Free Republic

... With the March 31 deadline for 2014 enrollment in individual health insurance just days away, more questions are being asked about the mismatch in publicity about the Affordable Care Act by its opponents and supporters. The millions of beneficiaries of the measure — families excluded from insurance because of high premiums or preexisting medical conditions, low-income individuals made newly eligible for Medicaid, seniors receiving a new subsidy for prescriptions, women granted the legal right to affordable maternity coverage for the first time — seem to be absent from the news media or political ad campaigns.

... David Cameron, who once promised that if you voted blue you would go green, now appoints Owen Paterson, a man who is not just ignorant of environmental science but proud of his ignorance, as his environment secretary. George Osborne, who once promised that his Treasury would be "at the heart of this historic fight against climate change", now gives billions in tax concessions to the oil and gas industry, cuts the funds for onshore wind farms and strips the Green Investment Bank of the ability to borrow and lend All of which is a long way of saying that...

Flooding, famine and rising sea levels will put hundreds of millions at risk in one of the world's most vulnerable regions. People in coastal regions of Asia, particularly those living in cities, could face some of the worst effects of global warming, climate experts will warn this week. Hundreds of millions of people are likely to lose their homes as flooding, famine and rising sea levels sweep the region, one of the most vulnerable on Earth to the impact of global warming, the UN states. The report – Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability – makes it clear that...

Breast cancer survivor Ginny Mason was thrilled to get health coverage under the Affordable Care Act despite her pre-existing condition. But when she realized her arthritis medication fell under a particularly costly tier of her plan, she was forced to switch to another brand. --snip-- But some have been shocked at how much their prescriptions are costing as insurers are sorting drug prices into a complex tier system and in some cases charging co-insurance rates as high as 50 percent. That can leave patients on the hook for thousands. "I was grateful for the Affordable Care Act because it didn't...

Four years after its passage, the debate over the Affordable Care Act is far from over. The controversial measure was signed into law on March 23, 2010, but President Obama and Democrats this week illustrated that the law is still a tough sell, especially during a midterm election year. Mr. Obama on Thursday gave Democrats a blueprint for explaining the law on the campaign trail while tying it to other Democratic campaign themes, such as expanding women's economic opportunities. "Before we passed Obamacare, it was routine for insurance companies to charge women significantly more than men for health insurance --...

Doctors feel a "deep sense of outrage" at the failure to grant them a 1% increase in basic pay, the head of the British Medical Association has said. In a letter to Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt, Dr Mark Porter urged the government to reconsider the decision. Many NHS staff will get a 1% rise, but those receiving automatic "progression-in-job" increases, "typically worth over 3%", will not get the 1% as well. The government said a 1% across-the-board rise would cost jobs. The Consumer Prices Index (CPI) measure of inflation is currently at 2%, and the NHS pay review body had...

The good news is that with a recent surge of employment, California has regained virtually all of the million-plus jobs it lost during what many call the Great Recession. The bad news is that despite regaining those lost jobs, California still has one of the nation's highest jobless rates, surpassed by only a handful of other states, and it's still well above the national average of 6.7 percent. How can that be?

“Now, I love the Redwoods and vacation there and think they're a jewel of our nation, but we've got to expand the idea of who are the environmentalists,” Ellison added. The African-American community is disproportionately affected by climate change because more black people live in urban areas that face the greatest exposure to air and water pollution, said Ellison, who was joined by Rep. André Carson (D-Ind.). The two lawmakers, both members of the Congressional Black Caucus, plan to encourage young African-Americans to take a greater interest in fighting climate change as part of a six-college tour organized by the...

Nearly six months after the disastrous launch of Healthcare.gov a new glitch has come to light: Incorrect poverty-level guidelines are automatically telling what could be tens of thousands of eligible people they do not qualify for subsidized insurance. The error in the federal marketplace primarily affects households with incomes just above the poverty line in states like Pennsylvania that have not expanded Medicaid. The mistake raises the price of their insurance by thousands of dollars, making insurance so unaffordable many may just give up and go without. Some states chose to run their own marketplaces. It was unknown Thursday night...

European Union nations on Thursday agreed on a sweeping policy to fight tax evasion after tiny Luxembourg dropped its reservations to new rules which render its secretive banking culture more transparent. Luxembourg Prime Minister Xavier Bettel confirmed at Thursday’s summit of EU leaders “the willingness of the government to take that road,” a key step to scrap the banking secrecy for foreigners. […] The legislation proposes an EU-wide automatic exchange of data on bank deposits to allow governments to identify and pursue tax evaders with foreign accounts on home soil. Van Rompuy said it would “close down loopholes, promote automatic...

