Free Republic

After beating back the repeated Republican efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act, Democrats, for the first time in years, are taking the offense on health care. While the flashiest proposal—for an entirely government-run system—remains a distant aspiration, Democrats are again looking for new ways to expand Washington’s role in shaping the health-care system. Their ideas include new plans to expand coverage, restrain drug prices, and create a public competitor to private health-insurance companies. Encouraging all of these efforts are polls showing that support for the ACA clearly increased during the long legislative struggle over its future. “People are increasingly...

In one of the most aggressive efforts in the nation to curb soaring healthcare spending, a new California measure would put the state in charge of setting prices for hospital stays, doctor's visits and most other medical services covered by commercial insurers. The bill, backed by labor unions and consumer groups, is certain to rouse fierce opposition from physicians and hospitals, setting the stage for a brawl between some of the Capitol's top lobbying heavyweights. Proponents also face friction on the left from advocates of single-payer healthcare, who espouse an alternate vision of how to overhaul the state's healthcare. Despite...

Pop quiz: What percentage of bankruptcies in the United States are caused by medical bills? If you lived through the debate over passing Obamacare, you probably answered something like “half.” That was the figure in common currency among advocates of health-care reform; then-Sens. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) and Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) were just two of the prominent advocates who used it. Other variants were also popular; Barack Obama, for example, was fond of saying that “the cost of health care now causes a bankruptcy in America every 30 seconds.” It’s a memorable number. But it’s almost certainly many times the true...

Health insurance premiums in California are expected to rise nearly 18 percent in 2019 as a result of federal policy changes enacted by Congress and the Trump administration, according to an analysis released Monday by the Urban Institute left-leaning think tank.

Gwen Hurd got the letter just before her shift at the outlet mall. Her health insurance company informed her that coverage for her family of three, purchased through the Affordable Care Act marketplace, would cost almost 60 percent more this year — $1,200 a month. She and her husband, a contractor, found a less expensive plan, but at $928 a month, it meant giving up date nights and saving for their future. Worse, the new policy required them to spend more than $6,000 per person before it covered much of anything. “It seems to me that people who earn nothing...

Congress’ chief scorekeeper said Wednesday it botched some of its original Obamacare estimates, and its employees have to make “trade-offs” as they confront the heavy workload from lawmakers. Keith Hall, director of the Congressional Budget Office, said they were off in their guess for enrollment in Obamacare’s exchanges, though he said so were other analysts. “Sometimes it’s really hard to estimate these things,” Mr. Hall said Wednesday. “Certainly with the exchanges, we were off — we weren’t as far off on things like the actual spending, some other things — but everybody else was as well. We can be off...

Although the Trump administration and Congress have struggled to fully repeal Obamacare, while putting a good dent in the law by repealing the individual mandate through tax reform, officials are finding new ways to lower costs and expand coverage to consumers. On Thursday, the Department of Labor announced a new rule proposal that opens the door to allowing insurance companies to sell plans and coverage across state lines. From Insurance News Net:  In another move toward dismantling the Affordable Care Act, the Department of Labor announced a proposed rule to expand the offering of small business health plans, also known as...

Nearly 9 million people signed up for coverage through the federal ObamaCare exchanges, according to a top administration official. Last year, 9.2 million people signed up for coverage during an open enrollment period that was twice as long. Approximately 8.8 million people enrolled during the six week open enrollment period, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid administrator Seema Verma tweeted Thursday.

Indeed, the repeal of the Obamacare mandate is one of the great civil rights victories of our times. Obamacare violates our inalienable natural rights/property rights in critical ways. First, it compels you to purchase an insurance product you may not need or want in terms dictated by the government. In a free society, you would be free to negotiate the terms and coverages of the plans, deductables, price, etc. For example, an elderly couple doesn't need pregnancy benefits, infant annihilation coverage, or coverage for any minor children. When I was working, we had two health insurance choices---Self, or Self and...

Tax could potentially affect 156,000 Americans who could see premiums rise even furtherAn Obamacare tax that will be imposed in 2018 will raise premiums even further and is estimated to cost $270 billion over the next decade, according to a report commissioned by UnitedHealth Group. The report was commissioned to examine how a tax imposed by Obamacare would impact premiums. Under Obamacare, health insurers that offer coverage are required to pay a fee on health insurance premiums they earn, which is also considered a tax by the IRS. Congress imposed a moratorium on collecting these taxes in 2017, but that...

Cue the funeral bagpipes. My fourth health insurance plan is dead. Two weeks ago, my husband and I received yet another cancellation notice for our private, individual health insurance coverage. It's our fourth Obamacare-induced obituary in four years. Our first death notice, from Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield, arrived in the fall of 2013. The insurer informed us that because of "changes from health care reform (also called the Affordable Care Act or ACA)," our plan no longer met the federal government's requirements. Never mind our needs and desires as consumers who were quite satisfied with a high-deductible PPO...

