Free Republic

Dozens of lawmakers and aides are so afraid that their health insurance premiums will skyrocket next year thanks to Obamacare that they are thinking about retiring early or just quitting... The fear: Government-subsidized premiums will disappear at the end of the year under a provision in the health care law that nudges aides and lawmakers onto the government health care exchanges, which could make their benefits exorbitantly expensive... If the issue isn’t resolved, and massive numbers of lawmakers and aides bolt, many on Capitol Hill fear it could lead to a brain drain just as Congress tackles a slew of...

Obamacare Funded big IRS Data - By October 2010, the Internal Revenue Service had the capability to sift through emailing patterns associated with millions of individual internet addresses and have already established 32,000 categories of metadata and 1 million unique “attributes.” The IRS continues to collect tax data, but they also are now acquiring huge volumes of personal information on taxpayers’ digital activities, from eBay auctions to Facebook posts and, for the first time ever, credit card and e-payment transaction records. Dean Silverman, who led the IBM zEnterprise™ 196 systems upgrade bragged: “Private industry would be envious if they knew...

Obama: Premiums Will Decrease 3000% So You Should Get A Raise When H'care Is Passed

Simple Tool Stratifies Mortality Risk in Type 2 Diabetes Marlene Busko May 13, 2013  Researchers have created an online mortality-risk calculator for patients with type 2 diabetes, which stratifies patients into low, medium, or high risk of dying from any cause within 2 years. By plugging in values for 9 readily available patient characteristics — age, body mass index (BMI), diastolic blood pressure, LDL cholesterol, triglycerides, HDL cholesterol, urine albumin-to-creatinine ratio, antihypertensive treatment, and insulin therapy — a physician can quickly determine whether a patient has a high risk for death. "The novelty and the importance of this study is that we provide...

Kurt Schlichter notes that conservatives have been vindicated quite often in the past several weeks: Kurt Schlichter @KurtSchlichter Things Conservatives Have Been Proven Right About Lately: ☑ Benghazi; ☑ Pigford;☑ Obamacare; ☑ IRS. Next up: The immigration reform scam. 6:43 PM - 10 May 2013 357 Retweets 90 favorites I suspect that list will grow longer. The common thread in each of these scandals is corruption and a willingness to abuse the expanded powers of big government--while failing to carry out the most basic responsibilities of any government. In Benghazi, Obama a) failed to take action to save American diplomats...

230.9. (a) It shall be unlawful for a large employer, as defined in Section 14199.1 of the Welfare and Institutions Code, to designate an employee as an independent contractor or temporary employee, reduce an employee's hours of work, or terminate an employee if the purpose of the action is to avoid the employer's obligations under Article 7 (commencing with Section 14199) of Chapter 7 of Part 3 of Division 9 of the Welfare and Institutions Code.

Calling it the single “most important decision in our lifetime” to improve Kentuckians’ health, Gov. Steve Beshear officially announced Thursday that he agreed to expand Medicaid 308,000 more Kentuckians. The Affordable Care Act — also known as Obamacare — allows states to expand Medicaid to cover those who earn up to 138 percent of the federal poverty rate, which is about $31,000 for a family of four. With Beshear’s announcement, Kentucky will be the 22nd state to agree to the expansion, which takes effect Jan. 1, 2014. The move to cover more low-income Kentuckians could nearly cut in half the...

Retailers are cutting worker hours at a rate not seen in more than three decades — a sudden shift that can only be explained by the onset of ObamaCare's employer mandates. Read More At Investor's Business Daily: http://news.investors.com/economy/050313-654674-retail-workweek-3-year-low-on-obamacare.htm#ixzz2Sd5AKiY6 Follow us: @IBDinvestors on Twitter | InvestorsBusinessDaily on Facebook

For a long time conservatives have warned that the heavy propaganda and regulatory hands of the Obama administration were not going to change the exercise or eating habits of 315 million Americans... Now comes early statistical proof that after reelecting Obama with fewer votes the second time and 1,567 days of his reign of government intervention and stimulation, many Americans are deciding that maybe the Obamas' plans for their lives do not fit their plans for their own lives.

Doctors are the only people who can drive the change in healthcare delivery that's needed to save the country from a financial crisis, a health policy expert said here. Emanuel highlighted six elements that must underline payment and delivery reform efforts: -- Focus on cost value -- Focus on the patient -- Standardize processes .... "We need a big infrastructure to be able to deliver high-quality care going forward," Emanuel said.

