secretary Jay Carney. "I give up," Carney told ABC News reporter Jonathan Karl, accusing the White House reporter of speaking "in tones of dramatic revelation" to inflate a story. The exchange centered around documents released by House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) on Monday. Meeting notes from the administration "war room" handling the rollout of ObamaCare showed that consumers who called the ObamaCare...

**SNIP** CNN reports that insurers had nothing to do with it in at least three states, where the states themselves forced the cancellations in order to comply with ObamaCare: President Obama may have promised Americans that they can keep their insurance if they like it, but that’s not the case in at least three states where insurance companies are required to discontinue plans that don’t meet Obamacare’s new coverage standards. Virginia, Kentucky and Idaho have told insurance companies that they must scrap insurance plans that don’t meet the minimum coverage requirements laid out in the Affordable Care Act. Some states...

The president said Wednesday that the notices sent to consumers suggest that they're losing their coverage "somehow because of the Affordable Care Act." He argued, however, that consumers only lost coverage if insurers altered those policies at all after the law took effect. In that case, Mr. Obama said, insurers had to "replace them with quality, comprehensive coverage." "Today that promise means that every plan in the marketplace covers a core set of minimum requirements," he said. Insurers "can't use allergies or pregnancy... or the fact that you're a woman to charge you more." He advised the public, "If you're...

"All we've been hearing the last three years is if you like your policy you can keep it. ... I'm infuriated because I was lied to," one woman told the Los Angeles Times, as part of a story on how some middle-class Californians have been stunned to learn the real costs of Obamacare. And that lie looks like the biggest lie about domestic policy ever uttered by a U.S. president. The most famous presidential lies have to do with misconduct (Richard Nixon's "I am not a crook" or Bill Clinton's "I did not have sexual relations") or war. Woodrow...

Dan from Squirrel Hill's Blog Obama supporters will go hysterical over this well sourced list of 384 examples of his lying, lawbreaking, corruption, cronyism, etc. By Dan from Squirrel HillPosted on August 15, 2013. Updated on October 24, 2013.As the author of this blog post, I place it into the public domain. Anyone may freely copy it in any part or in its entirely, without asking my permission, and without paying any money. I do ask you please cite a link to http://danfromsquirrelhill.wordpress.com/2013/08/15/obama-252/I ask you to please show this list to as many people as possible – and especially, to please...

**SNIP** "Can we just see if it works?" Amine Ashkar pleads as he tries to sign up for health insurance at the Community Clinic, Inc. in Silver Spring, Md. on Wednesday afternoon. "We can try," answers Martha Lopez, a former insurance agent who's helping people enroll. The screen gets stuck as she tries to set up an account for Ashkar, a 32-year-old bus driver who's looking for a better deal on his insurance. Lopez and her team of fellow navigators employed through the nonprofit clinic have been unable to complete a single enrollment online. "Why don't we try next week?"...

Obamacare wins! Now, let’s talk about that website. **SNIP** They also have to find enough success stories — people who have gotten their health coverage and are pleased by the experience — to counteract the comments Republicans are circulating from people who are complaining that the premiums are too high. There are people who are successfully signing up, on the federal website as well as state-run marketplaces like the one in Minnesota. But they haven’t been able to overshadow the stories of people who can’t even log in. “Since at the end of the day, Obamacare is a marathon and...