Free Republic

We know that under this administration, high-ranking officials in various federal agencies have claimed that they didn't understand — or had reasons not to follow — federal law that requires certain sorts of record retention," including for official email correspondence, said Attkisson, "This has happened, I believe, at the IRS, with HHS," she said, citing the agencies accused, respectively, of targeting politically conservative PACs ... Attkisson, an independent journalist formerly with CBS News, said that while working on a story about the ACA's online insurance marketplace, HealthCare.gov, she has learned that one official "was specifically told, 'Don't email things; we...

11:26: When a law is ambiguous, the court often defers to the agency in charge of administering it. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit said just that, and that the IRS’ interpretation that subsidies were available to all was a reasonable one. Verrilli resisted questions about ambiguity, saying it was clear. But if not, he said, the agency does deserve deference. But Justice Anthony M. Kennedy said he was concerned about giving the power to allocate billions of dollars in subsidies to an agency. It was then that Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. asked his only...

As part of the White House response to the Sandy Hook Elementary School tragedy, President Barack Obama emphasized the importance of preventing access to guns “for those who would commit acts of violence.” In order to accomplish that objective, the Administration announced that it would engage the regulatory process to close loopholes in the background check system for purchasing firearms.

MRIs cost about $4,000, but his patients pay $400 CT scans are $2,000 with insurance, he said, but are $300 through his practice X-rays are usually $500, but priced at $60 at Pinckney's clinic, the results of which he can check on his smartphone

**SNIP** The website remains unfinished. Politico reported last week that the back end of Healthcare.gov “still isn’t properly wired to the health insurance companies.” Problems persist with subsidy payments, and information verification, resulting in roughly 800,000 enrollees receiving inaccurate subsidy information. “Even though consumers had a largely smooth enrollment experience this year, the fact that these gaps persist behind the scenes 18 months after HealthCare.gov launched shows that the system is still not working as intended,” Politico said. “Instead of a swift process, health plans use clunky workarounds and manual spreadsheets. It takes time and it costs money.” Kevin Counihan,...

Former Arizona county sheriff Richard Mack, a fierce opponent of Obamacare and a leader in the "constitutional sheriff" movement, is struggling to pay his medical bills after he and his wife each faced serious illnesses. The former sheriff and his wife do not have health insurance and started a GoFundMe campaign to solicit donations from family and friends to cover the costs of their medical care. "Because they are self-employed, they have no medical insurance and are in desperate need of our assistance," reads a note on Mack's personal website. Mack, the founder of the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers...

While childhood vaccination rates are well over 90%, adults are far more likely to be behind on vaccinations http://www.hhs.gov/nvpo/national_adult_immunization_plan_final.pdf Think you're up to date on your vaccinations? You might be surprised at how many vaccinations are now recommended for American adults -- and the federal government plans to start tracking which of those vaccines you're behind on. The Department of Health and Human Services released its preliminary draft of a new five year plan to increase adult vaccinations this month. The newly revised 52-page National Adult Immunization Plan says: While the NVP provides a vision for improving protection from vaccine-preventable...

Socialists, Democrats, Communists and liberals rely on people being kept in the dark about their policies. Things are so much easier for them that way. When the media never asks inconvenient questions, any chance of the truth getting out is generally non-existent. But when the bottom publically falls out of one of their fake “benefits” it becomes impossible for these people to keep us in the dark. When the Berlin Wall was coming down the Communists were still telling people to go back to work at their useless factories where they were making useless commodities no one wanted; but the...

The GOP needs a politically defensible alternative if the Supreme Court overturns federal-exchange subsidies. On March 4 the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in King v. Burwell, with a decision expected in late June. If the court strikes down the payment of government subsidies to those who bought health insurance on the federal exchange, Republicans will at last have a real opportunity to amend ObamaCare. Doing so, however, will be politically perilous. The language of the Affordable Care Act states that subsidies should only be paid through state exchanges. The bill’s authors perhaps believed that pressure from citizens and...

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.

Rand Paul: Most vaccines should be ‘voluntary’ By ADAM B. LERNER 2/2/15 2:42 PM EST Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) waded into the debate over vaccinations Monday, telling conservative talk show host Laura Ingraham that he thinks most vaccines should be “voluntary.” Paul, an ophthamologist and likely 2016 White House hopeful, expressed particular concern over mandatory vaccinations for sexually transmitted diseases. He criticized former Texas Gov. Rick Perry for his executive order mandating that Texas children receive the HPV vaccine. “I’m not anti-vaccine at all,” Paul said, but “I think that’s a personal decision.” Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/02/rand-paul-vaccines-114834.html#ixzz3QhA3J7zr

Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-Fla.) unequivocally declared Monday that Texas is a "crazy state" he never wants to live in, infuriating a Texas lawmaker. Tensions flared between Hastings and Rep. Michael Burgess (R-Texas) during a House Rules Committee meeting to prepare a bill slated for a floor vote Tuesday to repeal ObamaCare. Hastings showed disdain for Texas during a discussion about states' implementation of the 2010 healthcare overhaul and decisions over whether or not to participate in the exchanges. "I don't know about in your state, which I think is a crazy state to begin with," Hastings told Burgess. Burgess immediately...