A government contract does not make Medicaid any less a government program. Likewise, Exchange health plans will be under government contract. Only "federally-qualified" plans get contracts. Benefits offered are federally-approved. And health plans must share their data - and yours -- with the federal government. These health plans also receive payments directly from the federal government. And unless the federal government says yes to your application for Exchange coverage, you cannot receive Obamacare. Here's more proof that Exchanges don't offer "private insurance." First, all Exchanges must use the same 21-page federal application form. Second -- here is what I just...

A few minutes after the Supreme Court issued its landmark decision upholding President Obama’s health care law last summer, a senior adviser to Mitch McConnell walked into the Senate Republican leader’s office to gauge his reaction. McConnell was clearly disappointed, and for good reason. For many conservatives, the decision was the death knell in a three-year fight to defeat reforms that epitomized everything they thought was wrong with Obama’s governing philosophy. But where some saw finality, McConnell saw opportunity — and still does. Sitting at his desk a stone’s throw from the Senate chamber, McConnell turned to the aide and,...

Brasilia, Mar 28, 2013, Reuters: A Brazilian doctor who was charged with killing seven patients to free up beds at a hospital intensive care unit may have been responsible for as many as 300 deaths, according to a Health Ministry investigator. Prosecutors said Dr Virginia Soares de Souza and her medical team administered muscle relaxing drugs to patients, then reduced their oxygen supply, causing them to die of asphyxia at the Evangelical Hospital in the southern city of Curitiba. De Souza, a 56-year-old widow, was arrested last month and charged with seven counts of aggravated first degree murder.

As many as 1,165 people starved to death in NHS hospitals over the past four years fuelling claims nurses are too busy to feed their patients. The Department of Health branded the figures 'unacceptable' and said the number of unannounced inspections by the care watchdog will increase. According to figures released by the Office for National Statistics following a Freedom of Information request, for every patient who dies from malnutrition, four more have dehydration mentioned on their death certificate.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A new study finds that insurance companies will have to pay out an average of 32 percent more for medical claims under President Barack Obama's health care overhaul. What does that mean for you? It could increase premiums for at least some Americans. If you are uninsured, or you buy your policy directly from an insurance company, you should pay attention.

Watching "Time" editor Rana Foroohar in action on Morning Joe today, it was quickly evident how, on a range of issues from gun control to gay marriage, she toed a predictable liberal line. But it wasn't until talk turned to health care that it became apparent just how far out Foroohar is on the left. She sang the praises of single-payer on steroids--the socialized system in the UK. Willie Geist had cited a USA Today article reporting on a non-partisan study projecting medical claim costs to rise an average of 32% under ObamaCare, and as much as 80% in Ohio....

I first learned about this at Texas Fred, who is more than a little stirred up about the implications of the coming implementation of the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare. As many of you know, more than a few states are fighting back against Obamacare and are trying to slow or stop the onslaught of new federal regulations and requirements that are the backbone and teeth of the legislation. Oklahoma is on the forefront of that fight and Oklahoma Insurance Commissioner John Doak is leading the effort in our state. (The New American) In an exclusive telephone interview...

There is perhaps no worse political disaster for the government of Cuba than the death of President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela. After the Soviet Union collapsed and ceased to subsidize the Castro regime, the government of Cuba went through a very difficult period. That is, until President Chávez picked up the tab. While the real amount of the subsidy is unknown, Venezuela does send more than 115,000 barrels of oil a day to the refinery at Cienfuegos and pays for tens of thousands of Cuban doctors and sports trainers who are deployed all over Latin America. The true amount is...

After a barrage of guidance, the IRS finally published its proposed regs on the Affordable Care Act’s “Employer Shared Responsibility” provision, along with a practical Q&A with real-life examples for employers. Here’s help making sense of it all. At this point, virtually every organization knows that all “large” employers — those with 50 or more full-time employees — must provide all full-time equivalent employees (FTEs) with health insurance or pay a “shared-responsibility” penalty. Obamacare considers individuals who work at least 30 hours each week to be an FTE, However, many employers will be surprised by at least one clarification the...

The Affordable Care Act is looking less and less affordable. Start with the IRS’s new estimate for what the cheapest family plan will cost by 2016: $20,000 a year to cover two adults and three kids. And that will only cover 60 percent of medical bills, so add hefty out-of-pocket costs, too. The next surprise is for parents who thought their kids would be covered by an employer. Sloppy wording in the law left that unclear until last week, when the IRS ruled that kids won’t be covered. Starting in 2014, the law will require employers with 50 or more...

