Free Republic

Amy Moses and her circle of self-employed small-business owners were supporters of President Barack Obama and the Affordable Care Act. They bought policies on the newly created NY state exchange. But when they called doctors and hospitals in Manhattan to schedule appointments, they were dismayed to be turned away again and again with a common refrain: "We don't take Obamacare," the umbrella epithet for the hundreds of plans offered through the president's signature health legislation. Though their insurance cards look the same as everyone else's the plans are often very different from those provided to most Americans by their employers....

Mitt Romney devoted an entire speech back in March to attacking Donald Trump in an effort to steer conservatives away from the businessman. Since then, he’s continued hammering the real estate mogul on one issue after another, including Trump’s tax returns. Romney said earlier this week that Trump's refusal to release them was “disqualifying.” “I don’t know what’s wrong with Mitt Romney. It’s so strange,” American Conservative Union Chairman Matt Schlapp said on Fox News. “He as a candidate didn’t even release his taxes until Harry Reid took to the floor and claimed that maybe he didn’t pay any income...

Regulations: Here’s a headline that should scare anyone who has been following ObamaCare: “As time runs out, the Obama administration races to reshape health care.” Hasn’t it done enough damage reshaping health care already?

Trucated title. Full title: Mitt Romney met privately with William Kristol, who is leading the effort to draft an independent candidate In spite of his insistence that he will not run, Mitt Romney is being courted this week by a leading conservative commentator to reconsider and jump into the volatile 2016 presidential race as an independent candidate. William Kristol, the longtime editor of the Weekly Standard magazine and a leading voice on the right, met privately with the 2012 nominee on Thursday afternoon to discuss the possibility of launching an independent bid, potentially with Romney as its standard-bearer. “He came...

Thanks to @tedcruz for making a fight for conservatism, American leadership and freedom.

For those who thought it is too late for a third-party candidate to run for president, don't count out that option quite yet. Bill Kristol has put out a hypothetical short list of third-party candidates, including Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida and Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, who could run if Donald Trump becomes the Republican nominee, Breitbart News reports. One of the nation's most influential conservatives and editor of The Weekly Standard, Kristol has said that a Trump victory in Indiana this Tuesday would force him to refocus on his so-called Latter-Day Republican independent ticket.

With his five blowout wins Tuesday night, Donald Trump has passed Mitt Romney’s popular vote total from four years ago and is on a trajectory that could land him more Republican votes than any presidential candidate in modern history – by a lot. Trump surged to 9.9 million votes, according to totals that include Tuesday’s preliminary results across the northeast and could rise further as the final votes are counted. That’s already more than 100,000 more than Romney earned in the entire 2012 primary season and tens of thousands more than John McCain earned in 2008.

<p>Historian David Maraniss notes, in Sunday’s Post, that President Obama came to office with the goal of changing “the trajectory of America” and leaving “a legacy as a president of consequence, the liberal counter to [Ronald] Reagan.”</p> <p>On the foreign-policy front, he is the anti-Reagan for certain. Reagan defeated Soviet communism and left us a safer world; Obama presided over the rise and metastasis of the Islamic State and left us a far more dangerous one.</p>

Former GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney is again warning his party of the dangers of a Donald Trump nomination, saying a three-man race likely paves the way for the New York billionaire to capture the nomination on the first ballot of this summer's GOP convention in Cleveland. The former Massachusetts governor, in an interview on "The David Gregory Show" podcast says Tuesday's New York primary is an important moment in the primary fight. "If (Gov. John Kasich and Sen. Ted Cruz) are both going at it aggressively until the very end then I think Trump gets it on the first...

"We Will Repeal Obamacare" CPAC 2014

In August 2007, then-Sen. Barack Obama expressed his hope for the growth of socialized medicine in the United States. “[Health care] is a $2 trillion part of our economy, and it is my belief that it’s not just politically, but economically, it is better for us to start getting a system in place—a universal health care system signed into law by the end of my first term as president and build off that system to further to make it more rational … By the way, Canada did not start immediately with a single-payer system. They had a similar transition step.”...

