Free Republic

Taxes: Health and Human Services admits it sent nearly a million incorrect tax forms to ObamaCare enrollees. A government that can't even get something simple like this right has no business running health care.

A new round of advisers is being sent to Kenya on behalf of the Obama administration, which plans to deploy individual private contractors to assist in the simultaneous expansion of health-care services and the ongoing decentralization of the national government. Indeed, one of Obama’s long-term goals “is to establish a social health insurance system to enable equitable provision of health care to all Kenyan citizens,” one of the adviser-recruitment documents explicitly declares. Specific to the delivery of health care and related services such as family planning, the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, is recruiting a senior health-systems strengthening...

President “selfie-stick” just got a snapshot of his troubled Affordable Care Act and it’s starting to resemble an unaffordable debacle. The latest snafu: Some 800,000 Americans who got their plans on the technologically toxic Healthcare.gov were given incorrect tax forms and will need to “amend” their filings. Don’t worry though, the correct forms are coming ... in March!

WASHINGTON — About 800,000 taxpayers who enrolled in insurance policies through HealthCare.gov received erroneous tax information from the government, and were urged on Friday to hold off on filing tax returns until the error could be corrected. ... Democratic lawmakers pressed hard for the Obama administration to open a “special enrollment period” around tax filing season for Americans who only then realize they face penalties for failing to purchase health insurance last year. Andrew M. Slavitt, the No. 2 official at the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said the period would last from March 15 to April 30.

Phony Numbers: The Obama administration says more than 11 million signed up for ObamaCare this year. Should anyone believe this number? Even if it's true, is it a sign of success? The answer to both is a resounding no.

In the grand scheme of things, the most important development in health policy is the pending Supreme Court case revolving around whether subsidies can be provided to people obtaining health insurance from the federal exchange, even though the law explicitly says handouts are only available to people getting policies via state exchanges.If the Court rules correctly (unlike, ahem, the last time the Justices dealt with Obamacare), it will then be very important that congressional reformers use the resulting mess to unwind as much of the law as possible.That will be a challenge because statists already are arguing that the “only” solution...

Hypocrisy: If ObamaCare is so great, why do Democrats repeatedly try to hide its more unpleasant features? The latest example is their desperate effort to grant still more exemptions to the law's individual mandate.

The measles outbreak that began in Disneyland last December has infected more than 100 people in 14 states, most recently victimizing five infants at a Chicago area daycare. Last year, there were 644 cases of measles reported, by far the largest number in a decade and a half. The resurgence of a contagious and potentially deadly disease has reignited the nationwide debate over mandatory childhood vaccinations. Worldwide, there are still hundreds of thousands of measles-related deaths each year. A decade before children began receiving the measles vaccine (given as the MMR—measles, mumps, rubella—vaccine series since 1971) in the United States,...

**SNIP** Meredith is one of about 6 million people whose subsidized insurance hangs in the balance as the Supreme Court takes up a case that poses the most serious challenge to the Affordable Care Act since the court found the law constitutional more than two years ago. The plaintiffs in King v. Burwell insist that people who buy coverage on the federal exchange are not entitled to subsidies, noting that the law says financial help is available for those who enroll through exchanges “established by the State.” The Obama administration argues that Congress clearly intended to help everyone who qualifies...

President Obama and the Veterans Administration bureaucracy are already sabotaging the VA reform law passed in August. The ink is barely dry on the 8.6 million “Choice Cards” that supposedly allow vets to see a doctor outside the delay-plagued system. Obama’s budget tries to snatch the $10 billion allocated for the Choice program and allow it to be spent however VA top administrators want. It’s a sickening betrayal. Even worse, VA secretary Robert McDonald is telling federal lawmakers that this underhanded move will better serve “VA system priorities.” That’s the problem. He’s more interested in protecting “the system” than vets....

Karen Hains of Bettendorf has chosen delayed vaccinations for her children. Hains’ daughter received her 2-month immunizations on schedule. Right afterward, she said, the baby “had bloody, mucusy stools for a week and could hardly nurse,” Hains said. The little girl also ran a fever of 102 degrees. “After the 4-months vaccinations, she had (a reaction) again, but a little less severe,” Hains said. “That was enough for me to realize that was definitely because of the shots. It wasn’t until my second child that I decided to do something different.” With her second child, she waited until after 6...

Employer mandates and penalties exist only in states with ACA subsidies, which are only available through state-based exchanges. Most individuals will also be exempt from the mandate and penalties because there's no "affordable" (subsidized) coverage.

Crony Socialism: Among ObamaCare's many bad ideas was the attempt to create an entirely new industry of nonprofit insurance co-ops. It is fast turning into a huge, multibillion-dollar taxpayer boondoggle.

Spending: President Obama almost sounded like a free-market health care reformer during a recent interview. Too bad he can't even imagine letting the private sector fix things.

First lady Michelle Obama believes Americans can keep the federal government from meddling with their lives by eating healthy foods and maintaining an active lifestyle. In an interview with Cooking Light magazine published Monday, Mrs. Obama said the best way to avoid dealing with “the system” is to take care of one’s own body. Doing so, she said, will eliminate trips to the doctor and the need to deal with Obamacare. “It’s just making sure people understand that the most powerful thing that they can do for their overall health is feed their bodies good nutritious food,” the first lady...

According to the Federal Trade Commission, “When health care markets are competitive, consumers benefit from lower costs, better care, and more innovation.” On a superficial level, this sounds good, but the devil is in the details. A huge detail is that the health care consumer rarely pays directly for the services, and has little say over how they are performed. Likewise, the notion of what constitutes “better care” and “innovation” are hotly debated. Ironically, those two precepts often lead to higher cost, with questionable benefits to outcome. Notwithstanding the typical high school textbook’s version, the bulk of antitrust activity (part...

Everyone worries about stolen credit cards or hacked bank accounts, but just visiting the doctor may put you at greater risk for identity fraud. Those medical forms you give the receptionist and send to your health insurer provide fertile ground for criminals looking to steal your identity, since health care businesses can lag far behind banks and credit card companies in protecting sensitive information. The names, birthdates and — most importantly — Social Security numbers detailed on those forms can help hackers open fake credit lines, file false tax returns and create fake medical records. "It's an entire profile of...

The penalty for not having health insurance this year is more than doubling. Coloradans have until February 15 ,2015, to shop for plans through the Connect for Health Colorado market place. Under the Affordable Care Act individuals are required to either have health insurance or pay a penalty at tax time. That penalty is either a flat rate or two percent of family income. This year, that rate is $325 per adult, $162 per child and up to $975 per family. Compared to last year the fine for an adult was only $95 and up to $285 per family.

A proposal to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act failed 4-7 in Tennessee’s Senate Health Committee during a special session Wednesday as lawmakers expressed concern with increasing the federal government’s role in state affairs. The proposal, Insure Tennessee, had been in development since early 2013 when Governor Bill Haslam signaled interest in negotiating an expansion with federal officials. The two-part proposal included the Volunteer Plan, providing premium assistance to those with employer sponsored coverage, and the Healthy Incentives Plan, establishing health savings accounts and incentivizing healthy behaviors like physicals and appropriate emergency room use. Critics of the plan, however,...

Health insurance giant Anthem Inc. said late Wednesday that hackers had breached its computer system and the personal information of tens of millions of customers and employees was possibly at risk. [Snip] The data breach extended across all of Anthem's business, possibly affecting customers at large employers, individual policyholders and people enrolled in Medicaid managed-care plans. Anthem has more than 37 million members in California and 13 other states. But the company warned that it also had information in its database on other Blue Cross Blue Shield patients from all 50 states who had sought care in its coverage area.