Free Republic

Republicans have tried more than 70 times over the past 15 years to weaken or kill Obamacare. But their campaign keeps backfiring. The sweeping tax and spending bill President Donald Trump signed this summer got his party closer to that goal than ever before. Though never marketed as a repeal, it unraveled much of the law and is expected to eventually push millions of people who gained insurance since the Affordable Care Act’s passage off the rolls. Even that legislative achievement is proving politically fraught. As the partial government shutdown stretches into its second week, the White House and a...

“Mr. Trump has promised working-class tax cuts and protection for working-class social insurance, such as Medicaid,” Hawley wrote. “But now a noisy contingent of corporatist Republicans — call it the party’s Wall Street wing — is urging Congress to ignore all that and get back to the old-time religion: corporate giveaways, preferences for capital and deep cuts to social insurance.” Hawley has consistently spoken up about his opposition to the House plan to use Medicaid cuts to pay for the party-line megabill. The House Energy and Commerce Committee has been charged with finding at least $880 billion in federal spending...

Contrary to Marjorie Taylor Greene’s claim, most of the Obamacare subsidies are not expiring, for good or for ill.Into the debate on extending the Biden administration’s Covid subsidies for health coverage stepped Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga. In an X post Monday evening, Greene claimed that “when the tax credits expire this year my own adult children’s insurance premiums for 2026 are going to DOUBLE, along with all the wonderful families and hard-working people in my district.” She went on to repeat the claim that premiums would “DOUBLE” — with all caps in the original — two other times in...

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) touted Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s (R-Ga.) call to extend Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies, as he doubled down on his opposition to funding the government without addressing the expiring tax credits. In remarks on the Senate floor Tuesday, the Democratic leader read aloud from part of a social media post in which Greene said she’s “absolutely disgusted” that health insurance premiums could double if the ACA subsidies expire at the end of the year, breaking with her party on an issue at the center of the government shutdown standoff.“I’m going to go against everyone...

While the shutdown is needless, the Democrats are rightly concerned about healthcare cost coverage. MEDICAID EXPANSION FAIRNESS What I’m thinking of is to slightly and generally increase the state Medicaid expansion share to 5% plus the highest rate of state income tax. Right now, California pays for Medicaid expansion at 10% and rakes in 13% income tax from doctors. That would make Medicaid expansion cheaper for no income tax red states like Florida and Texas. To help fund likely Medicaid expansion to states like Texas and Florida, the state Medicaid shares (traditional & expansion) would increase annually starting in 2028...

The industry’s blame game will not end the US national health care nightmare. The shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was met by many people online with a morbid sense of inevitability. The often callous nature of the US health care system has long been a point of wide discussion, with evidence piling up that the way the country provides medical services is costly in both money and human life. The health industry’s executives — insurers, pharma, even hospitals — have become popular villains. The killing of a human being is morally repugnant — full stop. But many people still...

As a nature-loving physical therapist in Boulder, Colo., Colin O’Banion shops at farmers markets, grows organic squash in his backyard and thought he could never vote for Donald J. Trump.But during the pandemic, he said, he and his wife became social outcasts when they refused Covid-19 vaccines for themselves and their three sons. Tuning in to alternative health podcasts, he became convinced that the country’s public health establishment was corrupt, and that the only antidote was the upheaval being promised by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as he teamed up with Mr. Trump. “That’s what brought me on board,” Mr. O’Banion,...

Can anybody help me find a picture of pajama boy from the healthcare commercials, please?

U.S. employers are bracing for the largest increase in health insurance costs in a decade next year, according forecasts from healthcare consultants, but workers may be somewhat spared this time around in a tight labor market. Benefit consultants from Mercer, Aon (AON.N) and Willis Towers Watson (WTW.O) see employer healthcare costs jumping 5.4% to 8.5% in 2024 due to medical inflation, soaring demand for costly weight-loss drugs and wider availability of high-priced gene therapies. Advertisement · Scroll to continue A survey conducted by Mercer, a unit of Marsh McLennan (MMC.N), found over two thirds of employers either do not plan...

For over a decade, I’ve been helping politicians talk about health care and the Affordable Care Act. But in the past weeks the health care system hit me like an avalanche consuming a mountain. In the blink of an eye, I went from someone who thought they understood the minutiae to realizing all the Beltway smarts in the world couldn’t prepare me for this journey. In 2010, as a staffer working for House Democrats, I crafted messaging as we attempted to make some of the most expansive changes to our health care system in a generation. There was hand-wringing, whipping,...

