Free Republic

As workers across the country continue to battle for their civil and healthcare rights against increasingly tyrannical state mandates, healthcare workers in New York were thrown an important lifeline on Tuesday.A federal judge has granted a temporary injunction against the vaccine mandates for healthcare workers in New York state. The injunction only covers religious exemptions, allowing for healthcare staff to reject the vaccine mandate on religious grounds after it was revealed that fetal cell lines were used in the development of the vaccines.Workers had been required to be vaccinated against COVID-19 by September 27th.From CBSNewYork:The health care workers protesting the...

This Wednesday, my little sister, Julie, will be buried. She died because she delayed seeking health care for what turned out to be a catastrophic condition after her private health insurance policy was cancelled because of Obamacare. As she waited for a new Obamacare-approved policy to kick in, her condition deteriorated to the point that it was too late. Julie, her husband, and four children were covered by a medical plan they liked, and had been promised they could keep by President Obama. But like so many others in this country, her family’s private health care policy was cancelled because...

Patients who have had a ‘fair innings’ could be denied life-saving drugs under proposed health reforms. The plans would mean experts taking into account whether there is a ‘wider societal benefit’ to giving a patient crucial medicines. The NHS rationing body, Nice, fears the Department of Health proposals could see younger people deemed a higher priority for drug treatments because they have more years ahead of them – potentially contributing more to the economy – than the elderly. Doctors, MPs and campaigners last night condemned the plans as ‘barking mad’. The move will also fuel fears that the elderly are...

WASHINGTON — One of the latest Obamacare pitches to get young adults to sign up for health insurance starts out with a mother's kitchen note reminding her grown son to enroll. "Mom, you know I can't afford it," the young black man protests, as he sits down at a kitchen table next to a bespectacled woman with a laptop computer linked to the U.S. federal enrollment website, HealthCare.gov. "But for the first time you can," she replies reassuringly. "You go to the HealthCare.gov website, compare quality plans and you could get help paying for it."

The head of the state’s beleaguered health insurance marketplace, which was once a national model, broke down in tears Thursday, as she described how demoralizing it has been for her staff to struggle with a broken website that has left an unknown number of people without coverage.

Colorado health-exchange director on paid leave DENVER — A director with Colorado's health-care exchange is on paid leave after it was discovered she has been accused of stealing from a nonprofit housing organization she oversaw in Montana. Christa McClure is the director of partner engagement for Connect for Health Colorado, the state program that implements the Affordable Care Act. According to the Denver Post, program spokesman Ben Davis says in her Colorado job, McClure does not have access to any of exchange's finances. The eight-count indictment against McClure was filed in U.S. District Court in Billings, Mont., in January.

Fraudsters on the inside, hackers on the outside. Here we are, stuck in the middle with the security nightmare called Obamacare. Can it get any worse? Yes, it can. After the spectacular website crashes during last fall's federal health insurance exchange rollout, enrollees will soon wish the entire system had stayed down and dead. "404 Error" messages and convicted felon Obamacare navigators may be the least of our health care tech problems now. The latest? U.S. intelligence agencies notified the Department of Health and Human Services last week that the Healthcare.gov infrastructure could be infected with malicious code. Who's responsible?...

"...Increasingly, experts in health insurance are becoming concerned that many of these first-time buyers will be in for a shock when they get medical care next year and discover they're on the hook for most of the initial cost.... ...Hospitals are worried that those who rack up uncovered medical bills next year won't be able to pay them, perpetuating one of the problems the new health care system is supposed to solve..... ..."The real big surprise was how much out-of-pocket would be required for our family," said David Winebrenner, 46, a financial adviser in Lebanon, Ky., whose deductible topped $12,000...

As if ObamaCare’s botched website, coverage cancellations, and higher costs were not bad enough, the Obama Administration has quietly dealt yet another blow – this time striking millions of the nation’s most vulnerable seniors. Specifically, the Obama Administration has decided to deeply cut funding for the Medicare program’s home health benefit as a way to help pay for ObamaCare. The Administration made this announcement very quietly, waiting to do so until the very end of the last Friday before Thanksgiving, perhaps thinking that most people would not be looking. To be sure, the timing of the Administration’s quiet announcement did...

Kathleen Murphy, a Democrat who is running for the House of Delegates against Republican incumbent Barbara Comstock, told a forum in Great Falls on Saturday that doctors should be forced to accept Medicare and Medicaid patients: FYI last night at the Great Falls Grange debate, Democrat delegate candidate Kathleen Murphy said that since many doctors are not accepting medicaid and medicare patients, she advocates making it a legal requirement for those people to be accepted.  She did not recognize that the payments are inadequate to cover the doctors' costs.  She also did not recognize there is a shortage of over 45,000 physicians...

