Free Republic

Healthcare is not a right, it is a service provided by doctors and nurses who went to school to learn how to care for a sick human being. And they expect to be compensated for their services. Surely you would not expect your mechanic who learned how to fix your car, repair it for free, because it is your right to have a running vehicle. Health insurance is not a right either, it is also a service. Can you control what an insurance company does and what pricing systems they use? Can you control what government does now that they...

Buried in a largely overlooked government audit of the Obama-Care exchanges is a finding that casts still more doubt on the reliability of the 8 million enrollment number commonly cited by the administration and the press. In a section titled "Other Issues," an inspector general report released last week found that the HealthCare.gov marketplace couldn't show it had been reconciling its monthly enrollment numbers with insurance companies.

Ezekiel Emanuel, one of the architects behind Obamacare, is now claiming that “insurance companies as we know them are about to die.” Critics of President Barack Obama’s signature health care law have long alleged that one of the real goals of law was to put private insurance companies out of business.

CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield is being forced to cancel plans that currently cover 76,000 individuals in Virginia, Maryland, and Washington, D.C., due to changes made by President Obama's health care law, the company told the Washington Examiner today. That represents more than 40 percent of the 177,000 individuals covered by CareFirst in those states. Though Obama famously promised that those who liked their health care coverage could keep it under his program, in reality, the health care law imposes a raft of new regulations on insurance policies starting Jan. 1 that are forcing insurers across the country to terminate existing plans....

ObamaCare's online marketplace is creating a mess for insurance companies by approving error-ridden applications, according to a report. Among the small number of people who have successfully purchased coverage, many have filed duplicate enrollments, misreported family members or left data fields empty, insurers told The Wall Street Journal. The defective sign-ups are the latest in a series of mounting problems for healthcare.gov, the online enrollment portal created so that millions could purchase health plans. Every day since its Oct. 1 rollout, the site has been dogged by both traffic and software problems that have prevented nearly all users from shopping...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Even as leading Democrats offered assurances to the contrary, government experts repeatedly warned that a new long-term care insurance plan could go belly up, saddling taxpayers with another underfunded benefit program, according to emails disclosed by congressional investigators. Part of President Barack Obama's health care law, the program is in limbo as a congressional debt panel searches for budget savings and behind the scenes, administration officials scramble to find a viable financing formula. A longstanding priority of the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports program, or CLASS, was spliced into...

Here is a report from 2000 that shows the waste of WEAC of at least $ 50 million a year times 10+ years === 1/2 billion dollars. According to Gov Walker this excess cost is now $68 million per year. WEAC controls 85% of teacher health insurance without competition. http://www.wpri.org/Reports/Volume13/Vol13no8.pdf page 20 The market for teachers’health insurance in Wisconsin is characterized by several traits. The health insurance is determined through the collective bargaining process. The health insurance plans provided by the districts are rarely put out to bid. The WEAInsurance Corporation, an entity affiliated with the state’s largest teachers union,...