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Democrats hope to retake the House of Representatives in next year’s elections. They won’t — and they’ll have themselves to blame, because 2014 is when ObamaCare kicks in. With a vengeance.

After a barrage of guidance, the IRS finally published its proposed regs on the Affordable Care Act’s “Employer Shared Responsibility” provision, along with a practical Q&A with real-life examples for employers. Here’s help making sense of it all. At this point, virtually every organization knows that all “large” employers — those with 50 or more full-time employees — must provide all full-time equivalent employees (FTEs) with health insurance or pay a “shared-responsibility” penalty. Obamacare considers individuals who work at least 30 hours each week to be an FTE, However, many employers will be surprised by at least one clarification the...

Actually, we already saw it last quarter and there’ll be no escaping it this year. To the shock of many, U.S. GDP shrank in the fourth quarter of 2012 by 0.1%. Immediately, however, economists and commentators flooded the media with reassuring explanations. Super Storm Sandy reduced economic activity in the areas it ravaged; worries about the fiscal cliff and sequestration dampened business spending and government defense spending; businesses let inventory levels dwindle. Even the Federal Reserve commented that the GDP drop was the result of “weather-related disruptions and other transitory factors.” All this is true, to some extent. But none...

The Congressional Budget Office on Tuesday quietly raised the 10-year cost of ObamaCare's insurance subsidies offered via the health law's exchanges by $233 billion, according to a Congressional Budget Office review of its latest spending forecast. The CBO's new baseline estimate shows that ObamaCare subsidies offered through the insurance exchanges — which are supposed to be up and running by next January — will total more than $1 trillion through 2022, up from $814 billion over those same years in its budget forecast made a year ago. That's an increase of nearly 29%. [snip] The CBO also expects 7 million...

The federal government has once again driven a wedge between patients and physicians by creating its own criteria for the screening of these two prevalent malignancies. Instead of trying to improve on something that was working pretty well, Washington decided to scrap the idea because it did not fit the current agenda. Our own government is avoiding early diagnosis and treatment of these two known killers, turning a blind eye as these malignant terrorists invade our bodies. Only Washington could take something as straight forward as cancer screening and turn it into a complicated quagmire, and a deadly one at...

Here in the darkest days -so far- of the nightmarish Obama era, it seems the monstrous statist power-and-tax-grab known as 'Obamacare' is here to stay... or is it? Judge Roberts might have sold us down the river, but there's still plenty of fight left in conservatives. And it's not just us right-wingers-clingers either: fact is, Dear Leader's unwanted and unloved quasi-nationalization of the US healthcare industry has never enjoyed majority public support in this country- same as the day they rammed it through. At least half the electorate still wants it repealed. We all know we're being screwed here, yet...

As the federal government moves forward to implement President Obama's Affordable Care Act, the Department of Health and Human Services is slated to spend millions of dollars promoting the unpopular legislation. In the face of this publicity blitz, it is worth remembering that the law was originally sold largely on four grounds—all of which have become increasingly implausible. • Lower health-care costs. One key talking point for ObamaCare was that it would reduce the cost of insurance, especially for non-group insurance. The president, citing the work of several health-policy experts, claimed that improved care coordination, investments in information technology, and...

In a final regulation issued Wednesday, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) assumed that under Obamacare the cheapest health insurance plan available in 2016 for a family will cost $20,000 for the year. Under Obamacare, Americans will be required to buy health insurance or pay a penalty to the IRS. The IRS's assumption that the cheapest plan for family of five will cost $20,000 per year is found in examples the IRS gives to help people understand how to calculate the penalty they will need to pay the government if they do not buy a mandated health plan. “The annual national...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Some families could get priced out of health insurance due to what's being called a glitch in President Barack Obama's overhaul law. IRS regulations issued Wednesday failed to fix the problem as liberal backers of the president's plan had hoped. As a result, some families that can't afford the employer coverage that they are offered on the job will not be able to get financial assistance from the government to buy private health insurance on their own. How many people will be affected is unclear. The Obama administration says its hands were tied by the way Congress...

Some families could get priced out of health insurance due to what's being called a glitch in President Barack Obama's overhaul law. IRS regulations issued Wednesday failed to fix the problem as liberal backers of the president's plan had hoped. As a result, some families that can't afford the employer coverage that they are offered on the job will not be able to get financial assistance from the government to buy private health insurance on their own. How many people will be affected is unclear. The Obama administration says its hands were tied by the way Congress wrote the law....

