Free Republic

Big health plans stung by losses in the first few years of the U.S. health law’s implementation are seeking hefty premium increases for individual plans sold through insurance exchanges in more than a dozen states. The insurers’ proposed rates for individual coverage in states that have made their 2017 requests public largely bear out health plans’ grim predictions about their challenges under the health-care overhaul. According to the insurers’ filings with regulators, large plans in states including New York, Pennsylvania and Georgia are seeking to raise rates by 20% or more. In states such as Florida and Maryland, insurers are...

Charlie Rose and three of Barack Obama’s former speechwriters had a good laugh Monday night while joking about the president’s infamous, oft-repeated false promise that under Obamacare, “if you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan.” Obama said dozens of times in the run-up to the Affordable Care Act’s signing and enactment that no Americans who liked the insurance plan they had would lose it under the Affordable Care Act. In reality, millions of policies were canceled because of the law’s regulations, and Obama was forced to apologize to the American people. The infamous remark...

In 2010, the police department in Rutledge, Tenn., was riven by scandal. The police chief, a 12-year department veteran, had been charged with assault and was under investigation by state authorities. But that wasn't what Mayor Danny Turley cited when he fired the top cop that year. Turley "had no choice," he said--his "hands were tied"--because the city could have lost its liability insurance if the chief kept his job. That would have left Rutledge responsible for paying out on future lawsuits, potentially crippling its small budget. So the insurance company got its way, and a police officer got an...

A study published in the prominent medical journal BMJ concluded that errors by doctors and hospitals kill more than 250,000 people a year in the US. Martin Makary, professor of surgery at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, led the research team and said “It boils down to people dying from the care that they receive rather than the disease for which they are seeking care.” “In recent years a lot has been made of the issue of people living without health insurance and how the government must take heroic efforts to compel everyone to obtain insurance,” Makary observed....

In the face of losses in the Affordable Care Act marketplace, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Illinois is looking for new ways to cut spending. Starting June 1, the Chicago-based health insurer will no longer accept credit cards as a form of payment for members who buy their own health insurance on or off the Illinois marketplace. The company began notifying customers of the change last month. Blue Cross will still accept other forms of payment, including debit cards. The new payment policy will not affect customers in the group or Medicare markets. In an email announcing the new...

Coworkers going nuts about healthcare costs. Healthcare Act is going to ruin low-end workers financially. Huge sucking sound of money leaving the economy. Government probably has in mind to get it all to single payer so they can abscond with the money.

Remember how the last big increases in ObamaCare premiums took place last fall? Good times, good times. The Hill reports that insurers have begun warning that the financial model of ObamaCare remains unstable. Either they need to get approval from state regulators for another round of large premium increases, or they may bail out altogether. Even the pro-ObamaCare Kaiser Family Foundation says, “Something has to give”: Health insurance companies are amplifying their warnings about the financial sustainability of the ObamaCare marketplaces as they seek approval for premium increases next year.Insurers say they are losing money on their ObamaCare plans...

New York victims of the 2012 storm object to Ted Cruz's vote against relief funds. MINEOLA, N.Y.—Heidi Cruz, the wife of Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz, was met at a campaign event by victims of Superstorm Sandy who protested his opposition to a 2013 bill doling out billions in aid for storm relief and clean-up. People from Long Island and southeast Queens, which were devastated by the October 2012 storm, said the Texas senator’s vote against a $51 billion aid package targeted to New York and New Jersey to recover from the damages disqualified him from the presidency. The 2013...

There’s a lot to consider when buying a new car, but headlights are rarely on anyone's top checklist; now a new study says it’s something drivers should seriously consider. The first ever headlight test was conducted by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety this week and researchers say the results are ‘dismal’. Only one new car model received a good rating. The 2016 Toyota Prius with led headlights received the best rating in the study, while some higher-end cars were in the bottom tier. The study says headlights should illuminate at least 300 feet ahead, but many of the new...

Scott Killerud was about to throw away a mailing about the 2016 enrollment period for MNsure last November when something caught his eye. "Just as I was going to drop it in the trash, I was like - wait a second. What did I just read?" the Pine County farmer said.

