Free Republic

After seven and a half hours of the Republicans trying to introduce some rationality into the discussion of Obamacare, the "reform" of Medicare that actually takes trillions out of the present system and adds millions of people into it, the ordinary American can be excused for being confused, frustrated, and angry. That's exactly where President Obama, the Chicago political mafia around him, Harry Reid, the Senate Majority Leader, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi want people to be. At one point in the pointless all-day meeting on Thursday, she even claimed that passing Obamacare would create four million jobs overnight! Even...

Insurance: Spiking premiums are telling us something important — about why costs are out of control and why ObamaCare won't work. It's time to listen to these price signals, not try to squelch them. True to form, Democrats were quick to jump on the recent flap in California over the request by Wellpoint Inc.'s Anthem-Blue Cross unit for a 39% increase in premiums for its individual health plans. Forget about the complexities of health economics. This was meant to be a populist morality play. The administration and its allies jumped on the story with a blast at insurance company greed...

Health Reform: The linchpin of ObamaCare 2.0 is that 31 million uninsured will be covered at little added cost. But in fact, White House estimates for low costs are based on little more than accounting tricks. The president's plan "puts our budget and economy on a more stable path by reducing the deficit by $100 billion over the next 10 years — and about $1 trillion over the second decade — by cutting government overspending and reining in waste, fraud and abuse," the White House says on its Web site. Sound too good to be true? It is. None of...

Three days before President Obama's supposedly bipartisan health-care summit, the White House released a new blueprint that Democrats say they will ram through Congress with or without Republican support. So after election defeats in Virginia, New Jersey and even Massachusetts, and amid overwhelming public opposition, Democrats have decided to give the voters want they don't want anyway. Ah, the glory of "progressive" governance and democratic consent. "The President's Proposal," as the White House document is headlined, is in one sense a notable achievement: It manages to take the worst of both the House and Senate bills and combine them into...

Every single day of this man's presidency is focused on destroying individual liberty and capitalism. There is no absolutely no authority for the federal government to control insurance premiums. This is right out of the Politburo's handbook. President Obama will propose on Monday giving the federal government new power to block excessive rate increases by health insurance companies, as he rolls out comprehensive legislation to revamp the nation?s health care system, White House officials said. Keep in mind that this is effectively seizing control of the health insurance industry. After all, if you control the rates, you control the companies'...

[snip] Liberals are making a bid to restore the "public option," ObamaCare's most controversial and destructive inspiration. Some 18 Senators as we went to press—led by Colorado's Michael Bennet and growing to include New York's Chuck Schumer on Thursday—have endorsed slipping this government-run insurance entitlement in the reconciliation process that would let Democrats abuse Senate rules to hustle ObamaCare into law with 50 votes. Vehemence among House progressives is also at a fever pitch, though it always is. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius joined the mob, telling MSNBC's Rachel Maddow that if the public option is "part of...

Health Care: Will the administration seize the moment of Scott Brown's victory to work out real solutions, or will it follow Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid over the cliff? Or is it just about government control? Before Sen.-elect Brown became the Scott heard 'round the world, House Speaker Pelosi was asked what his victory in the bluest of blue states would mean. "Certainly the dynamic will change depending on what happens in Massachusetts," she replied in a bit of an understatement. The dynamic has changed, yet the Democrats, as the country song goes, apparently don't know when to hold them...

Two weeks ago the Mayo Clinic shocked the nation when it closed the doors of one of its Arizona clinics to patients on Medicare. Just this past June President Obama himself praised Mayo as a model of medical efficiency noting that Mayo gives “the highest quality care at costs well below the national norm.” If Mayo feels compelled to walk away from this government-run program, others will surely follow. The nation must understand why. Doctors are leaving Medicare for two reasons: one obvious, the other more concealed. The first is simple—the math: 1) For the past decade Medicare consistently paid...

Politics: Big Labor carved out a tax exemption for union members' health plans on Thursday, paving the way for passage of health care reform. Call it what it is: a bribe to cronies in an increasingly corrupt overhaul. With Nebraska winning "free" coverage of its Medicare costs in the Senate version of the bill, and Louisiana getting a tax exemption of its own, what's one more bone to a favored political group on a bill Democrats are determined to pass no matter what? That's what made it easy for labor leaders, following a sit-down with the White House, to carve...

Meet the Beltway bloodsuckers. They convene in the dead of night, when most ordinary mortals have left work and let their guard down or are lying asleep in bed. Pale-faced and insatiable, the nocturnal thieves do their nefarious business in backrooms and secret chambers. Their primary victims? Taxpayers, the free market and deliberative democracy. Democratic leaders have been promising the most ethical, transparent, open and engaged administration for years. Instead, they have delivered a bleak and creepy legislative environment that could double as a “Twilight” movie set. Skulking Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid rammed the government health care takeover package...

