Free Republic

Broad exemptions to Obamacare's individual mandate, including one added secretly last year, make the mandate a paper tiger. In June the CBO confirmed this by raising its estimate of the number of people who could claim an exemption and sharply dropping its estimate of the number of people who will pay a penalty.The Wall Street Journal reports, "almost 90% of the nation's 30 million uninsured won't pay a penalty under the Affordable Care Act in 2016." In 2012 CBO said 18 million could qualify for exemptions. This year CBO said that number was 23 million. As for those who will...

Some doctors and medical care experts are worried that individuals with Obamacare may begin to see fewer options for quality health care if more and more doctors stop accepting the plan. Low reimbursement rates for doctors is causing some doctors to say that they can no longer afford to accept Obamacare coverage, according to NPR  and the Daily Caller. About eight million people on Obamacare reportedly have fewer options than those with private health insurance when it comes to physicians and hospitals that will accept them. But some people are starting to worry that the narrow network problem with Obamacare...

<p>Advocates of the Affordable Care Act, focused until now on persuading people to buy health insurance, have moved to a crucial new phase: making sure the eight million Americans who did so understand their often complicated policies and use them properly.</p>

Not an unusual data point at all, based on the polling trend -- but a timely reality check for the delusional "people love Obamacare!" propagandists. CNN's latest national survey includes a number of noteworthy nuggets, including the "Affordable" Care Act fallout verdict referenced in the headline (via Ed Morrissey): (1) President Obama's job approval rating is mired at (42/55), languishing roughly where it's been for months. He is underwater with men (39/58), women (45/52), young people (45/49), and independents (34/62). Seventy-seven percent of Democrats and nearly two-thirds of non-white voters continue to give Obama high marks, but virtually everyone...

Two conflicting court decisions on tax credits for Obamacare have millions of consumers worried, along with some Republican governors who opted to let the federal government run their state programs. A decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals D.C. Circuit determined that only those enrolled in state-operated Obamacare exchanges are eligible for the tax subsidies that put the "affordable" in the Affordable Care Act, The Wall Street Journal reported. Should the ruling stand, Bloomberg News reports, customers in those 36 states could see their subsidies vanish, boosting their healthcare premiums by 76 percent, dealing a serious blow both to Obamacare...

Should the Obamacare law be enforced as written? No, the IRS is allowed to change it. I don't know. Yes, and let the chips fall where they may.

Well, this is awkward.Unlike the D.C. Circuit, which split 2-1, the majority here was 3-0. Even so, the most noteworthy thing about the opinion is how tormented the court seems in trying to determine what Congress intended when it said that subsidies should be available only on “an exchange established by the State.” From page 20:Page 24:Page 28:If they can’t decide what the key phrase was designed to do, why don’t they follow the D.C. Circuit’s lead and stick with the plain text? In the first excerpt above, the court frankly admits that the language of the law seems...

Less than an hour after an appeals court in Washington ordered the Obama administration to turn off the spigot of federal subsidies to consumers through U.S.-run health-care exchanges, an appeals court in Virginia ruled that the subsidies should be allowed to keep on flowing. With the future of Obamacare hanging in the balance, the back-to-back opinions raise the likelihood of another Supreme Court showdown over the the president’s marquee law. The two circuits split over an issue fundamental to the implementation of the Affordable Care Act. That is, whether the Internal Revenue Service had the authority under the statute passed...

The Obama administration will continue handing out Obamacare subsidies to federal exchange customers despite a federal court’s ruling Tuesday that the subsidies are illegal. A D.C. Court of Appeals panel ruled Tuesday morning that customers in the 36 states that didn’t establish their own exchange and use HealthCare.gov instead cannot be given premium tax credits, according to the text of the Affordable Care Act itself. (RELATED: Federal Court Takes Down Obamacare: Subsidies In Federal Exchange Are Illegal) But the White House said in response that it will continue handing out the billions of taxpayer dollars in subsidies. White House press...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Roll Call magazine: "Fiscal Diagnosis Only Gets Tougher for Health Care Law -- In its latest report on the law, the Congressional Budget Office said it is no longer possible to assess the overall fiscal impact of the law." That, again, is by design. Of course it's by design! This is the thing I've been waiting for people to wake up and realize. Look, I'm not trying to brag here. I don't have to. Like Babe Ruth said, "It isn't bragging if you can do it." I knew exactly what I was saying when I said, "I...

