Free Republic

Property Insurance experts are weighing in on one state senator’s call for another special session to address the skyrocketing cost of property insurance for millions of Floridians. Gov. DeSantis is also urging patience, and quote “knocking on wood that we won’t have a big storm this summer.” “So knock on wood (that) we won’t have a big storm this summer,” he also said. “Then I think you’re going to start to see companies see an advantage.” “We have seen some projections that other companies may decide to take similar actions and withdraw from the state,” Friedlander said. “But we have...

Ron DeSantis, the rightwing Republican governor of Florida and a likely 2024 presidential candidate, has handed favors to his big-money donors in the insurance industry at the expense of cash-strapped residents of his state, a new report claims. The report, “How Ron DeSantis sold out Florida homeowners”, draws on contributions from the American Federation of Teachers union, the non-profit Center for Popular Democracy, the voting rights group Florida Rising and the dark money watchdog Hedge Clippers. [cut] the report’s authors suggest, that DeSantis’s administration has put the insurance companies’ interests ahead of Florida’s own citizens, who are battling homeowner insurance...

State Farm quickly distanced itself from a program that pushed books about gender fluidity on young children Monday after a new ad campaign slammed the insurance giant as "a creepy neighbor," but Consumers' Research thinks the insurance giant still has to "undo the damage" it caused. "Yesterday we launched our ad campaign calling out State Farm for donating books aimed at kindergartners on the topics of transgenderism and being non-binary… now they claim that they have ended their partnership with the GenderCool Project," Consumers' Research executive director Will Hild told Fox News Digital, calling the turn of events "an indication...

Recent Harris Poll research revealed that two-thirds of consumers describe every step of acquiring health care as difficult. Half of respondents even avoid care because of this complicated bureaucracy, likely making their ailments worse and costlier in the long term. Doctors have been sounding the alarm on this problem for years. Thankfully, the White House is listening to physicians who are actually practicing—and we practitioners are saying patients need more price transparency, less reliance on insurance, and less government interference.This would result in lower cost, increased access, and higher quality. You can have only two of these in government-controlled health care....

A cozy alliance between insurers and law enforcement has turned the justice system into the industry’s hired gun and left innocent customers facing prison.... These tactics can be applied with impunity, thanks to legislation in all 50 states restricting the ability of customers to sue insurers for wrongly accusing them of fraud

In 2004 Congress passed the Weldon amendment, which said that no state can discriminate against a healthcare entity because it refuses to participate in abortions. The language includes states discriminating against a health plan that decides not to cover abortion. If the state does, according to the amendment, it will lose its federal funding. In August 2014, California informed its health insurers that they would no longer be allowed to offer health plans that exclude elective abortions. Insurers complied, as one might expect, and suddenly, no one in California could purchase health insurance that didn't pay for the death of...

Sometimes, those attacking America seem to understand our economy and the source of our power better than we do ourselves. Terrorists plot big, jarring attacks, in part hoping the spin off effects will cascade throughout our economy, pyramiding the ultimate costs. When terrorists hijacked airliners and crashed them into the World Trade Center towers, they were hoping not just to murder a few thousand innocent Americans, but to bring down the entire, world leading American economy as well. And they could have, without some careful, pro-growth, national economic policies in response. The hijacking of three, American jumbo jet airliners on...

Here's something that's really odd. Let's say at the end of last year there were almost 50 million uninsured people in the United States. Averaging over all the different estimates, let's say that 5 million of them have now acquired insurance because of ObamaCare. But now it's April and the open enrollment period is over. That means that 90% of the uninsured are still uninsured and they won't be able to buy an individual insurance plan until next November. As AP reporter Connie Cass explains: With limited exceptions, insurers are refusing to sell to individuals after the enrollment period for...

Moody’s announced Thursday it was downgrading its outlook for health insurers from stable to negative based on uncertainty related to ObamaCare. The credit rating agency cited an unstable environment because of the healthcare law’s difficult rollout, and projected that insurers would earn two percent less than forecast in 2014. “While we’ve had industry risks from regulatory changes on our radar for a while, the ongoing unstable and evolving environment is a key factor for our outlook change,” Moody’s Senior Vice President Stephen Zaharuk said in a statement. “The past few months have seen new regulations and announcements that impose operational...

"....... question is whether insurance companies believe in the website enough to put their advertising money where their mouthpieces were before its launch on October 1. “The big tell of if/when people finally believe it’s working is when you see the states, insurance companies, etc., restart their ad buys and outreach programs that they put on hold to drive people to the site,” a Democratic observer of health-care issues told NBC’s First Read. “Once it’s established that you can go from typing in the words ‘HealthCare.gov’ to getting a confirming e-mail saying you’re covered with reasonable ease, then I think...

