Free Republic

President Barack Obama pushed today to renew focus on a so-called “public option” in the insurance marketplace -- a popular item among progressives, but one Obama publicly hedged against during negotiations leading to the passage of his signature health care law. In a speech in Miami, Obama said the public option would “give folks more options in those places where there’s just not enough insurers to compete.” But the president did not mention how during the 2009 negotiations over what’s now known as Obamacare the White House used the public option as a bargaining chip -- dropping it as a...

Single Payer push On Tuesday, I talked about the real reason Bill Clinton and The New York Times had suddenly decided to attack ObamaCare as an expensive, confusing, unworkable mess. Far from being an off-the-cuff comment, I argued, Bill was doing exactly what he’d been ordered to do. The left is salivating over the federal power that would come with a single payer system, Hillary’s wanted one for decades, and they need to boost support in key liberal demos. This is their pivot moment. As I wrote two days ago: It’s time to pivot toward single payer. Of course, this...

Hint: They don't care about your healthcare in the least. • Impossible to argue otherwise • Pivot Toward Single Payer This morning, Dan discussed a recent Bill Clinton speech in which the former President trashed Obamacare as a “crazy” system which hurts small business. In case you haven’t seen the clips, seen below. So, if they’re admitting what conservatives said all along - that ObamaCare is an unworkable mess - you have to ask why. Here’s the answer:

Published on Oct 3, 2016 Bill Clinton: ObamaCare Insurance Model “Doesn’t Work,” “Doesn’t Make Any Sense” (October 3, 2016)

Hillary Clinton looked to separate Donald Trump from recent Republican presidents on Friday, laying out a plan to encourage national service while arguing that Trump would never address the subject. The rollout of Clinton's plan -- which includes tripling the size of AmeriCorps and founding a reserve corps of 5 million people to respond to natural disasters -- was meant to be a moment for Clinton to talk more about her policies and values than about her boisterous opponent. But as has been the case throughout 2016, Clinton's speech was a both a direct and implicit rebuke of Trump.

Oregon's Senator Jeff Merkley Dear Diana, Thank you for contacting me to express your concerns about the rising cost of health insurance premiums in Oregon. I appreciate hearing from you and having the opportunity to share my perspective. I believe the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is a vast improvement over the system we had before. Even with higher premiums in 2017 than during the first three years of the marketplace, premiums continue to rise at an historically low rate, far below where they were predicted to be if the pre-ACA trend of premium increases had continued. Millions of Americans are...

Obamacare was designed to fail. It’s a gigantic con job. It was drawn up in such a way that it would eventually collapse thus theoretically clearing the way for single-payer Well, DUH! Of course Obamacare was designed to fail. The system is built on lies. It is a Trojan horse for a total government takeover of health care in the United States. In an op-ed in The Hill, Jeffrey I. Barke, M.D., who practices family medicine in Newport Beach, Calif., examines the issue. He writes: As ObamaCare’s troubles mount, I’ve heard my patients and my peers in healthcare ask: How...

The survey finds strong opposition to Amendment 69, the ColoradoCare universal healthcare plan. Among all respondents, 27% would vote yes and approve the amendment, 65% would vote no and reject it, and 8% of voters are undecided. Intensity is very strong among voters who oppose the amendment, with 45% of respondents saying they definitely intend to vote no. Only 10% of respondents definitely intend to vote yes. Not surprisingly, support for Amendment 69 is strongest among Democrats and voters aged 18 to 34. However, slightly more Democrats oppose the amendment than support it, 45% to 41% respectively. Among all voters...

Nearly a third of U.S. counties will be left with just one insurance option next year on the ObamaCare exchanges, according to a new analysis fueling warnings about the impact of the insurance company exodus from markets across the country. The Kaiser Family Foundation study found residents in Pinal County, Ariz., are even at risk of having no insurance options on the exchanges, which provide subsidized plans. Republicans seized on the report Monday to claim that the health care overhaul is not providing the choices promised by President Obama and others. […] The Kaiser Family Foundation study found that overall,...

Dear John: I make approximately $25,000 a year before taxes and I make another $10,000 from rental income. My mortgage is $2,100 a month. I got ObamaCare coverage last year, and I paid approximately $230 a month with some subsidies from New York state.

It's looking like a lot of people are going to have little Obamacare choice next year.One-third of the United States may have just a single insurer to pick from on Obamacare marketplaces in 2017, an analysis released Friday suggests. Seven entire states are projected to have just one carrier in 2017: Alaska, Alabama, Kansas, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Wyoming, according to research by the Avalere consultancy. And more than half of the country, 55 percent, may end up having two or fewer insurers to choose from on those government-run exchanges, Avalere said. "And there may be some sub-region...

