Free Republic

Mercy Health announced Thursday it will fire 347 workers due to “increasing challenges to our reimbursement structure as we adjust to reductions mandated by the Affordable Care Act,” the company said in a statement. President and CEO of the Mercy system, Lynn Britton, said the Obamacare-induced layoffs are taking a toll on workers and their families. “Changes such as these are difficult and distressing for everyone involved,” said Britton. “While our decisions support Mercy’s ability to stay strong and relevant in the face of challenges impacting all health care providers, today our thoughts and prayers are with those co-workers who...

House Democrats are looking at big health care changes, including federal aid to help families earning up to $88,000 pay for insurance and a requirement that all must carry coverage. A document obtained by The Associated Press shows the plan being written by the House Energy and Commerce Committee would also require employers to offer coverage to their full-time workers, or pay a percentage of their payroll to the government. The House committee summary is a first look at where Democratic leaders in that chamber are headed as they try to meet an ambitious goal of passing a bill by...

Forty-five House Democrats in the party’s moderate-to-conservative wing have protested the secretive process by which party leaders in their chamber are developing legislation to remake the health care system. The lawmakers, members of the fiscally conservative Blue Dog Coalition, said they were “increasingly troubled” by their exclusion from the bill-writing process. They expressed their concerns in a letter delivered Monday to three House committee chairmen writing the bill, which House leaders hope to pass this summer. Representative Mike Ross, an Arkansas Democrat who is chairman of the coalition’s health task force, said: “We don’t need a select group of members...

A local lawmaker and a healthcare executive see signs of hope in Monday’s announcement that the nation’s health care leaders stepped up and pledged significant cost savings — $2 trillion over 10 years — to help President Barack Obama reform health care. Roger Longenderfer, Pinnacle Health’s chief executive officer, said he was “encouraged” by the commitment put forth by the health care industry. “In the past, the industry has resisted change,” he said. “I think if the various parts of the industry can agree to assist each other, that will go a long way to providing care to more people,...

True to the advice of his chief of staff to never let a good crisis go to waste, President Barack Obama is using the current economic crisis to sell a top item on the liberal wish-list: universal health care. "You can't fix the economy," he has repeatedly said, "without fixing health care." But the president needs to take a chill pill before committing America to a huge new entitlement: One is hard pressed to find any evidence from abroad showing that universal coverage has grown the major industrialized economies more than ours in the past--or shielded them more than us...

You Can Take the Organizer Out of Chicago, But... May 6, 2009 - 23:59 ET President Obama's new health care plan rolled out on Capitol Hill on Wednesday. HHS Secretary Sebelius talked about creating a government health insurance plan to compete with private insurers and "leveling the playing field" between them. Government health care: great, they are coming to save you. But here's the one thing no one else is going to say: We have elected a former community organizer as our president who is helping to orchestrate a power grab of industry, energy, health care and taxes —...

President Barack Obama's plan to provide medical insurance for all Americans took a big step toward becoming reality Sunday after leaders of the health care industry offered $2 trillion in spending reductions over 10 years to help pay for the program. Hospitals, insurance companies, drug makers and doctors planned to tell Obama today they'll voluntarily slow their rate increases in coming years in a move that government economists say would create breathing room to help provide health insurance to an estimated 50 million Americans who now go without it. Six major groups plan to deliver a letter to Obama and...

Senate leaders are considering new federal taxes on soda and other sugary drinks to help pay for an overhaul of the nation's health-care system. The taxes would pay for only a fraction of the cost to expand health-insurance coverage to all Americans and would face strong opposition from the beverage industry. They also could spark a backlash from consumers who would have to pay several cents more for a soft drink. On Tuesday, the Senate Finance Committee is set to hear proposals from about a dozen experts about how to pay for the comprehensive health-care overhaul that President Barack Obama...

At a news conference yesterday, President Obama said, "I will not rest until the dream of health-care reform is achieved in the United States of America." Normally dreams cost you nothing, but Mr. Obama's determination not to rest until his becomes reality is likely to cost plenty. Yesterday a coalition of private health-system providers, seeing no exit from the administration's reform plans, signed on to the dream. They agreed in principle to try to shave 1.5 percentage points off the growth rate of U.S. health-care costs over the next decade, about $2 trillion. This vague, probably illusory promise isn't much...

At the heart of President Barack Obama's health-care plan is an insurance program funded by taxpayers, administered by Washington, and open to everyone. Modeled on Medicare, this "public option" will soon become the single dominant health plan, which is its political purpose. It will restructure the practice of medicine in the process. Republicans and Democrats agree that the government's Medicare scheme for compensating doctors is deeply flawed. Yet Mr. Obama's plan for a centrally managed government insurance program exacerbates Medicare's problems by redistributing even more income away from lower-paid primary care providers and misaligning doctors' financial incentives. Like Medicare, the...