Cass Sunstein, President Barack Obama’s nominee to head the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), has advocated a policy under which the government would “presume” someone has consented to having his or her organs removed for transplantation into someone else when they die unless that person has explicitly indicated that his or her organs should not be taken. Under such a policy, hospitals would harvest organs from people who never gave permission for this to be done. Outlined in the 2008 book “Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness,” Sunstein and co-author Richard H. Thaler argued that the...

WHEN Theresa Bixby, 63, learned that she had breast cancer four years ago, she reacted as many Americans do. “One of my first thoughts was, ‘will they pay?’ ” she said. But she wasn’t talking about conventional insurance plan. She lost hers when she left her full-time position for part-time work at her church in Greenville, S.C. She was worried about the program that she had joined six months earlier: Christian Healthcare Ministries. Christian Healthcare Ministries is not an insurance company. It is a nonprofit “health care sharing ministry” based in Barberton, Ohio. The cost of membership is far lower...

House Republicans will kick off February with a vote to repeal Obamacare, providing new members the chance to put their opposition on the record as the party chips away at the overhaul and devises some reforms of its own. “We will begin the month renewing our commitment to individual freedom and opportunity,” House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California said Thursday in a memo previewing next week’s votes. The vote will also force Democrats in the minority to reassert their support for Obamacare or break with the White House.

Medical retainer agreements between physicians and patients will not be considered “insurance” in Michigan under a recently passed bill signed into law on Jan. 15 by Gov. Rick Snyder. The idea is to ensure that this innovative way for families to obtain routine medical services at lower costs will not be stifled by the extensive state regulatory structure currently imposed on conventional health insurance policies that cover expensive non-routine care. The rationale for this alternative is that while insurance coverage may be advisable for catastrophic illnesses and injuries, it makes less sense as a way to pay for routine primary...

The latest data on Obamacare analyzed by the Congressional Budget Office shows that 10 million Americans are likely to lose their employer-based insurance by 2021 as companies dump their workers onto the Obamacare exchanges. That's 10 times the number originally projected by the CBO. About 1 of every 16 workers will be affected. The latest CBO report has not garnered a lot of attention, even though it contains the modestly good news that Obamacare is not costing as much as the CBO thought it would in 2010. That said, another reason the left and the administration may not be touting...

The latest data on Obamacare analyzed by the Congressional Budget Office shows that 10 million Americans are likely to lose their employer-based insurance by 2021 as companies dump their workers onto the Obamacare exchanges. That's 10 times the number originally projected by the CBO. About 1 of every 16 workers will be affected. The latest CBO report has not garnered a lot of attention, even though it contains the modestly good news that Obamacare is not costing as much as the CBO thought it would in 2010. That said, another reason the left and the administration may not be touting...

* Stunning figure comes from Congressional Budget Office report that revised cost estimates for the next 10 years * Government will spend $1.993 TRILLION over a decade and take in $643 BILLION in new taxes, penalties and fees related to Obamacare * The $1.35 trillion net cost will result in 'between 24 million and 27 million' fewer Americans being uninsured – a $50,000 price tag per person at best * The law will still leave 'between 29 million and 31 million' nonelderly Americans without medical insurance * Numbers assume Obamacare insurance exchange enrollment will double between now and 2025 It...

... Tragically, a record number of Americans subscribe to some version of this mythology, with 63 percent (67 percent of men polled and 58 percent of women) believing that guns truly do make them safer. The public’s confidence in firearms, however, is woefully misguided: The evidence overwhelmingly shows that guns leave everybody less safe, including their owners. ... That is, in the absence of guns, would-be criminals are not switching to knives or some other weapons to carry out homicide. These results are supported by a host of previous studies that illustrate that guns increase the rate of homicides. The...

Obamacare program costs $50,000 in taxpayer money for every American who gets health insurance, says bombshell budget report It will cost the federal government – taxpayers, that is – $50,000 for every person who gets health insurance under the Obamacare law, the Congressional Budget Office revealed on Monday. The number comes from figures buried in a 15-page section of the nonpartisan organization's new ten-year budget outlook. The best-case scenario described by the CBO would result in 'between 24 million and 27 million' fewer Americans being uninsured in 2025, compared to the year before the Affordable Care Act took effect. Pulling...

