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Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with low-level Chinese Communist Party officials, students, and businessmen in Shanghai on Thursday, promoting an “expansion of exchanges” with the rogue state in several fields. The most prominent of his meetings was with the head of the Communist Party in Shanghai, Secretary Chen Jining, who said in a press engagement prior to their meeting that he was pleased to hear that Blinken had attended a basketball game and visited Shanghai’s Yu Garden after landing on Wednesday: Met with Shanghai Party Secretary Chen Jining to discuss the importance of healthy economic competition and a level...

The victor of the 2024 election is set to face a number of new legislative deadlines immediately upon entering office that could have drastic effects on the country’s economy. More than a dozen candidates are eyeing the Oval Office in 2024, positioning themselves as the best choice to address the nation’s cultural and economic challenges. However, upon taking office in 2024, the winner of the presidential election must deal with the impending expirations of both the 2017 tax law as well as subsidies included in Obamacare. On top of that, the debt limit bill is also set to expire just...

The official value of the shekel slipped an average of .023 percent on Monday in mixed trading against the featured currencies on the Bank of Israel's foreign-exchange list. The United States dollar was fixed at NIS 3.442, up .35 percent from Friday, while the Euro declined .056 percent to 4.2819 shekels, and the pound sterling was set at 4.8348 shekels, down .932 percent ...

Two U.S. senators from both parties are close to finalizing a bipartisan deal to shore up the health insurance exchanges created under Obamacare, the chamber’s top Democrat said on Thursday. The move, which Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said was “on the verge” of completion, would stabilize the market for individuals who buy their own insurance plans on the federal or state-based exchanges.

With the September deadline for insurers to decide whether they are in or out of the Obamacare exchanges fast approaching, some insurers are opting to get out now. Aetna announced it was getting out of the Obamacare business in May. Today, the company announced it was leaving the one exchange where it had considered staying because of a Medicaid contract. From the Washington Examiner: The company said during an earnings call that it was withdrawing from the exchange in Nevada, the last state it had considered staying in. Aetna was leaving the possibility open because it was applying for...

Health insurer Aetna announced Thursday that it would completely withdraw from the Obamacare exchanges in 2018, after seeing its profits soar from reducing its participation this year. The company said during an earnings call that it was withdrawing from the exchange in Nevada, the last state it had considered staying in. Aetna was leaving the possibility open because it was applying for a Medicaid managed care contract, and the state gives extra consideration to insurers that participate in both programs.

Anthem is exiting the ObamaCare marketplace in Ohio, leaving around 20 counties in the state without an insurer willing to sell a health plan in its exchange for 2018. The company cited uncertainty as a reason why it’s exiting the exchanges in all of the state’s counties, particularly the question of whether or not the Trump administration will continue payments to insurers that compensate them for reducing out-of-pocket costs for lower-income enrollees.

Implosion: The law was, after all, just a "step on the path to single payer." Last year, you may recall that one of the nation’s largest insurers, Aetna, announced it had suffered major losses under the failing Affordable Care Act. As a result, it was pulling out of many ACA exchanges. The company said it intended to soldier on in just four states - Delaware, Iowa, Nebraska, and Virginia. Back then, Aetna claimed losses of almost $450 million. A few weeks ago, they announced that number has risen to $700 million since 2014, and they trimmed Iowa and Virginia from...

Health insurer Aetna Inc said on Wednesday it will exit the 2018 Obamacare individual insurance market in Delaware and Nebraska - the two remaining states where it had offered the plans. Aetna had previously announced plans to exit the individual commercial market in Virginia and Iowa. It has now "completely exited the exchanges," the company said in an emailed statement. The insurer attributed the losses to "marketplace structural issues, that have led to co-op failures and carrier exits, and subsequent risk pool deterioration." Aetna said it had 964,000 individual commercial plan members as of the end of 2016, but that...

Giant insurer Aetna said Wednesday it will not sell Obamacare plans in Virginia next year, citing expected financial losses on such plans in 2017. Aetna left open the question of whether it will sell such individual health plans anywhere in the United States. Aetna's decision to exit Virginia in 2018 comes several weeks after it said it would drop out of Iowa's individual market next year. The company was selling Obamacare plans in just two other states this year: Delaware and Nebraska. "Despite significantly reducing our exchange footprint, our individual commercial products could potentially lose more than $200 million in...

