Free Republic

Reform: The chairman of the Senate Finance Committee wants levies on insurers to pay for ObamaCare and fines for families who don't sign up. We can cut costs and expand coverage without sacrificing freedom.To keep ObamaCare alive, Montana Democrat Max Baucus has proposed a Rube Goldberg scheme of fees and fines on insurers and the uninsured designed to forcibly bring everyone into the loving and protective arms of the nanny state. To help finance his Plan B, Baucus would impose annual fees of $6 billion on health insurers, $4 billion on medical-device makers, $2.3 billion on drug manufacturers and $750...

PRESIDENT Obama and his allies in Congress seem to have decided that the best way to fix the private health-insurance market is to break it completely. Polls have prompted them to shift from health-care reform to "health-insurance reform." Combine this with a government-funded, -regulated and an ultimately -controlled "co-op" system, and the nation will arrive by local roads at the same destination that the public rejected via the expressway: an out-of-control health-care system dominated by federal bureaucrats and funded by increasingly high taxes. The irony is that private insurance works well where it's least regulated. To find the unaffordable disasters,...

PRESIDENT Obama and con gressional Democrats are now fixing their gun sights on health insurers, but their broader, underlying goals remain unchanged: socializing costs and extending Washington's control of the health-care sector. This takes what Obama told Joe the Plumber about "spreading the wealth" a step further. Because not only do the reforms redistribute wealth by shifting costs; they also put government in charge of spending even more of the nation's money. And they can do it via a "public option" or heavy insurance regulation and mandates. Follow along: Obama is now blasting insurers, claiming they "do nothing to improve...

Q: Will the House’s proposed health care plan outlaw private insurance? A: No. Those who are claiming that the plan would get rid of private insurance or make it illegal are misinterpreting the bill. FULL QUESTION President Obama claims that we will be able to keep our current private health care insurance, but I have heard that on page 16 of the health insurance initiative that after one year private health insurance providers will no longer be able to accept new individual policy holders. Where does this leave me if I need to change insurance companies after the first year?...

OBAMA AND THE DEMOCRATS HEATH CARE GOAL IS A PUBLIC OPTION THAT WILL ULTIMATELY ELIMINATE PRIVATE EMPLOYER PROVIDED INSURANCE (VIDEO OF OBAMA)

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Congress: In exchange for a vague promise of cuts in the cost of health care "reform," a few fiscally conservative Democrats agree to release the bill to a September floor vote. Have the pit bulls become Chihuahuas?Apparently even a Blue Dog Democrat will stop growling if you toss him a big enough bone. Four of the seven who helped keep the House bill bottled up in the Energy and Commerce Committee — Mike Ross of Arkansas, Baron Hill of Indiana, Zack Space of Ohio and Bart Gordon of Tennessee — agreed to vote the bill out of committee in exchange...

* Approximately 103 million people would be covered under the new public plan and as a consequence about 83.4 million people would lose their private insurance. This would represent a 48.4 percent reduction in the number of people with private coverage. * About 88.1 million workers would see their current private, employer-sponsored health plan go away and would be shifted to the public plan.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told a House panel Wednesday that a government-run health care plan is needed to keep in check the private insurance industry, which she says wields too much power and often fails to best serve the public.

But it does say in effect: Deliver better care or permit the development of a private system. "The prohibition on obtaining private health insurance might be constitutional in circumstances where health-care services are reasonable as to both quality and timeliness," the ruling reads, but it "is not constitutional where the public system fails to deliver reasonable services." The Justices who sit on Canada's Supreme Court, by the way, aren't a bunch of Scalias of the North. This is the same court that last year unanimously declared gay marriage constitutional. ... The larger lesson here is that health care isn't immune...

TALLAHASSEE -- Calling it a "broken system" that is straining the state budget, Gov. Jeb Bush on Tuesday proposed a massive overhaul of Florida's Medicaid program to make it more like private health insurance. The proposal, which will be a key issue during this spring's legislative session, would lead to hundreds of thousands of low-income people receiving medical care through health-maintenance organizations, insurance companies and other private organizations. Medicaid patients would be able to choose from different health plans, with the state paying their premiums. Bush said the proposal would help control spending on the program, which has soared in...