Free Republic

Lead story on Drudge The uniparty at work!

Via MofoPolitics, which is responsible for the clip, and Free Republic, where the Romney 3.0 movement is, shall we say, off to a bad start in the comments. I’m 90 percent sure she’s joking but there’s no way to be sure: Any conservative willing to offer three cheers for RomneyCare qualifies, indisputably, as a true blue Mitt fan. I didn’t think they existed, but they do. Even among people who knew all along that, if nominated, he would lose. Why Romney instead of someone else, though? One big reason, she says, is immigration. He was the guy who hammered Rick...

WASHINGTON, March 24 -- FreedomWorks issued the following news release: Tonight, the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) headquarters is hosting a fundraiser for North Carolina moderate and Senatorial candidate Thom Tillis. Headlining the fundraiser invite was a "who's who" of beltway establishmentarians, including Senator Mitch McConnell, Senator Lamar Alexander, and Senator Richard Burr. Attendees must pay a minimum of $1,000 per PAC or $500 per person to rub elbows with the D.C. elite. According to the Washington Post, (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2014/03/21/nrsc-chairman-obamacare-has-helped-dramatically-expand-senate-map/) NRSC Chairman Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) explained today that playing in races like this one are a priority because the "map and...

When liberal pro-Obama scholars question the legality of President Barack Obama's actions to implement Obamacare, the issue of illegal presidential use of power moves from partisan to frightening. George Washington Law School's Jonathan Turley is the second most quoted law professor in the nation and a two-time Obama voter. He recently testified before Congress on Obama's extensive use of executive orders and administrative actions to make unilateral changes in Obamacare, immigration policy, minimum wage and the IRS qualifying standards for non-profit status. As to Obamacare, Obama, so far, changed it in at least a dozen major ways, including, but not...

Republicans have voted more than 50 times to repeal or alter Obamacare as the popularity of the legislation continues to be nearly non-existent. In the process, Republicans have been criticized for failing to present an alternative piece of legislation to replace Obamacare. More than a dozen alternative plans have been crafted on the Hill, but Republicans haven't been able to rally around a single plan. Now, that's changing as Republican prepare to present Americans with an official alternative to the Affordable Care Act: The plan includes an expansion of high-risk insurance pools, promotion of health savings accounts and inducements for...

President Obama is planning to break the law, once again, in an effort to protect vulnerable Democrats in the Senate. According to news reports, “the White House will announce a new directive allowing insurers to continue offering health plans that do not meet Obamacare’s minimum coverage requirements.” In the absence of this “directive,” health insurance companies would have to cancel millions of health policies just a few weeks before November’s congressional elections. Obama’s edict would theoretically forestall, until after those crucial midterms, a tsunami of voter outrage that would inevitably drown the reelection prospects of many Democrats. It’s not clear,...

By voting repeatedly to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) over the past 4 years, Republicans have risked being identified as a party without a positive health policy agenda. On January 27, 2014, however, three Republican senators — Orrin Hatch (UT), Tom Coburn (OK), and Richard Burr (NC) — unveiled a proposal that would not only repeal the ACA, but also replace it with comprehensive legislation based on Republican health policy principles.1 Although the proposal recycles long-standing Republican prescriptions, it also offers new ideas. The proposal would not entirely repeal the ACA. Republicans seem to be coming to terms with...

Following the passage of  RomneyCare in 2006, the state of Massachusetts set up a prototype of the Obama health care exchanges called the Massachusetts Health Connector. It was a simple website that listed plans offered by various health insurers and it seemed to work fairly well. Although I did not support RomneyCare, I hoped that by getting ahead of the healthcare.gov train wreck, Massachusetts residents would be unaffected by the destructive Obamacare rollout.It turns out I was very wrong. The Boston Globe reports this week: The [Health Connector] website, created under Massachusetts’ 2006 landmark health insurance law, worked well for...

Massachusetts Health Connector officials acknowledged on Thursday that the state’s health exchange website may not be fully functional by June – the date by which approximately 200,000 state-subsidized health insurance plans will expire. All of those individuals will have to move to new plans, which are approved under the guidelines of the Affordable Care Act, by June 30. But they may or may not be able to use the state website to enroll in those plans. “We’re about to hit March. June 30 is not very far away,” Sarah Iselin, a special assistant to Gov. Deval Patrick overseeing fixes to...

