Free Republic

President Trump said Wednesday he will continue trying to toss out all of the Affordable Care Act, even as some in his administration, including Attorney General William P. Barr, have privately argued parts of the law should be preserved amid a pandemic. “We want to terminate health care under Obamacare,” Trump told reporters Wednesday, the last day for his administration to change its position in a Supreme Court case challenging the law. “Obamacare, we run it really well. . . . But running it great, it’s still lousy health care.” While the president has said he will preserve some of the Affordable...

The White House will not reopen the Obamacare exchanges to allow uninsured Americans to purchase health care coverage during the coronavirus pandemic, NBC News has confirmed. Last month, President Donald Trump signaled that he was considering a special enrollment period that would reopen federal insurance exchanges, which shuttered in December after the end of the annual open enrollment period. "It's something we're talking to a lot of people about. We'll see what happens," Trump said in March. The news that the Obamacare will not be reopened was first reported by Politico. In March, the Affordable Care Act turned 10 years...

WASHINGTON, DC – The Trump-Barr Department of Justice (DOJ) informed a federal appeals court on Monday that it agrees with Texas and the other states suing over Obamacare that President Donald Trump’s repealing of the individual mandate renders the entire law unconstitutional, and therefore should be struck down in its entirety. This all turns on the legal doctrine of severability. Much of the time when a statute is unconstitutional it is actually only partially unconstitutional. Typically a court will strike down that part of the law, but sever it from the rest of the statute and uphold the remainder. Pundits...

The Department of Justice (DOJ) on Monday announced that it is siding with a district court ruling that found the Affordable Care Act unconstitutional. The move is an escalation of the Trump administration's legal battle against the health care law. The DOJ previously argued in court that the law's pre-existing condition protections should be struck down. Now, the administration argues the entire law should be invalidated......

When you go out and make a major purchase for yourself or your family, do you ever do it without first knowing what it’s going to cost you? Of course not. Yet that is what our health care system asks of millions of Americans every day, when they make health care decisions without knowing what they will cost or show up to the pharmacy counter to pick up a drug they need without knowing the price. Take prescription drugs: Patients are often in the dark about what their medications will cost them until they get to the pharmacy counter. But...

A White House study released on Friday found that President Donald Trump’s Obamacare reforms will save Americans roughly $450 billion over the next ten years. A White House Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) study released on Friday found that Americans will save $450 billion through Trump’s Obamacare reforms. The CEA suggested that Trump’s repeal of the Obamacare individual mandate and the expansion of short-term insurance plans and Association Health Plans (AHPs) will save Americans billions over the next ten years. The White House also suggested that the benefits of Trump’s deregulatory actions saved Americans billions, increased access to more health...

Thanks to President Donald Trump’s slashes to the federal government’s Obamacare advertising budget and his administration’s “sabotage” of Obamacare, hundreds of thousands of clueless people have been left in the dark and aren’t enrolling in Obamacare—at least, that’s what countless reporters and pundits would have you believe. However, the truth is this issue is far more complex that what many on the Left suggest.There’s no doubt that 2019 Obamacare enrollment has dropped compared to enrollment figures from one year ago. The Associated Press reports enrollment in the federal Obamacare exchange—the health insurance exchange used by 39 states—has fallen by nearly 20...

Despite numerous promises from congressional Democrats and President Barack Obama when they passed the Affordable Care Act in 2010, the health care law has created far more problems than it has solved. Premiums, deductibles, and health care choices have all worsened since Obamacare went into effect, and there’s no sign America’s health insurance system will improve anytime in the near future. President Trump inherited a health insurance crisis when he took office in January 2017, so he and congressional Republican leaders immediately began to work to implement their plan to replace Obamacare with a more market-centered approach to improving the...

If you’re not a health care policy nerd like me and don’t pay close attention to the fear-mongering commonly found in outlets like The Washington Post and CNN, you may have missed the recent explosion of news stories and opinion articles bashing the Trump administration for allegedly putting Obamacare in grave danger — and doing so in a reckless and legally questionable manner, too.For instance, New York magazine accused the Trump administration of “standing against the rule of law.” The New York Times’ Margot Sanger-Katz wrote a recent Trump administration decision could make it “much more difficult for individuals and...

The U.S. Department of Labor on Thursday unveiled new rules that would allow small businesses and entrepreneurs to join together to form their own health insurance pools. The rules, which will be open to a 60 day public comment period, are a direct response to President Donald Trump's executive order on health care, which would expand health associations and allow people participating in the groups to buy insurance that does not meet all of the coverage requirements under the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. "Under the proposal, small businesses and sole proprietors would have more freedom to band...

