Free Republic

The nation’s health insurers, resigned to the idea that Republicans will repeal the Affordable Care Act, on Tuesday publicly outlined for the first time what the industry wants to stay in the state marketplaces, which have provided millions of Americans with insurance under the law.The insurers, some who have already started leaving the marketplaces because they are losing money there, say they need a clear commitment from the Trump administration and congressional leaders that the government will continue offsetting some costs for low-income people. They also want to keep in place rules that encourage young and healthy people to sign...

U.S. foreign-policy sage Henry Kissinger used to tell Harvard students that the test of a good statesman was his ability to sense the evolution of an event before it happened. What President Richard Nixon's secretary of state meant was that a successful diplomat had to be able to read the character of his foreign counterpart as well as have the ability to take the pulse of the country he was dealing with

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says Congress will act early next year to repeal President Barack Obama’s health care law but delay the changes as Republicans try to come up with an alternative. […] Speaking in Louisville, McConnell cautioned that the law’s critics “can’t just snap your fingers and go from where we are today to where we’re headed.” He said a replacement to the health care law will be done in a “phased-in way.” …

The myth that a complete replacement package has to be in place the moment Obamacare is repealed refuses to die First congressional Republicans said they couldn’t repeal Obamacare because they didn’t have full control of Congress. Then when they gained control of both chambers of Congress congressional Republicans said they couldn’t repeal Obamacare because they didn’t control the White House.

A new study by Jonathan Gruber, one of the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) chief economic architects, suggests that roughly two-thirds of new Medicaid enrollees in 2014 were eligible for the program under previous state eligibility criteria—meaning that they were not made eligible by the ACA. If accurate, then a much smaller share of new Medicaid enrollees were made eligible for the program by the ACA than Washington experts commonly believe. For example, the Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) most recent projection is that only one of six new Medicaid enrollees were eligible for the program before the ACA. Gruber’s results, combined...

After a dinner meeting with Donald Trump at Jean-Georges restaurant in New York, Mitt Romney delivered a glowing review of the president-elect’s leadership during the transition. Mr. Romney, who was invited to the dinner purportedly for a follow-up interview for the job of secretary of state, described it as a “wonderful evening” and said that he was “impressed” with Mr. Trump’s handling of his upset victory in the election. “We had another discussion about affairs throughout the world and these discussions I’ve had with him have been enlightening, and interesting, and engaging,” Mr. Romney, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee, told...

PARK CITY, Utah — Mitt Romney warned here Friday that Donald Trump’s election as president could change the nation’s moral character and lead to the normalization of racism, bigotry and misogyny. Romney, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee who has been the most vocal leader of the “Never Trump” movement, delivered one of his strongest rebukes yet of Trump’s candidacy in an interview with CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer. “I don’t want to see trickle-down racism,” Romney told Blitzer. “I don’t want to see a president of the United States saying things which change the character of the generations of Americans that...

The Wall Street Journal recently posted that Mitt Romney is emerging as the leading candidate to be Secretary of State in the Trump administration. Obviously we all know Romney is the poster child for GOPe, and that for whatever reason he threw his debates against Obama in 2012. Personally, I would like to see him lead a task force to eliminate vast numbers of Federal regulations, but it is not up to me. In this thread I am concerned with Foreign Policy and nothing else. Where can we expect Romney to differ from what we expect from President Trump on...

Say what you will about Donny Deutsch, but the man-about-Manhattan and the Hamptons moves in the Trump social circle and is well-connected there. So attention must be paid to Deutsch’s declaration on today’s With All Due Respect. Asked by Mark Halperin whether the talk about Romney being considered for Secretary of State is “real, whether Romney might end up with the job,” Deutsch responded: “somebody very, very, very high up in the inner [Trump] circle yesterday told me it was very, very real,” and that this person was “very excited about it.” View the video here.