The Congressional Budget Office on Tuesday quietly raised the 10-year cost of ObamaCare's insurance subsidies offered via the health law's exchanges by $233 billion, according to a Congressional Budget Office review of its latest spending forecast. The CBO's new baseline estimate shows that ObamaCare subsidies offered through the insurance exchanges — which are supposed to be up and running by next January — will total more than $1 trillion through 2022, up from $814 billion over those same years in its budget forecast made a year ago. That's an increase of nearly 29%. [snip] The CBO also expects 7 million...

The federal government has once again driven a wedge between patients and physicians by creating its own criteria for the screening of these two prevalent malignancies. Instead of trying to improve on something that was working pretty well, Washington decided to scrap the idea because it did not fit the current agenda. Our own government is avoiding early diagnosis and treatment of these two known killers, turning a blind eye as these malignant terrorists invade our bodies. Only Washington could take something as straight forward as cancer screening and turn it into a complicated quagmire, and a deadly one at...

Here in the darkest days -so far- of the nightmarish Obama era, it seems the monstrous statist power-and-tax-grab known as 'Obamacare' is here to stay... or is it? Judge Roberts might have sold us down the river, but there's still plenty of fight left in conservatives. And it's not just us right-wingers-clingers either: fact is, Dear Leader's unwanted and unloved quasi-nationalization of the US healthcare industry has never enjoyed majority public support in this country- same as the day they rammed it through. At least half the electorate still wants it repealed. We all know we're being screwed here, yet...

Some families could get priced out of health insurance due to what's being called a glitch in President Barack Obama's overhaul law. IRS regulations issued Wednesday failed to fix the problem as liberal backers of the president's plan had hoped. As a result, some families that can't afford the employer coverage that they are offered on the job will not be able to get financial assistance from the government to buy private health insurance on their own. How many people will be affected is unclear. The Obama administration says its hands were tied by the way Congress wrote the law....

Who wants to be a ‘death panelist’? Jonathan Gruber was one of the Obama administration’s key advisers during the health-care reform debate. As the economist who conceived the ideas at the heart of the Massachusetts health-care law, he is arguably the intellectual godfather of the Affordable Care Act. All of which would make him a natural fit for the Independent Payment Advisory Board, the new, 15-member panel that has the authority to reduce Medicare doctors’ reimbursements and pilot new ways to deliver high quality care for less. There’s just one tiny problem: Gruber has absolutely no interest in serving on...

The 15-member Independent Payment Advisory Board (i.e. the so-called “death panel”) included in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”) has run into a bit of problem: Very few want to join. Jonathan Gruber, for example, helped lay the groundwork for Massachusetts’ health-care law and played an important role in making “Obamacare” the law of the land. So you’d think he’d be an obvious choice for the panel, right? “No way,” he said, according to the Washington Post. “Maybe if it was a part-time gig. But full time? I can’t see it.” And he’s not alone. “It is supposed...

s it relevant that the man who helped craft Obamacare’s regulations on insurers will now make lots of money by suing insurers based on those regulations? The firm that hired him seems to think so. Here’s the press release: KEY OBAMACARE ARCHITECT JOINS MEHRI & SKALET, PLLC Former HHS Director, Longtime Insurance Regulator Jay Angoff to Lead Firm’s Insurance and Healthcare Practice as PartnerWASHINGTON, DC (January 14, 2013)—After nearly three years at the Department of Health and Human Services—as the first Director of Obamacare insurance implementation, as Senior Advisor to the Secretary, and as a Regional Director—longtime insurance regulator and...

Hospitals are denying patients the latest life-extending cancer drugs, a report reveals. Dozens of trusts are failing to hand out treatments for bowel, ovarian, lung and brain cancer that have been approved by the NHS watchdog NICE. Some of these drugs have been shown to boost survival rates by a quarter while others have extended the lives of terminally-ill patients by over a year. The report - commissioned by the Department of Health - also reveals that many hospitals are failing to prescribe the latest treatments for heart attacks, asthma, multiple sclerosis, arthritis and Crohn’s Disease. In fact some of...

Sarah Palin once warned of death panels resulted from socialized medicine. She was mocked for the label, but the United Kingdom’s NHS hospitals are seemingly striving to prove that Palin was correct. The Liverpool Care Pathway has become notorious for its supposed end-of-life treatment. Over time, it has come to light that the so-called end-of-life “care” really consists of slowly starving and dehydrating patients to death, even children, who are put on the pathway not for being terminally ill, but simply for being disabled. Now, more shocking news has come to the surface. It turns out that half of all...

