Free Republic

Elections have consequences, just ask BO if you don’t believe me. So far, Israel’s election has had these consequences: Bibi has officially been unfriended by Barry. – New York TimesBig Guy is seriously considering taking his toys and going home. PoliticoFormer Obama campaign chairman and presidential advisor, David Axelrod, accused Bibi of “shameful demagoguery.” (this, from a man, as Mary Katharine Ham pointed out, “ran a campaign that accused Mitt Romney of giving a woman cancer, blessing scurrilous charges of tax evasion, and darkly warning Ohio voters that Obama’s opponent wasn’t ‘one of us.’” – PowerlineIran’s nuclear arms for peace...

This year, as many as 6 million taxpayers will learn that they now owe a "Shared Responsibility Payment" because they didn't have health insurance last year. How many will actually pay is anyone's guess.

Millions of Americans may be in for a shock when they file tax returns and learn that they have to pay a fine for failing to enroll in health insurance in 2014 and an even bigger fine for failing to enroll in 2015 before the enrollment period ended on Feb. 15. While there is nothing they can do to avoid the 2014 fine, which must be paid this year, they could avoid the 2015 fine, payable next year, if the Obama administration allowed them more time to enroll. The government should open a special enrollment period that lasts beyond April...

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.

White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest described reports that millions of Americans would be getting tax bill because of Obamacare as "inaccurate" just days after the Treasury Department estimated that 6 million Americans will pay about $2 billion in individual mandate taxes this year."I don't think it is accurate to suggest that millions of people are going to get a tax bill as a result of this," Earnest said in response to a question Tuesday about the millions of Americans who will pay a tax penalty for not having health insurance in 2014. "The vast majority of Americans, more than three-quarters of Americans,...

ObamaCare's individual mandate penalties were supposed to encourage people to buy insurance. But it turns out that the penalties amount to a regressive tax that hits lower-income families the hardest. That's the conclusion of the Minnesota-based Citizen's Council for Health Freedom (CCHF), which found that low-income couples who don't buy an ObamaCare plan will end up paying a far greater share of their income in penalties than those making twice as much.

Obamacare was never created to give people quality and affordable healthcare; it was designed to create a single payer system, socialized medicine, allowing government complete access to and control of your life! And if that's not offensive to each and every American, your freedoms, what is? The reason Obama refuses to drop the individual mandate is because he knows a huge majority of Americans will not want Obamacare if given the choice. Why? Because it's complete and unadulterated crap! They pick and choose your doctors, your premiums are anything but affordable and death panels will decide if your loved ones...

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is planning to make ObamaCare a priority in his first weeks as leader of the Senate, vowing a sustained effort to dismantle the law piece-by-piece. Instead of a full repeal, McConnell said the GOP will tackle unpopular aspects of the law such as the individual mandate, the medical device tax and the 30-hour workweek requiring employers to provide insurance. “These are the kinds of things that I believe there is a bipartisan majority in the Senate to approve,” he said in the interview with Time magazine published Wednesday. The only other priority he listed was the...

This morning, a three-judge panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit invalidated a 2012 IRS rule allowing tax subsidies in federal insurance exchanges under the Affordable Care Act. Within hours, a three-judge panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit issued a contrary ruling in a similar, but separate, case, allowing exchange subsidies in both state-based and federal exchanges. Though both decisions are still subject to further review and will have no immediate impact, such “circuit splits” are often considered strong evidence that a case will ultimately end up before the U.S. Supreme...

Almost none of the uninsured will end up paying the ObamaCare mandate penalty, according to an updated analysis by the Congressional Budget Office, which found that 87% will be able to claim an exemption. That exemption rate is higher than the CBO had previously thought, which not only blows a hole in its budget forecast for the law, but also increases the odds of an insurance industry "death spiral." According to the CBO's latest estimate, out of the 30 million people who will still be uninsured in 2016, just 4 million will end up paying any tax penalty, despite the...

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...