Aetna Inc will exit the Obamacare individual insurance market in Virginia and will not offer these plans on or off the online exchange created by the Affordable Care Act, the company said on Wednesday. The company said last month that it would leave Iowa. It is selling these plans in four states in 2017.

First, Humana pulled out of Obamacare for 2018. Then, Wellmark announced it was leaving. Which health insurer could be next? The failure of the GOP health care plan in Congress and the ongoing uncertainty surrounding the Trump administration's next moves have left insurers skittish about participating in the Obamacare exchanges next year. Certainly, Obamacare was troubled before President Trump took office. But many experts, including the Congressional Budget Office, felt Obamacare was stable overall. Certainly, Obamacare was troubled before President Trump took office. Several major insurers scaled back their involvement on the exchanges, while others hiked premiums to cover their...

Health Reform: The need for an overhaul of ObamaCare just got more acute, as a new survey shows that satisfaction rates among those enrolled in ObamaCare plans has taken a steep nose-dive this year amid premium hikes and reduced choices. The new coverage of ObamaCare these days has been all about protests against repeal and the alleged increase in public support for the law. But a survey of actual ObamaCare customers released this week paints an entirely different picture. It found that just 22% of the 44,200 ObamaCare enrollees polled rate their health plan as good to excellent. That's down...

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) pulled out a surprise map during his town hall debate with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on CNN Tuesday night to make a point about the problems facing Obamacare. Cruz argued that in 70 percent of counties in America, consumers have a choice of one or two health insurance plans on the Obamacare exchanges.

The federal government is recommending the state of Colorado repay $9.7 million in grant funds it says were not properly managed in the creation of its Obamacare health insurance exchange. […] The government concludes the Colorado marketplace did not adequately document costs that it charged to the establishment grants ($4.4 million); charged grants for unallowable contract costs ($4.5 million); improperly transferred costs from one establishment grant to another ($312,000); and improperly awarded bonuses, overpayments, unallowable promotional giveaway items, excessive and unreasonable tips, vendor rebates that were not credited to the establishment grants, and unallowable social activities ($463,000). …

Only four of the original 24 Obamacare health co-ops remain standing after Maryland’s co-op announced Dec. 8 it was suspending the sale of individual health insurance policies, the Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group has found. The four remaining co-ops clinging to financial solvency are in Massachusetts, Montana, New Mexico, Wisconsin.

Highmark Inc. is canceling individual health plans in more than half of the Pennsylvania counties in which it has sold the plans on the Affordable Care Act's marketplace, reducing the competition that some experts say is necessary to make the market sustainable. The Pittsburgh-based insurer is no longer selling the plans in 27 of the 49 counties in which it sold them for 2016, according to a Tribune-Review analysis of federal marketplace data. About 70 percent of the insurer's individual marketplace members in Pennsylvania will lose their plans, according to a Highmark spokesman. The plans expire at the end of...

Five states—Alabama, Alaska, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Wyoming—will have only one insurance company offering plans through the Obamacare health insurance exchange in 2017, according to an analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation. “In states that use Healthcare.gov, the average number of insurers participating in the marketplace will be 3.9 in 2017 (down from 5.4 companies per state in 2016, 5.9 in 2015 and 4.5 in 2014),” said KFF. […] In addition to the five states that will have only 1 insurance company offering plans through the Obamacare exchange, nine states will have only two insurance companies offering plans through the...

The cost of expanding Medicaid under President Barack Obama's health care overhaul is rising faster than expected in many states, causing budget anxieties and political misgivings. Far more people than projected are signing up under the new, more relaxed eligibility requirements, and their health care costs are running higher than anticipated, in part because the new enrollees are apparently sicker than expected. Rising drug prices may also be a factor. As a result, at least three expansion states, Arkansas, Kentucky and Ohio, have been pushing to require Medicaid recipients to pay more toward their health insurance - a step that...

Since everyone's still buzzing about Monday night's debate seen 'round the planet, I figured I'd offer some counter-programming. Hillary Clinton has said on multiple occasions that Obamacare is "working," but that it needs some "fixes" such as an even bigger government role and more taxpayer funding. Just last week, Harry Reid claimed that Americans who read the news know that the law has been a positive for the country. (Click through on those links for our detailed rebuttals at the time). The ongoing reality is that this failed, unpopular, party-line policy experiment is collapsing under its own weight. The latest...