Free Republic

.... 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...

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...

In the interest of an informed debate, we've compiled a list of job actions with strong proof that ObamaCare's employer mandate is behind cuts to work hours or staffing levels. As of Jan. 31, our ObamaCare scorecard included 401 employers with more than 100 school districts among them. Recently, IBD explained that a big minimum wage hike alongside the employer mandate would add to pressure on employers to cut workers to part-time, complicating the goal of reducing inequality. Click on the employer names in the list below for links to supporting records, mostly news accounts or official documents.We'll continue to...

Health Care: ObamaCare is turning out like the nine-headed Hydra monster of Greek mythology. Every time President Obama tries to lop off one of its failures, two more emerge. Recent news provides a good case in point. On Wednesday, Obama decreed that those who had plans they liked before ObamaCare could keep them for two more years. The move helped solve a huge political problem Obama himself created when he first made it possible for some people to keep plans they liked. Obama had allowed just a one-year extension — where he gets the authority to do any of this...

The House of Representatives passed legislation Wednesday afternoon to make the fine/“tax” for violating Obamacare’s individual mandate $0 for this year, and it did so by the wide margin of 90 votes (250 to 160). That’s 83 more than the 7-vote margin (219 to 212) by which Obamacare passed the House four Marches ago. Moreover, 27 Democrats voted for today’s legislation—27 more than the number of Republicans who voted for Obamacare when it passed. In all, 223 Republicans voted for today’s bill, while only one—Paul Broun of Georgia—voted against it. Here’s the member-by-member tally for the vote. Earlier today, the...

Local governments, community colleges and other public employers are cutting work hours among part-time employees to prepare for coming mandates under Obamacare, according to the New York Times. President Obama twice has delayed the law’s “employer mandate,” which will require large employers to provide health insurance or pay fines. It starts in 2016 for midsize employers and will phase in starting in 2015 for employers of 100 workers or more. But public sector employers are trimming back work hours now, because their obligations will be based on data from this year, the Times reported.

The University of Notre Dame must provide birth control to employees and students after a federal appeals court ruled Friday, a move the school says will force it to violate its religious beliefs. In a blow to religious colleges and universities across the country, the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago denied Notre Dame's request for an injunction to the ObamaCare birth control mandate that requires the school to provide coverage for contraception. The injunction would have given Notre Dame a temporary reprieve from the birth control mandate, as the Roman Catholic school challenges the rule in court....

Democrat Rep. Nancy Pelosi said in a press conference today that even though the Obama administration has unilaterally delayed Obamacare’s implementation nearly 30 times, there is one delay that will not happen: the individual mandate. A reporter asked Pelosi, who was House Speaker when Obamacare passed: “The administration announced another delay of the employer mandate on obamacare or the affordable care act. Do you think that opens up wiggle room for Democrats to vote to delay the employee mandate that the employees are now required to but, and if so, why not?” Pelosi fired back: “No, it is a completely...

Calling the Obama administration “the most tone deaf to religious liberty issues in recent memory,” Philadelphia Archbishop Charles Chaput warned that religious freedom in the U.S. is “at risk,” and that “the more government mandates evil action, the more likely civil disobedience becomes.” Last February, Chaput urged his fellow prelates to take the “right action…whatever the cost” regarding the Health and Human Services’ contraceptive mandate, which requires nearly all insurance plans under the Affordable Care Act to pay for sterilization, contraceptives, and abortion-inducing drugs. …

As the country's first 'Imperial President' threatens to rule by Executive fiat and just simply run-over the Republicans' feckless leadership, he's also made clear he intends to continue ongoing, previous strategies (lie, obfuscate, and withhold) he's utilized thus far. The latest example of unconstitutional+underhanded mischief from the habitually-dishonest Obama was unearthed by Megyn Kelly on Fox Monday night, when in the course of researching the ObamaCare Employer Mandate delay they found 'on one little nugget... found under a mountain of new regulations': any employer who dare “reduce the size of its workforce or its overall hours of service of its employees' will...

Judge Napolitano with Megyn Kelly on the Kelly File about Obama's Abuse of Power Discussion of national security regarding allowing those with limited contact with terrorists to enter the US. Obamacare employer mandate delay until 2016. Obama can NOT create a crime.

