Free Republic

President Donald Trump’s decision earlier this month to end federal subsidies to insurance companies on the Obamacare exchanges will, ironically, allow many more individuals to qualify for free health insurance. The Wall Street Journal noted Friday: ” When sales of plans on the law’s exchanges begin Nov. 1, a growing number of consumers around the country will be able to get coverage for 2018 without paying any monthly premium … because they qualify for larger federal premium subsidies that cover the full cost of a plan, according to the new analysis.” Obamacare provides subsidies to individuals making up to about...

A federal judge in California on Wednesday denied a request from 19 attorneys general across the country to force the Trump administration to resume funding of cost-sharing payments under the Affordable Care Act. The ruling leaves intact President Trump’s decision earlier this month to immediately end the payments that reimburse insurers for discounts the law requires them to give lower-income customers with health plans through ACA marketplaces. The attorneys general, from 18 states and the District, were seeking a judicial order that would have maintained the funding. In his decision, Judge Vince Chhabria of the U.S. District Court for the...

Democrats and some Republicans in Congress are pushing for a $10 billion a year payout to insurance companies that sell Obamacare plans. President Trump calls it "bailing out" the insurance industry. Truer words were never spoken. The politicians backing this sweetheart deal claim it will protect consumers. Don't fall for it. The money will go straight to the bottom lines of insurers -- who enjoy tremendous clout in Washington, D.C., thanks to over $85 million in campaign contributions and over $150 million spent on lobbying every year. The deal's authors, Sen. Lamar Alexander, R. Tenn., and Sen. Patty Murray, D....

**SNIP** California and the District of Columbia through their state-run marketplaces, and Florida and Virginia through the federal marketplace, approved nine of the 12 fictitious applicants GAO created for special enrollment and subsidies. That’s because there are no laws requiring marketplaces to verify whether someone is eligible for special enrollment outside the normal enrollment period for life events, like gaining a dependent through marriage or a making permanent move. “While subsidies under the (Patient Protection and Affordable Care) Act are generally not paid directly to enrollees, participants nevertheless benefit financially through reduced monthly premiums or lower costs due at time...

It seems that federal officials have worked overtime to undermine public trust. Benghazi, the IRS abuses, the “fast and furious” gun-running fiasco, the solar power boondoggles, and the seemingly endless implementation problems of the Affordable Care Act—all these scandals have common themes: arrogant and abusive bureaucracy, double dealing, lame excuses, and legal hairsplitting. The outrages listed above can be placed squarely at the doorstep of the White House. But one scandal is truly bipartisan: How key administration and congressional officials connived to create, under cover of the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, special health insurance subsidies for members...

White House spokesman Josh Earnest taunted congressional Republicans Thursday in spite of a major court ruling against Obamacare, saying “they’ve been losing this fight for six years.” The Hill reports: In a major ruling, Judge Rosemary Collyer, an appointee of President George W. Bush, said the administration does not have the power to spend money on “cost sharing reduction payments” to insurers without an appropriation from Congress. Collyer’s decision doesn’t immediately go into effect, however, so that the administration can appeal it. A reporter asked Earnest at the outset of the briefing how “problematic” this was for the law overall....

A federal judge delivered a blow to the Obama administration and the president’s signature health care law Thursday in a lawsuit mounted by the House of Representatives. But the lawsuit’s future could be impacted further by November’s elections. U.S. District Judge Rosemary Collyer sided with the House in a case challenging how the Obama administration has been funding payments to insurers through Obamacare’s cost-sharing subsidies. Collyer, appointed by President George W. Bush, is allowing the program to continue, pending an appeal from the Department of Justice.

Taxpayers will have to shell out an estimated $18 billion more to subsidize Obamacare in 2016 despite lower than expected enrollment in the health care exchanges, according to a forecast by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO). In its latest 10-year economic forecast, CBO predicted that 13 million Americans would purchase health insurance through the Obamacare exchanges in 2016, with 11 million of them receiving government subsidies to help pay for their premiums. But that figure is 40 percent lower than the 21 million enrollees CBO predicted last year would sign up. ...

The government spent $936 billion last year on health programs including Medicare, Medicaid and subsidies related to the Affordable Care Act, a jump of 13 percent from 2014, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Spending on Social Security, in contrast, totaled $882 billion, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) reported.

