Free Republic

From the IRS link above: "The filing deadline to submit 2015 tax returns is Monday, April 18, 2016, rather than the traditional April 15 date. Washington, D.C., will celebrate Emancipation Day on that Friday, which pushes the deadline to the following Monday for most of the nation. (Due to Patriots Day, the deadline will be Tuesday, April 19, in Maine and Massachusetts.)"

Republicans controlling the Senate are abandoning an effort to use their power over the federal purse strings to block implementation of the Affordable Care Act. The more pragmatic approach with a huge $164 billion spending measure reflects a hope by top Republicans like Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to remove veto bait from must-pass spending bills in hopes of advancing them more easily. …

We conclude that (hospital) CEOs are heavily driven to perform on government pay for performance metrics, but less so to metrics that currently fail to correspond to a reimbursement requirement. (Conclusion first here) Truven Health Analytics™ and Mercer teamed to investigate whether there is a correlation between CEO compensation and hospital performance on a balanced scorecard. The study showed there is a strong alignment for the highest level of performance. However, the study also found that 80% of hospitals do not perform well on a balanced scorecard. Instead, compensation appears to be designed to incent the CEO to pursue metrics...

California state lawmakers are one step closer to expanding coverage under Obamacare to illegal immigrants, sending a bill to Gov. Jerry Brown’s desk that would allow those living in the state to illegally buy health insurance on the exchange with their own money. The California legislature passed a bill last week setting in motion a process to eventually allow illegal immigrants living in the state to purchase private health insurance through its state-run exchange, Covered California. Illegal immigrants cannot and would not qualify for federal subsidies available to lower-income Americans under Obamacare.

More than 92,000 Coloradans will lose their Obamacare health care coverage in 2017 as four leading insurance companies scale back or eliminate their plans while others propose rate hikes of as much as 40 percent. Insurance holders with individual plans through Anthem, UnitedHealthCare, Humana and Rocky Mountain Health Plans will need to find new coverage for the 2017 coverage year, according to a Monday statement from the Colorado Division of Insurance. ... the news came as a devastating blow to the state’s already-shaky insurance market. Colorado is one of 14 states that opted to launch its own Obamacare exchange instead...

"We can tell you about the growing problem of medical debt and how hospitals are suing thousands of patients for having the gall to be both sick and poor, or how debt collectors screw-up and use illegal tactics to get paid for debts they often can’t even prove that anyone owes. But that’s nothing compared to the site of a goofy English guy forgiving $15 million in medical debt he bought for pennies on the dollar. On Sunday’s Last Week Tonight, host John Oliver took a long, multifaceted look at the messy, shady world of debt collection and debt buying."...

President Barack Obama is opposing suggestions the government privatize the Department of Veterans Affairs to improve health care veterans receive. In an interview with the Colorado Springs Gazette, the president said his administration has made progress modernizing the VA and providing veterans with more timely health care following criticism over wait times. Privatizing the agency would delay that progress, he said. The administration came under fire when it was disclosed that secret wait lists were uncovered at a VA health care system in Arizona amid reports that several veterans had died waiting for health care. Government investigations found significant system...

Donald Trump has inserted himself into one of the most contentious House primaries in the country this weekend, endorsing GOP Rep. Renee Ellmers in her member-versus-member race in North Carolina. Trump makes a personal appeal to voters to back Ellmers in a robocall released Saturday. She was "the first congresswoman to endorse me and she really was terrific and boy, is she a fighter," Trump says in the call. It is the first time this election that Trump has picked sides in a congressional race.

DEMOCRATIC FASCISM [beware hillary clinton] Written by Dr. Jack Wheeler Friday, 04 November 2005 Lying to a Grand Jury is a very serious crime. We know this because when Bill Clinton lied under oath to a Grand Jury, he was sentenced to 30 years in a federal penitentiary. His fellow Democrats, putting patriotism before party, all agreed that perjury and obstruction of justice were inexcusable violations of law, and that no one, not even the President of the United States, was "above the law." What's that? Bill Clinton willfully perjured himself and impeded the special prosecutor's investigation but got...

As liberals often do, Chelsea Handler exploited a group of young children for political gain. In the episode of Chelsea “Magic & GMOs with Lizzy Caplan, Bill Nye” on Netflix, she opened with a focus group of elementary-aged boys and girls. Naturally a self-professed Hillary Clinton supporter would ask them, “Who here is a Donald Trump supporter?” As soon as the first child said that Trump would be a good president, some of the others wore shocked faces. Then the rest began bashing Trump. He was described as grumpy and only liking white people. One little black girl said Trump...

