Free Republic

Judicial Watch requested the Trump administration stop members of Congress and their staff from unlawfully purchasing, with taxpayer subsidies, health insurance through the District of Columbia’s small business exchange. ... Because the ACA limits the purchase of insurance on a small business exchange to employees of small businesses – and Congress is not a small business – the ACA unequivocally requires that certain members of Congress and congressional employees purchase insurance on an individual exchange created either by their state of residence (or by the District, if they are a D.C. resident) or by the federal government for that state....

Repealing Congress’ special exemption from Obamacare regularly polls at the 90+ percent level, and for good reason — the illegal ruling by OPM once again allowed Members of Congress (and their staffs) to live by a different set of rules than those they imposed on the rest of America. Worse, by exempting the legislative branch from the pernicious effects of this particular law, it allows Members and their staffs to avoid the personal pain (financial and health) imposed by the monstrosity they imposed on the rest of us, and, by doing so, delays its inevitable repeal. The good news is,...

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...

Obamacare’s supporters have long insisted that it is the “law of the land,” implicitly suggesting that it is immutable and permanent. Evidently, it hasn’t occurred to these people to mention that to their dear leader. His Majesty, Barack I, obviously thinks of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act as a collection of royal decrees, any one of which may be altered at his pleasure. Thus, in a proclamation issued last week through the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, His Highness declared that all U.S. territories are now exempt from most of PPACA’s morass of rules and regulations. Neither...

As WSJ reports, last week's geopolitical chaos and distraction was ideal for a news dump, and the White House didn't disappoint: On no legal basis, all 4.5 million residents of the five U.S. territories were quietly released from ObamaCare. It seems the costs of healthcare soared in these five territories due to uneconomic mandates - which woul dhave been a disaster PR-wise for the administration and so, under cover of catastrophe, WSJ reports all of a sudden last week HHS discovered new powers after "a careful review of this situation and the relevant statutory language," that enabled them to 'selectively...

He forgot to mention it. Minor oversight, could have happened to anybody.The mandate, remember, has already been suspended this year for people who had their old insurance canceled and who now regard it as a “hardship” to purchase insurance on the supposedly affordable Affordable Care Act exchanges. For them, as Ezra Klein put it at the time, “ObamaCare itself is the hardship.” But there’s an obvious problem with that scheme: The “hardship” exemption applies only to people who used to have insurance, and it applies only for this enrollment period. The mandate penalty would continue to bite people who...

The Obama administration will not delay ObamaCare's individual mandate or the March 31 deadline for enrolling in the new healthcare law, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said Wednesday.Sebelius offered the assurance during testimony to the House Ways and Means Committee, where Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Tex.) noted the administration has made dozens of other changes or delays to the law. ADVERTISEMENT Given problems caused by ObamaCare's faulty website last year, Brady asked Sebelius directly if delays to the individual mandate or enrollment deadline were next.“No sir,” Sebelius responded on both counts.

ObamaCare's Exemption HHS quietly repeals the individual purchase rule for two more years. But amid the post-rollout political backlash, last week the agency created a new category: Now all you need to do is fill out a form attesting that your plan was cancelled and that you "believe that the plan options available in the [ObamaCare] Marketplace in your area are more expensive than your cancelled health insurance policy" or "you consider other available policies unaffordable." This lax standard—no formula or hard test beyond a person's belief—at least ostensibly requires proof such as an insurer termination notice. People can also...

This is either a glaring admission of defeat from the White House or… no, that’s really all it could be. After weeks of defending the cancellation of health plans insurers discontinued in 2013 in order to comply with the Affordable Care Act’s coverage mandates, the White House announced in November of last year that it was urging insurers to reinstate those plans. The catch was, of course, that most insurers would be unable to turn on a dime and reinstate those plans. Furthermore, the administration allowed individual states leeway to determine whether or not they would even allow insurers to...

<p>The Obama administration is considering letting people keep existing individual insurance policies that are not ObamaCare compliant beyond 2014, perhaps as long as three years.</p> <p>Late last year millions of Americans learned that President Obama's promise, "if you like it plan, you can keep it," wasn't actually true. Their insurance plans were being canceled because they didn't meet ObamaCare provisions.</p>

Sure, ObamaCare is great for you. So great that the president is now offering 3 million members of his base ObamaClemency: The Obama Administration has rolled out another 129 waivers to one provision of the new health reform law, with almost half of those new exemptions going to various union groups. The extra waivers bring the total to 1,168....The waivers now cover almost three million Americans, but the feds argue that is "less than 2 percent of all Americans who have private health insurance." The waiver gets you out of "a portion of the law that in 2011 requires an...