Kicks of mules ObamaCare is in big trouble. With the election of a Republican president and the survival of Republican majorities in both the House and Senate, ObamaCare should be history. But ObamaCare is not dead yet. The effort to repeal and replace it is going to face some serious obstacles - some of which are policy-related, like the problem of how you deal with people with pre-existing conditions, or of how you transition people who have signed up for subsidized policies. The left wants you to think that repealing ObamaCare means ripping people’s health care away from them. The...

Several of the Republican Party’s most generous donors called on the Republican National Committee on Thursday to disavow Donald J. Trump, saying that allegations by multiple women that Mr. Trump had groped or made inappropriate sexual advances toward them threatened to inflict lasting damage on the party’s image. To an elite group of Republican contributors who have donated millions of dollars to the party’s candidates and committees in recent years, the cascade of revelations related to Mr. Trump’s sexual conduct is grounds for the committee to cut ties with the party’s beleaguered standard-bearer, finally and fully. “At some point, you...

On Friday, former Gov. Gary Johnson offered a guarantee. “If Mitt Romney wants to be a part of the administration, that would be a guarantee.” The comments came at Friday’s joint Deseret News-KSL editorial board meeting with Johnson and Bill Weld. I asked Johnson what role, if any, Romney might play in a Johnson-Weld administration. Although the Libertarian nominee seemed to doubt whether Romney would really be interested, he said the former Republican presidential nominee would be free to, in essence, choose his own adventure. “I think [the position] would be for Mitt Romney to decide … and I say...

Already this week, a letter from 50 respected Republican foreign-policy gurus announced that they would not support Donald Trump; Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) wrote an op-ed declaring that she would not vote for Trump; and Trump once again roiled the race when he told a packed rally: “By the way, and if [Hillary Clinton] gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. The Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don’t know. But I’ll tell you what, that will be a horrible day.” The Clinton team, not surprisingly, took this as an invitation to commit violence. Michael Hayden,...

With just a few weeks to go until the GOP convention, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney says he’s still getting some encouragement from his family to jump into the 2016 race for the White House. “My wife and kids wanted me to run again this time,” Mr. Romney, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee, said this week at the “Aspen Ideas Festival.” “I’ve got some kids — I got an email from one of my sons yesterday saying ‘you gotta get in, Dad — you gotta get in,’ ” he said....

Mitt Romney blasted the Republican Party on Saturday for not doing more to stop presumptive nominee Donald Trump, saying that the prospects for the party are bleak. During a discussion in Park City, Utah, where Romney is hosting his annual conservative summit, the 2012 presidential nominee singled out Trump’s former rivals Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Gov. John Kasich (R-Ohio), the last two candidates to drop out of the race against Trump. "Ted Cruz was basically praising Donald Trump through the whole process," Romney told discussion host and CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer. And Kasich “was in well after the time...

Romneycare in Mass was the model for Obamacare This weekend there are rumors that Hillary Kristol has recruited Romney to run as a Third Party spoiler, perhaps ubsuring a Clinton victory in Nov If that happens, Romney-Obamacre doesn't get repealed; its killer premiums will be with us forever.

Yikes. I’m probably as surprised as anyone else to hear myself saying it, but the producers might want to start cranking up the music and offer a subtle hint to Mitt Romney that it’s time to get off the stage. We’re busy getting ready for the convention in Cleveland and the pieces are pretty much set up on the board, yet it seems that the winner of the 2012 GOP primary can’t bring himself to step back and let somebody else get on message. This pattern of behavior was on display yet again this week when Mitt let everyone know...

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...

…Unless, of course, you're trying to put Hillary in the oval office Donald Trump is a boorish, horrible, human being who fails to live up to even the dismal behavioral standards of Bill Clinton. He’s also not a “true conservative” - whatever that is. This is the message being offered by the #NeverTrumpers who are hell-bent on handing the election to Hillary finding a “real dyed-in-the-wool conservative” who will run as a 2016 third party candidate. Because Trump is so odious, someone with honest-to-God “right-wing credentials” simply must be dragged into the race. To that end, “real conservative” and Weekly...