Free Republic

Another day, another Obamacare delay. HHS issued new, er, guidance late yesterday afternoon about how the health care law’s individual mandate will be enforced on those who did not purchase insurance on time. In short, for those who managed to buy insurance by May 1, it won’t be enforced at all. This is the third postponement of the individual mandate.The Washington Examiner’s Philip Klein explains: Starting in 2014, individuals who did not purchase government approved insurance were supposed to be subject to a penalty of $95 or 1 percent of taxable income. Under the original sequence of events, individuals would...

When the embattled Kathleen Sebelius announced her intention to resign as secretary of Health and Human Services, she pledged to stay in President Barack Obama’s cabinet until her replacement was confirmed by the Senate. Turns out, there may be a financial incentive for the former Kansas governor to take her time getting out of Washington. Next week, Sebelius becomes eligible to receive a government pension and continue certain taxpayer-funded health-care benefits when she hits her five-year employment mark with the federal government, Office of Personnel Management (OPM) policy indicates. Under OPM rules, Sebelius, who was sworn into office on April...

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) spends roughly $123.2 million per year to provide “email services” for its 70,000 employees, according to the Government Accountability Office (GAO). Buried in a footnote of a recently released GAO report on the agency’s coordination with the nonprofit group Enroll America, the congressional watchdog detailed the high operating costs associated with running the department’s email. “HHS told us that HHS pays $146.64 per month per user for email; that this charge covers connectivity, storage, and other e-mail services; and that this charge is independent of the number of emails that are sent...

The Department of Health and Human Services is proposing a rule that would, if implemented, guarantee that even more Americans who like their health insurance plans cannot keep them. Fixed indemnity plans, which pay insured customers a set amount towards medical expenses and are often cost-effective relative to more comprehensive health insurance, are popular forms of coverage, and potentially becoming more popular in the wake of Obamacare. Health insurance industry representatives say that fixed indemnity plans have been attracting more interest as many Americans look for a way to mitigate against the high deductibles applicable to many insurance policies available...

At the end of the day, we all want Americans to have access to affordable, quality healthcare, but Obamacare is the wrong path to get to that goal. As we begin to review the qualifications and record of President Obama’s new nominee to become HHS Secretary, Sylvia Mathews Burwell, current director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), will have to answer a number of very important questions during her upcoming confirmation hearings before both the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee and the Senate Finance Committee. And while Ms. Burwell was unanimously confirmed to become OMB director,...

As horrible as Kathleen Sebelius has been as this nation's health and human services secretary, she has been exactly who President Barack Obama has wanted her to be. This was no rogue incompetent tinkering with America's health care. This was one of Obama's chief lieutenants, one who was doing his bidding every step of that treacherous road they traveled together. Don't get me wrong; Sebelius was inexcusably bad -- arrogant, defiant, uncompassionate, dogmatic and unrepentant. Obama cashiered her only because it was time to deflect blame from himself and change the channel. There is nothing incompatible between assigning major blame...

Senate Democrats have been desperately trying to move the national conversation away from Obamacare to just about anything else before the midterm elections — “paycheck fairness,” the minimum wage, even the Koch brothers. But President Obama’s choice of Sylvia Burwell to replace Kathleen Sebelius as secretary of Health and Human Services thrusts Obamacare right back into the national spotlight — and with it Obama’s false promise that “if you like your health-care plan, you can keep your health-care plan.” Burwell should not be confirmed until she explains how OMB allowed the president of the United States to lie — repeatedly...

Count Ted Cruz among the unimpressed about the HHS claim that over seven million Americans enrolled in ObamaCare by the end of the open-enrollment deadline. Javier Manjarres conducted a short telephone interview with Sen. Cruz, pointing out an earlier story broken by talk radio host Drew Steele about notification letters from HHS of ObamaCare auto-enrollment and questioned whether those were part of the HHS calculations. Cruz called this part of the mystery around the “funny numbers” coming out of the Obama administration, and wondered how many of the 7.1 million were only partial sign-ups:CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE VIDEO The...

Health Overhaul: The midwife of ObamaCare exits stage left, leaving behind wreckage that once was the finest health care system in the world, less affordable health insurance and patients unable to find doctors and hospitals. Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of Health and Human Services — referred to in the increasingly un-Affordable Care Act's iconic use of the phrase "the Secretary shall determine," which appears in ObamaCare's guiding document no fewer than 1,005 times — has determined that it's time to go. Or rather it's been determined for her by a White House in whose parallel universe ObamaCare's current alleged enrollment...

President Obama on Friday formally nominated Sylvia Mathews Burwell to head the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) following the botched resignation of Kathleen Sebelius. Burwell served in several positions under the Bill Clinton administration, including as a deputy aide to then-budget director Jack Lew. In July 1995, Burwell (then Sylvia Mathews) was one of several key aides questioned by the Senate Whitewater Committee regarding the death of deputy White House counsel Vince Foster. Foster’s death was officially ruled a suicide. The Clinton White House eventually admitted to misleading investigators about how senior officials had seized and disposed of...

