Free Republic

The Obama administration doled out more than $77 million to promote the former president’s signature health-care legislation in what could be its final full year of existence, contracts obtained by The New York Post showed. They show the federal government contracted with Democratic-leaning public relations firm Weber Shandwick to spend $74.15 million on July 28, 2016, and another $3.69 million on Sept. 9, 2016, promoting the plan. The Weber Shandwick contract was signed by Pam Jenkins, president of the firm. Its chairman, Jack Leslie, was picked by Obama in 2009 to be chairman of the US African Development Foundation. Leslie...

My fix for Obamacare: 1 Repeal the Obamacare law 2 Allow interstate medical insurance sales 3 Tort reform to reduce liability costs for physicians and hospitals When I say repeal I mean all of it and now. Let the market float and over the same time period that was to be Obamacare's collapse the market will engineer a replacement. Reduce medical regulation and prices will drop.

I’m also hoping that President Trump can see through the old political “bait and switch” that is pushing him to approve the present DC Solution to Obamacare I like to refer to Obamacare as ObamaScare. This seems to reflect the true meaning of the term, especially for those who resist/rebel against the [forced] use of Obamacare. But there is more to this today than previously. There is talk of repealing Obamacare. There is also talk of “repairing,” “Replacing,” and “Changing Obamacare” so, apparently, it will be more acceptable to the voter.

Part One of the House GOP’s official plan to repair/undo/fix/replace Obamacare was released this week, to utter shock and dismay. The authors say that everything America needs will be in the full packet, so it’s unfair to judge Part One without seeing the rest. That may be true, so here, let’s just look at the big picture, whether it’s one part, two parts, three or ten. America had a healthcare financing problem a decade ago. Conservative solutions, such as malpractice/tort reform, extending the tax-deductibility that employer-provided health insurance gets to individual policies too, and closing the borders to reduce the...

Sometimes called direct pay, and closely related to concierge care, this sort of business model was once seen as the perquisite of rich folks and medical tourists from foreign lands. But nowadays many of the people seeking cash-based care are middle-class Americans with high-deductible insurance plans. For a patient with an $11,000 family deductible, for example, it might make more sense to seek out a cash-based center like the Premier Medical Imaging facility in Minneapolis, which offers a basic MRI for $499, than to cough up the several thousand dollars that the same procedure generally costs at a traditional hospital....

Here's another important fact. Many Mexicans go to Mexico for medical care, including surgery and all kinds of major medical care. As a result, when one of them is in a wreck or injured, no medical records are available here to show previous injuries/conditions and they are able to claim it was because of the wreck/injury. As a result, lawyers argue that all injuries they have were a result of the incident which occurred here. Conversely, Americans whose records are available can not claim previous injuries were caused by the recent wreck/injury due to availability of records AND a different...

Crumbling down around us Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve heard about the proposed merger between health insurance giants Aetna and Humana. It was big news throughout the last year. That plan has now disintegrated, and both companies are re-jiggering their plans as they move on separately. If you think ObamaCare is part of that scenario, think again. Last August, we learned of Aetna’s intentions for the ACA exchanges, and now we know Humana intends to follow suit.

Aetna chief executive Mark Bertolini said Wednesday that the Affordable Care Act's exchanges - the marketplaces where consumers can buy individual health coverage under President Barack Obama's signature health-care law - are in a "death spiral." [Snip] "My anticipation would be that in '18, we'll see a lot of markets without any coverage at all," Bertolini said. Representatives of the Health and Human Services Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Good Quality Health Coverage Employer Tax Credit [President Trump has promised to improve health coverage and lower employer tax burdens.] Employers who allow every qualified employee and normally on-site, employer-managed "contracted"/"self-employed" person with at least six months/$6,000 of employment to sign up for qualified care and drug coverage (in the following calendar year) may claim a tax credit of $3 against their federal corporate or personal income tax, but never both, for: 1. each qualified employee who received qualified care and drug coverage from the employer for a week and paid no more than $10 per week for it 2....

