Free Republic

BAY CITY — The Affordable Care Act was supposed to help families with pre-existing conditions, not hurt them. But that has not been the case for the Davert family. Their health insurance bill has gone up 300 percent and the family is looking at taking out loans and returning to work while on disability to pay the increased costs. The Davert's experience with Obamacare is not just frustrating, it could be dangerous given the medical issues and special needs of the family. "We have such a unique family and we've overcome many obstacles," said Ken Davert, who has cerebral palsy....

New Obamacare health insurance enrollees may feel a pang of envy when they eye the coverage plans offered by Walmart to its employees. For many years, the giant discount retailer has been the target of unions and liberal activists “notorious for failing to provide health benefits” and "substandard.” But a Washington Examiner comparison of the two health insurance programs found that Walmart's plan is more affordable and provides significantly better access to high-quality medical care than Obamacare. Walmart offers its employees two standard plans, a Health Reimbursement Account and an alternative it calls "HRA High" that costs more out of...

In 2011 during his reelection campaign Barack Obama promised Americans who “get their insurance from the workplace” will see $3,000 in savings thanks to Obamacare.(VIDEO-AT-LINK)Not true. The National Federation of Independent Businesses (NFIB), a group representing 11,000 members and small businesses, has not had a single member report health-care savings under Obamacare. The New York Post reported: New York’s small-business owners, seniors and doctors are among the big losers as President Obama’s prescription for health-insurance reform takes effect. The National Federation of Independent Businesses, an organization that represents nearly 11,000 entrepreneurs across the state, says it has yet to find...

ObamaCare has delivered another sucker punch to the middle class. This time it's sticker shock. Now that most people can get past the tech problems of HealthCare.gov and actually see the real cost of insurance plans available, they are finding that Affordable Care is a big hit to the family budget. And when the family budget gets hit in the solar plexus, guess what happens to consumer spending and the economy?

No way to know yet if the federal exchange is also seeing a 50 percent payment rate system-wide, but if it is, we’re looking at close to 500,000 people whose new coverage will begin tomorrow in some sort of limbo. Or maybe more, actually: At least one insurance company is seeing payment rates closer to 35 percent, and the Journal found one man who signed up in late November who still hasn’t been billed yet by his new insurer. That’s the fruit of chaos imposed on the industry by Obama and HHS in moving around deadlines haphazardly to protect themselves...

**SNIP** The expanded hardship exemption, for instance, "opened a major can of worms," wrote analyst James Capretta on the Weekly Standard blog. "The administration said for months that the mandate would not be waived for anyone, even those with canceled policies, and it vowed a veto of any delay legislation coming out of Congress. Now the rules have been changed, and some families who have committed to pay thousands of dollars in insurance premiums will feel very personally betrayed by an untrustworthy administration." They join millions of others who are reeling from massive premium increases under this onerous law. Over...

Ginger Chapman and her husband, Doug, are sitting on the health care cliff. The cheapest insurance plan they can find through the new federal marketplace in New Hampshire will cost their family of four about $1,000 a month, 12 percent of their annual income of around $100,000 and more than they have ever paid before. Even more striking, for the Chapmans, is this fact: If they made just a few thousand dollars less a year — below $94,200 — their costs would be cut in half, because a family like theirs could qualify for federal subsidies.

Consumers worried that tight deadlines around the holidays and lingering computer problems could thwart their efforts to secure coverage under President Barack Obama's health overhaul will get extra time to pay, the health insurance industry said Wednesday. The board of the industry's biggest trade group — America's Health Insurance Plans — said consumers who select a plan by Dec. 23 will now have until Jan. 10 to pay their first month's premium, instead of a previous New Year's Eve deadline set by the government.

On a recent trip to Miami, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius admitted that, yes, some people will be paying more for health insurance under Obamacare:Sebelius Admits Americans Could Pay More For Insurance Due To Oba . . ."More back tracking now from the Obama administration admitting that some Americans will pay more for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act," said the Florida news anchor. "During a visit to Miami, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius stopped at a local library to talk to local residents about enrolling on the health insurance website. She also acknowledged that...

"....Already reeling from criticism over his flawed promise that people who like their health care plans will be able to keep them, Mr. Obama risks further erosion of his credibility if people believe his health care law is cutting into job-based plans they figured were safe...

