Free Republic

The Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, has forced many public schools to cut employee hours or privatize noncore services. At issue is the ACA’s mandate that employers with 50 or more full-time workers provide health insurance to any who work 30 or more hours per week. The Baraga Area Schools in the western Upper Peninsula is among the many districts in Michigan that are feeling the effects of the law. Superintendent Jennifer Lynn says her district had employed more full-time support staff, but has been forced to cut hours due to the prohibitive cost of the ACA mandate. Baraga is...

The furor on Capitol Hill over Planned Parenthood has stoked a debate about the use of tissue from aborted fetuses in medical research, but U.S. scientists have been using such cells for decades to develop vaccines and seek treatments for a host of ailments, from vision loss and neurological disorders to cancer and AIDS. Anti-abortion activists set off the uproar by releasing undercover videos of Planned Parenthood officials that raised questions of whether the organization was profiting from the sale of fetal tissue. Planned Parenthood has denied making any profit and said it charges fees solely to cover its costs....

Donald Trump offered the single best, most original policy idea in the Republican Party debate Thursday night. He also demonstrated by far the greatest understanding of a complicated area of public policy. There, I said it. People have been avoiding noticing this out of a dual aversion to Trump's brand of demagogic anti-immigrant politics and an excessive sense that deference is owed to the real professional politicians up on the stage. But while I wouldn't rank Trump as one of the great health wonks of all time, his answer to a question challenging him to defend his past praise of...

The first debate is over but many questions still remain. It is unfortunate that candidates are only given a minute to make their point and 30 seconds for any potential rebuttal. Personally, my interest in the debates is to understand a candidate's policies and what he intends to do as president. So, ignoring the gotcha questions of Megyn Kelly to Donald Trump ( i.e. War on Women crap ), here are two follow up questions I have for Trump: 1) HEALTHCARE During the first GOP debate, moderator Bret Baier said to Donald Trump, "15 years ago, you called yourself a...

In the Republican debate on Thursday, Brett Baier asked Donald Trump about his past statements on health care. "Now, 15 years ago, you called yourself a liberal on health care. You were for a single-payer system, a Canadian-style system. Why were you for that then and why aren't you for it now?" [snip] Trumps answer to Baier's question should trouble anyone who believes in free market health care reforms.

Bankruptcy: A court filing this week shows that the first ObamaCare-created insurance co-op to fail will likely cost $147 million. How many more will have to go under before President Obama admits to this boondoggle?

President Obama once said about ObamaCare that, "The health insurance that's being provided is good. It's high quality, and it's affordable." Consumers, apparently, have a different view.

“What, then, is law? It is the collective organization of the individual right to lawful defense. Each of us has a natural right—from God—to defend his person, his liberty, and his property. … [I]t follows that a group of men have the right to organize and support a common force to protect these rights constantly…Thus, since an individual cannot lawfully use force against the person, liberty, or property of another individual, then the common force—for the same reason—cannot lawfully be used to destroy the person, liberty, or property of individuals or groups.” Frederic Bastiat 1801-1850 Coach is Right has written...

Mayor Rahm Emanuel's signature wellness initiative may be just a 90-pound weakling, Chicago Inspector General Joe Ferguson is suggesting. In a report issued today,E the city's watchdog said there are "serious questions" about whether the much-promoted program, which aims to get city workers to shape up or pay more, actually has accomplished much except to spend money. ... despite a 19 percent decrease in its workforce between 2004 and 2013 (41,550 to 33,554 full-time equivalents), the city incurred a 43 percent increase in health care costs." The city's current $24 million contract with American Healthways Services,E a Tennessee firm that...

Obamacare has offered insurance to millions of people, but they’re unhappy with the coverage they’re getting and are particularly upset about the costs, according to a survey released Monday that suggests the health care law continues to struggle to win over Americans. Just 30 percent of customers on Obamacare’s exchanges were satisfied with their coverage, the health care research arm of the Deloitte consulting firm said. Only a quarter of Obamacare customers in the survey were confident that they could get care when they needed it, and just 16 percent felt “financially prepared” to handle future health care costs, Deloitte...