Daily Caller News Foundation VA Proposes To Remove Ban On Transgender Surgery For Vets Jonah Bennett National Security/Foreign Policy Reporter The Department of Veterans Affairs has proposed to a rule to remove the ban on transgender sex change surgery for veterans, which has existed since the 1990s. According to the proposed regulation, gender reassignment surgery wasn’t previously considered medically necessary for gender dysphoria, a condition transgender individuals claims makes them feel as though they were born in the wrong body and assigned the wrong gender.

During a 2009 address to a joint session of Congress, President Barack Obama told the country that his plans for health care reform would not extend to people who are in the country illegally. "You lie!" South Carolina Republican Rep. Joe Wilson notoriously shouted. Obama replied, "That's not true." But only two years after the largest coverage provisions in the Affordable Care Act took effect, the country's most populous state has passed a bill that, in fact, seeks to extend Obamacare to people regardless of their immigration status. The bill, now before California Gov. Jerry Brown, aims to allow people...

The Malleus Maleficarum is a 15th century text which instructed Inquisitors in the proper methods of identifying, trying and executing witches. Many years ago, renowned psychiatrist Thomas Szasz (1920-2012) used the example of the Malleus to write: "In the days of the Malleus, if the physician could find no evidence of natural illness, he was expected to find evidence of witchcraft.” “Today,” continued Szasz, “…if he cannot diagnose organic illness, he is expected to diagnose mental illness." Szasz was joined by other psychiatrists and educators in believing that the “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders V” (DSM 5) published...

A new batch of evidence from the Congressional panel investigating Planned Parenthood reveals some disturbing exchanges between the buyers and sellers of aborted baby body parts. Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn, who chairs the Select Panel on Infant Lives, sent the evidence to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services this week along with a letter asking HHS to investigate possible violations by Planned Parenthood and the organ harvesting company StemExpress. The newly uncovered evidence points to multiple potential violations of federal laws based on emails between the companies, invoices, contracts for the aborted babies’ body parts and other documents. Some...

Reader WC Varones emailed an article he wrote on Obamacare and the Disincentive to Work. At the heart of the matter is a redistribution scheme that punishes the middle class the most, and the wealthy the least, for the benefit of the poor. “As awful as Obamacare has been at its purported goal of making health care affordable, it has been unquestionably successful at one of Obama’s other primary goals: the redistribution of wealth. Unfortunately, the poor design of the redistribution function is one of the reasons Obamacare is failing. As the Economist points out in “Healthy Dose of Redistribution“,...

When she discovered she was pregnant, the 22-year-old aspiring veterinarian started calling abortion clinics in her home state of Oklahoma. It was a short list – there are only two, and neither could get her an appointment quickly. Unemployed, no car, and still living with her parents, Pearl thought about trying Texas, but knew the state had also recently tightened restrictions on clinics. ...

... Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas has about 603,000 individual policyholders and, unlike other insurers in the state, offers coverage in every county. In a recent filing with federal regulators, the company said it is seeking increases averaging from 57.3 percent to 59.4 percent across its individual market plans. In a statement, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas said its request is based on strong financial principles, science and data. “It’s also important to understand the magnitude of the losses … experienced in the individual retail market over the past two years,” the statement said. The company says it...

Congress is looking into the funding for several Obamacare programs for which no money has been directly appropriated. Earlier this month, a federal judge ruled that the administration is unlawfully paying insurers who are required to reduce costs for poorer customers on Obamacare’s exchanges. But there are other Obamacare programs that the administration is running for which Congress has refused to fund. ... Subpoenas ignored or willfully unfulfilled, stonewalling witnesses, and lies, lies, lies. Sound familiar? "The most transparent administration in history" has a game plan when dealing with Congress and they play it out to the letter. They even...

Oklahoma leads the nation in price increases on the federal health insurance exchange, according to a national analysis by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Prices for silver health plans on the federal exchange rose 42 percent from 2015 to 2016. Blue Cross Blue Shield is the only company that has been on the exchange for Oklahoma for several years. The marketplace is run by the federal government since Gov. Mary Fallin opted not to establish a state-run exchange when the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, sometimes referred to as Obamacare, went into effect. Three others were on for a...

In the wake of an undercover investigation into Planned Parenthood’s alleged fetal trafficking operation, the California state legislature is considering a bill that would criminalize publishing secretly recorded video footage of “health care providers.” AB 1671, which has been backed by Planned Parenthood, would criminalize the publication of confidential interactions with state-licensed medical personnel, including abortionists and clinician staff, punishable by up to one year in prison and a $10,000 fine per violation. Introduced by Los Angeles Assemblyman Jimmy Gomez, the bill has received criticism from both pro-life activists and those who worry about its potential to chill free speech...