After making a big deal of publicly supporting the Affordable Care Act, Walmart—the nation’s largest private sector employer—is joining the ranks of companies seeking to avoid their obligation to provide employees with health insurance as required by Obamacare. It was not all that many years ago that Walmart announced, in response to harsh criticism over the low pay provided to Walmart ‘associates’, that the company would provide a healthcare benefit to its part-time, low earning employees. The uncharacteristically generous nod to worker needs was short lived as the company partially pulled back on the commitment in 2011, citing premium rate...

Affordable Care Act is in full swing, there’s a lot of apprehension and perhaps, sometimes, enthusiasm about what is truly in store for the medical profession. The last time you visited your doctor you may have noticed that he or she was more apprehensive, cautious, and yes, maybe more overwhelmed. The fact of the matter is that the health care profession is undergoing the most significant renovation to ever happened in the history of the United States. Here are many things that keep many doctors awake at night:

Ann Clwyd broke down as she spoke about the final moments of Owen Roberts, who contracted pneumonia after being admitted.[Snip] She said her husband was squashed against the side of his bed, his lips dry, and cold from a fan that had been turned on for a patient in an adjacent bay. A light had been flicked on in the four-bed ward and someone shouted out “anybody for breakfast?” just moments before he died., Ms Clwyd said. She painted a picture of nurses who treated her husband with “coldness, resentment, indifference and even contempt"

East Germany's secret police sold citizens to western pharmaceutical companies to use as human guinea pigs in drug trials • Tens of thousands tested with experimental drugs not approved in the West • One study of a drug for heart conditions saw six out of 17 patients die • Sinister practice exposed in disturbing new Germany documentary Former Communist East Germany secretly sold its citizens to western pharmaceutical companies to use as human guinea pigs in drug trials. Tens of thousands of sick people in the former German Democratic Republic were treated with medicines not approved in the West to...

A record low number of American voters want to see the Affordable Care Act – Obamacare – repealed, according to a new post-election poll conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation. Obamacare was not the top issue driving American to vote, although nearly seven in 10 Americans cited it as a “major factor” in their decision choosing between the candidates, according to Kaiser. Voters who listed Obamacare as a major factor were evenly split between Republican Mitt Romney, 47 percent, and President Obama, 46 percent. But only 33 percent of Americans now want to see the law repealed. Romney had pledged...

Contrary to popular myth, states are under no obligation to expand Medicaid or create a health insurance exchange, and they should refuse to do either. That from Michael F. Cannon, director of health policy studies at the Cato Institute. He argues that the costs to the private sector will be significant if states agree to create exchanges.

With the Presidential election one week away, it’s worth reviewing how Obamacare will impact the residents of key swing states. A new survey of physicians has found that 30 percent of doctors in Florida intend to place new or additional limits on accepting Medicare patients, with 27 percent altogether refusing to accept new Medicare patients, because of Obamacare’s impact on the fees that Medicare pays to providers of health-care services. In addition, Obamacare will deeply cut Medicare Advantage for 1.2 million Florida seniors who are enrolled in the program, and drive up the cost of private health coverage, especially for...

Okay, let's see if we got this straight ... Now that the Supreme Court has upheld most of Obamacare we're going to be "gifted" with a health care plan we are forced to purchase and fined if we don't, which purportedly covers 10 to 30 million more people without adding a single new doctor (even causing established doctors to quit), but provides for 16,000 new IRS agents to make sure you have enough health insurance (and fine you and audit you if you don't), more than 180 new government agencies including 33 new government committees to make decisions for us...

Forty-three hospital patients starved to death last year and 111 died of thirst while being treated on wards, new figures disclose today. The death toll was disclosed by the Government amid mounting concern over the dignity of patients on NHS wards. * as well as 43 people who starved to death, 287 people were recorded by doctors as being malnourished when they died in hospitals; * there were 558 cases where doctors recorded that a patient had died in a state of severe dehydration in hospitals; * 78 hospital and 39 care home patients were killed by bedsores, while a...

Forty-three hospital patients starved to death last year and 111 died of thirst while being treated on wards, new figures disclose today. There were 558 cases last year where doctors recorded that a patient had died in a state of severe dehydration in UK hospitals The death toll was disclosed by the UK Government amid mounting concern over the dignity of patients on NHS wards. They will also fuel concerns about care homes, as it was disclosed that eight people starved to death and 21 people died of thirst while in care. Last night there were warnings that they must...

France on Monday unveiled a package of reforms designed to increase access to abortion, including 100 percent reimbursement of medical costs by the state social security system. At present French women are only able to claim back between 70 and 80 percent of the costs, which average between 200 and 450 euros depending on whether the abortion is induced by medication taken at home or carried out by surgical procedure in a clinic. The change to full reimbursement was included in the 2013 social security budget unveiled on Monday. In a statement the government said the move was "necessary to...

