Free Republic

The Obama administration wants you to bring a side of healthcare politics to your family picnic this weekend. After ObamaCare’s big win at the Supreme Court last week, federal health officials are serving up some tips about talking to family members who may be less-than-enthused that ObamaCare is here to stay. “You should be prepared when Aunt Janine says something like, ‘Obamacare hasn’t helped anyone!’” a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services wrote in a blog post on Thursday. For instance, if your Uncle Ted starts calling Obamacare a train wreck, you should calmly explain that he’s...

Earlier this week, religious employers suffered another loss at the hands of the coercive Obamacare Health and Human Services mandate. A U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit panel ruled against East Texas Baptist University and a group of other non-profit religious employers in their challenge to the Obamacare requirement that they facilitate health care coverage for employees that includes contraceptives and abortion-inducing drugs and devices, or fill out a form notifying the Department of Health and Human Services that they have a religious objection to providing such coverage. This so-called “accommodation” then initiates the process of the government...

The federal government cannot verify nearly $3 billion in subsidies distributed through Obamacare, putting significant taxpayer funding “at risk,” according to a new audit report. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Inspector General (OIG) released an audit Tuesday finding that the agency did not have an internal system to ensure that subsidies went to the right enrollees, or in the correct amounts. “[The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services] CMS’s internal controls did not effectively ensure the accuracy of nearly $2.8 billion in aggregate financial assistance payments made to insurance companies under the Affordable Care Act...

The Obama administration on Monday ordered all insurers to provide IUDs, the contraceptive patch and other birth control free of out-of-pocket charge to all women, rewriting the rules after reports that some insurance carriers were refusing to cover all types of contraceptives. Insurers must cover at least one brand of contraception in each of 18 different methods outlined by the Food and Drug Administration, such as oral contraceptive pills, the emergency contraceptive morning-after pill and intrauterine devices. Insurers can in some cases still impose costs to prod women to use generics rather than brand-name drugs, under the new guidance —...

The Supreme Court issued an order today preventing the Obama administration from forcing a Catholic group in Michigan to obey the HHS mandate that requires them to pay for abortion-causing drugs for their employees. This is the fifth time the Supreme Court has rebuked the Obama administration and prevented it from making such a mandate. For the sixth time in a row, the Supreme Court took steps to protect another religious objector from the HHS mandate. It ordered a lower court to reconsider its ruling that denied a group of Catholic ministries in Michigan the freedom to follow their faith.  “The government keeps making the same...

The Supreme Court has again thwarted the Obama administration’s illegal crusade to coerce employers into violating their religious convictions. Late last Wednesday, Associate Justice Samuel Alito stayed an order secured by the administration in a lower court that would have forced several Catholic organizations to comply with Obamacare’s contraception mandate. Despite a high-profile Supreme Court defeat last June in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, President Obama’s HHS bureaucrats and lawyers have continued their attempts to bully obviously exempt entities into obeying the mandate. Justice Alito’s action constitutes the fifth time SCOTUS has been compelled to rein the government in. The Court...

U.S. Supreme Court. Washington D.C., Apr 18, 2015 / 04:25 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The U.S. Supreme Court has continued its trend of decisions stopping enforcement of a federal contraception mandate against religious employers with moral objections. On April 15, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito issued an order barring the federal government from enforcing the mandate against Catholic Charities affiliates, Catholic schools and social service organizations in the dioceses of Erie and Pittsburgh. “Every time a religious plaintiff has gone to the Supreme Court for protection from the government’s discriminatory mandate the Court has protected them,” Lori Windham, senior counsel for...

The Obama Justice Department has filed its much anticipated corruption indictment against Senator Robert Menendez. He is the New Jersey Democrat who, from his powerful senior seat on the Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee, has vehemently opposed President Obama’s negotiations with the jihadist regime in Iran, as well as his outreach to Castro’s Cuba. Two things about the Obama administration cannot be denied. First, the president is desperate to cut a deal with the mullahs on their nuclear program, so much so that he has erased virtually every red line he ever purported to draw and has not been shy about...

A long-awaited audit of Maryland's health insurance exchange has found that the state improperly billed the federal government $28.4 million as former Gov. Martin O'Malley's administration struggled to launch what would become one of the most troubled websites in the nation. Though the year-long probe by the Department of Health and Human Services inspector general found no fraud or criminal wrongdoing, auditors said the state lacked oversight and internal controls — and they recommended that Maryland refund what the federal government paid to subsidize the cost of signing people up for coverage. The report — obtained by The Baltimore Sun...

