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Anthem said on Friday it would buy Cigna in a deal valued at $54.2 billion, creating the largest U.S. health insurer. Cigna shareholders will get $103.40 per share in cash and 0.5152 Anthem shares. The deal comes three weeks after Aetna struck a deal to buy Humana for $37 billion and is part of an industry-wide consolidation of the health insurance industry following the roll-out of the Obama government's health-care reform law.

Krugman is for a single-payer health care system and argues that socialist health care systems provide better health outcomes at cheaper cost around the world. My response was that third-party payer systems in education and health care are what's driving up costs and that health care premiums paid by families are rising way faster than Obama predicted. Where are the $2,500 in family savings? Medicare is apparently the glittering success story of government, yet it's running unfunded liabilities in the tens of trillions of dollars. Krugman was lamest in explaining the migration of a thousand people a day from blue...

Despite the Supreme Court’s repeated attempts to prop it up, Obamacare is collapsing. This is obvious not merely to the majority of Americans who have always disapproved of the law, but also to an increasing number of progressives. Consequently, we are once again hearing calls for single-payer health care. Most advocates of this system, including Hillary Clinton’s main competitor for the 2016 Democrat presidential nomination, favor Medicare-for-All. They want, in other words, to put all Americans on the government program that covers the elderly and disabled. An excellent antidote for this simplistic solution is David Hogberg’s new book, Medicare’s Victims:...

Aetna has reached a $37 billion deal to buy Humana. A news release from the two companies says Aetna will acquire all outstanding shares of Humana for a combination of cash and stock valued at approximately $230 per share. The deal was unanimously approved by the board of directors....

Six are the Chief, Kennedy, Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld the nationwide tax subsidies under President Barack Obama's health care overhaul, in a ruling that preserves health insurance for millions of Americans. The justices said in a 6-3 ruling that the subsidies that 8.7 million people currently receive to make insurance affordable do not depend on where they live, under the 2010 health care law.< The outcome is the second major victory for Obama in politically charged Supreme Court tests of his most significant domestic achievement. It came the same day the court gave the administration an unexpected victory by preserving...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld the nationwide tax subsidies under President Barack Obama's health care overhaul, in a ruling that preserves health insurance for millions of Americans. The justices said in a 6-3 ruling that the subsidies that 8.7 million people currently receive to make insurance affordable do not depend on where they live, under the 2010 health care law.

Now that the Supreme Court has ruled that health insurance consumers can receive federal subsidies regardless of their state’s role in running their insurance market, fewer states may stay in the game.When the Affordable Care Act passed in 2010, most people expected that each state would want to run its own health insurance marketplace. That never really happened, as many states opted to let the federal system, HealthCare.gov, do the work for them. Many of those states that did try running their own marketplaces are starting to think twice.Now, with the Supreme Court ensuring that every state’s consumers will have...

The title as designated and fixed by the Board is as follows: STATE TAXES SHALL BE INCREASED $25 BILLION ANNUALLY IN THE FIRST FULL FISCAL YEAR, AND BY SUCH AMOUNTS THAT ARE RAISED THEREAFTER, BY AN AMENDMENT TO THE COLORADO CONSTITUTION ESTABLISHING A HEALTH CARE PAYMENT SYSTEM TO FUND HEALTH CARE FOR ALL INDIVIDUALS WHOSE PRIMARY RESIDENCE IS IN COLORADO, AND, IN CONNECTION THEREWITH, CREATING A GOVERNMENTAL ENTITY CALLED COLORADOCARE TO ADMINISTER THE HEALTH CARE PAYMENT SYSTEM; PROVIDING FOR THE GOVERNANCE OF COLORADOCARE BY AN INTERIM APPOINTED BOARD OF TRUSTEES UNTIL AN ELECTED BOARD OF TRUSTEES TAKES RESPONSIBILITY; EXEMPTING COLORADOCARE...

Last week Americans For Tax Reform released new information showing that during Hawaii's special Obamacare enrollment period, zero people enrolled. The total state cost for the exchange sits at more than $200 million. While Hawaii enrolled zero individuals and is the worst performing state, it is not alone. Vermont signed up only 97 households, while Rhode Island enrolled just 25 households. Hawaii’s dismal performance should not be surprising. The website cost taxpayers $205 million but could only enroll 8,592 individuals in year one. Cost to taxpayers per enroll: $23,899. The state legislature recently rejected a $28 million bailout for the...

When Barack Obama and Democrats on Capitol Hill first rolled out ObamaCare, conservatives warned that the program was so badly designed that it couldn’t possibly be on the level. Instead, people assumed that Democrats intended ObamaCare to fail — so that the only possible choice would be a single-payer system of socialized medicine. Even after Democrats reluctantly eliminated the “public option,” opponents insisted that the intended end game was failure so bad that it would destroy private insurance and leave nothing but the federal government to pick up the pieces.The problem with that strategy, if indeed that was the...

