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Six years after offering hope and change, polls show the American public has fallen out of love with their president – so where did it all go wrong? Barack Obama romped to the presidency of the United States in 2008 on a tidal wave of ‘hope and change’. Back then, the financial crisis was raging and US troops were still engaged in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan, but a fresh-faced Mr Obama brimmed with confidence. He predicted that future generations would look back on his election and see the moment “when the rise of the oceans began to slow and...

More than a dozen states plan to cancel health care policies not in compliance with ObamaCare in the coming weeks, affecting thousands of people just before the midterm elections. "It looks like several hundred thousand people across the country will receive notices in the coming days and weeks," said Jim Capretta of the Ethics and Public Policy Center. The policies are being canceled because states that initially granted a reprieve at the request of President Obama are no longer willing to do so. In coming weeks, 13 states and the District of Columbia plan to cancel such policies, which generally...

As the 800-pound gorilla of retailers, Wal-Mart made national headlines when it announced on Tuesday that it was cutting the health benefits for its 30,000 employees who work fewer than 30 hours a week. A company blog post put the move down to rising healthcare costs, but the 30-hour cut-off gives a clue as to the real cause - President Barack Obama's healthcare reform. Under the Affordable Care Act, large companies are required, starting this January, to provide subsidised healthcare for every employee who works 30-hours a week or more. As the Atlantic's David A Graham notes, many of the...

The Obama administration unveiled a new version of HealthCare.gov on Wednesday, with some improvements as well as at least one early mistake and a new challenge. Officials also said that HealthCare.gov won’t display premiums for 2015 until the second week of November. Open enrollment season runs Nov. 15 through Feb. 15. Coverage can start as early as Jan. 1. […] The goof is a mistranslation in large type on the home page of the Spanish-language version of the site. It’s the very first word on the page. Trying to translate “get ready,” someone came up with the wrong word in...

WebMD Gets Millions to Whitewash Obamacare The Justification document for the Obama administration's contract with WebMD states that WebMD is a "trusted source of information" and that a "consistent source of information is critical to the success of the ACA and Marketplace Exchanges." The $13.9 million is being spent to "encourage providers and consumers to turn to official information sources regarding the ACA and to create an accurate perception of the ACA among health care providers and consumers." But official or not, Chuck Todd at NBC News recently said the Obama administration has a "trust deficit." -

In the last few months of 2013, Obamacare suffered a series of embarrassing setbacks dealing with everything from a clunky website to plan cancellations tothe White House feeling compelled to arbitrarily ignore the law.Since that time, though, people seem to have adapted to this new burden.But adaptation doesn’t mean approval. There are still serious problems with Obamacare, as evidenced by the fact that the Obama Administration has postponed implementation of various provisions 38 times!However, the White House wants us to believe the law is a success, even if that requires statistical contortions.So let’s look at the record.My Cato colleague Mike Tanner argues...

What's the prescription for this man's frustrating, fruitless quest to find a doctor on his Obamacare plan? Going to court. A Yale Law grad is suing a New York insurer, claiming that the $620.69-per-month health plan he bought failed miserably in its promise that its website would be available to help him find a primary care physician "anytime." "Sadly, nothing could be further from the truth," said Jon Fougner's lawsuit against Empire BlueCross BlueShield. Fougner, who filed the case himself, said that after he looked on Empire's site for doctors near him who were accepting new patients, it listed 30...

Walmart announced today that as of the beginning of next year it will be dropping health insurance for 30,000 employees who work less than 30 hours per week. So why is this a good thing? It may involve some hassle for individual employees, as they’ll have to go to the exchange to figure out what plan to get. But most of those Walmart workers will likely come out ahead. Someone who’s earning $9 an hour working 30 hours a week at a Walmart would be making $13,500 a year. Depending on what their spouse makes and what state they’re in,...

As a U.S. senator, Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., makes $174,000 a year. So imagine his surprise a few months ago, when he learned the Cover Oregon health insurance exchange had enrolled him in the Oregon Health Plan, which covers only the poorest of the poor. Chalk up another embarrassing glitch for Cover Oregon, which remains a troubled work-in-progress after months of triage and more than $300 million in taxpayer money. A few months ago, Merkley opened the mail at his east Portland home to find he’d been enrolled in the Medicaid-funded Oregon Health Plan. The Oregon Democrat already had signed up...

Even before the Affordable Care Act was signed into law, its conservative critics warned of the perverse incentive contained within the law which could prompt employers to reduce the health benefits they offered to some of their employees. “Because of the magnitude of the new subsidies created by Congress, the economics become compelling for many employers to simply drop coverage and help their employees obtain replacement coverage through an exchange,” former Tennessee Gov. Philip Bredesen warned in a 2010 op-ed in The Wall Street Journal. “Providing incentives for employers to dump their employees into the exchanges is simply shifting...

Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price was blunt. He said Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital originally sent Thomas Duncan home three days before ‎he was diagnosed with Ebola because he’s African and uninsured. “It is historical what has happened in this community,” Price said. “If a person who looks like me shows up without any insurance, they don’t get the same treatment.”

Wal-Mart says it's cutting health benefits to part-timers and boosting worker premiums. If a retail empire built on low prices can't find a way around ObamaCare's added costs, we are all doomed.

Everyday Low Benefits Wal-Mart dumps 30,000 part-timers onto the ObamaCare exchanges. Oct. 7, 2014 7:25 p.m. ET Wal-Mart endorsed ObamaCare in 2009 and helped drag the bill through Congress, and so far it hasn’t recanted. By holding back economic growth and incomes, perhaps the law is expanding the retailer’s customer base. Another plus—at least for management—is that Wal-Mart can jettison its employees into the ObamaCare insurance exchanges. The Associated Press reported Tuesday that the largest U.S. private employer is dropping health benefits for some 30,000 workers, or about 5% of its part-time workforce. Earlier health-plan eligibility triage in 2011 had...

The Minnesota Association of Health Underwriters (MAHU) has a strong message for Gov. Mark Dayton and MNsure, the state's health insurance marketplace. The association, which represents insurance agents told Dayton MNsure and the Minnesota Department of Commerce that the new MNsure average rate increase, set at 4.5 percent, is misleading consumers and making it more difficult for them to shop for better health insurance coverage. MAHU wants the Governor, MNsure and Commerce to tell MNsure clients the average rate increase, for most shopping through the exchange, will be considerably higher than 4.5 percent. MAHU Board Chair Alycia Riedl tells 5...

ObamaCare remains unpopular with more Americans saying that it has hurt rather than helped their families, according to a new poll. More than a quarter of Americans, 27 percent, said ObamaCare has been harmful, while 16 percent said it has helped, a Gallup survey released Wednesday found. The majority of Americans, 54 percent, said it has had no effect on them, down from around 70 percent the last two years. Slightly more Democrats than Republicans, 56 percent to 55 percent, said it has not affected them. Only 4 percent of Republicans said the law has helped them, compared to 27...

A Dallas hospital's bizarre bungle of the first U.S. case of Ebola leaves me wondering: Is someone covering up for a crony billionaire Obama donor and her controversy-plagued, taxpayer-subsidized electronic medical records company? Last week, Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital revealed in a statement that a procedural flaw in its online health records system led to potentially deadly miscommunication between nurses and doctors. The facility sent Ebola victim Thomas Duncan home despite showing signs of the disease -- only to admit him with worse symptoms three days later. Hospital officials, who came forward "in the interest of transparency," initially cited workflow...

Democratic Senator Mark Warner (D., Va.) refused to elaborate on the 250,000 Virginians who are losing their healthcare plans due to Obamacare during Tuesday’s Senate debate against Republican Ed Gillespie. Moderator Karen Tumulty asked Warner to respond to taxpayers who are losing their plans, but Warner did not acknowledge the cancellations. Rather, he touted the elements of Obamacare that he believes Virginians support. “Virginians want us to fix healthcare,” Warner said.

The next wave of ObamaCare insurance cancellations is under way, flying largely under the national media radar… until Wal-Mart announced it would be dropping coverage for all its part-time employees.

Wal-Mart, the country's largest retailer, is eliminating health benefits for about 30,000 employees to control its rising healthcare costs. The cut applies to part-timers who work fewer than 30 hours a week, Wal-Mart said Tuesday. It impacts 2% of the company's U.S. workforce. More of Wal-Mart's employees signed up for health benefits this year than the company expected, which boosted the company's costs.. Obamacare requires everyone to have coverage, which has prompted people to compare plans available to them at work with plans offered on government exchanges. The cheapest and most popular Wal-Mart plan currently costs employees as little as...

Next time you eat out at a fancy restaurant, don't be surprised if, at the end of your meal, you spot an unfamiliar item on your tab — a surcharge to pay for Obamacare. Diners at high-end restaurants such as Melisse, AOC, and a dozen others in the Los Angeles and San Francisco areas have noticed a 3 percent surcharge for employee healthcare tacked on to their bills, and the Los Angeles Times reports that some of the customers are none too happy about it. One diner complained in an online blog, "It's basically management saying 'Obamacare made me do...