The good people of Colorado must be smoking something these days. That’s the only explanation for the decision by 156,000 of the state’s more than 3 million registered voters to endorse a November ballot initiative that would create a statewide single-payer health care system. Patients in single-payer systems elsewhere must withstand low-quality care and long wait times. To fund all that failure, they pay sky-high taxes. If Colorado’s voters approve this single-payer measure at the polls this fall, they’ll experience these realities firsthand. Single-payer systems control costs by using government power to ration care. In Canada, where I grew up,...

Washington (CNN) -- The fight over health care reform burst back into public view Tuesday as four Democratic senators asked Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to hold a vote on a government-run public insurance option. Most observers have considered the public option -- an idea long favored by liberal Democrats -- to be a non-starter since it was dropped from a Senate reform bill passed in December. But Sens. Michael Bennet of Colorado, Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, Jeff Merkley of Oregon, and Sherrod Brown of Ohio signed a letter urging Reid, D-Nevada, to hold a vote on the...

President Obama joined the chorus of Democrats calling for the creation of a government run health insurance program as Obamacare is facing growing problems. In an article published Monday in the Journal of the American Medical Association, the president called for Congress to revisit the "public option" for Obamacare in areas where few insurers offer coverage. "Some parts of the country have struggled with limited insurance market competition for many years, which is one reason that, in the original debate over health reform, Congress considered and I supported including a Medicare-like public plan," Obama wrote in the piece. A public...

DENVER — A Colorado state representative and candidate for the state Senate recently revealed to The Denver Post that she and her colleagues are under strict orders not to take a public stance on the increasingly contentious debate on Amendment 69, the socialized medicine ballot measure that would double the state’s budget and drastically increase taxes. Rep. Lois Court, D-Denver, a candidate for Senate District 31, recently participated in The Denver Post’s Voter Guide, a biannual question-and-answer platform that the newspaper offers to all candidates running for state and federal offices in Colorado. In her answers, Court revealed a stunning...

One of Hillary Clinton’s most influential labor supporters has endorsed Sen. Bernie Sanders’ single payer healthcare plan. Members from Service Employees International Union, which represents nearly 2 million healthcare and government workers, passed a resolution declaring medical care a human right at its national convention in May. Obamacare, which the SEIU lobbied for and endorsed, failed to address inequality in the healthcare marketplace and insurance systems remain “confusing and inefficient.” The union pledged to work to improve upon Obamacare with the goal of expanding into a government-run system. “The American healthcare system allows the profit motives of providers, pharmaceutical companies,...

It’s About Us I turn 56 in a few weeks and I’ve never even bothered to register to vote before because I’ve always suspected something that so many people are finding out to be true this year; that we do not live in an authentic democracy and haven’t for a very long time. Don’t judge me for this, I’ve been disenfranchised as long as I can remember. We assassinated our own president in 1963, I lost friends from my high school in Vietnam, Nixon was a blatant crook and I’ve never felt there was ever a candidate that represented me...

A new Gallup Poll shows most Americans want the government to take on a bigger role in health care. More than 1,500 people from across the country were surveyed, and 58 percent favor replacing the provisions set up by the Affordable Care Act with a federally funded health care program. The ACA, or Obamacare, lets Americans buy insurance through the federal government, but the survey shows most citizens want the government to just pay for everything, or at least that’s what they’re saying now. In recent years, Americans have waffled on whether the government should pay their medical bills. Polls...

Circumventing Congress's ban on the use of federal money to bail out ObamaCare casualties. I’m sure you’re all quite familiar with the Obama Administration’s proclivity for ignoring Congress and doing whatever it wants, whether that means refusing to enforce the law or attempting to shove gun control down the nation’s throat. But if you think Obama only does this via executive orders, you haven’t quite grasped the full scope of his lawlessness. Let’s say you want to spend money to bail out health insurers that you have driven to the brink of ruin by passing ObamaCare. But Congress (thanks in...

Two weeks ago we reported that after its November warning that it may exit certain Obamacare markets as a result of substantial losses, the largest U.S. health insurer UnitedHealth, did just that when it announced it would no longer sell plans for next year in Georgia and Arkansas. Then over the weekend, UnitedHealth also added Michigan to the list of states whose Obamacare market it would no longer service. As Bloomberg reported, "the insurer won’t sell policies through Michigan’s ACA exchange for next year, according to Andrea Miller, a spokeswoman for the state’s Department of Insurance and Financial Services. Georgia...