Lawmakers in at least four states are pushing bills to force gun owners to register with, and buy liability insurance from, casualty insurers. So far, politicians have proposed imposing these mandates through state laws in Hawaii, New Hampshire and New York, and through city ordinance in Los Angeles. The bills are similar to legislation proposed last year in Congress by Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., whose "Firearm Risk Protection Act" would require gun owners to provide proof of liability insurance before purchasing a firearm and subject gun owners who fail to maintain insurance to fines up to $10,000, Insurance Business America...

Shariah compliant jihad insurance?... Cobalt, Chaucer Offer 1st Lloyd's Shariah Compliant Political Violence CoverShariah compliant managing general agent Cobalt Underwriting has launched a new political violence product backed by Chaucer. Cobalt, the London market’s only Shariah compliant underwriting agency, will offer the product with Lloyd’s capacity provided by Syndicate 2084, the Shariah compliant component of Chaucer Syndicate 1084.

Most uninsured Americans are sitting on the sidelines as sign-up season under the federal health law comes to a close, according to a new poll that signals the nation's historic gains in coverage are slowing. The survey released Thursday by the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation finds that: -- Only 15 percent of the uninsured know this year's open enrollment deadline, which is Sunday. -- More than 7 in 10 say they have not tried to figure out if they qualify for the two main coverage expansions in the law, Medicaid and subsidized private health insurance. -- Only 1 in 100...

Sunday is the deadline to sign up for health insurance, or else pay a fine. That fine has gone up, causing even more financial stress on the uninsured and those who choose to opt out of health insurance. "I just cannot afford it in any way, shape, or form right now," 27-year-old Seth Valkonen said when talking about health insurance. Valkonen chooses to be uninsured by paying a one time fine for not having coverage instead of a monthly premium. "The penalty is cheaper than the overall total for the entire year," he said, Already on a tight budget, this...

Update: In a reversal from claims made on the campaign trail, Ted Cruz's presidential campaign is now saying the senator and his family do have health insurance and never lost coverage. The late night Friday revelation came more than 24 hours after Cruz had told a New Hampshire audience that he and his family were without health insurance and were scrambling to obtain new coverage--and used the claim to slam Obamacare for the mess he was in. In statements to Bloomberg and Wall Street Journal, campaign spokeswoman Catherine Frazier blamed Cruz's false assertion that his family had lost their health...

Numbers from Friday’s jobs report underscores a persistent problem for the U.S. economy: Wages aren’t growing fast enough for most Americans. According to the data for December, the average wage for all workers grew at 2.5 percent over the last year, before accounting for inflation. Healthy wage growth would be somewhere in the range of 3.5-4 percent. How can we get to that level of wage growth? A number of proposals have been floated by economists and politicians across the political spectrum. But there’s one minor fix we can implement that could have major implications: allow workers who quit their...

With less than three weeks of open enrollment left, Covered California is working to highlight increased penalties for not having health insurance this year. Since its individual coverage requirement took effect in 2014, Obamacare has doled out increasingly expensive fines to people who do not purchase coverage through health exchanges or obtain insurance from an employer or a government program such as Medicare. This year brings the highest penalty yet, Peter Lee, Covered California's executive director, said during a news conference Wednesday. "This is real money going straight to the IRS, where the consumer gets nothing in return," Lee said.

Happy New Year, suckers That “affordable” health care the Democrats gave us in 2010 - on a reconciliation vote when none of them had read the entire 2,000-plus-page bill - sure keeps getting harder to afford. Of course, since ObamaCare is an unconstitutional mandate on individuals to purchase a product offered by private companies, it’s also quite difficult to afford not buying it - even though the product itself continues to devolve further into craptasm. Welcome to 2016, where the penalty you’ll face for not buying a product that’s now a bigger ripoff than ever will explode as follows:

When Barack Obama was campaigning for the presidency in 2008 and when he was selling Obamacare to the public in 2010, he made insurance companies the villains. In fact, on the eve of the passage of the Affordable Care Act, every Democratic spokesperson who appeared on TV to support the health reform legislation had one and only one argument to make: We needed Obamacare to protect ordinary people from ruthless, profit mongering insurance companies. They said almost nothing about insuring the uninsured or controlling costs or making health care delivery more efficient. Instead, every advocate produced at least one example...

The lone health insurance cooperative to make money last year on the Affordable Care Act's public insurance exchanges is now losing millions and suspending individual enrollment for 2016. Maine's Community Health Options lost more than $17 million in the first nine months of this year, after making $10.9 million in the same period last year. A spokesman said higher-than-expected medical costs have hurt the cooperative.