Free Republic

So eager were congressional Democrats to sign Barack Obama’s healthcare servitude plan into law that nary a one recognized the fact that passage would effectively end their top of the line, taxpayer funded health insurance coverage. And this would be just one of the unpleasant Affordable Care Act realities to take the legislation’s authors by surprise. For they would also lose some $10,000 in yearly premium assistance which had for decades been part of the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP). “In effect, the Affordable Care Act gave members of Congress a $10,000 pay cut.” But that Washington lawmakers should...

Health-care experts call it D.C. insiderism at its worst. The rumors began trickling in about a week before the scheduled vote on April 23: Republican leadership was quietly pushing senators to pull support for subpoenaing Congress’s fraudulent application to the District of Columbia’s health exchange — the document that facilitated Congress’s “exemption” from Obamacare by allowing lawmakers and staffers to keep their employer subsidies. The application said Congress employed just 45 people. Names were faked; one employee was listed as “First Last,” another simply as “Congress.” To Small Business Committee chairman David Vitter, who has fought for years against the...

Fraud Alert: Judicial Watch Files Taxpayer Lawsuit to Stop Congress from Participating in D.C.’s Small Business Exchange Both houses of Congress were not exactly honest on the applications they filed with the District of Columbia’s Health Benefit Exchange Authority. In fact, the signatories who put their names to the applications seemed to make little pretense of providing truthful information. Under D.C. law, only those small businesses that have 50 or fewer employees can participate in the Small Business Exchange. Guess how many people are employed by Congress? And, guess how many employees Congress claims to have? Congress employs upwards of...

<p>President Obama has enrolled in the federal health-care insurance exchanges, selecting a bronze-tiered insurance plan on the D.C. marketplace, the White House announced Monday.</p> <p>In advance of Monday’s key enrollment deadline, Obama signed up for coverage over the weekend during the start of his holiday vacation here in Hawaii in what a White House official described as a “symbolic” act to promote the Affordable Care Act, his signature legislative achievement.</p>

Multiple individual plans available on the D.C. health-insurance exchange specifically cover elective abortion but not hearing aids, routine foot-care, and routine eye-care. One such plan, Healthy Blue PPO $1500, has a summary on the D.C. exchange’s website titled “Excluded Services & Other Covered Services.” It says enrollees can receive coverage for abortions performed for non-medical reasons, but not for a number of other services that could seem medically necessary. The plan also excludes coverage for some other procedures, including cosmetic surgery, bariatric surgery, and infertility treatment. Per Anna Higgins of the Family Research Council, in D.C. Aetna plans and multi-state...

If you are a health policy reporter for the Washington Post and take upon yourself the role of cheerleader for Obamacare, the task can be quite challenging. Therefore one must admire the effort that Sarah Kliff displays into putting a positive spin on this bit of pathetically sad news: The District of Columbia's insurance marketplace has enrolled exactly five people in health plans, according to documents released by the Senate Finance Committee on Friday.

Earlier this week we learned Delaware has spent $4 million to enroll four people in Obamacare. That was nothing. New numbers from four different healthcare providers show Washington D.C. has spent $133,573,928 to enroll a grand total of five people in Obamacare. That's $26,714,785.60 per Obamacare enrollee. CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield: two enrollees from Oct. 1, 2013, through Oct. 30, 2013. Kaiser Permanente: three enrollees from Oct. 1, 2013, through Oct. 31, 2013. UnitedHealthcare: no enrollment data from the exchange as of Nov. 4, 2013. Aetna: no enrollment data as of Oct. 24, 2013. American's for Tax Reform breaks down taxpayer...