Free Republic

Seven out of 10 voters rate their health insurance coverage and the medical care they receive as good or excellent. Despite that, only 34% give our nation's health care system positive reviews. Not surprisingly, therefore, health care reform has consistently been a top voter concern election after election. Broadly speaking, voters have two concerns. Defensively, they want to make sure that Congress doesn't make a bad situation worse. That's why 78% of voters want any reform to specifically provide protection for people with preexisting conditions. Beyond that, however, voters want more control over their own health care decisions. And in...

Back in 1996, a Republican Congress and a Democratic president (Bill Clinton) enacted one of the most historic bipartisan policy victories in modern times: the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act for welfare reform. The passage of that bill has so many parallels to the fight over the Graham-Cassidy Obamacare-reform legislation now before Congress that it is worth recounting some of the lessons. Just as with the Graham-Cassidy bill, the '96 welfare reform bill gave block grants to the states so they could operate their own welfare systems. The basic federal provisions encouraged tough love: requiring recipients to begin...

Common Sense Medicine: Restoring the Patient/Physician Relationship Common Sense Medicine, hot off the press, is a powerful, easy-to-read, and entertaining exposé of the root problems plaguing American medicine and the simple solutions to increase access to high-quality, low-cost medical care!We are offering bulk discounts on this POWERFUL new book.Buy copies to give to patients, friends, and family!...A Kindle version is available...Read PDF version: http://aapsonline.org/CommonSenseMedicine.pdfCommon Sense Medicine: Restoring the Patient/Physician Relationship by Association of American Physicians and Surgeons on Scribd ...Meet the Author: Jeff DanbyJeff received a Bachelor of Arts in History with Honors from DePaul University in 1985, and...

If you have not already you can still do so as House Speaker Paul Ryan is conducting a phone survey regarding experiences with the Affordable Care Act (ACA). If you are a patient, you can give the House Speaker your opinion on the ACA. As of November 2016, Ryan’s Washington D.C. office is allowing callers to express their opinion regarding the the ACA or, more simply, Obamacare. The Affordable Care Act was passed by Congress and then signed into law by the President on March 23, 2010. On June 28, 2012 the Supreme Court rendered a final decision to uphold...

A lot more than just getting rid of the lines I mentioned on Facebook yesterday that I am not that big a fan of election years, and here’s a case in point. At this moment, #NeverTrump is all the rage among conservatives, and there’s a tremendous push to get Republican primary voters united against one remaining Trump rival to take the nomination away from him. My job is to write what I think about whatever happens on a given day. It’s not to only write what I think will result in a certain outcome. So when I tell you that...

Republicans have a plan if the Supreme Court guts Obamacare this summer by stripping the government of the ability to provide to the states that declined to set up insurance exchanges with federal subsidiesÂ… and it looks quite a bit like Obamacare. If the Court does interpret the Affordable Care Act literally, then it will compel the federal government to withdraw subsidies from millions of Obamacare beneficiaries. That will make the health coverage those individuals obtained through the ACA in recent years prohibitively expensive, and many will find themselves once again uninsured. This is a double-edged sword for Republicans....

We shall see. Gruber has had plenty of help. The President, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Kathleen Sebelius are more to blame for Obamacare’s troubles than Mr. Gruber even if he is the program’s “architect.”Jonathan Gruber in his now famous panel discussion at Penn simply told the truth as he saw it. A key reason, the key reason, Obamacare limped its way across the finish line was because of the deception employed by its champions. The ignorance of the American people, Gruber explained, was to be manipulated for their own good, and it was. And truly, from start to finish...

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz wants to repeal the Affordable Care Act in one fell swoop by starving it of funding, but many of his Republican colleagues, while saying they agree with his goal, prefer a less radical approach, Politico reported. The lawmakers would vote instead against individual planks of the president's signature healthcare program, such as the tax on medical devices and the redefinition of full-time work as 30-hours a week,  Politico said. It would take a simple 51-vote majority to take down Obamacare outright using a budget reconciliation measure. Each one of the new GOP senators campaigned on...

Obamacare’s popularity is waning in public opinion polls. Republican lawmakers talk of defunding or repeal, despite the current political improbability with Democratic control of the Senate and White House. Pending the outcome of the 2014 elections, repeal may be an option. But what then? A return to the status quo of unsustainable health care spending, with an insurance system that leaves many with inadequate or no coverage at all, may avoid the many problems with Obamacare. But it’s hardly a solution.

Democrats keep saying "Obamacare is the law of the land; just accept it and stop trying to change it!" Never mind the fact that the Democrats have already changed it, again and again, by issuing over 1200 waivers and postponements for their cronies. Even though the law doesn’t make any provision for such waivers, the Democrats issue them at the drop of a hat to the politically connected, and reject any proposal for waivers for the rest of us. Nope, the rest of us can’t change it. They say that it is settled law, so we must accept it. But...