The federal government is dumping the consequences of its Obamacare website failures onto the private sector health insurance companies. The private sector is now expected to scramble and under severe time pressure do what the feds couldn't in the three-plus years. Unable to calculate what subsidies should be for lower-income insurance buyers, it is asking insurers to estimate the subsidies, and it will cut a check to them for whatever they ask for. Roberta Rampton and Caroline Humer of Reuters write: President Barack Obama's administration has found a short-term fix to pay insurance companies for plans selected on HealthCare.gov,...

"....Starting in January, insurers will be forced to offer coverage to individuals suffering from pre-existing conditions. When drafting the legislation, lawmakers wanted to make sure that individual insurers didn’t worry about getting stuck with a disproportionate share of very sick enrollees with high medical costs. If that were to happen, it could motivate insurers to attempt to manipulate plan offerings so as to “cherry pick” the healthier participants. So lawmakers included several provisions to guard against this possibility, one being the risk corridors. A simple way of explaining the risk corridors program is that it requires insurers to estimate their...

The U.S. government is proposing compensation to help insurers participating in Obamacare health exchanges who fear that their costs will spin out of control if their plans are dominated by sicker people. Fears about cost burdens from sicker patients increased when President Barack Obama introduced a "fix" to fulfill his promise to let people who like their existing insurance plans keep them. The exchanges were created as part of Obama's healthcare reform law, popularly known as Obamacare. An estimated 7 million people are expected to sign up in the first year. Insurance went on sale on Oct. 1 and goes...

President Barack Obama’s healthcare law, struggling to survive its botched rollout, now depends more than ever on insurance companies, doctor groups and hospitals — major forces in the industry that are committed to the law’s success despite persistent tensions with the White House. Many healthcare industry leaders are increasingly frustrated with the Obama administration’s clumsy implementation of the Affordable Care Act. Nearly all harbor reservations about parts of the sweeping law. Some played key roles in killing previous Democratic efforts to widen healthcare coverage. But since 2010, they have invested billions of dollars to overhaul their businesses, design new insurance...

Insurance companies are ready to unleash an expensive PR blitz to get 7 million new customers once HealthCare.gov is fixed. But don’t expect them to sell “Obamacare.” Big insurers and the stock analysts that track them say that once the White House is sure its enrollment website is working, the companies will barrage the airwaves with messages encouraging people to join new health insurance exchanges, either by signing up directly with insurers or by giving the website another shot. The strategy makes sense: “Obamacare” polls terribly with Americans, but the idea of affordable insurance is a hit. And for the...

As a columnist I am supposed to dispassionately convey a viewpoint to educate my readers about the topic du jour. But I am hopping mad. Not at Obama or Queen Kathleen because I lost faith and confidence in those two long ago. After the escapades of the last week, my anger is totally focused on the leaders of the businesses who are in cahoots with Obamacare -- either through providing insurance or working on the website. Once again big business allowed their greed to cause them to be exposed to politicians defaming them. After more than three years of working...

The New York Times brought out the big guns in defense of Obamacare. Faced with a growing chorus of complaints about the keystone health insurance reform that bears Obama’s name, the New York Times shrugged. They shrugged because that’s all they have left. The shoulder shrug, by the way, is a sign of the lie. The Times shrugged off the problems with the website, the problems with rising insurance premiums and the major problem with the president’s promise that if you like your insurance you get keep it. The problem the Democrats face is that when Obama promised Americans...

Today, Team Obama isn’t getting any support from its normally active cheering section at CNN. Bob Laszewski, an executive who provides consulting services to many major American insurance companies, told CNN’s Anderson Cooper: “The White House is exerting massive pressure on the industry, including the trade associations, to keep quiet.” Here’s what’s Bob is talking about: Insurers who expose Obamacare’s most sinister effects are told they can’t become authorized Obamacare insurance providers – that means they’d be denied access to the largest market in the country just for telling the truth about how many people are being forced off their...

**SNIP** CNN reports that insurers had nothing to do with it in at least three states, where the states themselves forced the cancellations in order to comply with ObamaCare: President Obama may have promised Americans that they can keep their insurance if they like it, but that’s not the case in at least three states where insurance companies are required to discontinue plans that don’t meet Obamacare’s new coverage standards. Virginia, Kentucky and Idaho have told insurance companies that they must scrap insurance plans that don’t meet the minimum coverage requirements laid out in the Affordable Care Act. Some states...

On CNN's Anderson Cooper 360 Tuesday, investigative reporter Drew Griffin exposed allegations that the White House is pressuring insurance companies to not publicly criticize ObamaCare