<p>Nearly 26,000 New Mexicans are having health plans terminated at the end of the year because the insurance policies fail to provide expanded benefits and other coverage mandated by a federal health care law, according to insurance industry officials.</p> <p>State Insurance Superintendent John Franchini estimates most of those individual policyholders will pay an average of 35 percent more for new coverage, but will have plans with more health care benefits.</p>

Most of the talk about the Affordable Care Act has focused on website glitches and skyrocketing premiums but there are other issues looming on the horizon for the healthcare overhaul. Hospital coverage. If consumers expect to have (or continue to have) access to the best medical services at the nations top hospitals, they are in for a rude awakening. "Most of the top hospitals will accept insurance from just one or two companies operating under Obamacare." Because the ACA caps premiums, insurers will be have to offer less money to the nations best doctors and hospitals. In return, the hospitals...

A riveting day has dawned. House Speaker John Boehner, long criticized for inconsistent conservative passion, is actually allowing members to vote on a budget bill that ties continued government operations to a defunding of Obamacare. This would be the strategy Ted Cruz and his allies have been offering for weeks, earning them harsh criticism from Democrats and timid Republicans alike. The House, run by Republicans, will pass the measure. The Senate, run by Democrats, will not. No matter what those votes might be, a presidential veto pen stands ready to kill the whole idea of a bill that funds...

Death Panels by a thousand cuts. No one could have seen this coming, no one. From the L.A. Times, that hotbed of right-wing scare-tactics, Insurers limiting doctors, hospitals in health insurance market: The doctor can’t see you now. Consumers may hear that a lot more often after getting health insurance under President Obama’s Affordable Care Act. To hold down premiums, major insurers in California have sharply limited the number of doctors and hospitals available to patients in the state’s new health insurance market opening Oct. 1. New data reveal the extent of those cuts in California, a crucial test bed...

Republicans are using their weekly radio and Internet address to focus on health insurance costs under President Barack Obama’s health overhaul. GOP Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming, who was an orthopedic surgeon before coming to Congress, says many families “are going to have real sticker shock when they see their new insurance rates.” …

We must be forever vigilant in protecting and defending our Country — because one mistake, one terrorist attack that we don’t prevent, can cost untold lives and suffering. That said, we must also do the smart and Constitutional thing, and not just everything we can think of, and get away with, with terrorism as the excuse. With that in mind, lets look at this from a medical perspective: Let’s say you’re healthy overall but you develop a cough, it’s lasted for a month, and it seems to be getting worse. It might just be allergies, or bronchitis, or pneumonia, or...

White House recruiting Hollywood stars for ObamaCare rollout By Elise Viebeck - 06/25/13 10:29 AM ET The White House is working to recruit Hollywood celebrities to help promote ObamaCare, a top celebrity political adviser told The Hill. Trevor Neilson, a veteran of the Clinton White House, said he's in talks with the Obama administration and that his clients are "looking at ways to be involved." Neilson represents Eva Longoria, John Legend and many other stars as president of Global Philanthropy Group. His past clients have reportedly included Shakira and Madonna, and he has close ties to Bono and Bill Gates....

Start with people who have individual and small-group health insurance. These policies are most affected by ObamaCare's community-rating regulations, which require insurers to accept everyone but limit or ban them from varying premiums based on age or health. The law also mandates "essential" benefits that are far more generous than those currently offered. According to consultants from Oliver Wyman (who wrote on the issue in the January issue of Contingencies, the magazine of the American Academy of Actuaries), around six million of the 19 million people with individual health policies are going to have to pay more—and this even after...

A few minutes after the Supreme Court issued its landmark decision upholding President Obama’s health care law last summer, a senior adviser to Mitch McConnell walked into the Senate Republican leader’s office to gauge his reaction. McConnell was clearly disappointed, and for good reason. For many conservatives, the decision was the death knell in a three-year fight to defeat reforms that epitomized everything they thought was wrong with Obama’s governing philosophy. But where some saw finality, McConnell saw opportunity — and still does. Sitting at his desk a stone’s throw from the Senate chamber, McConnell turned to the aide and,...

OLYMPIA, Wash. - A study by the Society of Actuaries estimates that the new federal health care law will raise medical claims costs in Washington state by an average of 13.7 percent per person. Medical claims costs are the main driver of health insurance premiums. The study estimates that President Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act will raise claims costs nationally by an average of 32 percent per person in the individual health insurance market by 2017. That's partly due to sicker people joining the pool. The study finds wide disparities among states, and it did not make similar estimates for...