Now that the Supreme Court has given its narrow blessing to the Affordable Care Act, the big question is whether it will deliver the benefits that its proponents promise. Unfortunately, as it is now constructed, the plan will backfire causing fewer healthy people to buy insurance, raise premiums for those who do, destroy employment opportunities, cripple the health insurance industry, and weaken the economy. In order to guarantee insurance to all, regardless of age, health or pre-existing conditions, the framers of the plan concede that it is essential that the young and healthy (who are less likely to be heavy...

Governor Steve Beshear said the actions of Republican lawmakers at Wednesday’s interim joint committee on Health and Welfare, “don’t mean anything,” and he will continue to implement the Kentucky Health Benefit Exchange. Beshear, who is fresh off an economic development trip to India, said he has the authority to create the exchange through executive order. And he said it was prudent for Kentucky to do so because the Affordable Care Act, which was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in June, calls for some type of system to match the uninsured with health coverage. If Kentucky’s government didn’t set up...

"The new system would take 20 percent of the 'best' kidneys or kidneys that have the potential to last the longest, and give them to the 20 percent of patients that could last the longest," Cutler explained. "So, a simple example would be a young donor going into a young patient." And the reverse would be true, too. "Older kidneys would go to older patients," he said. He said the current system of matching donors and recipients is based on how long someone has been waiting, how close the match is, and how likely it is another match could be...

Skaneatles Falls, NY -- Welch Allyn told employees at companywide meetings this morning that it plans to cut 275 jobs, or about 10 percent of its worldwide workforce. The uncertainty surrounding the future of the Obama health care package is creating turmoil in the domestic market, [Chief Executive Steve Meyer] said. Hospitals and doctor offices aren't investing in new equipment until they see how the health care issues will play out, Meyer said. Welch Allyn and other medical device makers face a new federal tax hike come January when a new 2.3 percent tax on sales of medical devices called...

It’s not exactly earth-shaking news that there’s a lot of waste in the U.S. health care system, but this item we came across still managed to stagger us: A report by the Institute of Medicine estimates that as much as $750 billion is wasted in the U.S. health care system each year. Three quarters of a trillion dollars. Every year. As the Wall Street Journal notes, that’s bigger than the Pentagon budget, amounting to roughly 5 percent of GDP. The report offers a familiar laundry list of problems. Unnecessary services are the leading driver of waste, but administrative expenses and...

Liberal socialistic politicians consistently promise utopia and deliver misery. One way they do this is by pointing to “successful” programs in socialist nations as models for American problems. Cuba’s wonderful universal health care program has been one of these models for decades. But now it seems this program — sometimes touted as better than our own medical system — is now in shambles and facing more financial cuts. Raul Castro is even attempting to educate the population of the need to economize the country’s failing health care system. He has run a series of ads that have a common theme...

It was the fall of 1998, the height of Mr. Romney’s high-flying career as a private equity executive. But his wife, Ann, was not well. She was exhausted, and having difficulty walking; her right foot was dragging. When a neurologist at Massachusetts General Hospital arrived at a diagnosis — multiple sclerosis — “they just held each other in their arms,” their son Josh said, “and just cried.” Thirty years earlier, in the spring of 1968, Mr. Romney, then a Mormon missionary in France, had a scare of a different sort. He was at the wheel of a tiny Citroën, cruising...

The reason that President Obama uses teleprompters, even when addressing elementary school children, is because he cannot help but reveal who he is and what he believes during moments that involve real spontaneity. He no doubt wishes that he had gotten a “mulligan” for that line that he inadvertently delivered: “you did not build that business”, but it says so much about the man, his agenda, and why he feels the moral superiority to enact it. Some dismissed the comment, while others called it a Freudian slip. But devotees of Freud maintain that a “slip” is actually caused by an...

When President Obama's Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA, aka "Obamacare") goes fully into effect in 2014, the American people will only then begin to see the implications of its thorough government takeover of health care, in all its glory. But what they are not expecting is the massively expanded role of the Internal Revenue Service ("IRS") in our lives, as the IRS is the chief agency responsible for enforcing the Act.That is explained in a new paper by Dan Pilla, just published by the Heartland Institute, "Implementing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act." Pilla is a tax...

"At the top of my list of programs we don't need is one that costs $100 billion a year I'm going to get rid of and that's Obamacare," he said to cheers at a rally. But then, a telling pivot: "By the way, that doesn't mean that health care is perfect. We've got to do reforms in health care and I have some experience doing that, as you know. And I know how to make a better setting than the one we have in health care."