Free Republic

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that by 2017, some 2 million currently undocumented immigrants will be eligible for certain federal benefits under the Obama administration’s executive amnesty. In a report released Thursday, CBO considers how changes to immigration policy could affect the federal budget. Its estimates are based on President Obama’s expanded deferred action programs to provide legal status to undocumented immigrants. The office estimates that between 2 million and 2.5 million undocumented immigrants will “have received approval for deferred action” by 2017. The CBO’s estimate is less than the 5 million the Obama administration estimated its executive amnesty would...

When Dennie Wright went to sign up for Affordable Care Act insurance last year, it wasn’t a hard decision. His insurance agent told him he had only one insurer – Anthem Blue Cross – that he could buy from on the exchange, Covered California. Wright lives in a modest house overlooking a pasture in Indian Valley. It’s a tiny alpine community at the northern end of the Sierra Mountains, close to the border with Nevada. He lives in one of 250 zip codes where Blue Shield of California stopped selling individual insurance policies in 2014. “That was new to us,...

The Obamacare-IRS ScandalFrench Terror Attacks Tied To FBI Asset? New Docs: Top IRS official may have obstructed investigations into the IRS scandal The Obamacare-IRS Scandal There is a lawsuit that could bring President Obama’s federal healthcare crashing down under the weight of its own lawlessness. A few weeks ago, we filed anamicus brief in support of plaintiffs who are making the plain obvious point to the United States Supreme Court that President Obama (or any other president) should not be permitted to rewrite federal statues in brazen violation of the U.S. Constitution’s separation of powers. The plaintiffs in David King...

We have applied. How have any of your doctors, emergency rooms, or other providers reacted when you show them your card? Do they discount you right there? Any rejections? Are skeptical docs placated after bills are paid well and on time? I'd love to hear how it's working for you.

Republicans are shifting their tactics on ObamaCare, an abrupt change from the party’s repeal-only rhetoric that dominated the last five years of debate. The GOP is coalescing around the idea that incremental changes, rather than a sweeping repeal effort, can be more appealing to voters — while also holding out the possibility of hollowing out the law from within.

President Obama told Senate Democrats in a private meeting that he plans to "play offense" against the new GOP-controlled Congress, showing little hesitation about clashing with Republicans for the next two years. Congressional sources confirmed the comments, made Thursday during a summit in Baltimore, as Republican lawmakers held their own summit in Hershey, Pa. The president, who already has issued a string of veto threats in the opening days of the 114th Congress, indicated he's prepared to keep opposing legislation he finds objectionable. This includes legislation with bipartisan support. Not only has Obama threatened to veto bipartisan legislation authorizing the...

The leader of the agency charged with the ObamaCare rollout is stepping down after five years on the job. Marilyn Tavenner, administrator of the Center for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS), announced her departure Friday, which will take effect next month. "It is with sadness and mixed emotions that I write to tell you that February will be my last month serving as the administrator for CMS," Tavenner wrote in an email to staff. Tavenner is leaving after five turbulent years overseeing the agency. Her tenure included the disastrous rollout of the government’s HealthCare.gov website as well as, most recently,...

Marilyn Tavenner, head of the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, plans to step down at the end of February, she told her staff in an e-mail.As Bloomberg reports, Tavenner didn’t say why she was leaving.In November, she acknowledged that her agency had made a mistake in its calculation of the number of people enrolled under Obamacare. As a reminder... from November The Obama administration said it erroneously calculated the number of people with health coverage under the Affordable Care Act, incorrectly adding 380,000 dental subscribers to raise the total above 7 million. The accurate number with full health-care plans...

Hundreds of body parts have been discovered in a federal raid on a suburban Chicago crematorium as part of an investigation into the body part black market. FBI agents and agents with the Centers for Disease Control, wearing bio-hazard suits, raided two Cremation Services Inc. in Schiller Park on Tuesday. Biological Resource Center of Illinois in Rosemont, a body donation service, was also raided this week.

(Reuters) - U.S. healthcare executives say Obamacare is likely here to stay, despite repeated calls from Republican lawmakers for repeal of the 2010 law aimed at providing health coverage for millions of uninsured Americans. Top executives who gathered in San Francisco this week for the annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare conference, say that while President Obama's signature domestic policy achievement may well be tweaked, it is too entrenched to be removed.