A Watergate-type 'Deep Throat' has come forward to claim that despite all the talk of a contested Republican Convention, the GOP nominee will be former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, a deal, said the shadowy source who has direct knowledge of the situation, was sealed months ago by the Republican National Committee (RNC). "All this hoopla about Trump splitting the Party if he doesn't get the nomination – even if he gets only a majority of the needed delegates – is hogwash," insisted the well-placed source who claims direct knowledge of talks held between Romney and GOP executives. . . ....

Health Reform: ObamaCare enrollees are sicker than those covered before the law. Backers see this as good news, because it means those needing coverage are getting it. It’s actually a sign of an impending death spiral.

Mitt Romney's reemergence this election cycle as a harsh critic of Donald Trump has been crippling for his favorability among Republican voters, a new poll shows. Romney, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee, is seen as favorable by just 28 percent of Republican primary voters, according to a Public Policy Polling survey released Tuesday. A startling 62 percent of Republican primary voters view him unfavorably, the poll found, and 10 percent said they were not sure. That net favorability of minus-34 percentage points is a dramatic drop from polling conducted prior to 2016. In January 2015, for example, Romney was seen...

Massachusetts considering a single-payer healthcare system for the state, dubbed "Mass-Care." Lawmakers are currently debating a bill that would move private insurance to a single-payer system for all Massachusetts residents. BOSTON – State lawmakers heard arguments Tuesday in favor of a single-payer health insurance system for Massachusetts, with proponents testifying that more needs to be done despite the advances brought on by state and federal law. “I acknowledge that in Massachusetts we have a great health care system, but it is not a system that works for everyone,” Sen. Jamie Eldridge, D-Acton, said at a Joint Committee on Health Care...

A popular culprit is former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney. His crime? Welcoming Trump's endorsement in Romney’s own race for president in 2012. . . Romney didn’t seek Trump's endorsement because he thought it was worth having so much as he wanted to prevent Trump from making a disruptive kamikaze run. By sidelining Trump, Romney kept Trump's politics from entering the nation's bloodstream for another four years. If only today's Republican leaders could have done the same.

Mitt Romney will campaign with John Kasich Monday at two stops in Ohio, NBC News has learned from a source familiar with the plans. Romney is not expected to endorse the Ohio governor during the campaign swing, the source said, but it will be the first time Romney has campaigned on behalf of a Republican candidate this cycle. It's a significant move for the former Republican nominee, who previously recorded campaign telephone "robocalls" for Kasich as well as Marco Rubio. Earlier this month, at a speech in Utah, Romney lambasted frontrunner Donald Trump as a "fraud" and warned of the...

"My son Tagg came running up the stairs," Romney told the Globe, remembering the day of Trump's CNN interview, in which he blamed a faulty earpiece for his inability to reject the support of the former Ku Klux Klan leader. "[Tagg] was white in the face," Romney said. "He said can you believe what Donald Trump has said? And I was shocked as well. I contacted my colleagues, my advisers, and counselors and said: 'I'm giving a speech. I'm going to give it as soon as I can.'"

Many people who went without health insurance last year are now seeing fines more than double under President Barack Obama’s health care law, tax preparation company H&R Block said Tuesday. Among its customers who owe a penalty for the 2015 tax year, the average fine is $383, compared with $172 for 2014, the company said.

New information is surfacing about Mitt Romney and his 2016 plans following the 2012 presidential candidate's nationally-covered speech on Thursday morning. The former Mass. Governor and Republican nominee for President spoke out against Donald Trump, calling the Republican front-runner a "phony" and "fraud." He urged Republicans to unite behind another candidate, yet declined to indicate which candidate he would be supporting. An in-depth look at Romney's campaign finance activity, however, shows that the former candidate may be gearing up to take another shot at the White House. In late January and early February of 2016, Romney's campaign finance entities, which...