Free Republic

Lead story on Drudge The uniparty at work!

Here's more fallout from the health care law: Until now, customers could walk into an insurance office or go online to buy standard health care coverage any time of year. Not anymore. Many people who didn't sign up during the government's open enrollment period that ended Monday will soon find it difficult or impossible to get insured this year, even if they go directly to a private company and money is no object. For some it's already too late. With limited exceptions, insurers are refusing to sell to individuals after the enrollment period for HealthCare.gov and the state marketplaces. They...

Massachusetts Health Connector officials acknowledged on Thursday that the state’s health exchange website may not be fully functional by June – the date by which approximately 200,000 state-subsidized health insurance plans will expire. All of those individuals will have to move to new plans, which are approved under the guidelines of the Affordable Care Act, by June 30. But they may or may not be able to use the state website to enroll in those plans. “We’re about to hit March. June 30 is not very far away,” Sarah Iselin, a special assistant to Gov. Deval Patrick overseeing fixes to...

Patients who have had a ‘fair innings’ could be denied life-saving drugs under proposed health reforms. The plans would mean experts taking into account whether there is a ‘wider societal benefit’ to giving a patient crucial medicines. The NHS rationing body, Nice, fears the Department of Health proposals could see younger people deemed a higher priority for drug treatments because they have more years ahead of them – potentially contributing more to the economy – than the elderly. Doctors, MPs and campaigners last night condemned the plans as ‘barking mad’. The move will also fuel fears that the elderly are...

Doctors are leaving private practice to become employees of hospitals, according to this story in the New York Times. The decline in private practice physicians actually began a few years ago when changes to Medicare forced many physicians who practiced individually or in small group offices to make the move to a salaried position in a hospital.But there is no doubt that Obamacare has exacerbated the problem. The onerous recordkeeping is one big reason why private practice physicians are becoming extinct. Private physicians can’t afford the extra employees to meet the demands of Obamacare paperwork.Dr, Paul Hsieh explained in a...

(CNSNews.com) - President Obama told House Democrats on Friday that the health care law they passed without a single Republican vote in 2010 will prove itself -- five or ten years from now. "And I just want to say, thank you for all of you hanging in there tough on an issue that I think 10 years from now, five years from now, we're going to look back and say this was a monumental achievement that could not have happened had it not been for this caucus." House Democrats face midterm elections, not in five or ten years, but in...

The head of the state’s beleaguered health insurance marketplace, which was once a national model, broke down in tears Thursday, as she described how demoralizing it has been for her staff to struggle with a broken website that has left an unknown number of people without coverage.

This was brutal. During a Friday Google+ Q&A session broadcast on YouTube, President Barack Obama was confronted by a Kentucky mother who says she lost her health care plan and her son’s medical specialist due to Obamacare. “I’m probably not the only one whose had really a panicked experience lately trying to figure out if my 10-year-old son can continue with his specialist or not. I know that I can’t keep my plan — which I liked — but as I’m trying to figure out what to do going forward, I’ve spent weeks with days on the phone getting confidently...

Dear Mr. Bertolini, With a deep sense of sadness, I must inform you that I will no longer serve as a physician for Aetna patients under the terms of our contractual agreement, which you most recently unilaterally changed. I have been privileged and honored to care for thousands of patients covered by Aetna policies since the 1990’s. I have devoted my life to providing the very best, state-of-the-art care to these individuals. We have formed a patient-doctor relationship, which I hope many will chose to continue in spite of my severing ties with Aetna. You see, health insurance has evolved...

"...Increasingly, experts in health insurance are becoming concerned that many of these first-time buyers will be in for a shock when they get medical care next year and discover they're on the hook for most of the initial cost.... ...Hospitals are worried that those who rack up uncovered medical bills next year won't be able to pay them, perpetuating one of the problems the new health care system is supposed to solve..... ..."The real big surprise was how much out-of-pocket would be required for our family," said David Winebrenner, 46, a financial adviser in Lebanon, Ky., whose deductible topped $12,000...