Politifact was right to name President Obama’s “If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor” proclamation as its 2013 “Lie of the Year.” Yet, they missed out on another whopper of a fib a few years earlier in 2009. At the Heritage Foundation’s Conservative Policy Summit in Washington, DC on Tuesday, Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ), a pro-life warrior who has been involved in the movement for 42 years, exposed President Obama’s misleading statement about his signature legislation: “On Sept 9, 2009 in a joint session of Congress, Obama said in his health care reform, under our plan, no...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Not only do more Americans have health insurance, but the number struggling with medical costs has dropped since President Barack Obama’s health care law expanded coverage, according to a study released Thursday. The Commonwealth Fund’s biennial health insurance survey found that the share of U.S. adults who did not get needed care because of cost dropped from 43 percent in 2012 to 36 percent last year, as the health care law’s main coverage expansion went into full swing. The proportion of people who got treatment but had problems paying their bills also dropped, from 41 percent in...

<p>After two constitutionally dubious delays, ObamaCare’s employer mandate took effect on Jan. 1 for employers with 100 or more full-time employees. The last open-enrollment date for our company, CKE Restaurant Holdings, Inc., was Dec. 4, 2014. As of that date, our company had approximately 20,000 employees, 6,900 of whom worked 30 or more hours a week and were eligible for ObamaCare-compliant health insurance. We elected to offer them coverage rather than pay the employer penalty, which would have sent workers to ObamaCare’s health-insurance exchanges, where those who qualified could receive federal subsidies to help pay for insurance.</p>

Miami, Jan 14 (EFE).- Just one month before the end of the sign-up period in the health insurance market for 2015, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell on Wednesday urged Latinos to register and thus reduce the health "disparity" that historically has faced the group. "As one of the fast growing communities in the nation, Latinos' health is vital to the overall well-being of our country," said Burwell, who - along with Hispanic leaders - on Wednesday launched "Latino Action Week" to encourage members of that minority to sign up for health insurance on Obamacare's exchanges before the...

King v. Burwell, the court case that will determine if Obamacare’s language about federal subsidies and their availability on exchanges “established by the state”, will be heard in oral arguments at the Supreme Court on March 4, with a decision to come down later this year. The Obama White House is apparently so confident that they’ll win the case that they’re not preparing any back-up plan in case the Supreme Court wrecks the structure of their signature legislation. As Politico’s health care newsletter wrote this morning:Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) says that at a roundtable discussion with congressional leaders he asked...

Obama administration officials have warned that ambitious experiments run by the health law's $10 billion innovation lab wouldn't always be successful. Now there is evidence their caution was well placed. Only a small minority of community groups getting federal reimbursement to reduce expensive hospital readmissions produced significant results compared with sites that weren't part of the $300 million program, according to partial, early results. Dozens of community agencies on aging, from Ventura County, Calif., to southern Maine, were offered money to try to ensure that older people leaving the hospital received care that reduced their chances of being readmitted within...

... CoOportunity Health has failed. The Affordable Care Act set aside funding for health care co-ops, to enable the organizations to compete in places where there aren’t many insurers. CoOportunity Health was the second largest co-op in the country in terms of membership, and one of the largest in terms of the federal funding it received. But then CoOportunity hit a kind of perfect storm, says Peter Damiano, director of the University of Iowa’s public policy center. First, the co-op had to pay a lot more medical bills than those in charge expected. “CoOportunity Health’s pool of people was larger...

In the coming weeks, Americans will embark on the painful process of filing their tax returns. While this annual ritual leaves most people confused, depressed and overwhelmed, many will be faced with the additional step this year of paying hundreds or thousands of dollars if they chose not to purchase health insurance under ObamaCare for 2014. Under the individual mandate required by the president’s new health care law, Americans for the first time must pay the higher of two penalties if they are uninsured and did not enroll in ObamaCare last year—either $95 per adult and $47.50 per child under...

Increased insurance coverage does not mean increased access to medical care. No matter how badly you want something to be true, simply wishing will not make it so. This is a lesson that Obamacare supporters need to learn, as they tell us yet again that the Affordable Care Act “is working.” The latest claims stem in part from evidence that the number of uninsured Americans has been steadily declining. It is true that the most recent poll from Gallup found that the uninsured rate fell to 12.9 percent in the fourth quarter of 2014, down from 16.3 percent before the...

KALAMAZOO, MI -- Planned Parenthood Mid and South Michigan is closing its Battle Creek clinic, citing "increasing competition and declining patient demand" as a result of the Affordable Care Act. The last day of operation will be Jan. 31. Spokeswoman Desiree Cooper said the need for Planned Parenthood's health-care services has declined because of the ACA, which has greatly improved access to subsidized contraceptives and women's health-care services. The ACA requires insurances plan to provide women with an annual physical and contraceptives without a deductible or co-pay. That means women who formerly were reliant on Planned Parenthood for services and...