Free Republic

Ohio Gov. John Kasich’s Obamacare expansion passed another exciting milestone last month: $6 billion in new federal spending!Can you believe how generous Kasich is with your money? He’s a regular Prince of Light and Hope.Medicaid benefits for Ohio’s 650,000 Obamacare expansion enrollees cost $406 million in December. For context, that was more than the state’s higher education and criminal justice spending combined.If you’re a fan of Obamacare, this represents a rip-roaring success. If you’re not, I should clarify that we are, in fact, talking about the John Kasich who is running for president as a Republican.Since January 2014, Kasich’s...

The head of the agency that oversees President Barack Obama’s health-care legislation suggested it should not be held responsible for the 12 Obamacare health insurance co-ops that closed their doors to customers last year, according to prepared testimony he is scheduled to deliver today before the Senate Finance Committee. Andy Slavitt, acting administrator for Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), was not apologetic in his testimony and accepted no personal responsibility for the co-op failures in 15 states, according to an advance copy of his testimony obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation. The closures sent millions of Americans...

Four exchanges insolvent, 11 receive warning letters . . . and nearly 2 million enrollees aren't paying their subsidized premiums Gosh, who saw this coming? The federal government sets up an artificial market for selling health insurance, sets the prices, subsidizes the premiums, goads people to buy who’ve never before been able to afford it, forbids profits and bans anyone who actually knows what they’re doing from running the darn things. How could that possibly fail? Quite spectacularly as it turns out. While the mainstream media ignores all of the following, lest it stumble in its role as Democrat campaign...

I hear talking heads and politicians calling for one man’s resignation over the VA’s delayed treatment of our military men and woman. I see them in front of any camera they can find, throwing around strong words of indignation and outrage concerning the scandal having been perpetrated, apparently for years, resulting in a minimum of 40 deaths to date. I hear no politicians offering the immediate steps necessary to serve our veterans. Conservative pundits, yes. Politicians, no. So how to solve the V. A. problem and end the unnecessary loss of life? First, immediately announce that all military personnel may...

**SNIP** To function as intended, the marketplaces need a broad, healthy risk pool to keep staggering rate increases from occurring. The premiums of healthy, cheap-to-insure people cover the big bills for the relatively small number of sick people. So if the exchanges do not “enroll enough young, healthy people, insurers will have to raise everyone’s premiums,” wrote the New Republic’s Jonathan Cohn in May. “In the worst case, this could create what actuaries call a ‘death spiral’: Rising premiums prompt people to drop out, causing premiums to increase even more.” Because the reform was aimed at bringing coverage to most...

A new Republican House proposal would push federal workers off their employer-sponsored health plan and onto the insurance exchanges being established under the Affordable Care Act. Rep. Dave Camp (R-Mich.), chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, introduced the bill Friday after talk on the Hill that Democrats were trying to exempt members of Congress and their staffs from a provision in current law that requires them to enroll in the exchanges in 2014. Camp’s measure would extend that policy to all federal workers except active-duty military members and postal workers. “If the Obamacare exchanges are good enough for...

The Washington Post reported this week that in the face of hesitation and outright resistance from governors and legislatures, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is "working on a new partnership model to let state agencies help run the exchange — perhaps without the need for legislative authorization." The department says just 11 states have "embraced" the exchange idea, which is a core component of Obamacare. Under the law, if a state does not create a state exchange that complies with an extensive array of federal regulations, then the federal government will create its own exchange in the...