The Newland family, owners of Hercules Industries, who won a permanent injunction against the HHS mandate March 16, 2015. Photo courtesy of Alliance Defending Freedom. Denver, Colo., Mar 17, 2015 / 02:51 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A Catholic-owned company’s victory in its fight against a federal mandate to cover drugs and procedures that violate Catholic moral teaching shows the importance of putting God first, one of its co-owners has said.  “Oftentimes businesses can feel that their direction is dictated by market conditions, to which they must be reactive,” William Newland, a co-owner of Hercules Industries, told CNA March 17. “This final...

WASHINGTON —  In a potentially groundbreaking decision, the U.S. Supreme Court nullified a federal court ruling against the University of Notre Dame on the HHS contraception mandate and sent it back for reconsideration by the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals. The university is “gratified” by the decision, said its vice president of public affairs and communications, Paul Browne. Notre Dame officials had requested the case be remanded by the court in light of the Hobby Lobby decision last June. “Notre Dame continues to challenge the federal mandate as an infringement on our fundamental right to the free exercise of our...

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...

(CNSNews.com) – The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) is advancing federal regulations that require federally funded organizations caring for illegal alien minors who are in the United States without their parents (Unaccompanied Children or UC) and who may have been sexually abused access to “emergency contraception” services. “Emergency contraception” includes abortion-inducing drugs. These care providers currently include Catholic and other faith-based organizations that oppose abortion, according to the Center for Family and Human Rights or C-FAM, a Catholic advocacy group. The Interim Final Rule was published in the Federal Register on Dec. 24,...

Last week, the White House took to Twitter for purposes of publicizing its latest Obamacare enrollment blarney. Far more informative than the tweet’s fictitious sign-up numbers was the schmaltzy video to which it was linked. Staged in the Oval Office, this one-act farce features a simpering HHS Secretary briefing our Thespian in Chief, who then delivers the following soliloquy: “The Affordable Care Act is working. It’s working better than we anticipated. It’s certainly working a lot better than many of the critics talked about early on.” In Obama’s 27-word script, “working” appears three times. The President doth protest too much,...

In an effort to sign up as many consumers as possible for insurance under the Affordable Care Act (or Obamacare), the Obama administration has gone to extraordinary lengths to partner with churches and other faith-based groups, even publishing sample church bulletin inserts, flyers, and scripts for announcements, as well as "talking points." These materials are part of the "Second Sunday & Faith Weekend of Action Toolkit," which is available on the website of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).From the beginning, HHS has sought to develop partnerships with faith-based organizations to promote the Obamacare. This "toolkit" has been available since 2013. However, the details...

“Obamacare’s shoddy implementation doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of its great evil,” reported Breitbart late last year, referring to the healthcare rationing that is insidiously hidden within the pages of the evasive law. Perhaps the most alarming criterion of healthcare rationing found in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is the plan’s death panel language.Democrats vehemently denied that death panels would play a role in the ACA, but the law itself states that doctors will be paid to have discussions with patients about living wills, advance directives, and end-of-life options.Killing patients whose perceived utility is declining is not exclusively...

In his march towards total government control of American lives, President Barack Obama strikes at Medicare Advantage, or Medicare Part D, in his new budget released Feb. 2 for fiscal year 2016. “The Budget proposes to give the Secretary of HHS the authority to negotiate drug prices for biologics and high-cost drugs in Medicare Part D to help ensure access to and affordability of these treatments,” according to “Investing in America's Future,” the White House's FY 2016 budget narrative. “This proposal is one of a range of potential solutions to address these growing costs, and the administration looks forward to...

The House vote next week to repeal ObamaCare in full will include a critical difference this time: instructions for committees to develop a GOP healthcare reform alternative. The announcement came as part of a February memo from House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) to Republicans outlining the next month's agenda. Absent from the list are contentious bills on abortion and immigration. [Read the memo below.] Next week's ObamaCare vote will be the fourth stand-alone, full-scale repeal vote in the last four years. The vote will serve as an opportunity for the new House GOP freshmen who pledged to repeal the...

Seven months after federal officials fired CGI Federal for its botched work on Obamacare website Healthcare.gov, the IRS awarded the same company a $4.5 million IT contract for its new Obamacare tax program. CGI is a $10.5 billion Montreal-based company that has forever been etched into the public’s mind as the company behind the bungled Obamacare main website. After facing a year of embarrassing failures, federal officials finally pulled the plug on the company and terminated CGI’s contract in January 2014. Yet on Aug. 11, seven months later, IRS officials signed a new contract with CGI to provide “critical functions”...

Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell promoted Obamacare “in the spirit of Dr. King” on Monday, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, during a breakfast hosted by Al Sharpton. “African-Americans have the lowest life expectancy of any other race in this country,” Ms. Burwell said in a speech to the National Action Network, The Hill reported. But “thanks to the Affordable Care Act,” she said, “7.8 million African-Americans with private insurance now have access to expanded preventative services with no cost sharing.” Ms. Burwell’s speech comes as HHS ramps up its efforts to insure people ahead of next month’s