Free Republic

Bernie Sanders said, “I want to move from” Obamacare Sunday on “Meet the Press.” Sanders told host Chuck Todd, “I want to build on the Obamacare… But I do believe that when 29 million people still have zero health insurance, and when many more are underinsured with large deductibles and copayments, and when we pay much more per capita, and when we pay the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs, you know what, Chuck? I think we can do a little better.” Todd then pressed Sanders, “So it’s fair to say, yeah, you want to replace Obamacare?” Sanders...

Why Single Payer MIGHT work

During his “60 Minutes” interview Sunday, Republican presidential front-runner appeared to come out in favor of a form of single payer health insurance for the uninsured ... and openly called for raising taxes on the wealthy.

For decades, liberal activists yearned for a European-style, single-payer health system that they argued would lead to more affordable, efficient, and comprehensive medical coverage for all citizens. When Vermont four years ago enacted a landmark bill to establish the nation’s first single-payer health care system, they saw their long-sought dream about to be fulfilled. But reality hit last month. Governor Peter Shumlin released a financial report that showed the cost of the program would nearly double the size of the state’s budget in the first year alone and require large tax increases for residents and businesses. Shumlin, a Democrat and...

Most of Donald Trump’s public statements include the rote declaration that Obamacare is a disaster. This is true, of course, but it doesn’t tell us anything new. It’s only when he starts elaborating on his objections that one gets a sense of what he believes, and he doesn’t talk like a friend of the free market. During last week’s Republican debate, for example, he was asked about his past praise of single-payer health care and replied, “As far as single-payer, it works in Canada, works incredibly well in Scotland.” This answer was both antithetical to free-market thinking and profoundly ignorant.

WASHINGTON — Hoping to avoid another political uproar over the Affordable Care Act, the Obama administration is trying to persuade states to cut back big rate increases requested by many health insurance companies for 2016. In calling for aggressive regulation of rates, federal officials are setting up a potential clash with insurers. Some carriers said they paid out more in claims than they collected in premiums last year, so they lost money on policies sold in the new public marketplaces. After finding that new customers were sicker than expected, some health plans have sought increases of 10 percent to 40...

The National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) recently called attention to an IRS ruling that would penalize small businesses up to $500,000 for daring to compensate their employees for health insurance premiums. The NFIB reports, “On July 1, 2015, employers will be penalized $100 per day per employee if they try to make health insurance more affordable by reimbursing their employees for individual market health insurance premiums. The penalty affects businesses that provide reimbursement for more than one employee. The healthcare reimbursement prohibition regulation decreases an employer’s ability to assist employees with health insurance costs.” The ruling would fine the...

The number of Minnesotans struggling to pay their medical bills is rising sharply, despite an increase in the number of residents who have health insurance. In the past year, Minnesota’s main hospital and clinic groups filed nearly 9,000 lawsuits against people with large or long-standing medical debts — a sharp increase since 2005, according to a Star Tribune analysis of court records. Once a leading cause of personal bankruptcy in the United States, medical debt was widely expected to decline as more Americans got health insurance following federal health reform. Instead, shifts in the insurance market are pushing more people...

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....