The replacement of Kathleen Sebelius by Sylvia Mathews Burwell as the Secretary of Health and Human Services has been portrayed by the legacy “news” media as a new lease on life for Obamacare. The party line is that Sebelius was mortally wounded by GOP exploitation of a single uncharacteristic mistake—the botched rollout of Healthcare.gov—while Burwell is a brilliant Beltway veteran unsullied by controversy and possessing the very administrative skills needed to save Obama’s “signature domestic achievement.” … This tale fails to conform to the facts, however … The vessel is taking on water at an alarming rate, and Sylvia Burwell’s...

April 13, 2014, 10:09 am Sebelius: Pressure after rollout was 'awful' By Elise Viebeck Outgoing Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said she was "flat-out wrong" to believe that HealthCare.gov was ready to go on Oct. 1, 2013. Sebelius made the comment to NBC's Andrea Mitchell on "Meet the Press" in her first post-resignation interview. The secretary has only a handful of weeks left at HHS until her replacement is confirmed. In candid remarks about the healthcare rollout, Sebelius said she regretted not asking different questions when HealthCare.gov was under construction. "If I had a magic wand and...

Sylvia Burwell, whom President Obama is expected to nominate to replace Kathleen Sebelius as the secretary of health and human services, has a long professional career in business and consulting, but lacks substantial professional or political experience with health care. Her résumé​, according to Dan Diamond of the Advisory Board, only includes a stint as a board member at the University of Washington Medical Center. “Burwell’s track record in health care is not well-established,” Diamond writes in a briefing for the Advisory Board, a health-care consulting firm. Her predecessor, Secretary Sebelius, served as Kansas state insurance commissioner for eight years,...

OMB Leadership Sylvia Mathews Burwell, Director Sylvia Mathews Burwell is the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). She was confirmed by the Senate on April 24, 2013. Burwell previously served as President of the Walmart Foundation. Before joining the Foundation in 2012, she was President of the Global Development Program at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, where she worked for 10 years and was also the first Chief Operating Officer. During the Clinton Administration she served as Deputy Director of OMB, Deputy Chief of Staff to the President, Chief of Staff to the Secretary of the...

In the closing days of the open enrollment period for the Affordable Care Act (ACA) , the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) was mailing out letters notifying certain Americans that they had already started a healthcare coverage application on their behalf. The HHS letter stated that the information they used to begin the application for individual Healthcare was obtain by the state agency in charge of implementing Obamacare. The next step for the individual would be visit Healthcare.gov and complete the already started application to see if they qualify for “Marketplace coverage.” News of the HHS letter...

This isn’t exclusively an “Obama problem” — the boss emeritus has been scorching ICE for its catch-and-release policies for ages, starting long before O took office — but it’s important counterprogramming to the left’s narrative that Obama is some sort of fanatic about deporting illegals. Jeff Sessions put one hole in that balloon last week when his office ran the numbers and found that that if you’re here illegally and don’t have a criminal record, you’re already basically exempt from deportation. ICE won’t touch you, whether because you qualify for some sort of statutory exclusion or because Obama’s definition of...

There were fireworks at the D.C. Circuit today as the IRS and HHS squared off against appellants challenging the IRS’s power grab in Halbig v. Sebelius. I attended arguments today and provide the following synopsis. (Carrie Severino has discussed the district court’s opinion here, here, here, and here. Carrie also filed an amicus brief in the case.) The central question is: Does the phrase “established by the State” actually mean what it says, or is that just a fancy way of saying “established by either the State or by the federal government?” At issue is a tax subsidy that the IRS...

In Casablanca, Captain Renault feigns surprise by famously declaring, “I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!” Moments later, a croupier hands Renault a pile of money, saying, “Your winnings, sir.” Just as Renault wasn’t really surprised that Rick’s Café would break the law, none of can be surprised this week that President Obama and the implementers of Obamacare are breaking the law – again. After all, they’ve played fast and loose with the law creating Obamacare since it was (sloppily) written and (barely) passed almost exactly four (long) years ago. The most notorious of Obama’s...

WASHINGTON, D.C., March 26, 2014 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A prominent U.S. senator has said that President Obama should “explain to the pope why he is telling businesses in America they can’t remain true to their faith and stay in business.” On Thursday, President Obama will meet with Pope Francis for the first time. According to probable 2016 presidential candidate Sen. Rand Paul, R-KY, a topic of top priority should be the abortifacient, sterilization, and contraception insurance coverage requirement under the Affordable Care Act. Speaking on “Fox & Friends” on Tuesday morning, Paul did not mince words. “The ‘Hobby Lobby’ case is...

The Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) may soon be telling you what you should eat to reduce your “carbon footprint.” In order to—ostensibly—prevent global warming and reduce our national carbon footprint, Washington is already telling Americans what light bulbs they can buy, and what buildings in which they should want to live and work. Now, food could be the next frontier. Currently, the USDA and HHS are drafting their 2015 Dietary Guidelines. Every five years, the USDA and HHS issue recommendations for Americans on what constitutes a healthy diet. As Dr. Barbara...