What if you could receive a guaranteed basic yearly income with no strings attached? Didn’t matter how much money you made now, or in the future. Nobody would ask about your job status or how many kids you have. The check would arrive in the mailbox, no matter what. Sounds like a far-fetched idea, right? Wrong. All over the world, people are talking guaranteeing basic incomes for citizens as a viable policy. Half of all Canadians want it. The Swiss have had a referendum on it. The American media is all over it: The New York Times’ Annie Lowrey considered...

The Department of Health and Human Services is expected to spend over one trillion dollars in 2015 — but HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has never once testified before the Senate’s Budget Committee on either Obamacare’s costs or the president’s budget at large. “The Department of Health and Human Services is projected to spend over $1 trillion in FY2015 under the president’s budget, and health care costs — which today comprise nearly 30 percent of all federal spending — are growing more rapidly than other areas of the budget, especially over the long-term. It would be good for members of the...

President Barack Obama is getting some help from the country's tech giants in his effort to show Americans how climate change will affect their communities. The Obama administration thinks that local data, which may have a real-world effect on Americans' lives, will provide a convincing argument for steps to prevent climate change. The risk rising sea levels have on individual communities will be the focus of a new website, climate.data.gov, which uses government data to put environmental changes in context. The White House also called on tech companies to develop tools for Americans to better get a grasp on how...

After running the numbers on a set of four equations representing human society, a team of NASA-funded mathematicians has come to the grim conclusion that the utter collapse of human civilization will be “difficult to avoid.” The exact scenario may vary, but in the coming decades humanity is essentially doomed to some variant of “Elites” consuming too much, “resulting in a famine among Commoners that eventually causes the collapse of society.” That is, unless civilization is ready for one of two “major policy changes”: inequality must be “greatly reduced” or population growth must be “strictly controlled.” The apocalyptic pronouncements, set...

For Democrats Obamacare is the train wreck that keeps getting worse. For Republicans, it’s the gift that keeps on giving. Obamacare premiums are expected to nearly double later this year. Keep in mind premiums already rose 50-400% compared to the old “junk” policies people had and liked before Obamacare. A massive price increase latter this year will more or less collapse Obamacare. We might know more about Obamacare enrollment in the next few weeks, though while the administration claims 5 million have signed up they claim not to know how many have paid. If you haven’t paid, you aren’t covered....

Many like to watch movies or read fiction novels as a way to relax and get away from work and other stresses of day-to-day life. I, on the other hand, find non-fiction to be much more interesting than almost anything dreamed up by a fiction writer. So, when I want to relax and get away from things I like to read and watch non-fiction books and documentaries. Given what is going on in China lately I have been nearly obsessed learning about China's history. It is easily one of the most interesting cultures on Earth with thousands of years of...

Doctors groups fear their members won’t get paid because of an unusual 90-day grace period for government-subsidized health plans and are urging physicians to check patients' insurance status before every visit. “This puts the physician and their patients in a very difficult situation,” said Dr. Ardis Dee Hoven, president of the American Medical Association (AMA), which advised physicians Wednesday about how to minimize their risk. “If a patient is being treated for a serious illness, that requires ongoing care,” she said. “The physician is having to assume the financial risk for this. That’s the bottom line.” If an enrollee in...

After an extraordinarily eventful day that stretched well into the night, the General Assembly on Tuesday passed two bills that, in effect, deploy a large sign at the state line saying: Obamacare not welcome here. The first piece of legislation, House Bill 990, gives the Legislature the authority to decide whether the state should expand its Medicaid program, a power that currently resides with the governor. The second, HB 943, goes farther, barring any state or local governments, agencies or employees from advocating for Medicaid expansion, except under certain circumstances, or from creating a health insurance exchange.

A year ago, the Republican National Committee worried that young voters were “increasingly rolling their eyes” at what the Republican Party stood for. Now they are hoping that the messy rollout of Obamacare will convince some of those same youth voters that what they have to offer isn’t so bad. In an efforts to improve its performance among young voters, the Republican Party is repackaging its crusade against Obamacare and dishing it out to 18 to 35-year-olds. “Obamacare was intentionally designed to screw young people over,” Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus told reporters during a breakfast Tuesday. “I mean...

The White House will launch a new online initiative on Wednesday that will provide users access to climate data to spread awareness about the effects of global warming in an effort to improve climate-change preparedness across the country. As part of the initiative, the Obama administration will make federal data on climate change accessible to citizens, businesses and local governments in a new section within the data.gov website -- called climate.data.gov -- that will be jointly run by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, and NASA.