Free Republic

You just can't make this stuff up.

Many of us cheered in January of this year when Marilyn Tavenner, the woman who headed the disastrous rollout of the healthcare.gov website, announced she’d be stepping down from her position as Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). At the time, we weren’t too focused on who would be replacing her. Waiting in the wings was Andrew M. Slavitt, now Acting Medicare Chief, who had been biding his time as CMS’ deputy administrator since July 2014. Even though he’s been accused of possible cronyism and conflicts of interest, Andy Slavitt has a special brand of insurance...

"By March 23 many of our largest cities & hospitals are on course to be overrun with cases."

Did Dr. Deborah Birx say she wanted Trump to lose the 2020 election? That’s what’s heavily insinuated in Andy Slavitt’s upcoming book. Slavitt was on Joe Biden’s COVID council but resigned last week. It’s just part of Birx’s airing of alleged dirty laundry since she left Donald Trump’s COVID task force last December. She then decided to spill what she thought went wrong under the Trump administration regarding how they handled COVID. If this pans out, she’s no better than Fauci. Okay, maybe she’s slightly better as Fauci is an attention whore—but it circles back to why the expert community’s...

Andy Slavitt, the acting administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, gave false testimony to Congress on the state-based exchanges established under Obamacare, according to a report by the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. Slavitt was questioned about the status of taxpayer dollars invested in state-based exchanges at a hearing on December 8, 2015, according to the committee report. The hearing was held to determine how state-based exchanges spent grant money. “When asked under oath about the status of American taxpayer dollars invested in the exchanges, Acting Administrator Andy Slavitt testified before the House Energy and Commerce...

Journalist Matt Taibbi spoke to Brian Kilmeade about Mark Zuckerberg coming out against government censorship of social media and revealing the pressure he faced from the Biden administration to censor content on Facebook and Instagram. "On the whole, it is a net positive," Taibbi said. "Zuckerberg coming out and saying all this confirms a lot of what I reported and a lot of the information that came out from Jim Jordan's committee investigation into the Facebook Files. Even if it is not 100% sincere, it confirms some things and suggests that maybe these tech companies are afraid to continue doing...

Faced with imminent contempt of Congress charges, Mark Zuckerberg has finally agreed to cooperate with the GOP probe on Big Tech-government collusion. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) called off a markup session to formally file contempt of Congress charges against Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, citing Facebook’s “newfound commitment” to the Judiciary Committee investigation into censorship collusion. However, Jordan hinted at the extent of Facebook’s incestuous relationship with government entities for the purpose of censoring Americans. In a related bombshell revelation, Jordan unleashed the “Facebook Files” on Thursday detailing how the Biden White House coerced Facebook to assault Americans’...

At today's House Weaponization of the Federal Government Committee hearing, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) questioned D. John Sauer, Special Assistant Attorney General at the Louisiana Department of Justice, about Biden Administration attempts to curb speech on social media. WHITE HOUSE STAFFERS ARE SOME OF THE MOST POWERFUL PEOPLE ON THE PLANET EARTH. OFTENTIMES, THEY GET THE DISPOSITIVE OPINION ON APPOINTMENTS TO DIFFERENT POSITIONS WITH THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT. THEY INFLUENCE STATEMENTS OF ADMINISTRATIVE POLICY. THEY INITIATED REGULATORY REFORM. THEY OFTEN HAVE A SIGNIFICANT VOICE ON WHICH ASSIMILATION THAT IS CONSIDERED AN APPROVED. MR. SOUR, I WANT TO UNDERSTAND HOW MANY OF...

More vaccine mandates may be imposed across the US once the Food and Drug Administration gives its final stamp of approval to COVID-19 shots, health experts have predicted. The three vaccines on the market are currently being administered under an emergency use authorization but a full regulatory sign off could remove legal hurdles for businesses and government agencies that want to require shots for their customers and employees, NBC News reported. “I think once the vaccines go through full FDA approval, everything should be on the table, and I think that everything will be on the table at the level...

President Joe Biden's former coronavirus czar scolded Americans for not sacrificing enough during the past year to stem the pandemic. Andy Slavitt, who resigned as a senior adviser to the White House pandemic response team last week, suggested that Americans were selfish and have only themselves to blame for the tragedies of the past year. He made the snide comments Monday on "CBS This Morning" while shilling his new book “Preventable: The Inside Story of How Leadership Failures, Politics, and Selfishness Doomed the U.S. Coronavirus Response."

Former White House senior adviser on the COVID-19 response Andy Slavitt said Monday on ABC’s “The View” that Republicans “ought to be careful about trying to take down” National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases head Dr. Anthony Fauci. Co-host Joy Behar said, “Republican Senators Marsha Blackburn, Marco Rubio, and Tom Cotton are calling on Dr. Fauci to resign after his emails released showed he had doubts that covid was leaked from a lab. The man doesn’t have a crystal ball. He works with what he can. What do you think this is really about? Why are they attacking Fauci...

In their desperation to avoid saying anything good about Trump, the Biden Administration has hung young Jen Psaki out to dry. Jen Psaki, Joe Biden’s press secretary, twists and turns to avoid giving any credit at all to President Trump for getting Covid vaccines produced and to market so quickly. She tries to make it sound like anything Trump did was inconsequential. Trump’s Operation Warp Speed supercharged the process, so the vaccines got out far faster than anyone even thought possible. Trump set it all up, but the vaccines came online during Biden’s time. Biden’s administration is trying to take...

The incident suggests the Michigan governor’s office is either over its head in handling the pandemic, purposefully playing politics during the crisis, or both. Last week, a lawyer reportedly serving as a special counsel to Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer published a leaked letter that falsely indicated a shortage of ventilators and intensive-care beds at the Henry Ford Health System had forced staff to leave some Wuhan virus patients to die. While the hospital has since made clear that it has ventilators and beds at all of its Michigan locations, the incident suggests the governor’s office is either over its head...

This week the Trump administration managed to impose a massive tax increase on middle-income families beginning in 2018. You could be excused for missing this story if you were focusing instead on President Trump’s draconian budget or Republican efforts to take away health care from tens of millions of people. But, indeed, on Monday, the Trump Health Care Tax was born.

Did a key official in the ObamaCare chain of command lie to Congress about funds recouped from state-based exchanges? Andy Slavitt, acting Administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) testified in a House Energy and Commerce hearing last December that CMS had recouped over $200 million from state-based exchanges (SBEs) that have failed. Further investigation, however, shows that Slavitt’s claim was false — that the actual grant dollars recovered was about a tenth of what he claimed, and that even those dollars were not “recouped,” but just never transmitted in the first place. The executive summary lays...

The head of the agency that oversees President Barack Obama’s health-care legislation suggested it should not be held responsible for the 12 Obamacare health insurance co-ops that closed their doors to customers last year, according to prepared testimony he is scheduled to deliver today before the Senate Finance Committee. Andy Slavitt, acting administrator for Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), was not apologetic in his testimony and accepted no personal responsibility for the co-op failures in 15 states, according to an advance copy of his testimony obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation. The closures sent millions of Americans...