Free Republic

Representative Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said Thursday on CNN’s “Inside Politics” that she believed the January 6, 2021 Capitol Hill riot was an assault on “personal freedoms” that former President Donald Trump must be held accountable for. When asked about President Joe Biden’s campaign ad highlighting the Capitol riot, Pelosi said, “I think it’s very important, but I think it also recognizes that democracy is a personal issue. Freedom to whether it is to have access to health care, when, if, and how to expand your family, freedom to be in the workplace in a very strong way because you have...

A federal judge on Thursday struck down a key provision of the Affordable Care Act, jeopardizing free coverage of a wide range of preventive services including mammograms, colonoscopies and mental health screenings for nearly 168 million people on employer health insurance and on Obamacare’s individual market. District Court Judge Reed O’Connor, the author of several previous rulings against Obamacare, sided with conservative employers and individuals in Texas who argued that the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force that set those requirements has been acting unconstitutionally since 2010. The decision blocks enforcement of the rules nationwide.

A federal judge in Texas ruled on Wednesday that a mandate requiring most health insurance companies to cover medicine that prevents HIV infection violates the religious freedom of certain businesses. The ruling from U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor partially resolves a lawsuit brought by Braidwood Management Inc., a Christian for-profit corporation owned by Republican mega-donor Steven Hotze that employs about 70 people. Hotze claimed that forcing his company to cover pre-exposure prophylaxis drugs, more commonly known as PrEP, under the Affordable Care Act would make the company “facilitate and encourage homosexual behavior.” According to the Centers for Disease Control and...

When Congress passed the Affordable Care Act in 2010, its authors cited three overarching goals: to improve access to health care, to slow rising medical costs and to improve health outcomes. One of the main vehicles for achieving all three missions was a requirement that health insurers provide preventive health care services at no cost to patients. If there were no financial barriers, backers argued, patients would be more likely to get preventive services, from colonoscopies to vaccines to heart disease screenings, which would help keep people healthier and out of the hospital and, consequently, lower health care costs. (snip)...

If Congress follows the president’s lead and does not renew the Hyde Amendment, court precedents may require state Medicaid programs to cover abortions in most if not all cases.If Congress enacts them into law, the legislative concepts outlined in President Biden’s first budget will have far-reaching effects on American debt, deficits, and taxation. One specific policy may have an effect even as a proposal. By suggesting a repeal of the Hyde Amendment, the president gave conservative states another reason not to expand Medicaid. While coverage of the Biden budget has focused on its support of taxpayer funding for abortion, fewer...

The Supreme Court will consider whether setting Obamacare’s individual mandate tax to $0 renders the mandate unconstitutional, and if any other parts of Obamacare should fall with it.In a few weeks, health care will once again take center stage at the Supreme Court. In what has become a semi-regular occurrence, the justices will soon rule on a case focused on two central questions: Whether Congress’ 2017 decision to set Obamacare’s individual mandate tax to $0 renders the mandate unconstitutional, and if so, what if any other parts of Obamacare should fall with it.In advance of the impending ruling, John McDonough...

John Roberts is a politician — a politician who consistently makes laws, inconsistently applies the Constitution, and can't be voted out of office. Knock, knock. Who’s there? Unelected leftist politicians in robes with lifetime tenure. Turns out, the Supreme Court is a joke, and the punchline is Chief Justice John Roberts.Two high court decisions this week brought that reality into focus, when the George W. Bush-appointed chief sided with leftist justices to say sexual orientation is “sex,” and that the current commander in chief can’t undo unlawful executive action from a past president because of his reasons.Roberts has quite the...

The House speaker not only wants to use the coronavirus pandemic to entrench Obamacare, she wants to make taxpayers fund abortion in the process In the words of her former House colleague Rahm Emanuel, Nancy Pelosi never wants to let a crisis go to waste. The House speaker not only wants to use the coronavirus pandemic to entrench Obamacare, she wants to make taxpayers fund abortion in the process.A recent summary of the legislation Pelosi plans to introduce as an alternative to Senate Republicans’ “stimulus” bill laid out the strategy. House Democrats want to force insurers to reopen enrollment in...

The Supreme Court has agreed to hear an appeal case on the Affordable Care Act (ACA), commonly known as Obamacare, that could potentially invalidate the entire law. On Dec. 15, 2018, a Texas judge ruled that Obamacare’s individual mandate was unconstitutional. Judge Reed O’Connor agreed with the plaintiffs who argued that the lack of a penalty invalidated the “individual mandate” provision of the law, and if that part of the law was now invalid, then the whole law was. Democratic states and the House of Representatives appealed the decision, and the case made it all the way up to the...

