Free Republic

As the mother of two chronically ill children, I have long faced high health care costs. My sons suffer from a rare bone-marrow failure syndrome called Shwachman-Diamond syndrome and have secondary mitochondrial disease that requires treatment with a broad range of expensive medications. We averaged $10,000 to $12,000 a year in billed out-of-pocket medical expenses before Obamacare became law. In 2013, we incurred just over $27,000 in out-of-pocket medical expenses. President Obama’s signature piece of legislation has more than doubled our yearly medical costs. Having read the then-proposed Affordable Care Act in 2010, I was skeptical of the legislation from...

A pre-existing condition health insurance program established by Obamacare is already straining its own budget and, to control costs, the administration’s Health and Human Services Department (HHS) has stopped enrolling any new people in the program, according to an audit by the General Accountability Office (GAO). In addition, to further control spending, HHS has directed the program to shift more of the costs onto the current enrollees, thus raising the out-of-pocket health care expenses for the people with pre-existing conditions. “Finally, due to growing concerns about the rate of PCIP [Pre-existing Condition Insurance Program] spending, in February 2013, CCIIO [under...