During the past few days the legacy media and the internet have been flooded with news articles, editorials and blog posts with titles like “Overhead costs exploding under ObamaCare.” This all-too-predictable phenomenon has been breathlessly reported by outlets as different in their ideological perspectives as the Wall Street Journal and the Daily Kos. Sadly, when liberal and conservative publications are equally enthusiastic about breaking a story, it usually means the latter have been duped into promoting progressive propaganda. This case is no exception. The basis for these reports is a “study” produced by a couple of notorious lefty data diddlers....

State ObamaCare exchanges are fast running out of cash because of higher-than-expected costs and lower-than-expected enrollment. In an attempt to keep their heads above water, many exchanges are considering combining some of their operations with those of other states — a tactic that may prove as difficult as setting up the exchanges in the first place and that raises the specter of fully nationalized health insurance.The Obama administration, under the terms of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), disbursed about $5 billion in subsidies to states to get their exchanges up and running. After that, the exchanges were supposed to be...

A number of states are quietly considering merging their healthcare exchanges under ObamaCare amid big questions about their cost and viability. Many of the 13 state-run ObamaCare exchanges are worried about how they’ll survive once federal dollars supporting them run dry next year. Others are contemplating creating multi-state exchanges as a contingency plan for a looming Supreme Court ruling expected next month that could prevent people from getting subsidies to buy ObamaCare on the federal exchange. The idea is still only in the infancy stage. It’s unclear whether a California-Oregon or New York-Connecticut health exchange is on the horizon. But...

The 2016 presidential election is attracting an unusually large number of hopefuls. The Republicans will probably field more than a dozen candidates and the Democrats, as many as five. Presently, very few of these supposed contenders have a real chance of becoming president. Republicans Ben Carson, Carly Fiorina and Ted Cruz are long shots. On the Democratic side, that term applies to everyone but Hillary Rodham Clinton.. ~snip~ If you tell them in private, "You do not have a chance to be president," they will point to underdogs who won, such as Jimmy Carter or Ronald Reagan, or front-runners who...

In a news story titled “Nearly half of Obamacare exchanges are struggling over their future,” The Washington Post reports the following: Nearly half of the 17 insurance marketplaces set up by the states and the District under President Obama’s health law are struggling financially, presenting state officials with an unexpected and serious challenge five years after the passage of the landmark Affordable Care Act. Many of the online exchanges are wrestling with surging costs, especially for balky technology and expensive customer-call centers — and tepid enrollment numbers. To ease the fiscal distress, officials are considering raising fees on insurers, sharing...

(CNSNews.com) -- President Barack Obama’s home state of Hawaii is shutting down its state-based health care exchange, the Hawaii Health Connector (HHC), due to incurring debts and the unwillingness of state legislators to put more taxpayer money into the struggling operation, the Honolulu Star-Advertiser reported Saturday.Established in 2011, the non-profit organization is Hawaii’s state-based health exchange for the President’s Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare. There are currently about 37,000 Hawaiians enrolled in health care plans through the exchange, far short of the roughly 70,000 needed to raise enough money to sustain it, the article reports.Officials with the exchange released a report to its...

Hawaii state insurance exchange to shut down Hawaii Health Connector never achieved financial sustainability May 11, 2015 | By Brian Eastwood The Hawaii Health Connector will shut down operations on Sept. 30, InsuranceNewsNet reported. The exchange site will cease new enrollment this week, discontinue its outreach programs at the end of May and transfer its technology assets to the state by Sept. 30, the article said. The exchange's 37,000 enrollees can re-enroll on the federal Healthcare.gov exchange for the 2016 plan year. Hawaii Health Connector has faced financial problems from its inception. A report issued earlier this year found that...

Could employer-provided health insurance be going the way of employer-sponsored pension plans? Rick Lindquist, president of Zane Benefits, which specializes in individual health insurance reimbursement for small businesses, says: Not only could it happen; it’s happening already. Lindquist and Paul Zane Pilzer (who founded Zane Benefits), argue that case in their new book, “The End of Employer-Provided Health Insurance.” As surprising as you may find the title, get a load of its subtitle: “Why It’s Good for You, Your Family and Your Company.” Lindquist and Pilzer’s company stands to profit if employers shift from traditional health insurance and toward their...

Socialists, Democrats, Communists and liberals rely on people being kept in the dark about their policies. Things are so much easier for them that way. When the media never asks inconvenient questions, any chance of the truth getting out is generally non-existent. But when the bottom publically falls out of one of their fake “benefits” it becomes impossible for these people to keep us in the dark. When the Berlin Wall was coming down the Communists were still telling people to go back to work at their useless factories where they were making useless commodities no one wanted; but the...