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House Republicans issued a report Wednesday saying that one-third of people who signed up for health insurance through new federal exchanges hadn’t paid their first month’s premium as of mid-April, which could undermine the Obama administration’s claims of robust enrollment under the new health law. […] The report by House Energy and Commerce Committee Republicans said 67 percent of people who had signed up for health insurance through federal marketplaces had paid their first month’s premiums as of April 15. That was far lower than the numbers emerging from individual insurance companies, which have been reporting payment numbers in the...

Several weeks ago the World Affairs Council of Philadelphia sponsored a debate–more a discussion–between me and Thaddeus Mason Pope about end of life care under the Affordable Care Act. He supports medical futility. I oppose it. We went from there. I began my presentation with the quote in the headline above–asserting that Palin’s term “death panels” may have put a spear through the heart of Obamacare. I then said: People are afraid of centralized bureaucrats dictating whether Craig’s [the moderator’s terminally ill babies) children can have medical care, whether my 96-year-old mother can have medical care, whether people with disabilities...

Jeb Bush and Bobby Jindal appear in a commercial that will air Sunday to promote NewRepublican.org, a project focused on outlining a positive GOP agenda for the future. The former Florida governor and the current Louisiana governor, both potential 2016 presidential candidates, support a super PAC that is the brainchild of Republican strategist Alex Castellanos. “If you believe that every parent ought to be able to choose their child’s school, and that the economy should be driven from the bottom up, not the top down from Washington, then you’re thinking like a New Republican,” Bush says to the camera at...

The problems with the implementation of the Affordable Care Act may be masking another major change in the way health care is delivered to U.S. consumers, experts believe. At a conference in Washington on Thursday, health care and business professionals said that there’s an increasing trend in the industry toward cutting insurance companies out of the process entirely, as large, regional hospital systems move into the insurance business. Dr. Kenneth L. Davis, CEO and president of Mount Sinai Health System, the largest health care provider in the state of New York, said that starting next year, Mt. Sinai will begin...

Obamacare will reduce the earnings of its 300,000 members by up to $5 an hour by requiring them to buy health insurance, according to a report by Unite Here, a union which represents chiefly lower-wage workers in service industries. The union said it “threatens the middle class with higher premiums, loss of hours and a shift to part-time work and less comprehensive coverage.” Americans who says they’ve been hurt by Obamacare outnumber those who say they’ve benefited from it by more than 2 to 1, according to recent polls by both Rasmussen and Gallup.

"....As more people enter the A.C.A.’s new insurance exchanges, they will get to choose between a bronze plan with a narrow network and lower premiums and a platinum plan with a broader network and higher premiums. Inevitably,some insurance plans will offer narrow networks with poor-quality providers.However,there are four ways that we could reassure Americans that they are getting high-quality care despite choosing a narrow network.First,the exchanges should require that networks meet a minimum level of adequacy—meaning there are sufficient numbers of each type of practitioner in every geographic area. The National Committee for Quality Assurance, a nonprofit group, has already...

He who holds the data makes the rules. If you haven't figured this out, it's almost too late. Obama knows it. In 2009, his team mandated electronic medical records and $27 billion to make it happen as a "foundation" for health care reform. If you wonder whether medical privacy is important, check out Minnesota, where the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) and the Democrat-controlled legislature plan to eliminate all medical privacy rights. Bills being fast-tracked include: GENETIC GRAB: Repeal of hard-won parent consent requirements for government storage, use, and sharing of Baby DNA and newborn (genetic) screening test results for...

CBS affiliates bring us two updates on the ongoing disaster of Covered California, the ObamaCare exchange in the Golden State that has begun to look a lot more like Uncovered Californians. In Sacramento, Nick Janes reports on the plight of Katherine Cadman, who eagerly signed up for an insurance policy through the state’s exchange — and then tried to use it to see a doctor. Doctors, however, are not anxious to see customers from ObamaCare plans, thanks to the lousy reimbursement rates:(VIDEO-AT-LINK) One viewer said she did months of research before picking the plan that Blue Cross recommended. But it’s...

Along with Barack Obama’s promise of “if you like your healthcare plan, you can keep your healthcare plan,” was his declaration that “people with pre-existing conditions shouldn’t be penalized.” Yeah, well, that was then and this is now. People with serious pre-existing diseases, precisely those Obama said the “Affordable Care Act” would help, could find themselves paying for expensive drug treatments with no help from the healthcare exchanges. Those with expensive diseases such as lupus or multiple sclerosis face something called a “closed drug formulary.” Dr. Scott Gottlieb of the American Enterprise Institute explains: “If the medicine that you need...