Though Coach is Right published this piece in early January, the subject matter may be even more pertinent today as countless doctors refuse to treat ObamaCare patients, hospitals deny them admittance and the negative impact of the law has moved from talking point to reality. When Chief Justice John Roberts sided with the Supreme Court’s Marxist bloc in ruling the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate constitutional, stunned conservatives immediately accused him of committing an “act of judicial cowardice.” “It is not our job to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices,” wrote the supremely hypocritical Roberts as...

One by one, the myths of the Affordable Care Act have been revealed. When the curtain on open enrollment falls on March 31, the last remaining big myth of ObamaCare will be fully exposed: The individual mandate has failed. After a last-ditch effort with President Obama himself encouraging "young invincibles" to sign up before the deadline, the administration is scrambling to boost enrollment. On Tuesday, the White House announced that people who applied for coverage on the federal health-insurance exchange will have until mid-April to finish the paperwork. The mandate was supposed to be the administration's magical elixir for the...

The White House will not delay the “individual mandate” at the core of Obamacare, a top Administration official said Sunday. “That will not happen,” top White House advisor Dan Pfeiffer said Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press, amid Republican calls for a delay of the requirement that Americans have health insurance by March 31 or incur a fine assessed with their 2013 tax return. The original deadline, Feb. 15, was extended amid the disastrous rollout of the administrations website for policy shopping, healthcare.gov. The administration has already delayed the law’s employer coverage requirements.

2014 is the first year most Americans will have to either have health insurance or face a tax penalty. But most people who are aware of the penalty think it's pretty small, at least for this first year. And that could turn into an expensive mistake. "I'd say the vast majority of people I've dealt with really believe that the penalty is only $95, if they know about it at all," says Brian Haile, senior vice president for health policy at Jackson Hewitt Tax Service. "And when people find out, they're stunned. It's much, much higher than they would expect."...

.... But amid the post-rollout political backlash, last week the agency created a new category: Now all you need to do is fill out a form attesting that your plan was cancelled and that you "believe that the plan options available in the [ObamaCare] Marketplace in your area are more expensive than your cancelled health insurance policy" or "you consider other available policies unaffordable." This lax standard—no formula or hard test beyond a person's belief—at least ostensibly requires proof such as an insurer termination notice. But people can also qualify for hardships for the unspecified nonreason that "you experienced another...

Health and Human service released a seven page bulletin Wednesday announcing the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Service's decision to extend the transitional policy of the Affordable Care Act by two years, to Oct. 1, 2016. Effectively, this makes the individual mandate -- the requirement that all individuals purchase insurance by the end of March or face a tax penalty -- considered by many to be the backbone of the Affordable Care Act, an option one can opt out of rather than a requirement. The transitional policy allows for hardship exemption from the tax penalty if an individual can’t afford...

Death Blow: Almost two years ago, President Obama's solicitor general told the Supreme Court that without the individual mandate, ObamaCare would fail. But after winning that victory, the administration itself has effectively killed the mandate. In his oral arguments before the court, Donald Verrilli made it abundantly clear that, without the individual mandate, ObamaCare would "make matters worse, not better." As he told the justices, the "guaranteed issue" and "community rating" regulations at the heart of ObamaCare won't work if you let the young and healthy choose not to buy insurance.

He forgot to mention it. Minor oversight, could have happened to anybody.The mandate, remember, has already been suspended this year for people who had their old insurance canceled and who now regard it as a “hardship” to purchase insurance on the supposedly affordable Affordable Care Act exchanges. For them, as Ezra Klein put it at the time, “ObamaCare itself is the hardship.” But there’s an obvious problem with that scheme: The “hardship” exemption applies only to people who used to have insurance, and it applies only for this enrollment period. The mandate penalty would continue to bite people who...

House Republicans are considering a bill this week that delays the enforcement of ObamaCare's individual mandate penalties for five years, and uses the savings to prevent a cut in Medicare doctor payments for 10 years. The two ideas are likely to be combined into a single bill: the Sustainable Growth Rate Repeal and Medicare Provider Payment Modernization Act, H.R. 4015. That bill repeals cuts to physician payments, and allows for small increases over 10 years.