Free Republic

An Alabama-based Catholic television station has filed a lawsuit against the Department of Health and Human Services over its controversial mandate that requires religious employers to cover contraceptives, including those that can cause early abortion. Eternal Word Television Network, whose station in Irondale brings programming to more than 145 million homes across the globe, filed the suit on Monday. Brought before the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Alabama, EWTN is being represented by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty and has the aid of Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange.....

See: Rubio Seeks Obama's Support for Delay of Individual Mandate "Sen. Marco Rubio is urging President Barack Obama to support his bill that would delay Obamacare’s individual mandate until six months after the program’s malfunctioning website is working normally." What I would like to ask Senator Rubio is: Under what provision of our Constitution is Congress authorized to impose a fine upon a citizen who exercises a fundamental right to purchase health insurance to meet their personal medical and health care needs and refuses “federally approved” health insurance? Does the Senator from the great State of Florida disagree with what...

Reacting to the troubled rollout of President Obama's health care law, 10 Democratic senators led by New Hampshire's Jeanne Shaheen have signed a letter asking Obama to extend the enrollment period for individuals to purchase insurance through the new exchanges. However, not only would such an extension require an act of Congress (as I detailed in an earlier post), but it's likely to ruffle the feathers of insurers, who were counting on enrollment ending on March 31. Why would insurers be bothered? After all, wouldn’t they want to give Americans as much time as possible to purchase their product? Though...

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney was dismissive Thursday of comments by Sen. Joe Manchin endorsing a one-year delay of the new health care law's individual mandate. "The fact is you have to make the system work," Carney told reporters during the White House press briefing. The argument, by Manchin and others, is that such a delay would be only fair to the American people after the Obama administration granted a similar delay to large businesses in their reporting requirement for providing health insurance to their employees. To that, Carney and other Obamacare supporters argue that the individual mandate is...

According to Alliance Defending Freedom, the Obama HHS mandate is currently losing 32-5 in federal courts from all of the lawsuits ADF and other pro-life legal groups have brought. “The Obama administration’s abortion pill mandate forces employers, regardless of their religious or moral convictions, to provide insurance coverage for abortion-inducing drugs, sterilization, and contraception under threat of heavy penalties by the Internal Revenue Service and other federal agencies if the mandate’s requirements aren’t met,” ADF says.Below is a rundown of some of the victories, click the links for more details about the particular case.Colorado: Newland v. Sebelius: The Newland family...

The House voted Wednesday to delay the ObamaCare employer mandate, defying a White House veto threat and winning over dozens of Democrats. Republicans also approved a bill delaying the mandate that individuals purchase health insurance by 2014. The House GOP called up the two bills to protest the Obama administration's unilateral decision to delay the mandate that employers provide health insurance for a year. Members voted 264-161 to delay the employer mandate for a year — a vote the GOP says authorizes Obama's decision. Thirty-five Democrats joined Republicans in passing the employer mandate delay. Only one Republican voted no. Members...

**SNIP** Theoretically, someone who chooses to be uninsured owes the government money, but the government is prohibited by the ACA from trying to collect it. What kind of a debt is it that can’t be collected? **SNIP** As I understand it, the only way the IRS can possibly collect the penalty is by withholding your tax refund. No problem: if you arrange your taxes so that you don’t overpay, the penalty can never be collected from you. Which is to say that there is no penalty for failing to comply with the Obamacare “mandate.” Many commentators have pointed this out,...

Three weeks after the launch of the Obamacare exchanges that were three years in the making, the Obama administration is in full spin mode trying to contain the damage caused by the flawed $400-plus million Healthcare.gov website. After myriads of structural problems and security concerns — even shutting down the entire website for repair — there is broad bipartisan agreement that Obamacare isn’t ready for prime time. Former White House press secretary Robert Gibbs referred to the rollout as “excruciatingly embarrassing.” Jon Stewart said Democrats can’t “spin this turd.” And just 12 percent of Americans believe the launch has gone...

If the individual mandate is delayed by year or the fine is not to be enforced for a year, doesn't that create another problem? If health insurers are still required to accept all applicants regardless of pre-existing conditions, then won't the insurers have to raise the rates on those that have insurance to make up for the failure of the healthy masses to enroll? Surely, delaying the mandate or the fines will cause less people to enroll.

A lawsuit challenging premium subsidies in federal exchanges survived a procedural hurdle Tuesday, with U.S. District Court Judge Paul Friedman rejecting the federal government’s motion to dismiss and promising a ruling by February 15th. The case, Halbig v. Sebelius, is one of four outstanding lawsuits challenging an IRS rule allowing premium subsidies in states refusing to create an exchange. If successful, the challenge would not only stop the employer mandate in most states, but would protect some Americans from the individual mandate to buy federally-approved health insurance. Because exchange subsidies are estimated to cost $1.075 trillion through 2023, blocking them...