WASHINGTON — Stymied in his efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act, President Trump is poised to issue an order that could ease some federal rules governing health insurance and make it easier for people to band together and buy coverage on their own, administration officials said Saturday. One official said the directive could move the president a step closer to one of his longstanding goals: allowing consumers to buy health insurance across state lines. Conservatives say that interstate sales could expand options for consumers, increase competition in the insurance market and perhaps lower costs. The order, which the administration...

RUSH: Donald Trump’s on the way to Indiana to give a speech about the tax cut plan. He stopped for a little miniature presser with the Drive-Bys out there. He said a couple of things. He said that they have the votes for the health care bill. They’ve got the votes but some senator’s in the hospital and can’t vote by the deadline, so they’re gonna wait until early 2018. Trump said he’s considering an executive order on associations which would allow coverage and buying of insurance across state lines, which will fix a lot of Obamacare. The insurance companies...

President Trump is preparing an executive order to allow people to purchase health insurance across state lines, a reform conservatives have long championed as a way to bring costs down and stir greater competition in the national marketplace. The executive action gives the White House a chance to follow through on at least one promise related to healthcare reform after Senate Republicans' second attempt to overhaul Obamacare failed this week. Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul "I think there's going to be big news from the White House in the next week or two, something they can do on their own," Paul...

ABC’s self-described “eating pizza” expert, Jimmy Kimmel was at it again on Tuesday, admittedly politicizing his son’s medical condition to push for socialized medicine. This time he was targeting Republican Senator Bill Cassidy and Senate Republicans with disgusting charges of aiming to do cruel things with the lives and health care of Americans. In all, Kimmel’s description painted the GOP as villains in a straight-to-DVD Hollywood flop. “And this new bill actually does pass the Jimmy Kimmel Test, but a different Jimmy Kimmel Test,” he declared, noting that Cassidy wanted his bill to live up to Kimmel’s situation. “This one,...

The US government should allow insurers to sell Pretty Good Quality (PGQ), Medicare-like policies with the federal government generally paying the percentages listed in parentheses of a person's maximum silver plan subsidy amount as premium subsidies. The monthly basic drug coverage subsidy would be computed without adjusting for household income, so young, healthy and affluent people would want to buy drug coverage too. The monthly basic drug coverage subsidy amount for coverage on a US citizen might be: $1 for each year of age less 20% if no recombinant auto-immune drug is covered less 10% if no standard anti-HIV regimen...

Just weeks before the 2018 Obamacare open enrollment period is set to begin, Virginia's largest health insurer has pulled of the individual marketplace. Anthem is leaving the system, citing overwhelming costs and unstable markets. More from Forbes: “Today, planning and pricing for ACA-compliant health plans has become increasingly difficult due to a shrinking and deteriorating Individual market, as well as continual changes and uncertainty in federal operations, rules and guidance, including cost sharing reduction subsidies and the restoration of taxes on fully insured coverage,” Anthem said in a statement Friday afternoon. “As a result, the continued uncertainty makes it difficult...

Anthem just announced it will back out of Nevada's Obamacare exchange for 2018. A major insurance provider just announced it will back out of Nevada's Obamacare exchange for 2018. Anthem said in a statement Monday it was leaving Nevada's exchange because "planning and pricing for ACA-compliant health plans has become increasingly difficult due to a shrinking and deteriorating individual market, as well as continual changes and uncertainty in federal operations, rules and guidance, including cost sharing reduction subsidies and the restoration of taxes on fully insured coverage." The company had previously backed out of 14 rural counties in the Silver...

There's nothing like the sight of Republicans and Democrats working together and scrambling to save big time government aid to super-rich corporations. Whether it's a bailout for major banks, tax credits for Big Oil, or big subsidies for large agriculture businesses, this kind of crony capitalism seems to anger almost everyone but nobody really does anything about it. Now, we're about to witness another scramble to provide our hard-earned taxpayer money into the pockets of an industry that's already raking in the big bucks. The Senate Health Committee is going to hold hearings in September to find ways to keep...

Trump is threatening to go after congressional health insurance and make them subject to their own legislation. Senator Chuck Schumer warned, “If the president refuses to make the cost-sharing reduction payments, every expert agrees that premiums will go up and health care will be more expensive for millions of Americans. The president ought to stop playing politics with people’s lives and health care, start leading and finally begin acting presidential. Once this is run through the Schumer Translation Device, or STD, which accurately decodes statements by the New York senator, we get the actual Schumer quote, “If the president refuses...