Free Republic

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., predicted Wednesday that President Trump would soon move on his own to make health insurance more affordable, after the Senate failed again this week to advance any bill to reform federal healthcare policy. Paul he has been pitching the idea of using the Employee Retirement Income Security Act to let people buy insurance across state lines. That law already allows corporations to buy insurance across state lines for their workers if they are located in several states. Paul's idea is to let individuals form associations and do the same thing, and he said Trump administration officials...

WASHINGTON — Senator Susan Collins of Maine said on Monday that she would oppose the latest plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, leaving Republican leaders clearly short of the votes they need for passage. Ms. Collins, a Republican, announced her opposition in a written statement, delivering a significant and possibly fatal blow to the party’s seven-year quest to dismantle the health law.

Republicans are about to do something very stupid. Using bribery, threats and cajolery, they intend to pass a catastrophically unpopular bill on a party-line vote. GOP: Obamacare is unpopular, so let's pass a new health care bill that's even MORE unpopular. Normal Person: Why would you do that? GOP: No, you don't understand. Obamacare is totally imploding, so if we pass this bill now, all its problems will be blamed on us! Republicans would be better off doing nothing. They can survive the ridicule for running against Obamacare through four election cycles and then not repealing it. They cannot survive...

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell pushes for a limited measure if the GOP's Obamacare repeal fails. McConnell argued that a smaller bill would have to focus on helping private insurance markets. The senator's comments indicate that Republicans may have to negotiate with Democrats over fixes for the health-care system.

Charlie Rose and three of Barack Obama’s former speechwriters had a good laugh Monday night while joking about the president’s infamous, oft-repeated false promise that under Obamacare, “if you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan.” Obama said dozens of times in the run-up to the Affordable Care Act’s signing and enactment that no Americans who liked the insurance plan they had would lose it under the Affordable Care Act. In reality, millions of policies were canceled because of the law’s regulations, and Obama was forced to apologize to the American people. The infamous remark...

Some states running their own ObamaCare exchanges may be illegally using federal dollars to keep them afloat, according to a new warning from a government auditor. The inspector general for HHS said officials must better inform states about the purpose of the grants to prevent them from improperly using the money to prop up their health insurance exchanges. ObamaCare required that all state-based marketplaces be self-sustaining by January 2015. For example, the audit said Washington state’s health exchange “might use $10 million in establishment grant funds to support operations” in the second half of 2015, citing budget documents. The Washington...

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) broke with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) on Monday, revealing that he won't filibuster legislation to fund the government in service of conservative goals to defund Obamacare. The Republican leader's decision is a major blow to the push by Cruz and powerful conservative activist groups, who wanted Republicans to unite and filibuster a continuing resolution until Democrats caved agreed to gut funding for the Affordable Care Act. "Senator McConnell supports the House Republicans' bill and will not vote to block it, since it defunds Obamacare and funds the government without increasing spending by a penny,"...

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Tuesday declined to take sides in the squabble among House Republicans over a government shutdown. Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has tried to convince his colleagues to support legislation that would keep the government open after Oct. 1 while forcing the Senate to vote on defunding ObamaCare. That approach was dismissed by the right wing of his conference, and now 70 House conservatives are supporting an effort to tie a one-year defunding of ObamaCare to the government funding resolution. McConnell, who crafted deals to end the 2011 debt-ceiling standoff and the 2012 fight over...