This announcement actually came out almost a week ago, arriving with little fanfare or notice, given all the other global events which were unfolding. The archivists for the Clinton Library sent notice that they were preparing to release a “huge trove or records” (as Politico put it) relating to Hillary Clinton’s policy work during her time as First Lady in Bill Clinton’s White House. The descriptions here beggar the imagination and probably overshadow the fact that they will just coincidentally be coming out just when Hillary’s expected POTUS run is kicking into high gear. A massive collection of documents related...

Nearly 20 years ago, Carson argued for government-run catastrophic health care and “national guidelines” on how and when the very ill should be treated. Carson himself calls his proposals “fairly radical.� In 1996, Dr. Ben Carson, now a conservative favorite and potential presidential candidate, wrote a paper outlining his vision for U.S. health care. Some of his proposals: nationalized catastrophic care, essentially replacing Medicaid with health care food stamps, and “national guidelines” about when the elderly and terminally ill should receive care. By implementing government-run catastrophic health care, Carson argued, the price of premiums would go down so much...

Paying Your Fair Share:: By: Larry Walker II ::In Tax Simplification, Part II, I expounded on a 2010 Annual Report to Congress, in which National Taxpayer Advocate Nina E. Olson focused on the need for tax reform as the No. 1 priority in tax administration. In particular, she focused on the problem of delivering social benefits through the tax system, which complicates the mission of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), resulting in a dual mission of welfare administration as well as revenue collection. But instead of taking heed, the federal government doubled down, adding a new health care excise tax...

This thread is intended to provide awareness that all of our healthcare patient PHI data(personal healthcare information), medical records, prescriptions, etc. is increasingly shared among hundreds of thousands of healthcare entities that are exempt from HIPAA PHI distribution restrictions. You are not permitted to opt out via a consent form. Cash payment for healthcare services is also frequently recorded, as well. This is a 2+ Billion dollar a year business that is largely unregulated. Healthcare records have huge repercussions that can impact an individual's ability to attain employment and insurance. Healthcare records also influence government and law enforcement action. Many...

Information Leak: President Obama says he wants to improve cybersecurity and privacy. If he actually cared about them, he'd shut down healthcare.gov, which lets dozens of companies collect data on unwitting users. In a speech meant to preview part of his State of the Union address, Obama said: "As Americans, we shouldn't have to forfeit our basic privacy when we go online to do our business." Nice sentiment. But it's not being upheld by his own ObamaCare website. As the AP reported on Tuesday, Healthcare.gov has at least 50 third-party companies that have "embedded connections" to the site, which means...

WASHINGTON (AP) - The government's health insurance website is quietly sending consumers' personal data to private companies that specialize in advertising and analyzing Internet data for performance and marketing, The Associated Press has learned. The scope of what is disclosed or how it might be used was not immediately clear, but it can include age, income, ZIP code, whether a person smokes, and if a person is pregnant. It can include a computer's Internet address, which can identify a person's name or address when combined with other information collected by sophisticated online marketing or advertising firms. The Obama administration says...

The NHS is ‘not fit for the future’ and unless it undergoes radical change it may be forced to abandon free healthcare for all, in the future, the service's top doctor has warned. Medical director of NHS England Professor Sir Bruce Keogh said the NHS must become far less reliant on hospitals and needed a ‘complete transformation’ of the way it operates. Sir Bruce told the Guardian: ‘If the NHS continues to function as it does now, it’s going to really struggle to cope because the model of delivery and service that we have at the moment is not fit...

Though it violates both state and federal law, Massachusetts spent tens of millions of dollars to give illegal immigrants medical care—including prescription drugs, physical therapy and dental services—through its taxpayer-funded healthcare program for low-income individuals. Tax-paying residents of the Bay State should be outraged, to say the least. The information comes straight out of a scathing report that contains the findings of an investigation conducted by Massachusetts State Auditor Suzanne Bump. It reveals that questionable or prohibited medical claims totaling $35,137,347 were reimbursed by the state’s Medicaid agency known as MassHealth. A chunk of it went to non-emergency services for...

Acknowledging the public health impact of racism and deep disparities in the quality and accessibility of medical care for patients of color, a national organization, White Coats for Black Lives, says it’s launching a new effort today, in celebration of Martin Luther King, Jr. Dorothy Charles, one of the group’s organizers and a first year medical student at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine, offers some context in an email: Racism profoundly impacts people of color: the black-white mortality gap in 2002, for example, accounted for 83,570 excess deaths. As future physicians, we are responsible for addressing the...

incidents point to dangerous breakdowns in the Canadian health-care system. But don’t expect to find any public record of either apparent blunder — or of thousands of similarly harmful and sometimes deadly mistakes that occur in facilities across the country each year. Most instances of the system hurting rather than healing patients, in fact, are not even reported by staff internally, a National Post investigation has documented. Research suggests that about 70,000 patients a year experience preventable, serious injury as a result of treatments. More shocking, a landmark study published a decade ago estimated that as many as 23,000 Canadian...