The White House on Monday dismissed concerns by retiring Rep. Jim Moran (D-Va.), who in a radio interview on Monday said he didn't think enough young, healthy consumers would purchase ObamaCare policies. Moran told WAMU that millennials "are less likely to sign up" for health insurance on the federal exchanges. "I think they feel more independent, I think they feel a little more invulnerable than prior generations," Moran says. "But I don't think we're going to get enough young people signing up to make this bill work as it was intended to financially." Healthcare experts have warned of a so-called...

The health reform law is trying to force $15 an hour workers and their employers to buy more than a million dollars of coverage when they don't have anything like a million dollars in assets to protect. Further, some of these families are being forced to give up "mini-med" plans that paid the first $2,000 or $3,000 of medical bills and enroll in plans with deductibles of $10,000 or more. Why do we need to force a family at this income level need to pay the first $10,000 of medical costs? We don't. I can think of only two reasons...

...a single taxpayer would have to have an income of about $190,400 before the penalty for a full year would overtake the lower end of the estimated average bronze premium range (again, based on an estimated 2016 filing threshold: (2.5% × [$190,400 − $10,400] = $4,500)). For a married couple, the corresponding household income would be $500,800 (2.5% × [$500,800 − $20,800] = $12,000).

WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration will grant a waiver exempting volunteer emergency departments, mainly fire departments, from the Affordable Care Act's requirement that employers with more than 50 workers working 30 hours or more per week provide health coverage. The announcement came from a Treasury Department official in a blog posted over the weekend. It means that on January 1, 2015, when employers with 50 or more workers are required to provide health coverage to their workers, volunteer fire department and ambulance companies will be exempted. Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., who joined some other congressional members in asking for the...

The Obama administration is trying to persuade millions of uninterested, or perhaps reluctant, Americans to purchase health insurance through the Obamacare exchanges. But the heart of Obamacare is coercion. If Americans fail do what the law's Democratic authors believe is best, the federal government will punish them, through the progressively higher penalties of the individual mandate, until it hurts more not to buy coverage than it does to give up and purchase it. But what if many of those Americans rebel? Even if they know having health insurance is better than not having it, what if they refuse to be...

Many of you have heard about the Little Sisters of the Poor, a group of nuns providing care for the elderly, who  are now taking on the Obama Administration over the Affordable Care Act's (ObamaCare) contraception mandate. Religious exemptions from the ObamaCare contraception mandate are often made for government-approved entities, but the Obama Administration has deemed the nuns, who work exclusively with the elderly, unworthy of an exception. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor recently granted the Little Sisters of the Poor a temporary injunction, so they do not have to violate their religious beliefs by offering health insurance that...

People forget it now, but the Religious Freedom Restoration Act — the law that companies and nonprofit organizations are using to fight the Obama administration’s requirement that almost all employers cover contraception, sterilization, and drugs that may cause abortion in their insurance plans — was controversial among conservatives in its first years. The old debate over it should remind us of two truths that, while compatible, are in tension with each other: The principle for which conservatives are fighting in today’s cases is important, and it is not absolute.The story starts in the 1980s, when two drug counselors in...

According to National Director Father Frank Pavone, the mandate “promotes the very culture of death that Priests for Life works to combat.” WASHINGTON, D.C., January 2, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Another religious organization has won victory over the HHS abortion and contraception mandate created under the Affordable Care Act.  On Tuesday, the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Priests for Life do not have to follow the mandate while the Supreme Court hears an appeal. In a press release, Priests for Life expressed relief that the decision means that they do not have to cancel health insurance coverage for...

A resident and a sister arrange flowers at the Little Sisters of the Poor's Mullen Home in Denver, CO in this undated file photo. Credit: El Pueblo Catolico/James Baca. Washington D.C., Jan 3, 2014 / 05:57 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Despite the claims of the U.S. Justice Department, the demands of the federal contraception mandate threaten the continued works of service performed by the Little Sisters of the Poor, their attorneys say. Eric Rassbach, deputy general counsel with the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which is representing the religious sisters in court, charged that the government's claim amounts to “doublespeak” and...