The 15-member Independent Payment Advisory Board (i.e. the so-called “death panel”) included in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”) has run into a bit of problem: Very few want to join. Jonathan Gruber, for example, helped lay the groundwork for Massachusetts’ health-care law and played an important role in making “Obamacare” the law of the land. So you’d think he’d be an obvious choice for the panel, right? “No way,” he said, according to the Washington Post. “Maybe if it was a part-time gig. But full time? I can’t see it.” And he’s not alone. “It is supposed...

s it relevant that the man who helped craft Obamacare’s regulations on insurers will now make lots of money by suing insurers based on those regulations? The firm that hired him seems to think so. Here’s the press release: KEY OBAMACARE ARCHITECT JOINS MEHRI & SKALET, PLLC Former HHS Director, Longtime Insurance Regulator Jay Angoff to Lead Firm’s Insurance and Healthcare Practice as PartnerWASHINGTON, DC (January 14, 2013)—After nearly three years at the Department of Health and Human Services—as the first Director of Obamacare insurance implementation, as Senior Advisor to the Secretary, and as a Regional Director—longtime insurance regulator and...

Hospitals are denying patients the latest life-extending cancer drugs, a report reveals. Dozens of trusts are failing to hand out treatments for bowel, ovarian, lung and brain cancer that have been approved by the NHS watchdog NICE. Some of these drugs have been shown to boost survival rates by a quarter while others have extended the lives of terminally-ill patients by over a year. The report - commissioned by the Department of Health - also reveals that many hospitals are failing to prescribe the latest treatments for heart attacks, asthma, multiple sclerosis, arthritis and Crohn’s Disease. In fact some of...

Beginning next year, people without health insurance through their employer will be able to buy it monthly on "exchanges." They are encouraged to buy the insurance, or else face a penalty for each month and family member not covered. Let's suppose for the moment that the penalty is enforced (even though law limits how the IRS can enforce it). By law, people can let their insurance lapse for three months with no penalty. Moreover, they can choose when the three month lapse occurs, and accelerate and/or delay medical procedures to fall outside the lapse interval, without concern for being denied...

Skaneatles Falls, NY -- Welch Allyn told employees at companywide meetings this morning that it plans to cut 275 jobs, or about 10 percent of its worldwide workforce. The uncertainty surrounding the future of the Obama health care package is creating turmoil in the domestic market, [Chief Executive Steve Meyer] said. Hospitals and doctor offices aren't investing in new equipment until they see how the health care issues will play out, Meyer said. Welch Allyn and other medical device makers face a new federal tax hike come January when a new 2.3 percent tax on sales of medical devices called...

"At the top of my list of programs we don't need is one that costs $100 billion a year I'm going to get rid of and that's Obamacare," he said to cheers at a rally. But then, a telling pivot: "By the way, that doesn't mean that health care is perfect. We've got to do reforms in health care and I have some experience doing that, as you know. And I know how to make a better setting than the one we have in health care."

Businesses expect their healthcare costs to grow by about 7 percent next year — a bigger jump than they've seen in the past three years — according to a new survey. The National Business Group on Health, which conducted the survey, did not directly attribute the expected jump to President Obama's healthcare law, though it noted that employers are changing their health plans to comply with the new law. Sixty percent of employers surveyed said they plan to shift more healthcare costs to employees, but most said their workers' costs would rise by less than 5 percent next year. Companies...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: You know who's next? Doctors. And it's not Obamacare. It's not Medicare copayments. It's not any of that. You know how they're gonna go after doctors? Very simple, and I might even see Obama make this speech this summer. It might even happen before the campaign. It depends on how successful they judge this current tactic to be. See if you can envision President Obama, the president of the United States, after giving a speech where he says, "You got a business? You couldn't build that! Somebody else made that happen," transform to doctors. "Is it really...

Breaking on Fox News

IDEA FOR ROMNEY CAMPAIGN Does a slow drip of negative news regarding ObamaCare change anybody's mind enough to change their vote? MAYBE, IF IT AFFECTS THEM BAD ENOUGH I went into a pain management center this morning hoping to be placed on disability due to my lower back pain, so I could collect disability from the government... Not really... I'm self employed, white, never been a union worker or employed by the government, so I likely could not qualify. But I really did see a pain specialist for my lower back problem... like I said, I am self employed, so...