The cost of "free" healthcare? Human collateral. Based on a January 2023 jobs report, President Biden touted what he called the “strongest job growth in history.” The two sectors with greatest growth were hospitality and healthcare. Biden failed to mention though, that increasing the number of “healthcare” jobs harms, in fact kills, Americans. The primary function of any healthcare system is medical care. Job growth that helps Americans get care would be care providers, i.e., doctors and nurses. Some other jobs facilitate providers’ delivery of care such as technicians and pharmacists. Then, there are the middlemen. Which jobs grew in...

Weeks. Not days. Woman who picked up had an unpronounceable first name. It went downhill from there. Am I the only white American experiencing this kind of dissonance, with gargantuan demand and scarce supply? How many of your MD's patients are now illegal aliens and their extended families, armed with free govt health care benefits which the good docs just can't seem to get enough of?

Jan. 17 (UPI) -- A record number of Americans postponed getting medical treatment in 2022 due to prohibitive costs, with lower-income, younger adults and women the worst affected, according to a Gallup poll released Tuesday. Overall, 38% of those surveyed reported that they or a family member had put off seeking medical care because of the high bills they would incur. That's the highest such response in the 22 years Gallup has been tracking the trend. The 12-point increase from 2021 marked the steepest year-over-year increase so far, Gallup said in a news release. Those putting off treatment for "very"...

SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — A “secret shopper” accountability study shows that medical patients can’t readily schedule appointments by phone through Medicaid providers in New Mexico, even as the state and federal government spend $8.8 billion annually on the health care program that serves nearly half of state residents. When primary health care providers were reached by phone, more than one-quarter were either not accepting new patients or had left the listed medical practice. The study found that patients who were able to connect with Medicaid care providers confronted waiting lists or appointment times that exceeded contractual requirements. The consumer-protection...

A large Planned Parenthood affiliate has been doing more sterilizations on men this fall since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health. Dr. Grace Shih, director of vasectomy services for Planned Parenthood Great Northwest, told KIRO 7 News that they have seen a 34-percent increase since the June abortion ruling, according to Fox News. Shih said one man told her that he believed having a vasectomy was an “act of love.” Others apparently never want to have children. “Men are interested in learning about contraception and learning about a vasectomy. I think the change in our...

The number of people who signed up for health insurance through HealthCare.gov jumped by 40 percent compared to last year, President Biden said on Friday. “Right now, four out of five folks who sign up for health insurance through the Affordable Care Act can get healthcare coverage for $10 a month or less. These lower rates were set to expire on Jan. 1 of this coming year, but instead we were able to extend them,” Biden said during remarks addressing business and labor leaders.

When Emmanuel Obeng-Dankwa is worried about making rent on his New York City apartment, he sometimes holds off on filling his blood pressure medication. “If there’s no money, I prefer to skip the medication to being homeless,” said Obeng-Dankwa, a 58-year-old security guard. He is among a majority of adults in the U.S. who say that health care is not handled well in the country, according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. The poll reveals that public satisfaction with the U.S. health care system is remarkably low, with fewer than half of Americans...

When a vaccine is found, it might not work for everyone, Sarah Varney writes for Kaiser Health News. In the United States, the promise of a vaccine “is hampered by a vexing epidemic that long preceded Covid-19: obesity,” she wrote. Studies have shown that flu, hepatitis B, tetanus and rabies vaccines can be less effective in obese adults than in the general population, and there’s no reason to believe a coronavirus vaccine will be any different. “Will it still work in the obese? Our prediction is no.”

The ruling greatly expands the kinds of employers that can cite religious or moral objections in declining to include birth control in their health care plans. WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday cleared the way for the Trump administration to give the nation's employers more leeway in refusing to provide free birth control for their workers under the Affordable Care Act. The ruling is a victory for the administration's plan to greatly expand the kinds of employers who can cite religious or moral objections in declining to include contraceptives in their health care plans. Up to 126,000 women...

Attorney General William Barr made a last-minute push Monday to persuade the administration to modify its position in the Obamacare dispute that will be heard at the Supreme Court this fall, arguing that the administration should pull back from its insistence that the entire law be struck down. ... Barr and other top advisers have argued against the hard-line position for some time, warning it could have major political implications if the comprehensive health care law appears in jeopardy as voters head to the polls in November. According to four sources familiar with the meeting, Barr argued for modifying the...