President Trump said Sunday that it could take “sometime into next year” until his ObamaCare replacement plan is ready, a slower timetable than he and other Republicans have put forward in the past. Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly asked Trump in an interview before the Super Bowl if Americans can “expect a new healthcare plan rolled out by the Trump Administration this year.” “Yes, in the process and maybe it’ll take till sometime into next year but we’re certainly going to be in the process,” Trump replied. “You have to remember Obamacare doesn’t work so we are putting in a wonderful...

A Texas mosque has received nearly $1m in donations after it was destroyed in a fire over the weekend. More than $900,000 had been raised to rebuild the Islamic Center of Victoria as of Monday afternoon, according to a GoFundMe page. Texas officials have yet to determine the cause of the blaze, which happened in the early hours of Saturday.

<p>California Democrats have been showing defiance towards President-Elect Donald Trump since the election, promising to resist his immigration policies, keep their murderous “Sanctuary cities” and pledging to extend medical insurance coverage to millions of illegal aliens.</p> <p>It was all an act.</p>

I was involved in an accident this past Sunday where a lady pulled out of a side street onto my lane and panicked and stopped. I was able to swerve and avoid t-boning her driver's side door. I clipped her rear fender and damaged my vehicle. She admitted her fault, the police reported such, etc. I got an email from USAA, my insurance company, and they said the total repair bill is ~$5,500. The email also said they paid the auto repair company $4,500 as my deductible is $1,000. Is this SOP? The accident was the other party's fault. Should...

Millions of motorists face higher premiums to fund ‘crazy’ payouts for uninsured drivers. The European Union has ruled that even motorists who break the law by driving without insurance should be protected if their car is damaged. However it means that law-abiding drivers who do pay for cover face an increase in bills to cover the cost. Transport Secretary Chris Grayling last night said he was furious that ‘hardworking drivers will foot the bill for the irresponsible actions’ of criminals. But he added that, until the UK leaves the EU, he is powerless to stop it. The Cabinet minister, who...

And it shall be when thy son asketh thee in time to come, saying, What is this? That thou shalt say unto him, By strength of hand the Lord brought us out from Egypt, from the house of bondage: Exodus 13:14 The Marxists are crying the old You Broke it, You Own It chant as they hold a handful of shattered splinters. Is there anything they do which does not come with a 60’s cliché? Time for the Repubs to put the nail in the coffin and say, You Broke it, We Own It. This election was won on two...

One more time: If you like your plan, you can keep your plan. A senior adviser to President-elect Donald Trump said Tuesday that after Obamacare is repealed and replaced with different health-care law no one who has health insurance would lose their coverage. "That is correct. We don't want anyone who currently has insurance to not have insurance," the adviser, Kellyanne Conway, said on MSNBC's "Morning Joe." How that will be avoided, however, is a very big question. Trump and his fellow Republicans, who control both houses of Congress, have said they intend to quickly repeal the Affordable Care Act...

With California in full revolt against the incoming Trump Administration swearing to go to war with the other 49 states, the elected Leftists who run the state struck again against small businesses in the state. The government enacted 900 (yes, you read that correctly) new laws for 2017. One they snuck under everyone’s nose is a revision of the very expensive worker’s comp system. As you probably know worker’s compensation insurance is paid by employers to cover medical costs for an employee getting injured on the job. It is a sure bet, as you suspected, that California has the costliest...

Here is my health coverage proposal: BABIES Babies, born and unborn, would be covered under their mother's (or father's) policy until the end of a policy term. Mandatory issue coverage for babies would be available: a. effective at the end of that policy term or b. effective the six month after the sign-up month Mandatory issue baby coverage would only cover the care of the baby after it is delivered. SUBSIDIES [The Founding Fathers would be astonished at the mere thought of federal health care/product coverage subsidies, but federal patent exclusivity and state law crimping of provider supply and (drug...

Tom Hagen, chairman of Erie Insurance, remembers the exact spot his small desk occupied when he went to work at the company in 1953. Standing in that same building - now the Erie Insurance Heritage Center - Hagen on Friday said the small office building was crowded at the time with 100 employees. Sixty-three years later, local employment has grown to 2,889 and problems with crowding persist. The company announced a solution to that Friday morning - a plan to invest $135 million in a 346,000-square-foot building that's expected to make room to add another 600 employees, and possibly make...

FYI Drudge Report is starting to flash intermittent color bursts. Usually a sign of higher level breaking news about to post.