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Minnesota’s individual health care market is in “an emergency situation,” the state’s top industry regulator said Friday, noting that it took the approval of massive rate increases to persuade all its remaining insurance companies not to pull out for next year. After a major insurer’s exit from the market earlier this year, the state scrambled to convince the seven remaining companies to continue offering plans to those residents who aren’t covered by an employer or through a public program, Department of Commerce Commissioner Mike Rothman said. The state agreed to rate increases that range from an average of 50 percent...

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Health insurers are hiking premiums and limiting enrollment in Minnesota’s individual market next year, with regulators saying the emergency measures were needed to avert a market collapse. The moves are a clear sign that the market for some 250,000 people who buy coverage for themselves is dysfunctional and needs reform, said Commerce Commissioner Mike Rothman during a Friday news conference. While rate increases of more than 50 percent aren’t fair to consumers, Rothman said, things could have been worse. He described a period this summer when all health insurers in the state seemed prepared to abandon that segment of the...

QUITMAN COUNTY, MS (WMC) - Residents in North Mississippi will soon be forced to find a new way to receive emergency medical services after the Quitman County Hospital closes on Thursday. Hospital officials said the hospital is shutting down because of funding. Employees were notified last week about the closure.

The nonpartisan investigative agency of Congress says the Obama administration failed to follow the president's health care law in a $5 billion dispute over compensating insurers for high costs from seriously ill patients. The finding by the Government Accountability Office is a setback for the White House and bolsters Republican complaints that administration officials bent the law as problems arose carrying out its complicated provisions. The law specified that $5 billion from a $25 billion fee to compensate insurers would go directly to the Treasury. But when fee collections fell short, the administration failed to allocate a share of money...

It's awful for you, but they're getting what they've been after all along. Many voters don’t remember the failed predecessor of ObamaCare. It was called HillaryCare in the early 1990s. Hillary Clinton was an unelected, non-official put in charge of a commission to design a plan to hijack the U.S. health care system. It failed when the public found out what was in it and pressured the Senate to abandon it, which they did. In 2009, President Obama, then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi shoved ObamaCare down the throats of the American people. They...

Vaccines Regulators: Doctor concocts vaccines with cat saliva, vodka Published September 29, 2016 Associated Press Illinois regulators on Wednesday suspended the license of a suburban Chicago doctor who allegedly gave patients modified vaccinations containing cat saliva and vodka. The Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation ordered the emergency action in the interest of public safety, according to paperwork signed by Acting Director Jessica Baer. After hearing complaints from health care providers that children were getting unapproved oral versions of childhood shots from Dr. Ming Te Lin, investigators visited Lin's Flossmoor practice. They found a cluttered, unsterile office and "a...

Lawmakers are venting outrage over high prescription drug costs, but if Congress is looking for culprits, it might want to look in the mirror. Republican- and Democratic-controlled Congresses, and presidents of both parties, may have set the stage for the startling prices that have consumers on edge. In the last 13 years, Congress passed major legislation that expanded taxpayer-financed coverage for prescription drugs but lacked explicit mechanisms for dealing with costs, instead relying mainly on market forces. […] “The history we see over and over again is that when the government steps in as a guaranteed payer without regard to...

Since everyone's still buzzing about Monday night's debate seen 'round the planet, I figured I'd offer some counter-programming. Hillary Clinton has said on multiple occasions that Obamacare is "working," but that it needs some "fixes" such as an even bigger government role and more taxpayer funding. Just last week, Harry Reid claimed that Americans who read the news know that the law has been a positive for the country. (Click through on those links for our detailed rebuttals at the time). The ongoing reality is that this failed, unpopular, party-line policy experiment is collapsing under its own weight. The latest...

When Health Republic Insurance of New Jersey announced recently that it’s $46 million in debt and shutting down, it became the 17th failed ObamaCare co-op since the Affordable Care Act launched three years ago. Those failures – just six of the original 23 co-ops remain – have left hundreds of thousands of people scrambling for coverage. Meanwhile, insurers claiming big losses are leaving some state exchanges -- including Indiana University Health Plans, whose exit is expected to result in 27,000 Indiana residents losing ObamaCare plans in 2017. And companies still operating in the federal and state exchanges are raising premiums...

