Free Republic

At age 69, Lynn Ianni is a pickleball whiz, zipping from dinks to drives energetically. When she suffered an injury on the court two years ago, she sought physical therapy, and was surprised to learn her Medicare insurance wouldn’t cover it. She was, according to Medicare records, dying and in hospice. - snip - “They said, ‘you're in hospice.’ And I said, ‘what? What are you talking about?” Ianni said. “‘Are you kidding me? Do I look like I’m in hospice?’” Ianni’s Medicare number had been stolen, and used by a company to fraudulently enroll her in hospice – specialized,...

How's this for a somber retirement forecast: The typical American worker has less than $1,000 saved for retirement, according to a new report from the National Institute on Retirement Security (NIRS). "The data are clear: Outside of high earners, Americans are choosing survival over savings and hoping to catch up later," NIRS executive director Dan Doonan told Yahoo Finance. "Even for those approaching retirement age — 55-to-64-year-olds — the median amount saved for retirement is only $30,000. We're looking at a looming crisis. These aren't just statistics — they represent millions of families who are doing everything right but still...

Two Pakistani nationals were indicted on Thursday for their roles in defrauding Medicare in a scheme conducted in Chicago, Illinois. The duo allegedly regularly billed “Medicare and private insurers” in excess of $10 million for “nonexistent healthcare services,” according to the Department of Justice. Kashif Iqbal and Burhan Mirza, and several other unnamed participants, “used nominee-owned laboratories and durable medical equipment providers to submit fraudulent claims to Medicare and private healthcare benefit programs for items and services not rendered. Mirza illegally obtained private identification information of individuals and providers as part of the fraud. He then used this data to...

Dr Oz, Administrator of Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, exposed a linen factory was converted into an office building for 400 likely fake Medicaid businesses in Minneapolis He then confirmed EACH ONE IS BILLING ROUGHLY A MILLION DOLLARS to taxpayers “Roughly each business had $1,000,000 of billing. It's an industrial area” “How is it possible 400 businesses billing almost $400 million were able to thrive here? — Why did no one in the state figure out this was a concern?”

And I have very expensive Medicare Advantage PPO insurance. Where have all these people clamoring for medical services come from, and why has medical care literally been hijacked in the State of Florida? I couldn't even understand the woman at the specialist's office, her foreign accent was so thick. This appointment was on a referral from my PCP. Where is DeSantis on all of this? Is it the same in other states as well? Why are we allowing foreign hordes to debase the quality of medical care available to US citizens in their own country?

Minnesota wasn’t an accident and Maine proves it. From Medicaid fraud to no-bid contracts, whistleblowers are exposing the same playbook being used across multiple states.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt detailed the “four commonsense pillars” of President Donald Trump’s newly unveiled framework for the “Great Healthcare Plan,” which the White House is calling on Congress to pass.Leavitt outlined the president’s vision to reporters during Thursday’s White House press briefing. She stated that the first pillar is “permanently lowering prescription drug prices” by codifying Trump’s most-favored-nations deals with pharmaceutical companies.“Congress can get this done by codifying President Trump’s historic most-favored-nation [MFN] initiatives into law to guarantee Americans the same low prices for prescription drugs that people in other countries around the world pay,” Leavitt said.....

With evidence emerging of more than $9 billion worth of taxpayer fraud in Minnesota, the media are finally starting to cover the problem of criminals stealing from the taxpayer. But fraud is by no means limited to Minnesota—it is a nationwide problem that leaders at both the federal and state levels need to tackle before it gets even worse. Even the New York Times was forced to take notice, publishing an explosive article showing evidence of more than $1 billion of taxpayer money stolen by about 80 different Somali immigrants to Minnesota. Just days after the Minnesota story broke, a...

The Trump administration on Monday doled out billions to states from a fund Congress created to “transform” rural health care. The funds, however, will be lavished more generously on small states and states that adopt administration friendly policies. “The purpose of this $50 billion investment in rural health care is not to pay off the bills,” Dr. Mehmet Oz, head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, told reporters Monday. “The purpose of this $50 billion investment is to allow us to rightsize the system and to deal with the fundamental hindrances of improvement in rural health care.” Over...

Over the past few years, Minnesota has become ground zero for what federal prosecutors now call “industrial-scale” fraud targeting taxpayer-funded social programs. What began as a single high-profile case exploiting COVID-era child nutrition funds has snowballed into revelations of potentially **$9 billion or more** stolen across multiple programs—mostly Medicaid-funded services. The schemes share common threads: shell entities, fake billing for services never provided, kickbacks, and luxury spending or transfers abroad. Here’s a clear, chronological breakdown of how it started, how it grew, and where things stand today. The Spark: Feeding Our Future and Aimee BockThe scandal traces its public origins...