This week’s most important lesson does not involve the failure of Obamacare. There’s no lesson there. If you thought the government was capable of competently executing the roll-out of this abomination I have a timeshare deal you might want to buy into. The place overlooks a unicorn ranch; it’s awesome.This week’s most important lesson does not involve the so-called government shutdown. Calling the furloughing of a few glorified DMV clerks and the closing of parks to war heroes a “shutdown” is a total fraud. Don’t tease me – I want to see welfare cheats going EBTless, D.C. pencil-pushers lining Pennsylvania...

One. That’s how many people showed up for a pro-Obamacare event in Centerville, Virginia. And let’s face it: People didn’t miss the event because they were working. The ambivalence toward the implementation of Obamacare is evidenced throughout the nation, as the President’s left over campaigning apparatus – Organizing for Action – held a number of unattended Obamacare events this weekend. The event, reported by Politico, illustrated the growing displeasure with the President’s signature piece of legislation. When Congress returns from its recess in early September, there is bound to be extensive efforts to defund, postpone, or repeal the President’s clumsy...

President Barack Obama told his fellow Democrats in Congress last week that “you’re on the right side of history” with respect to his policy ideas. So why aren’t congressional Democrats standing on Obama’s “side” as it pertains to Obamacare? The “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act” (euphemistically referred to as “Obamacare”) health care reform law is being phased-in around the country, with approximately half of the states in the union setting-up insurance exchanges in compliance with the law and the Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”) gearing up to enforce the law. Yet a growing cadre of individuals and organizations that have...

<p>Small business owners' fear of the effect of the new health-care reform law on their bottom line is prompting many to hold off on hiring and even to shed jobs in some cases, a recent poll found.</p> <p>"We were startled because we know that employers were concerned about the Affordable Care Act and the effects it would have on their business, but we didn't realize the extent they were concerned, or that the businesses were being proactive to make sure the effects of the ACA actually were minimized," said attorney Steven Friedman of Littler Mendelson. His firm, which specializes in employment law, commissioned the Gallup poll.</p>

The art of jiujitsu is to use an opponent's weight and strength to your advantage. I believe we can further choke the life out of Obamacare by using this martial art technique. Let me explain. Last week, I shared with you that while Republicans' power to repeal Obamacare has been thwarted by the president's re-election, all is not lost. Conservatives can still suffocate the federal monstrosity by supporting individual-to-state efforts to impede its funding and implementation. I noted how, just two weeks ago, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered a lower federal court to take up a lawsuit by the patriots...

So what about the GOP House vote to repeal that legislative monstrosity that masquerades under the misleading title of "Affordable Care Act"? Was the vote more than symbolic? Will the vote have any impact on the presidential and congressional races? What about the GOP proposals to replace Obamacare? A host presented those three questions, and I'd like to address them more thoroughly than the time permitted on television. I don't believe that the GOP repeal vote was merely symbolic, even though everyone knows that the obstructionist Democratic Senate, which hasn't produced a budget for more than 1,100 days, will...

These days, the left is just about begging conservatives to surrender on repealing ObamaCare. Immediately after the Supreme Court’s controversial 5-4 ruling upholding its constitutionality, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Steve Israel insisted that, “…Republicans need to drop their partisan obstruction and move on.” President Obama agreed, stating firmly, “…the law I passed is here to stay. …We are moving forward.” A couple of recent polls show that a sizable fraction of the electorate sympathizes with the idea, including some independents. This has been a long fight, so that’s understandable. Let’s retrace where we’ve been. The bitter public debate over...

Evidence is starting to pour in that suggests that while the Obama administration may have won the battle by having health care reform declared constitutional, it may have lost the war where it concerns the president being re-elected in the fall.

ObamaCare has a date with the United States Supreme Court this week, on its 2nd Anniversary of its signing. Republican US Senate candidate for the state of Pennsylvania, Sam Rohrer, is conducting a National Talk Show information campaign to draw attention to the foibles of the Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. “Obama Care”) that President Obama signed the Obama Care law on March 23, 2010...

Every election, voters are told that this election is the most important of our lifetimes. In most elections, it’s not really true. In 2012, though, it probably is true, for one reason: Obamacare. Two years after a Democratic Congress and President Obama foisted onto the American people an unpopular trillion-dollar takeover of American health care, we know that Obamacare is, in fact, even more unpopular than before and that it will cost almost $2 trillion. The American people were told Obamacare would reduce health care costs, but premiums already are jumping. The American people were told they could keep their...