Friday afternoons are the Obama administration’s preferred time to release information it doesn’t want the public to see. Case in point: On Sept. 9, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) quietly released a memo indicating its intention to bail out the health insurance companies participating in the Affordable Care Act. Congress — and the American people — should pay attention. Such a bailout is one of the administration’s top goals between now and Dec. 31. But spending billions of taxpayer dollars would only prop up a failing law that continues to harm the people it was supposed to...

Irked by the decision of 20 million Americans who have declined to sign up for Obamacare, the IRS is crafting a letter to advise them of the "antisocial implications" of non-participation. Commissioner John Koskinen explained that "failure to enroll evinces a lack of cooperation with a policy that the government has determined is necessary. Non-compliers may feel that enrollment is optional. It is not. That's why there is a fine. Paying the fine doesn't get them off the hook." Koskinen pointed out that "not only does the amount of the fine ratchet up each year, our Agency has other tools...

Are you one of 20 million uninsured Americans who hasn’t signed up for Obamacare? Then you might be getting a note from the IRS this year “suggesting” you enroll. “Getting a letter from the IRS can be a threatening and nerve-racking experience; it seldom is seen as a suggestion and more of a threat,” Galen Institute President Grace-Marie Turner wrote in a Forbes column Wednesday. The IRS is reportedly “reaching out” to Americans who claimed an exemption or chose to pay the tax penalty for not purchasing mandatory health insurance. The ploy is intended to “attract” Obamacare enrollees. “The government...

$11 Billion In Missing Obamacare Subsidies From Mass Tax NoncomplianceComplications arising from the Affordable Care Act (ACA) premium tax credits (PTCs) are causing millions of people to effectively break the law. People who benefit from advance premium tax credits (APTCs) must file tax returns and include a form to reconcile the advanced amount to the actual end-of-year entitled amount. The failure of so many people to fulfill this new legal requirement has led the government to spend more than it should have as APTCs tend to be higher than legally entitled amounts. The big news is that tax filers,...

Subtitle: He promises tax reductions, child care, repeal of Affordable Care Act Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, during his stump speech today at the Stranahan Theater in South Toledo, boasted he would replace the "failed and corrupt establishment" of the nation and that he would terminate all "job-killing" orders from the Obama Administration.

Obamacare was designed to fail. It’s a gigantic con job. It was drawn up in such a way that it would eventually collapse thus theoretically clearing the way for single-payer Well, DUH! Of course Obamacare was designed to fail. The system is built on lies. It is a Trojan horse for a total government takeover of health care in the United States. In an op-ed in The Hill, Jeffrey I. Barke, M.D., who practices family medicine in Newport Beach, Calif., examines the issue. He writes: As ObamaCare’s troubles mount, I’ve heard my patients and my peers in healthcare ask: How...

Before March 2010, health care reform was already a divisive political issue. People chose sides for very personal reasons, which made it a difficult topic to discuss using an indoor voice.

Death of a Society Destroying Marriage & the Family: An Essential Principle in the Culture of Death. Homily from 2008 before the election on the culture of death in our land. Father speaks of a story of an assisted suicide vote then brings in how the culture of death has attacked marriage & sex. For more please go to http://www.romans10seventeen.org/ & please say 3 Hail Marys for the priest Marriage provides a proper structure for family, and family is the unit cell of society. Society is made of families. Family is the building block of society. Changing the nature of...

Prices for medicine, doctor appointments and health insurance rose the most last month since 1984. The price increases come amid a broader debate about climbing health care costs and high premiums for Obamacare coverage. [Snip] Medical care costs altogether rose 1% just in August from July, according to the Consumer Price Index, a report on price inflation from the U.S. Labor Department.

Health Republic Insurance of New Jersey is folding after the state’s insurance commissioner put the Obamacare co-op in “rehabilitation” due to its hazardous financial condition. The co-op had a liability of $46.3 million under the Affordable Care Act’s risk adjustment program, according to the New Jersey Department of Banking and Insurance. That program was designed to transfer money between insurers in case one insurer had more costly enrollees “Despite our hard work and growing customer base, the unfortunate necessity for complying with the [Affordable Care Act’s] risk adjustment mandate has put the company under considerable financial strain,” said Tom Dwyer,...