Digital News Report – Besides collecting taxes and going after tax cheats, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) will be going after Americans who do not purchase private health insurance. The new health care legislation being debated in Congress will put the IRS in charge of making sure Americans purchase a health insurance policy. Those who don’t pay will be penalized because all Americans will be forced to purchase a policy. Besides making sure citizens do buy insurance, the IRS will assess penalties on those who do not. They will also collect new fees from businesses and oversee enforcement. Already understaffed...

Who cares about the U.S. Constitution, when Barack Obama’s vision for America is weighing in the balance? Don’t count on the U.S. Congress to care. In the aftermath of the Senate’s passage of an Obamacare bill, Attorney’s General from multiple states have begun to announce that they are launching investigations into the legality, and constitutionality of the Senate legislation. Chief among their concerns is the possibility that that the bill places Americans outside the state of Nebraska at a significant disadvantage, financially and otherwise, to residents of the state of Nebraska. South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster, along with the...

They are objects of derision.  Influential government officials refer to them as unproductive, of less value than others in society. The political party running the government aggressively denies them access to health services while putting in place bureaucracies devoted, in effect, to ending their lives. The Jews in Nazi Germany?  In the Soviet Union of Stalin? In a socialist paradise set up by the rabidly anti-Semitic United Nations? No, seniors in a United States governed by the party of President Barack Obama and his allies on the Democratic left. The Democratic Party senate healthcare bill makes it official: Seniors are...

"For all of America's cherished belief in choice and freedom, it remains an astonishing fact that the U.S. government forces citizens over the age of 65 into a subpar health plan of its choosing. And so it is with some hope that we greet a new federal lawsuit that aims to allow senior citizens to flee Medicare. The suit comes courtesy of Kent Masterson Brown, a lawyer who has previously tangled with the government over Medicare benefits. Mr. Brown represents three plaintiffs who are suing the federal government to be allowed to opt out of Medicare without losing their Social...

WASHINGTON -- Senate Democrats are poised to pass a landmark health care bill that could define President Barack Obama's legacy and usher in near-universal medical coverage for the first time in U.S. history. Ahead lie complex talks with the House to reach final legislation in the new year. "We stand on the doorstep of history," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat. "We recognize that, but much more importantly, we stand so close to making so many individual lives better." The vote Thursday on the bill extending health care coverage to some 31 million uninsured Americans brings Obama...

University of Chicago Law Professor Richard A Epstein has brilliantly argued that the Reid bill unconstitutionally turns private health insurers into public utilities. Luckily for those who haven't time to study his detailed argument, he's now summarized it nicely in the Wall Street Journal: "As Harry Reid's 2,000 page health-care bill is being rammed through the Senate, most of the public debate has been focused on its expanded coverage, its now defunct public option, and its high taxes. Lost in the shuffle has been its intensely coercive requirements on health insurance issuers, especially in the individual and small group markets....

What's happening with ObamaCare this week in the Senate is raw, rank politics at its worst. PASSING LAWS has been compared to making sausage. But in the case of the mammoth health care bill expected to pass the Senate on Christmas Eve, that's an insult to employees at the Jimmy Dean plant. It's also a slap at Americans who want Congress to take its time to make thoughtful changes that will affect one seventh of the U.S. economy. President Obama campaigned on "change we can believe in." Most voters believed him. Yet many polls show that only a minority of...

Self-Evident Truths: Sen. Dianne Feinstein says it comes under the Commerce Clause. Rep. Steny Hoyer says it's mandated by the "general welfare" clause. Despite liberal wishes, health care is not a right. The "living Constitution" that Democrats and their court appointees have given us may be the death of our freedoms. Their constitution adapts to the times and serves the whims of the elitists. The Constitution is supposed to limit government powers. It does not allow government to do anything it feels like doing. Cass Sunstein, the head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, is the author of...

Tuesday, December 22, 2009 "Democrats Ensure America Will No Longer Be the Last Best Hope of Earth" by Dennis Prager SNIPPET: "As the passage of the bill that will start the process of nationalizing health care in America becomes almost inevitable, so, too, the process of undoing America's standing as The Last Best Hope of Earth will have begun." SNIPPET: "Just as the left has waged war on America's Judeo-Christian roots, it has waged war on individual liberty and responsibility." SNIPPET: "Barack Obama, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi are right about one thing -- they are indeed making history. But...

Health Care: Democrats on the take and in the dead of night pass an execrable piece of legislation that they haven't read, the public doesn't want and only socialists could love. What has happened to this country? If we hadn't stayed up past midnight Sunday, we wouldn't have known what was going on. Here we thought a vote on the proposed health care overhaul wasn't going to take place until Thursday night — Christmas Eve. But there they were, the United States Senate, at 1 a.m. Monday, rushing to vote in the middle of a snowstorm to close debate on...