I recently read about an ESPN commentator on CNN, stating that Obama had lied to the American People, but that it was not a problem because all Presidents lie. And besides, Bush was worse. This ESPN, politico wanna-be just couldn’t understand why the American people no longer trust Barack. Apparently it is perfectly acceptable to this individual that a dope smoking, foreign aid student like Obama should be placed in THE position of responsibility to the entire world. After all, other Presidents have lied. Of course with Obama it has been elevated to an art form. The major concern of...

The founder of StemExpress, the private company that has engaged with Planned Parenthood in the sale of aborted baby body parts, is the younger sister of the health policy director of House Speaker Rep. John Boehner (R-OH). The founder and CEO of StemExpress is Cate Dyer, the younger sister of Charlotte Ivancic, Boehner’s health policy director, as originally observed at the conservative site ForAmerica. In response to Breitbart News’ request for comment, Emily Schillinger, Boehner’s press secretary, said, “Charlotte Ivancic is a dedicated public servant who enjoys the utmost respect among her peers and Members of Congress. She has the...

Under resident Barack Obama's overhaul, taxpayers provided $2.4 billion in loans to get the co-ops going, but only one out of 23 -- the one in Maine -- made money last year ... Another one, the Iowa/Nebraska co-op, was shut down by regulators over financial concerns. The audit by the Health and Human Services inspector general's office also found that 13 of the 23 lagged far behind their 2014 enrollment projections. The probe raised concerns about whether federal loans will be repaid, and ... Just last week, the Louisiana Health Cooperative announced it would cease offering coverage next year

Industrial Policy: Louisiana's Health Cooperative went belly up last week, the second of 23 ObamaCare-created insurance co-ops to fail. With more failures likely, it could cost taxpayers almost six times the Solyndra debacle.

Uber is completely revolutionizing the market for urban transportation. Could a similar revolution occur in other fields, including the market for medical care? That’s what University of Chicago economist John Cochrane wondered the other day. But we no longer have to speculate. Uber medicine has already arrived. There are a number of firms that will bring a doctor to your doorstep at the flick of a cell phone app, including Doctors Making House Calls (North Carolina), Pager (New York City), Heal (Los Angeles) and Medicast (Seattle). Insurance rarely pays for the service. Like so many other innovations in meeting the...

Bureaucracy: The central goal of ObamaCare is supposed to be to make health care more affordable. So why is the IRS threatening massive fines on businesses that try to help their employees buy an ObamaCare plan?

Republicans can forget about campaigning against Obamacare in 2016 if Ohio Gov. John Kasich is on the party’s presidential ticket. Conventional wisdom says Kasich will need to explain his Obamacare Medicaid expansion to Republican primary voters — but he’s been explaining it for two years. That’s the problem: most of Kasich’s arguments for Medicaid coverage for working-age adults with no kids and no disabilities sound like they were written by Democratic strategists. The longer Kasich is in the presidential race, the greater the potential for Democrats to capitalize on Kasich’s promotion of Obamacare. ... The governor told the Ohio General...

The White House confirmed to Fox News what the Investigative Project on Terrorism reported two days ago — that the administration met with the deputy of a radical cleric who is barred from entering the United States, and whose organization supports Hamas.  Sheik Abdullah bin Bayyah served as vice president of the International Union of Muslim Scholars, a group headed by Egyptian cleric Yusuf Qaradawi, who has urged Muslim nations to acquire nuclear weapons, demanded the death of American soldiers in Iraq, and defended Hitler. So what did the White House want to discuss with bin Bayyah? Moderation: A senior...

During the debates on ObamaCare, Medicaid got little attention. That was a mistake, since enrollment and the cost of treating all those jumping onto the program is surging beyond expectations.

Health Reform: Before ObamaCare, it would've been hard to find a health plan that combined a huge $6,000 deductible, few in-network doctors, and sky-high premiums. Today, thanks to ObamaCare, it's hard not to.