Free Republic

<p>Historian David Maraniss notes, in Sunday’s Post, that President Obama came to office with the goal of changing “the trajectory of America” and leaving “a legacy as a president of consequence, the liberal counter to [Ronald] Reagan.”</p> <p>On the foreign-policy front, he is the anti-Reagan for certain. Reagan defeated Soviet communism and left us a safer world; Obama presided over the rise and metastasis of the Islamic State and left us a far more dangerous one.</p>

When the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, more commonly known as Obamacare, was enacted, Americans were promised a healthcare system in which insurance companies would be held accountable and patients would have access to affordable care. Six years later, however, the reality has proven to be quite different-a plan that was supposed to mend our nation's fractured healthcare system has driven up healthcare costs, decreased market competition, and ultimately harmed patients. Last week, UnitedHealth--the nation's largest health insurer--announced that it expects to lose more than $500 million through plans they offered under the ACA in 2016. Just yesterday, Anthem...

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VINTON, Iowa, Jan. 22 (UPI) -- Hillary Clinton has been taking increasing credit for the Affordable Care Act in a bid to discredit the healthcare policy of opponent Sen. Bernie Sanders. At a campaign stop Thursday in Vinton, Iowa, she told supporters: "It was called Hillarycare before it was called Obamacare. I don't want to start over again, I don't want to rip up this accomplishment and begin this contentious debate all over again." **SNIP** By contrast, the healthcare reform plan put forward by Clinton's husband in 1993 was far more overreaching than the Affordable Care Act, and in fact...

Congratulations, catatonic America, Hillary knows you'll be going along just fine in your media-induced stupor, you'll be swallowing your daily dose of Obamacare castor oil when she's in charge! So, Bernie Sanders imagines he can introduce into the debate, the fact that Big Insurance & Big Pharma weren't going to be taken behind the woodshed after all, it was BI & BP who were the ones dragging America out back there, to be paddled black & blue. SANDERS: "We need someone with the guts to stand up the private insurance companies and all of their money, and the pharmaceutical industry....

Gee, Hillary. Where the eff have YOU been the past 5 years? At a town hall meeting in Iowa City, Iowa Hillary Clinton was asked by a supporter about companies moving to a mostly part-time workforce and the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA). Clinton said that companies are going to a mostly part-time workforce because of restrictions in Obamacare. “You know, we’ve got to change that because we have built in some unfortunate incentives that discourage full-time employment,” Clinton said. So basically, you just dissed Obama, genius woman.

Democrats gained the political muscle to push the Affordable Care Act (ACA) through Congress on three basic arguments. First, they argued that the United States had too many uninsured people, with estimates ranging from 30 million to 45 million. Second, the rise in costs for health care outstripped inflation, and the market required an intervention that would bend the cost curve downward. Third, Democrats claimed that insurance companies made too much profit and shorted most consumers on care, while those with generous health plans - so-called "Cadillac plans" - drove up utilization rates and costs for everyone else.

The Obama administration is sending a new message to people on the Obamacare e-mail list. Sign up for health insurance by December 15 or face big fines. “Important,” the new email warns subscribers. “The penalty for not having health insurance is increasing. If you don’t sign up for coverage, you’ll risk having to pay $695 per person or more for the year.” Since the new enrollment period is in session, email messages from the Obamacare website have increased urging more people to sign up for coverage or face fines. When asked about the fines faced by Americans without insurance, White...

http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-decline-of-obamacare-1445807092 ObamaCare will almost inevitably be reopened in 2017, whoever wins the election. The good news is the emerging consensus among Republican candidates about a credible, pragmatic and optimistic alternative. Jeb Bush was the latest to release a plan two weeks ago—and this is a debate that has always deserved to be litigated at the presidential level to create a mandate for reform.

NEW YORK — A key federal program designed to cushion health insurers’ risks in the Obamacare exchanges has a massive shortfall, which could throw some insurers into financial turmoil. Insurers requested $2.87 billion in so-called “risk corridors” payments for 2014, but will only receive $362 million, or 12.6%, said the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, which oversees Obamacare. The risk corridors program’s goal is to help insurers transition into the individual exchanges, which opened in 2014. Insurers had a tough time setting premiums since they didn’t know how sick their new customers would be. Under the three-year program, insurers...