The Senate this week is expected to vote on a tax bill that includes a controversial provision to repeal Obamacare’s tax penalty on the uninsured. Democrats and some conservative policy analysts fret that if Congress scuttles the so-called individual mandate, insurance premiums will rise. The reverse may be closer to the truth: Premiums for Obamacare policies next year will be so high that millions will be exempt from the tax penalty whether Congress repeals it or not. Even the skimpiest coverage now costs so much that many uninsured people with six-figure incomes will be exempt. The individual mandate is repealing...

President Trump's decision to cut off Obamacare payments to insurers has driven up the number of zero-cost plans being sold to customers for 2018. The move to stop the cost-sharing reduction subsidies has led to higher tax credits for low-income customers, which in turn has led to an increase in the number of cheap Obamacare plans available for no premium but high deductibles. The eligibility for a zero-cost plan varies depending on where an enrollee lives and how much he or she makes. For instance, 2,436 counties in the U.S. offer free bronze plans — the cheapest of Obamacare’s four...

According to a report from the Washington Examiner, President Donald Trump will prepare an executive order that will unravel Obamacare’s individual mandate. A Republican senator told the Examiner that the executive order resides at the Office of Management and Budget waiting for final approval. President Trump reportedly delayed the executive order after Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) pushed to include a repeal of the individual mandate in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. A White House official pushed back on the Senators’ claims, saying that the Trump administration’s position remains that Congress should resolve the issue of repealing Obamacare. The White...

Why don’t the stories say: “President Trump Faithfully Executes Affordable Care Act”? In report after sky-is-falling report, the journalism wing of the media-Democrat complex castigates the president over his decision to — as the New York Times put it — “scrap subsidies to health insurance companies that help pay out of pocket costs of low-income people.” These subsidy payments are “critical” to sustaining the “Affordable Care Act.” Without them, the Grey Lady frets, “President Barack Obama’s signature domestic achievement” could “unravel.” To add insult to injury, the paper implies that Trump’s “determination to dismantle [Obamacare] on his own” is...

With the shot clock about to expire, Republicans on Capitol Hill may have the ball in their hands again for another chance at what was supposed to be an easy lay-up. Yesterday, Sen. John McCain — who stuck a stake through the heart of the previous ObamaCare repeal effort — announced that he would endorse the only vehicle left remaining. McCain even said that he’d put aside his distaste for operating outside regular order to vote for the Lindsey Graham-Bill Cassidy version of repeal-and-replace: Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said Wednesday that he supports a newer version of an ObamaCare...

The Trump administration is slashing funding for ObamaCare enrollment outreach. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) officials announced on a call with reporters Thursday that funding for advertising and other outreach for ObamaCare enrollment will be cut from $100 million last year to $10 million this year. A department official argued the administration is seeing "diminishing returns" from ObamaCare spending. Officials also pointed to ObamaCare's shortcomings to justify the cuts. “A health-care system that has caused premiums to double and left nearly half of our counties with only one coverage option is not working," said HHS spokeswoman Caitlin Oakley....

It became harder Monday night for President Donald Trump to help engineer the collapse of the Affordable Care Act. A federal court ruled that attorneys general in 17 states and the District of Columbia would be allowed to intervene in a case over crucial subsidies known as cost-sharing-reduction payments. ... In 2016 a judge ruled in favor of the House, saying the CSR payments were illegal because Congress did not appropriate them. ... But on Monday, the court ruled that the 17 states and DC could intervene and ... said ending the payments would be damaging to the states' citizens.

Top health insurance companies in numerous states are looking to hike premiums by double-digits – some by roughly 30 percent or more – for ObamaCare plans in 2018, according to newly released figures that could light a fire under stalled efforts on Capitol Hill to fix the program. “A lot of us have lost focus on the fact that the system we have doesn’t work,” White House Budget Director Mick Mulvaney told “Fox & Friends” on Wednesday, referring to the proposed premium hikes. The Wall Street Journal reported that major insurers in Idaho, West Virginia, South Carolina, Iowa and Wyoming...

So, just by changing back the definition of what constitutes full time employment, President Trump can essentially eradicate, as in destroy, the employer mandate portion of ObamaCare --and there's not much Congress can do about it. Unlike Republican members of Congress, Trump can use his pen to fundamentally transform ObamaCare. The Affordable Health Care for America Act (ObamaCare) forces businesses to provide health insurance largely via the employer mandate. The Obama regime had the IRS define a full time employee as follows:

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) revealed that he spoke with President Donald Trump on Monday and told the president that he can take executive action to allow organizations to offer more affordable group health insurance plans. Rand Paul, one of the Senate’s leading conservatives, told reporters that Trump will consider taking executive action to address the many problems with the healthcare system after Sen. John McCain tanked an Obamacare repeal bill last week. The Kentucky senator’s proposed changes would allow groups such as AARP, which represents retirees, to form associations to allow individuals and small businesses to form larger groups to...