CAMP MEEKER (CBS SF) — A Sonoma County man battling more than a dozen tumors in his body is fighting a new battle with his insurance carrier, who has denied coverage for his treatments. Jeffrey Rusch of Camp Meeker knew the news was bad when an MRI found 20 tumors in his brain. Two days later, a C-T scan at Sutter medical center in Santa Rosa brought another devastating blow, discovering a large tumor in his lungs, and more in his liver and bones. Doctors told Jeffrey he would need to be hospitalized immediately. “My husband was having a lot...

Four years after its passage, Obamacare has now been largely implemented, and millions have had their coverage disrupted. For years, the administration has propagated a number of myths about Obamacare. Some have already crumbled, and others will fall as Obamacare continues to change the American health system.Myth No. 1: If you like your health plan, you can keep it. Despite President Obama’s promise that “If you like your plan, you can keep it,” about 6 million people have already been notified by insurance companies that their policies are being canceled. That number will grow. Currently, about 19 million people have...

CAMP MEEKER (CBS SF) — A Sonoma County man battling more than a dozen tumors in his body is fighting a new battle with his insurance carrier, who has denied coverage for his treatments.

A California woman says Veterans Administration hospital guards beat her husband to death after he waited four hours for dialysis. Norma Montano says her husband of 44 years, Jonathan, died of a stroke on June 11, 2011, after he was beaten and had his carotid artery stomped by VA guards. Montano says the hospital also lied to her about what happened to her husband. Montano’s son and daughter are also plaintiffs in the suit. Montano says he husband was tired of waiting, but when he tried to leave and go to another facility, he “was told by the nursing staff...

There are multiple levels of irony in this New York Times report on the impact of ObamaCare on poor patients in the nation’s hospitals. Congress demanded the power to revamp the health-insurance industry and expand Medicaid in order to help the poor get better medical care for less money. In reality, the opposite appears to be happening, as hospitals attempt to force the poor into ObamaCare: Hospital systems around the country have started scaling back financial assistance for lower- and middle-income people without health insurance, hoping to push them into signing up for coverage through the new online marketplaces...

Nick and Rachel Robinson were excited about the possibilities that Obamacare offered them when they found out they were expecting a third child. “It’s one of those times where you hear the news and there’s this immediate sense of joy and excitement like, ‘Yay, a new kid. That’s awesome!’” Nick Robinson told NPR. But the happy news also came with a new set of worries. “What are we going to do? How are we going to pay for this? This is intense.” When the option of the Affordable Care Act became available, the Robinsons believed it was the answer to what they...

After much apparent pleading from the contractor, Nevada made the decision to drop their individual ObamaCare website builder Xerox and is now the next state hitching its wagon to the federal online exchange. It all looked like it could have gone so well back in October, until users started trying to actually sign up for health insurance and began to uncover the more than 1,500 defects embedded in the site, according to a report from Deloitte last month, and the Silver State has finally realized that the situation cannot be salvaged any time soon — and certainly not in...

Nearly one-third of California’s total population -- roughly 11.5 million people -- will be enrolled in Medi-Cal next year.. Enrollment is expected to exceed previous estimates by 1.4 million, and administration officials said it would cost the state $1.2 billion more than originally thought.

John and Dawn DiMarco signed up for an Affordable Care Act plan through the state health insurance exchange during open enrollment. They received their insurance card and were covered but their bill was thousands of dollars more than advertised. They spent weeks going back and forth with various state agencies and the insurance company to try and get answers. Then, this month, their carrier, Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield, sent them a cancellation notice. NBC Connecticut contacted Access Health CT on Tuesday and they told us it has to do with a computer issue with their vendor. UPDATE: A spokesperson...

MIAMI (AP) -- The first thing Michelle Pool did before picking a plan under President Barack Obama's health insurance law was check whether her longtime primary care doctor was covered. Pool, a 60-year-old diabetic who has had back surgery and a hip replacement, purchased the plan only to find that the insurer was mistaken.Pool's $352 a month gold plan through Covered California's exchange was cheaper than what she'd paid under her husband's insurance and seemed like a good deal because of her numerous pre-existing conditions. But after her insurance card came in the mail, the Vista, California resident learned her...