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has long been an outspoken opponent of the Affordable Care Act. One of her main concerns about the law had to do with its so-called “death panels,” which have been summarily dismissed by the left and it allies in the media — but which were just confirmed by the administration to in fact exist. Though “death panels” may be something of a misnomer, it specifically refers to the use of taxpayer funds for reimbursement of “end-of-life” care and counseling mandated by Obamacare, along with the inevitable healthcare rationing that will come about due to government...

Train Wreck: From the tone of his Obama-Care opinion, Chief Justice Roberts seems to believe he's spared a law that's working just fine. Wrong. With or without the court's help, ObamaCare is in desperate shape.

Good news from the Supreme Court today: If you like your health care subsidies, you can keep them. If you like limited government and the separation of powers, you are out of luck. Now that Chief Justice Roberts and five of his colleagues found that the phrase “Exchange established by the State” means “Exchange established by the State or the Federal Government,” we should henceforth follow Justice Scalia’s suggestion that this act of Congress, which had to be passed before the People knew what was in it and then had to be rescued not once, but twice, by a complicit...

So the Supreme Court has upheld the subsidies and taxes under Obamacare in states that did not establish exchanges, despite the text of the law requiring that those subsidies and taxes apply to states that established exchanges. This is not very surprising. We have not been publishing or writing much about the King v. Burwell because I was confident – I thought it was a 1 in 5 shot, and I believe Michael Cannon thought the same – that SCOTUS would uphold the law no matter the facts of the case. In the short run conservatives may feel depressed about...

"If and when Congress votes on a new immigration bill -- whatever the "triggers," timetables or other provisos -- the real issue to be decided will be the same as it has been from the beginning. That issue is whether the Republican Party, dazed from a daily pounding by the Washington press corps, will agree to commit political suicide by enfranchising 11 plus million illegal aliens on U.S. soil, the vast majority of whom will soon be casting Democratic ballots." So wrote the great M. Stanton Evans, who passed away on Tuesday. Having been at the forefront of the movement...

When it became obvious a couple of years ago that Obamacare would accelerate health care inflation, the law’s boosters began claiming that cost control was never its primary goal. PPACA’s promoters had previously promised that it would reduce annual health care expenses by $2,500 per family while improving access and quality of care. But the facts forced them to abandon that pledge and adopt a safer party line. As expressed by the New York Times, the new story goes thus: “At its most basic level, the Affordable Care Act was intended to reduce the number of Americans without health insurance.”...

Companies with more than 100 full-time employees need to comply or face fines. ... Companies with more than 100 full-time workers must offer affordable health insurance to at least 70% of their staff. This "employer mandate" was supposed to take effect in 2014, but the Obama administration delayed it to this year. And those that don't comply face hefty penalties. Companies will be fined if they don't offer coverage and even just one of their workers gets subsidized insurance on an Obamacare individual exchange. For 2015, the fine is $174 a month times the number of full-time employees (minus 80...

There's a bizarre reason why millions of Americans saw their health plans cancelled in 2013 and, as explained in a new video featuring Robert Graboyes of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, millions more will lose their plans in years to come.

The Affordable Care Act may become even more of a nightmare with Hillary Clinton in the White House, says Betsy McCaughey, chairwoman of the Committee to Reduce Infectious Deaths and former lieutenant-governor of New York. "Hillary could make it worse," McCaughey said Friday on "The Steve Malzberg Show" on Newsmax TV, referencing Clinton's attempt to launch a heathcare plan when her husband, Bill Clinton, was president. "Hillarycare back in November 1993, all 1,362 pages of it . . . was far more coercive than Obamacare." For example, said McCaughey, a medical doctor, Clinton's plan was far more rigid than President...

Watch Gruber talk about Hillarycare as part of the Alliance for Health Reform!