**SNIP** There are a whole bunch of problems with this most recent scramble to save the Senate majority: 1. Democrats have opposed in lock-step every change or delay that Republicans have offered (e.g. repeal or suspension of the individual mandate, prohibition on insurance company bailouts, relief from the medical-device tax). It’s hard to declare Obamacare “the law of the land,” block serious consideration of changes and then concede it needs changing. 2. Why did they vote for the law in its current state? Maybe they were hoodwinked by the president’s promises that it would be a pro-growth, pro-jobs reform, or...

Slowly but surely President Obama is unwinding, rolling back, and even cancelling his very own Obamacare. A couple of years ago he told Republicans not to mess with his plan. He said he’d veto any changes. But now, in substantial ways, he’s messing with his own plan. By various counts, the president has made 25 to 30 key changes to the Affordable Care Act. They all violate the legislation passed in 2010. Many believe Obama’s executive actions are unlawful or unconstitutional. Whatever the case, at this rate, there may not be much if any Obamacare in the next couple of...

Patients who have had a ‘fair innings’ could be denied life-saving drugs under proposed health reforms. The plans would mean experts taking into account whether there is a ‘wider societal benefit’ to giving a patient crucial medicines. The NHS rationing body, Nice, fears the Department of Health proposals could see younger people deemed a higher priority for drug treatments because they have more years ahead of them – potentially contributing more to the economy – than the elderly. Doctors, MPs and campaigners last night condemned the plans as ‘barking mad’. The move will also fuel fears that the elderly are...

Doctors are leaving private practice to become employees of hospitals, according to this story in the New York Times. The decline in private practice physicians actually began a few years ago when changes to Medicare forced many physicians who practiced individually or in small group offices to make the move to a salaried position in a hospital.But there is no doubt that Obamacare has exacerbated the problem. The onerous recordkeeping is one big reason why private practice physicians are becoming extinct. Private physicians can’t afford the extra employees to meet the demands of Obamacare paperwork.Dr, Paul Hsieh explained in a...

WASHINGTON — One of the latest Obamacare pitches to get young adults to sign up for health insurance starts out with a mother's kitchen note reminding her grown son to enroll. "Mom, you know I can't afford it," the young black man protests, as he sits down at a kitchen table next to a bespectacled woman with a laptop computer linked to the U.S. federal enrollment website, HealthCare.gov. "But for the first time you can," she replies reassuringly. "You go to the HealthCare.gov website, compare quality plans and you could get help paying for it."

The head of the state’s beleaguered health insurance marketplace, which was once a national model, broke down in tears Thursday, as she described how demoralizing it has been for her staff to struggle with a broken website that has left an unknown number of people without coverage.

Dear Mr. Bertolini, With a deep sense of sadness, I must inform you that I will no longer serve as a physician for Aetna patients under the terms of our contractual agreement, which you most recently unilaterally changed. I have been privileged and honored to care for thousands of patients covered by Aetna policies since the 1990’s. I have devoted my life to providing the very best, state-of-the-art care to these individuals. We have formed a patient-doctor relationship, which I hope many will chose to continue in spite of my severing ties with Aetna. You see, health insurance has evolved...

The federal overhaul has had a bumpy start, but with insurance payments they can handle, many have stopped gambling on their future Lost amid all the fury, however, have been the success stories.

Editor's note: This review is cross-posted at JohnHanlonReviews.com “I can’t fake it,” then-presidential candidate Mitt Romney said as the political advisers and family members nearby deflated. They knew what that meant. The scene, which occurred during the heated 2008 GOP primary battle between Romney and his rising political adversary, Senator John McCain (R-AZ), occurs early on in the new Netflix documentary, Mitt. The film premieres on Netflix at 11 AM today and offers a rarely-seen look at the former Governor and his family as they trudge through two seemingly-endless presidential campaigns. Director Greg Whiteley was given great access to Romney...

The feedback continues, with a bunch of military veterans and family members asking me how I could defend the callous COLA cuts to military pensions by way of explaining why Congress is trying to undo them. Another reader email: I strenuously object to being asked to sacrifice any more! I risked my life in two deployments to war zones, sacrificed my health (I'm also a disabled veteran), and jeopardized my relationship with my family for my country. I find Congress' latest demand a kick in the gut. We veterans and retirees have sacrificed enough without having to endure the...

In late October, continuing a four-year pattern of making such claims, MIT's Jonathan Gruber, who along with Ezekiel "Zeke the Bleak" Emanuel is considered one of the two "architects" of the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, pointed to a study which claimed that "the Affordable Care Act is working even better than expected, producing more coverage for much less money." But, as Wingfield noted in his Friday column, Gruber sang a totally different tune when quoted in the Washington Post on Thursday. WaPo's Sarah Kliff failed to tag Gruber as an Obamacare architect, making it appear as if he's just...