In 1999, newspaper columnist Molly Ivins was diagnosed with breast cancer and promptly exhorted her readers: "Go. Get. The. Damn. Mammogram. Done." She also quoted a friend, columnist Marlyn Schwartz, who lamented, "If you have ever wondered what it would feel like to sit in a doctor's office with a lump in your breast trying to remember when you last had a mammogram, I can tell you. You feel like a fool." Ivins' breast cancer killed her in 2007. She didn't say whether she had gotten regular mammograms before her diagnosis. If so, she was spared something many a dying...

Unable to guarantee adequate medical care for its citizens, the Quebec Government is turning to euthanasia. The law would allow 14 year olds to refuse treatment without the consent of their parents. Also in the French version, other witnesses including Luc describe the potential abuses by politicians, hospital administrators, the medical profession and families in a money driven society where certain lives would be deemed less worthy to live because of financial pressures.

FULL TITLE: Terminally sick children have been secretly given deadly overdoses by British doctors in illegal mercy killings, claims retired GP British doctors have secretly killed terminally sick children by giving them 'huge' overdoses of painkillers, it was claimed yesterday. Hours after Belgium became the first country in the world to allow the euthanasia of children, a retired GP suggested it was already happening, informally, in Britain. Dr Michael Irwin told an LBC Radio debate: 'It has happened in this country, very quietly. I know of one or two children over the last few years.'

Listen to Emilie, from Tennessee tell her experiences with ObamaCare.

Colorado health-exchange director on paid leave DENVER — A director with Colorado's health-care exchange is on paid leave after it was discovered she has been accused of stealing from a nonprofit housing organization she oversaw in Montana. Christa McClure is the director of partner engagement for Connect for Health Colorado, the state program that implements the Affordable Care Act. According to the Denver Post, program spokesman Ben Davis says in her Colorado job, McClure does not have access to any of exchange's finances. The eight-count indictment against McClure was filed in U.S. District Court in Billings, Mont., in January.

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: It was an LA Times story on Obamacare, and these are popping up more and more. An Obamacare fan says, "Now I can't sleep at night. I can't imagine this is how President Obama wanted it to happen." No matter what problems that they've had at the website or the exchanges, you can find some Obamacare supporters who've touted the relative success of some of the state exchanges. One of the ones they point to is Covered California, as a success. But now, people who have been able to sign up with Covered California, are discovering that...

Aliso Viejo resident Danielle Nelson said Anthem Blue Cross promised half a dozen times that her oncologists would be covered under her new policy. But when she went to her oncologist's office, she promptly encountered a bright orange sign saying that Covered California plans are not accepted. "I'm a complete fan of the Affordable Care Act, but now I can't sleep at night," Nelson said. "I can't imagine this is how President Obama wanted it to happen." "There are a lot of economic incentives for health insurers to narrow their networks, but if they go too far, people won't have...

...CBO says Obamacare, as the law is known, could cut the size of the U.S. workforce by 2 million people within 3 years... That’s roughly double the CBO’s prior estimate... Those 2 million jobs don’t represent people who will be fired or denied work because of Obamacare. They represent people who hold a job primarily for the healthcare benefits provided by their employer, and might choose not to work it they could get coverage some other way. “The ACA will reduce the total number of hours worked,” the CBO explained in its report, “almost entirely because workers will choose to...

Moody's rating agency has lowered the outlook for health insurers from stable to negative, blaming ObamaCare. Section 1342 of the Affordable Care Act forces taxpayers to make insurers whole for most of the losses incurred selling ObamaCare exchange plans through 2016. The bailout is designed to conceal the failure of the president's signature health law until he is out of office. No one in the Obama administration talked up the advantages of bailing out insurers. It was kept under wraps until the fall of 2013. As any business owner will tell you, a temporary bailout is no substitute for the...

U.S. veterans are dying because of delays in diagnosis and treatment at VA hospitals. At least 19 veterans have died because of delays in simple medical screenings like colonoscopies or endoscopies, at various VA hospitals or clinics, CNN has learned. The new document obtained by CNN shows a worse problem than has previously been made public by the VA. As CNN has previously reported, as many as 7,000 veterans were on a backlog list -- waiting too long for colonscopies or endoscopies -- at VA facilities in Columbia, South Carolina and Augusta, Georgia.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said on Tuesday it is working with the three manufacturers of intravenous saline solutions commonly used to hydrate hospital patients to address a shortage caused by a spike in demand. To cope with the shortage, healthcare providers are using substitute products such as oral hydration fluids or smaller IV saline bags with slower drip rates when appropriate, said Bona Benjamin, director of medication use quality improvement for the American Society of Health System Pharmacists. "We have heard from our members all over the country that the shortage is serious," Benjamin said. "People are able...