House Democrats are blocking their Republican colleagues from using Obamacare in letters mailed on the taxpayer's dime to voters, but who made up the term in the first place? Lots of people are asking this question, getting answers like "Certainly a republican, potentially Glenn Beck" and "I am about 80% sure it was Rush Limbaugh" and "Hillary Clinton's campaign coined Obamacare." Iowa Rep. Steve King claimed President Obama himself made it up. Free Republic posters want to claim credit. Lots of liberals suspect an insidious plot by Fox News. But the answer appears to be: a lobbyist.

If PSC drops its health insurance, the company would face a penalty of $2000 per employee under the Affordable Care Act. But for some companies, that penalty may actually be a big savings, says Tom Sutton, a NewsChannel 5 political analyst and chair of political science at Baldwin Wallace University. That’s because companies pay up to $7,000 for individual coverage and up to $20,000 for family coverage. Compared to the $2,000 penalty? “You’re going to save a lot of money,” Sutton says. And that’s not all. Sutton adds, “The Obama Administration has postponed the employer mandate penalty until 2015.” That...

[Obama supporter] Alan Blinder...purports to tell us..Obamacare is still worth it. "America cannot be a humane society if we leave 15% of our population uninsured...." I agree....But in context, his quoted statement above could not be more silly.... Alan, is Princeton so intellectually corrupt these days that no one there has noticed that the effect of Obamacare so far has been to INCREASE the number of uninsured by millions and millions of Americans?

GEORGE WILL: Someone has to tell the president it's not clever to be seen trying to be clever. In all the prevarications and the equivocations of politics, one tries to be economical in the use of the word lie. That's why Churchill once said an opponent was guilty of terminological inexactitude. Well, it's hard to avoid the feeling that even if the president really didn't know on September 26th what was going to happen on the first of October, now he knows what he actually said then, and he's not telling the truth about what he said then. In the...

Administration officials were concerned that once users were able to view the available policies for purchase on HealthCare.gov, they could be disappointed with the cost and options available. The concerns were expressed in meeting notes from the ObamaCare "war room" obtained by CNN. "In some cases, there will be fewer options than would be desired to promote consumer choice and an ideal shopping experience," the meeting notes read. "Additionally, in some cases there will be relatively high cost plans." The discussion last week among officials at the Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight appeared to reveal a behind-the-scenes concern...

<p>Nearly 26,000 New Mexicans are having health plans terminated at the end of the year because the insurance policies fail to provide expanded benefits and other coverage mandated by a federal health care law, according to insurance industry officials.</p> <p>State Insurance Superintendent John Franchini estimates most of those individual policyholders will pay an average of 35 percent more for new coverage, but will have plans with more health care benefits.</p>

Most of the talk about the Affordable Care Act has focused on website glitches and skyrocketing premiums but there are other issues looming on the horizon for the healthcare overhaul. Hospital coverage. If consumers expect to have (or continue to have) access to the best medical services at the nations top hospitals, they are in for a rude awakening. "Most of the top hospitals will accept insurance from just one or two companies operating under Obamacare." Because the ACA caps premiums, insurers will be have to offer less money to the nations best doctors and hospitals. In return, the hospitals...

Read and weep for our country... 11 people who seemed shocked - shocked to hear about obamacare penalties this week

Thanks to Obama and the Democrats (read Socialists) my cancer insurance is up 340% and the older I get, it will go up each year (was a fixed amount for everyone regardless of age before). My families healthcare premium went up 37%, but that's not the worst of it. Rather than having co-payments, now I have a deductible of $1901 before I see a dime of benefits. Thanks Obama for screwing my family over. We will let your, so called, Democratic Party (IE Socialist) exactly how we feel at the ballot box and every blog we know.

In this clip, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., gets a taste of the same medicine Democrats have been dishing out in the Obamacare debate for years. Why, he is asked by CNN’s Dana Bash, will he not go forward if the House passes a bill restoring NIH funding so that about three dozen kids with cancer can get treatment right away? Reid, looking a bit flummoxed, personally attacks Bash’s intelligence for asking the question...Speaking of the House, Reid asks, “What right do they have to pick and choose what part of government’s going to be funded?” There is actually...