Another Looming Disaster: Few Exchange Signups Have Paid for Their Insurance So Far We’ve been warning that Obamacare would be a train wreck for a long time. Now the boxcars full of dynamite reach the impact point. Pardon the ALL CAPS, but this seems like a fairly huge point: ALMOST NO ONE HAS PAID FOR THEIR INSURANCE YET!

On December 11th, HHS head Kathleen Sebelius told Darrell Issa’s House Government Oversight Committee that 365,000 had enrolled in ObamaCare. Later on during the hearing, this conversation took place between Sebelius and Representative Michael Burgess (R) of Texas concerning the definition of “enrolled”: Burgess: What if that patient doesn’t make the premium payment? You said they’re covered Dec. 23, but they never write the check. They never make the payment. Sebelius: Then they’re not covered. They are not enrolled, and at every point along the way, on the website they are told until they make the payment— (1) Sebelius repeated...

‘ObamaCare was sold on a trinity of lies.” That ornate phrase, more suitable for the Book of Revelations or perhaps the next “Game of Thrones,” installment comes from my colleague Rich Lowry. But I like it. Most people know the first deception in the triumvirate of deceit: “If you like your health insurance you can keep it, period.” The second leg in the tripod of deception was “If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.” But the third plank in the triad of disinformation hasn’t gotten much attention: ObamaCare will save you, me and the country a lot...

Just when the government's insurance website is starting to run more smoothly, an Associated Press-GfK poll finds a potentially bigger problem for President Barack Obama's health care overhaul. Americans who already have coverage and aren't looking for any more government help are blaming the law for their rising premiums and deductibles.

In the latest in the Paper of Record’s recent series on their gradually creeping realization that There Is No Such Thing as a Free Lunch: ObamaCare Edition, the NYT has a story out this morning that hones in on the Obama administration’s desire to tout premiums that sound as gloriously low as is humanly possible — even if that means deliberately obfuscating the ways in which insurance companies are now looking to make up the increased costs of the overhaul in other, less immediately obvious areas. The Obama administration will herald what appear to be “affordable” premiums available to so...

Dan from Squirrel Hill's Blog Obama asks us to “forget” his broken promise to reduce annual premiums by $2,500 In February 2008, Obama said:“We are going to work with you to lower your premiums by $2,500. We will not wait 20 years from now to do it, or 10 years from now to do it. We will do it by the end of my first term as president.”However, by the time his first term was over, family premiums had gotten bigger, not smaller. The increase was $3,065 per family.Afterward, the Obama administration chose a video called “Forget About the Price Tag”...

How the Affordable Care Act raises prices and limits medical choices. The reason this furor will continue even if the website is fixed is that the public is learning that ObamaCare's insurance costs more in return for worse coverage. Mr. Obama and his liberal allies call the old plans "substandard," but he doesn't mean from the perspective of the consumers who bought them. He means people were free to choose insurance that wasn't designed to serve his social equity and income redistribution goals. In his view, many people must pay first-class fares for coach seats so others can pay less...

The reason this furor will continue even if the website is fixed is that the public is learning that ObamaCare's insurance costs more in return for worse coverage. ObamaCare imposes to create a supposedly superior insurance product are resulting in an objectively inferior medical product. But government usually helps the less fortunate honestly by raising taxes to fund programs. In summer 2009, Senate Democrats put out such a bill, and the $1.6 trillion sticker shock led them to hide the transfers by forcing people to buy overpriced products.

I’m not sure just which president it was—most folks point to Ronald Reagan—who earned the term “Teflon President.” Whoever it was, he’s been royally upstaged over the last few years by Barack Obama. To the perpetual dismay of his political opponents, our current president’s approval ratings have seemed impervious to his blunders with the IRS, his Department of Justice, his foreign policy (including Benghazi in Libya), and other stumbles. Until now. I too have marveled over Obama’s remarkable ability to shake off even the most serious missteps. But I want to propose here that the up-front failures of Obamacare almost...

[...] What is being overlooked is the new and higher deductibles and total annual out-of-pocket expenditures, especially in the Bronze and Silver plans. The amount of these greatly exceeds the ability of most individuals and families to pay, thus providing the real possibility of personal bankruptcies due to medical bills and high losses for providers who cannot collect. [...] So what will happen? The family, being responsible citizens, will initially try to pay the bills, but that will soon prove impossible. They will ultimately default. And in any case, they will most likely end any college planning or retirement savings...