Free Republic

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) joined MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle this week to discuss President Donald Trump’s plan to create TrumpRX, a government-run website offering discounts on select prescription drugs. Paul, a libertarian leaning Republican, pulled no punches in criticizing Trump’s willingness to intervene in the free market and even went so far as to compare the Trump administration to self-identified socialist New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani. Paul shared his interview on X and wrote, “If you’re going to criticize the socialist Mamdani for wanting to own grocery stores, you better criticize Republicans who want a share of Intel, of...

The healthcare “cuts” Democrats are using as an excuse to shut down the government are actually the phase-out of temporary pandemic-era Obamacare credits. Contrary to their current talking points, the phase-out of these credits was included in the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, which passed without a single Republican vote. This legislation, which significantly increased federal spending on temporary pandemic-related healthcare programs, extended subsidies for insurance policies purchased through the Obamacare exchanges only through 2025. The Biden administration’s emergency pandemic subsidies should be allowed to expire as intended. This would enable individual and small group plans to regain fiscal stability...

Longtime Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) acknowledged that her party forced the government into a shutdown on Wednesday in order to secure “health care for everybody” — including illegal immigrants. Waters, 87, was questioned outside the US Capitol Tuesday about Democrats’ opposition to a stopgap funding bill in both chambers of Congress that would have kept the government’s lights on until Nov. 21. “Are Democrats demanding health care for illegal aliens?” asked LindellTV reporter Alison Steinburg. “Democrats are demanding health care for everybody,” Waters responded, hours before her Senate colleagues blocked the spending measure. “We want to save lives,” she added....

As you've probably heard, Democrats decided to shut down the government over healthcare. In particular, they are using the leverage they have in the Senate to demand that the Trump administration extend Obamacare subsidies which are scheduled to expire at the end of the calendar year. Here's what that is actually about. In 2021, soon after Joe Biden took office, Democrats narrowly passed the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) with a vote that was along party lines. This $1.9 trillion bill included temporary Obamacare subsidies designed to make plans on the exchange cheaper so more people would sign up. But...

At the O2 Arena in London, the president sounded exasperated. His worldview had lostFor people like Fran who wanted answers, Obama gave none. He just seemed depressed. He said that Britain, like America, is at a “fork in the road.” He said that we’re too materialistic, and have lost two historic defenses against consumerism: religion and counterculture. (Hip-hop used to have a purpose, now rappers just talk about money.) He said there was a “significant risk” that AI becomes a tool of oppression and censorship, and said that Donald Trump has committed “violence against the truth.” “Old men hanging on...

Halloween could come early this year. The Democrats have named their price to avoid a government shutdown come October – an additional $350 billion for healthcare over the next decade. Critics say a big chunk of that money may go to ghosts. At issue are the generous subsidies the Biden administration created for Affordable Care Act policies, sweeteners that are slated to expire in December. Making healthcare essentially free for millions of Americans, those policies have skyrocketed enrollment in Obamacare plans. But a recent study found they have also sparked a curious phenomenon: an estimated 12 million enrollees “without a...

This morning the House passed a clean CR designed to fund the government through November, thereby avoiding the possibility of a shutdown at the end of this month. Democrats how vowed not to support it in the Senate.The vote was 217-212, with one Democrat, Rep. Jared Golden of Maine, joining Republicans in voting yes. Two Republicans — conservative Reps. Tim Burchett of Tennessee and Victoria Spartz of Indiana — and all other Democrats voted against the bill.The short-term funding bill, known as a continuing resolution or CR, now heads to the Senate, where Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and other...

A group of GOP senators are working on legislation to extend Affordable Care Act subsidies with policy changes designed to win over conservatives, according to four people granted anonymity to disclose private discussions. This group has gotten “technical assistance” from the Senate Finance Committee, which has jurisdiction over the subsidies, according to two of the sources. The Obamacare subsidies are set to expire at the end of this year. Sen. Tommy Tuberville, an Alabama Republican running for governor, said in an interview Monday he was “part of that group that’s working on the wording to make sure we do it...

The Trump administration has agreed to settle a lawsuit by restoring webpages containing health- and science-related information, including resources on HIV and LGBTQ health issues, that had been deleted to comply with a series of executive orders issued by President Donald Trump. Those orders sought to erase transgender identity from federal law, prohibited agencies from using the term “gender” in policy, and targeted diversity, equity, and inclusion programs across government and the private sector. Other Trump orders targeted diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in both government and the private sector, and threatened to strip federal funding from events or organizations...

Republicans in Congress are facing mounting pressure from both sides of the aisle about whether to extend additional Obamacare premium tax credit subsidies as part of legislation to avoid a government shutdown this fall. The popularity of the added Obamacare marketplace subsidies, which former President Joe Biden and Democrats passed during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic as a temporary measure, could make it difficult for Republicans to let them expire by January without facing blowback during the 2026 midterm elections. But conservatives argued that there is systemic fraud in the Obamacare insurance marketplace through the extended subsidies and are...