Minnesota utility regulators on Thursday approved Xcel Energy’s plan to add four Upper Midwest wind farms that will boost its wind power capacity in the region by 42 percent. The decision by the state Public Utilities Commission (PUC) clears the way for Minneapolis-based Xcel and two energy development companies, including Geronimo Energy of Edina, to push ahead with the goal of meeting deadlines to secure lucrative federal tax credits. Regulators rejected a request by other wind energy interests to extend the review process on the four projects in Minnesota and North Dakota. Xcel didn’t disclose the cost of the projects,...

Every time I post that the IRS is clearly forbidden from punishing you for not paying the fine/tax, I get the same fictional responses. Maybe their goal is to make it sound so scary so that Obamacare gets magically repealed(poof) , but given that wont happen anytime soon this misinformation can have the unintended consequence of fooling/scaring people into complying and helping make Obamacare work. I found the section in the bill text and will posted it below as a vanity for future reference skip tp SPECIAL RULES. CHAPTER 48—MAINTENANCE OF MINIMUM ESSENTIAL COVERAGE ‘Sec. 5000A. Requirement to maintain minimum...

The statement that Obamacare is the law of the land seems to be repeatedly stated by “conservative” media personalities, such as Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, etc.. It is almost as if they are intentionally trying to beat it into our heads that Obamacare is “the law of the land”. I have yet to find one “conservative” talk show host make an attempt to challenge that comment when there is a very, very strong case to be made that Obamacare is not “the law of the land”. The truth is, Obamacare is a legislative act, H.R.3590 titled the: “Patient Protection and...

In a speech at a Maryland community college last week promoting his namesake health reform law, President Obama mentioned the word "benefits" 10 times. Free preventive care, coverage for children up to age 26, a better drug plan for seniors. "We're giving more benefits and protections," he said. But there was one word Obama didn't mention once in his entire 51-minute talk. And that word was "mandate." That's despite the fact that a central feature of ObamaCare is the requirement that all those adoring young people buy insurance or pay a fine, and is the key to whatever chances of...

Two words, my friends: “Bipartisan support.” U.S. Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia broke ranks with fellow Democrats and said he’d support a stopgap spending plan that delays the individual mandate in President Barack Obama’s health-care law.“There’s no way I could not vote for it,” Manchin said at a Bloomberg Government breakfast today. “It’s very reasonable and sensible.”…Manchin, 66, said he’d be willing to delay the individual mandate as part of the budget negotiations because the Obama administration in July gave businesses an extra year to provide their workers with health insurance.“Don’t put the mandate on the American public right...

After reviewing the constitutionally authorized taxing powers granted to Congress and the limits placed upon each specific kind of tax, a question arises as to which specific taxing power granted to Congress can be pointed to and levied as Obamacare’s "shared responsibility payment" and be within the limits of the specific tax pointed to. Roberts never answered this question but merely indicated the individual mandate tax levied upon those failing to have federally approved health insurance is to be collected along with income taxes. And so, a question arises as to which constitutionally authorized taxing power granted to Congress, when...

Four Christian universities in Oklahoma are the latest to sue the Obama administration over its mandate that forces employers, regardless of their religious or moral convictions, to provide insurance coverage for abortion-inducing drugs, sterilization and contraception. Southern Nazarene University, Oklahoma Wesleyan University, Oklahoma Baptist University and Mid-America Christian University filed the new lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma on Friday. They specifically objected to providing coverage for abortifacients, the Christian group Alliance Defending Freedom, which filed the suit on their behalf, said in a statement. "Christian colleges should remain free to operate according to...

The government mandated blend of ethanol in every gallon of gasoline is a full-fledged disaster and neither Congress, nor the Environmental Protection Agency shows any indication of either repealing or abandoning it. A recent Wall Street Journal editorial said, “A strong candidate for the most expensive policy blunder of recent years would have to be the mandate to blend corn ethanol and other biofuels into the nation’s gasoline supply. Last month even the Environmental Protection Agency essentially acknowledged that the program is increasingly unworkable and costly to consumers. The EPA just won’t do much to fix it.” Some future historian...

President Obama, confronted with the issue of the Supreme Court upholding his health care law by declaring the individual mandate a tax, contradicted the court by saying that the individual mandate “penalize[s]” Americans rather than taxes them. “You have to take responsibility, and if you don’t, you’re going to be penalized for it, and that’s the right thing to do,” Obama told WDTN-NBC while defending the individual mandate. He also denied that the court’s ruling means that he has raised taxes through Obamacare. “I have consistently kept my promise not to raise taxes on people [making] under $250,000 a year.”Obama effectively...

A Florida Catholic academic institute has filed a second lawsuit against the Department of Health and Human Services' abortion-drug "accommodation." Ave Maria University, a recently founded institute located in Naples, filed the suit Thursday in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida, Ft. Myers Division. "The University's sincere religious beliefs forbid it from facilitating, participating in, paying for, training others to engage in, or otherwise supporting contraception, sterilization, or abortion," reads the suit in part. "The University cannot fulfill its mission of preparing students to impact the world by living their Christian values if it violates...