We recently endured the longest-ever U.S. government shutdown as part of a fight over expiring healthcare tax credits. Democrats insist that Americans can’t afford Obamacare plans without the enhanced subsidies that were temporarily added post-COVID, which certainly raises questions about the efficacy of their Affordable Care Act. On top of proving a massive waste of time, the shutdown fight represented a misdirection of lawmaker energy. Rather than debating whether to paper over the healthcare affordability problem with yet another layer of subsidies, Congress instead should focus on finding cost-savings common ground like eliminating the abuse of the 340B drug discount...

When insurance costs more than survival, coverage is just a word. Obamacare didn’t protect families, it priced them into submission. A system that only works for the rich or the dependent is not a safety net. ====================================================================================== BRIEFING It’s been just over a decade since Obamacare was implemented, and for a majority of Americans, it’s done jack diddly squat for them. As a matter of fact, one American family sat down, did the Obamacare math honestly, and realized that working, paying premiums, and playing by the rules still left them staring at a literal dead end. Let’s break it down....

President Donald Trump has reopened the healthcare debate with a mix of ideas that do not align. He has pledged to “terminate” Obamacare, then signaled openness to extending ACA subsidies, then endorsed personal freedom accounts that would send money directly to individuals. These proposals represent very different diagnoses of what is wrong with American health care. No serious reform effort can point in contradictory directions. But this problem extends far beyond Trump. Republicans have offered inconsistent signals, with some now willing to extend ACA subsidies again despite a decade of arguing – correctly – that these subsidies inflate premiums and...

We’ve been here before: congressional Democrats and Republicans sparring over the future of the Affordable Care Act. But this time there’s an extra complication. Though it’s the middle of open enrollment, lawmakers are still debating whether to extend the subsidies that have given consumers extra help paying their health insurance premiums in recent years. The circumstances have led to deep consumer concerns about higher costs and fears of political fallout among some Republican lawmakers.

House Republicans passed a bill they say will lower healthcare costs for a broad swath of Americans by roughly 11%. It's a victory for Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., who has been managing deep divisions within the House GOP on the topic of healthcare as insurance premiums are set to spike across the country in a matter of weeks. One glaring issue that remains unresolved is Obamacare subsidies, which were enhanced during the COVID-19 pandemic but are set to expire at the end of this year. The legislation passed 216 to 211. Just one Republican, Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., voted against...

Four moderate House Republicans are rebelling against Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., to join his Democratic counterpart in forcing a vote on enhanced Obamacare subsidies set to expire at the end of this year. Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., Ryan Mackenzie, R-Pa., Rob Bresnahan, R-Pa., and Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., all joined a discharge petition by House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., on his push for a three-year extension of the subsidies. A discharge petition is a mechanism for overriding the will of House leaders to get a chamber-wide vote on specific legislation, provided it has support from a majority of lawmakers. In...

While members of the U.S. Senate continue to battle over whether to extend enhanced Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies just days before they expire, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) is sharing some harsh truths. Johnson, in a post on X, recalled how Democrats sold the ACA to the American people as a form of relief that would lower their health care premium costs but instead has raised those premium costs 3 times faster than the the rate of inflation. The Speaker shared a chart showing how, since 2014, premium costs on the ACA exchange have risen twice as...

House Republicans released legislation Friday aimed at lowering healthcare costs through expanded insurance options for small businesses and unprecedented transparency requirements for pharmacy benefit managers, setting up a crucial vote next week as enhanced Obamacare subsidies expire at year’s end.The Lower Health Care Premiums for All Americans Act, introduced by Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R-Iowa-01), is the GOP's alternative to Democratic proposals as Democrats push to extend expiring ACA premium tax credits that help 22 million Americans purchase insurance.Speaker Mike Johnson announced the measure would receive a floor vote next week, though GOP leadership indicated moderate Republicans seeking subsidy extensions may...

Few people lie awake at night worried about the federal debt. So the Republicans' plan to allow "temporary" COVID-19-era enhanced subsidies for Obamacare to expire because of their exorbitant cost won't win many votes. It will save Uncle Sam money. A staggering 93% of premiums are currently paid directly by the federal government to the insurance companies, reports the Paragon Health Institute. But will it win votes in the coming midterm elections? No. Democrats are gloating that reducing the subsidies will mean higher costs for enrollees and an increase in the number of people who go without insurance. Sen. Chris...

Earlier this year, when Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) began reporting on massive amounts of fraud in our social programs, the Democrats scoffed at him. They ran before any camera they could find to claim breathlessly that Musk was going to take away Social Security and leave Grandma out in the cold.That's not true, of course. Musk and DOGE were trying to not only save America from fiscal ruin, but to make these programs sustainable for the people who actually need and paid into them — the American taxpayers.Democrats, on the other hand, seem to view those programs...