“It was very uncomfortable for me when he would… [invoke] magical elixirs like hydroxychloroquine, because somebody told him it works. So when the press asked me, as painful as it was, I had to say, ‘No, that’s not true. Hydroxychloroquine doesn’t work. In fact, it can harm you. And, no, it [COVID] is not going to disappear like magic. So you’ve got to be careful and wear a mask.’” This is a complete lie by Fauci. He knew in 2005 that chloroquine (and hydroxychloroquine) was a "wonder drug" for SARS-CoV, according to his own NIH. Then he lied to demonize...

More than a decade after the Obama administration first tried to force the Little Sisters of the Poor to buy contraception including abortifacient drugs for employees, states are still hounding the nuns in court. At its heart, ObamaCare was a massive welfare program meant to redistribute health-care costs to the middle class. But it was also a social engineering project aimed at coercing religious organizations and businesses to adopt progressive values. The Affordable Care Act mandated employers, including nonprofits such as the Little Sisters of the Poor, to pay for contraceptives in their worker-provided health insurance as an “essential health...

In January, Dr. Elisabeth Potter said she was midway through performing a breast reconstruction surgery when a call from a representative from UnitedHealthcare came into the operating room. The health insurance company wanted to talk about the patient on the table. “I got a phone call into the operating room saying that UnitedHealthcare wanted to talk to me and that they wanted to talk to me now,” Potter, a plastic surgeon, told NBC News. Potter posted a video on TikTok recounting the call that’s reached nearly 6 million views. During the call she said the UnitedHealthcare representative wanted more information...

I’m not a doctor. The following are my observations of the medical system as a patient, not a professional opinion.I’m hoping for change; that is, for Congress and President Trump to decisively end Obamacare. We must push the healthcare industry towards healing from the abominations foisted upon it by over-regulation, DEI, gaslighting, cumbersome reporting, and a system that doesn’t incentivize health. RFK Jr. is helping by slowly tackling diet and immunizations.The pharmaceutical industry’s financial vice-grip on doctors, stifling independent diagnosis and creative, proactive treatment, does no service to the ill. Research follows funding, and if there’s no profit, there’s no...

More than 100,000 patients who visited hospitals in Texas between last November and February of this year admitted they were illegal migrants, according to state data. The data was gathered after Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott signed a law last year requiring hospitals to ask registering patients if they are a legal U.S. resident. According to KXAN-TV, by the end of February, 108,581 patients admitted to being illegal aliens — about 2.3 percent of all patients. This number, though, is obviously not complete. The law does not require patients to answer the question, and 12.9 percent — or 617,000 patients...

'The mandate negatively affected tens of thousands of service members – hundreds of thousands including spouses and children'.. A former Space Force officer's objection to the military's Biden-era COVID-19 vaccine mandate still haunts him over three years later... Joshua Zermeno, a former officer who dedicated part of his career to space superiority, having served in the U.S. military for 13 years. In August 2021, Zermeno objected to then-Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin's military COVID-19 shot mandate, questioning both its "efficacy and legality." For this, he received two Letters of Reprimand (LORs) and a "Do Not Promote" recommendation that blocked his...

The Department of Justice on Monday unveiled a record-shattering crackdown on the corrupt underbelly of America’s health care system. A jaw-dropping 324 defendants — including 96 medical professionals — have been charged in 50 federal districts and 12 states for orchestrating over $14.6 billion in intended fraud, largely targeting Medicare, Medicaid, and federal health programs meant to serve the elderly, disabled, and the poor. The takedown, spearheaded by the DOJ’s Health Care Fraud Unit in coordination with HHS-OIG, the FBI, the DEA, and over a dozen state attorney general offices, marks the largest health care fraud bust in U.S. history....

Former President Joe Biden only signed one pardon by hand during his final weeks in office, and it was his most controversial one. The Justice Department is reviewing the list of people granted pardons by Biden amid new concerns about his use of an autopen to automatically sign documents and concerns about his state of mind and mental acuity in his final months in office. Biden used his final weeks as commander in chief to grant clemency and pardon more than 1,500 people in what his White House described as the largest single-day act of clemency by a U.S. president....

Them Duke boys were at it again on Saturday… At the Somernites Cruise festival in Somerset, KY, one brave stunt driver by the name of Raymond Kohn hopped in a General Lee replica and jumped 150 feet over/through the town’s Fountain Square. It’s a video you have to see to believe — and people on social media were posting it from every possible angle. With thousands upon thousands in attendance for the 25th annual Somernites Cruise, known as the official car cruise capital of Kentucky, the “Dukes of Hazzard”-inspired 1969 Dodge Charger flew off the ramp, barrelled through the fountain’s...

We are looking into filing a lawsuit against the hospital that my wife was just in for a month. Let me give you her story and see if anybody has some advice for us. On Friday May 9th at 9am, I took my wife to the ER because she was having abdominal pain that we suspected was a bad appendix. By 11:30am it was confirmed that indeed her appendix was inflamed and needed to come out. My wife said well happy Mother’s Day to me and the PA responded, don’t worry this is no big deal, 3 little incisions, and...