When the health reform debate began more than a dozen years ago, most public health advocates touted the need for universal coverage. By the time Congress passed the Affordable Care Act (ACA), however, it had become predicated on also making care accessible for people with pre-existing conditions.  Obamacare allowed people with chronic illnesses to buy health coverage at rates no higher than their healthy neighbors. This feature has always been popular. Americans feel sympathy for those who were penalized for conditions like high blood pressure, high cholesterol and heart disease. Less healthy individuals often paid higher premiums to compensate for...

Nancy Pelosi isn’t wild about the question. The impeachment of President Donald Trump is under way, and I’ve asked the Speaker of the House if she thinks it’s the most important thing she’ll ever do. We’re sitting in her elegant office in the Capitol, on gold-upholstered armchairs around a low table topped with a vase of hydrangeas. Over her shoulder, the sweeping view of the National Mall is shrouded in wintry clouds. For a long moment, the Speaker goes silent as she seems to compile in her mind the list of accomplishments she’d rather claim as her legacy. “Apart from...

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said that her Medicare for All plan would cover everyone in America, even those in the country illegally, at a town hall on Nov. 8. Speaking in Raleigh, North Carolina, she said that her plan—which would see the government take over the entire healthcare industry—would cover all illegal immigrants in the United States, estimated to be up to 29 million people. “We know that you have included undocumented people in your plans to provide Medicare for All, so my question is why did you decide to include people regardless of immigration status, and would this include...

As many as one out of five in-network claims made for Ohio patients with Obamacare are denied, according to research by the Kaiser Family Foundation.Obamacare marketplace plans are typically purchased by those who are not insured through work, Medicaid or MedicareInsurers nationwide denied about 19% of all Obamacare claims, just below Ohio’s average, according to the Kaiser study, which analyzed data from The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services for Obamacare providers in 2017. Denial rates across the country ranged from a high of 41% in Kentucky to a low of under 8% in Oregon.In Ohio, denial rates peaked at...

"We have evidence of healthcare dating back 1.6 million years ago, but we think it probably goes further back than this. We wanted to investigate whether healthcare in Neanderthals was more than a cultural practice; was it something they just did or was it more fundamental to their strategies for survival? "The high level of injury and recovery from serious conditions, such as a broken leg, suggests that others must have collaborated in their care and helped not only to ease pain, but to fight for their survival in such a way that they could regain health and actively participate...

A Republican allegation that Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jared Polis invested in a company benefited by his work as a congressman is now a formal complaint. Former Secretary of State Gessler, a GOP candidate for governor in 2014, filed the complaint Tuesday with the Secretary of State’s Office on behalf of Kristina Cook, a Denver County Republican Party official and conservative radio personality. She and Gessler allege that Polis failed to disclose in his official paperwork that he had invested between $5 million and $25 million in BridgeHealth Medical Inc. “This failure to report his interest in BridgeHealth is not a...

In one of its most controversial decisions, the Supreme Court in 2012 upheld the constitutionality of a provision in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) mandating individuals purchase qualifying health insurance or else pay a fine, with Chief Justice John Roberts casting the deciding vote in favor of the law. However, nearly six years later, a provision included in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, passed mostly along party lines in December 2017, may soon force Roberts to reevaluate his decision, potentially ending the health care law without a single vote being cast in Congress.In Roberts’ majority opinion, which saved the...

Congress’ chief scorekeeper said Wednesday it botched some of its original Obamacare estimates, and its employees have to make “trade-offs” as they confront the heavy workload from lawmakers. Keith Hall, director of the Congressional Budget Office, said they were off in their guess for enrollment in Obamacare’s exchanges, though he said so were other analysts. “Sometimes it’s really hard to estimate these things,” Mr. Hall said Wednesday. “Certainly with the exchanges, we were off — we weren’t as far off on things like the actual spending, some other things — but everybody else was as well. We can be off...

Donald Trump made it an early priority to dismantle the top domestic and economic achievements of his predecessor's administration, pushing for a repeal of the Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. Obamacare) and eschewing global trade deals like the Trans-Pacific Partnership. But his most ardent supporters might have a surprise coming: Many Americans who would bear the brunt of Trump-administration policies are the same people who chose the GOP candidate for president in November. "I think you're going to get a disproportionate impact on people who supported Donald Trump but maybe don't realize that his policies may end up hurting them instead...

One of the most curious political phenomena of the western world is the indestructible affection in which the British hold their National Health Service. No argument, no criticism, no evidence can diminish, let alone destroy, it. The only permissible criticism of it is that the government does not spend enough on it, a ‘meanness’ (with other people’s money) to which all the service’s shortcomings are attributable. In effect, the NHS is the national religion. Yet again, however, the NHS is in ‘crisis.’ The British Red Cross has called the present situation an incipient humanitarian crisis, as if the country were...

While awaiting the Democrat press conference on the repeal of Obamacare Fox Business points out the Dems slogan going forward... on a sign at the podium which states MAKE AMERICA SICK AGAIN. Didnt take long to go back to the old 80s DNC playbook.Stay stupid Democrats stay stupid.