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Michael Chadwick is all for Obamacare insurance - up to a point. The 32-year old Manhattan realtor was uninsured in his late twenties, and he was optimistic when he initially signed up for coverage three years ago. Then, his income changed. "I couldn't keep up with the payments, so I had no health insurance for the remainder of 2014," Chadwick explained to CNBC. He had a better year in 2015, and he's hopeful he'll be able to maintain his health coverage again this year. Still, he expressed frustration with the law's mechanics. "The Affordable Healthcare Act (ACA) doesn't take into...

Another year gone. Another year of the Affordable Care Act's opponents moving further from - not closer to - getting their way on health care. How so? This week's omnibus deal, which was approved Friday by the U.S. House and Senate, provided a clear view once again of the uphill climb Republicans face in repealing Obamacare. The omnibus negotiations never included talk of repeal, because that's a non-starter among Democrats and the White House. Instead, Republicans were left to chip away at the health law they hate. They did so by postponing two important Obamacare taxes - the Cadillac tax...

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Troubling signs about the Affordable Care Act and the state of health care in the U.S. have bubbled up in the last few weeks. The administration's Obamacare enrollment projections for the coming year are down, the projected cost of premiums and out of pocket costs are up, nearly half of the insurance co-ops associated with the program are going out of business, and UnitedHealth Group, the nation's largest health insurer, said it may withdraw from the government marketplaces in 2017. Now comes a new survey by Gallup showing growing discontent with Obamacare and the U.S. health-care industry more generally after...

**SNIP** If profiteering from the rigged system is bad, how much worse is it that the government itself reported twice since July that basic information to determine enrollment and subsidy eligibility was not verified by the federal Health Insurance Marketplace or insurance exchanges examined in California and Kentucky? To test the system, investigators submitted 10 fictitious applications. All 10 were approved. One study concluded the government "could not verify" $2.8 billion in financial assistance payments through April 2014. Central planners never can include enough protections and contingencies to thwart self-interested human behavior. Neither can Washington foresee how markets will behave...

<p>More than 700,000 Obamacare customers claimed tax credits for buying health care but didn’t bother to file their taxes, potentially jilting the government out of $2 billion in bogus payments, the Senate’s senior lawmaker said Monday.</p> <p>Sen. Orrin G. Hatch, chairman of the Finance Committee and president pro tempore of the Senate, demanded the inspector general investigate the recalcitrant taxpayers and look at the IRS‘ own systems for trying to track down tax cheats when it comes to Obamacare.</p>

PROVIDENCE, Rhode Island — The new director of Rhode Island's health insurance exchange is making a case for keeping the state-run marketplace, as some lawmakers are calling for its demise. HealthSource RI has served as a model among the state-run marketplaces. Most other states use the federal exchange. Director Anya Rader Wallack says Rhode Island can use the state exchange as a tool to innovate and control health care costs in ways it couldn't if it switched. Gov. Gina Raimondo supports keeping the program in Rhode Island. But some say it isn't worth it. A group of lawmakers, led by...

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.