Hello all you other gainfully employed chumps paying for your own health care insurance. I just wanted you to know something I've found out. If you have a BRONZE plan like I do, because you are paying for it yourself and can't afford anything else, you are paying a $6,000 deductible per person before you can file a single claim to perhaps get any benefit. Meanwhile, people who have subsidized plans because they aren't working or not working or not earning very much get the vaunted SILVER plan! And you are paying for it. You are paying for a plan...

An IRS audit released this week shows that nearly half a million ObamaCare enrollees were able to claim more than $235 million in excess subsidies that they will never have to pay back, thanks to a quirk in the law that leaves the program vulnerable to potentially billions in excess subsidy payments.

Remember the hue and cry when it looked like the Supreme Court could deny ObamaCare subsidies to millions of people? Looks like it could happen anyway, thanks to the law's tax complications. Fully 40% of taxpayers who received ObamaCare subsidies last year haven't filed their taxes yet and are at risk of losing their subsidies for next year, according to the American Action Forum. An update on ObamaCare that the IRS recently sent to Congress said that out of the 4.5 million taxpayers who got ObamaCare's "advance payment" subsidies last year, only 2.7 million had filed the required tax forms...

“We should just start calling this law SCOTUScare,” Scalia wrote, referring to the several times the high court has ruled on controversial parts of ObamaCare. Scalia blasted that reading. “The court holds that when the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act says ‘Exchange established by the State’ it means ‘Exchange established by the State or the Federal Government,’ Scalia wrote. “That is of course quite absurd, and the court’s 21 pages of explanation make it no less so.”

Tonight, Reason’s Peter Suderman published an interesting revelation about the history of the decision reached this week by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, that Obamacare subsidies couldn’t be distributed unless it happened through a state exchange. It turns out that one of the key minds behind Obamacare, MIT professor Jonathan Gruber, entirely agreed with Michael Cannon and Jonathan Adler, the scholars behind the legal theory that backed up the Halbig plaintiffs who triumphed this week.  He’s on the record explaining that Obamacare subsidies are limited to state exchanges.  Suderman writes: Jonathan Gruber, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist who helped design the Massachusetts health...

Columnist George Will called MIT professor Jonathan Gruber “the gift that keeps on giving” to Obamacare opponents Monday after new emails show that the White House downplayed his role in crafting the law. Appearing on “Special Report,” Will tied Gruber to the upcoming Supreme Court decision on Obamacare subsidies, saying we’ll read the opinion “in light” of Gruber’s comments. The syndicated columnist made the comments after the House Oversight Committee released 20,000 pages of emails between Gruber and Obama administration officials. GEORGE WILL: Well, Mr. Gruber is, for opponents of the Affordable Care Act, the gift that keeps on giving....

Anyone who thinks ObamaCare will cut the deficit over the next decade should look at Page 11 of the latest Congressional Budget Office report. The table on that page shows how the trillions in ObamaCare subsidies are supposed to be "paid for" — by tax hikes or spending cuts. What it reveals, however, is that ObamaCare increasingly relies on dubious Medicare spending cuts to cover its growing subsidy costs.

Fiscal Responsibility: Now we learn that the Obama administration doesn't know whether billions in subsidies it paid out to insurers were appropriate. Yeah, this law is working just great.

The federal government cannot verify nearly $3 billion in subsidies distributed through Obamacare, putting significant taxpayer funding “at risk,” according to a new audit report. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Inspector General (OIG) released an audit Tuesday finding that the agency did not have an internal system to ensure that subsidies went to the right enrollees, or in the correct amounts. “[The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services] CMS’s internal controls did not effectively ensure the accuracy of nearly $2.8 billion in aggregate financial assistance payments made to insurance companies under the Affordable Care Act...

Ted Cruz is planning to battle his party over Obamacare again — this time, if Senate Republicans seek to extend subsidies that could be killed by the Supreme Court as soon as this month. In an interview with POLITICO, the 2016 presidential candidate weighed in on the high-stakes Supreme Court case that could end subsidies for millions of people who receive their health insurance through the federal exchange. A majority of Republican senators have endorsed an approach to keep those subsidies in place until September 2017, but Cruz flatly said “no” when asked if he’d sign on as well. “I...

[Obama's Death Panels law] hangs in the balance in the Supreme Court for the second time in three years, but the public has rendered a judgment ahead of the court's ruling. By a margin of 55 percent to 38 percent, more people say the court should not take action to block federal subsidies in states that didn't set up their own exchanges, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll..... ....The survey finds opinion on the health-care law among the worst in Post-ABC polling; 54 percent oppose, up six percentage points from a year ago. Support ties the record low...