Free Republic

Health insurers are now openly admitting that with Obamacare’s reforms, patient choice can no longer be a priority for Americans. “We have to break people away from the choice habit that everyone has,” Marcus Merz, CEO of Minnesota insurer PreferredOne, told The New York Times Tuesday. “We’re all trying to break away from this fixation on open access and broad networks.” With boatloads of mandatory services provided each and every customer whether they’re wanted or not, health insurers’ costs are going up. If insurance companies are going to keep prices at a manageable level, narrow networks are one of their...

A trio of liberal groups is looking to mobilize liberal voters on ObamaCare.  Planned Parenthood Action, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and MoveOn.org are teaming up in an effort to boost the law, and to boost officials who backed it. The groups are launching campaigns that will highlight popular parts of the law, according to The Washington Post. That includes the law's expansion of Medicaid, free contraception coverage and the ban on insurers denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions.

California Obamacare patients are finding it more affordable to drive to Tijuana, Mexico for health care treatment than to use their high-deductible Obamacare plans. Irma Montalvo tells USA Today seeing a Tijuana doctor only costs $15 and that she likes her Mexican doctor better. "She listens to me," said Montalvo, a U.S. citizen who was born in Mexico, said in Spanish. "I come here feeling really bad, and three days later I am better." The Obama administration has lamented the fact that Latino Obamacare enrollments remain surprisingly low. However, according to USA Today, "Mexican immigrants living in California, Arizona, Texas...

The Internal Revenue Service this week will publish a final rule requiring Obamacare health insurance exchanges to hand over key personal data to the IRS, which will use the information to implement the tax aspects of the controversial health care law. The IRS rule covers health exchanges that sell insurance to individuals, and it takes effect this year. That means people enrolled in an Obamacare exchange this year will have their information given to the IRS as soon as it’s needed for tax purposes. Information to be handed over from Obamacare exchanges includes names, addresses, taxpayer identification numbers, insurance premium...

Sissel v. United States Department of Health & Human Services Status: Plaintiff appealed to the D.C. Circuit Court of Apppeals on Jul. 5, 2013. Briefing completed Dec. 20, 2013. Oral argument scheduled for May 8, 2014. Summary: Pacific Legal Foundation has launched a new constitutional cause of action against the federal Affordable Care Act. The ACA imposes a charge on Americans who fail to buy health insurance — a charge that the U.S. Supreme Court recently characterized as a federal tax. PLF’s amended complaint alleges that this purported tax is illegal because it was ntroduced in the Senate rather than...

Two years ago, when the Supreme Court declared Obamacare's penalty to be a tax, it doomed the healthcare reform act as an "unconstitutional violation of the origination clause," columnist George Will says. This Thursday, the Washington, D.C., Court of Appeals, the nation's second-most important court, will hear arguments on whether the Affordable Care Act adheres to the Constitution's "origination clause," which declare that "all bills for raising revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with amendments as on other bills," Will writes in his column in The Washington Post Saturday. Will points...

If the president wants to witness a refutation of his assertion that the survival of the Affordable Care Act is assured, come Thursday he should stroll the 13 blocks from his office to the nation’s second-most important court, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. There he can hear an argument involving yet another constitutional provision that evidently has escaped his notice. It is the origination clause, which says: “All bills for raising reveornue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with amendments as on other bills.” The ACA passed the Senate on a...

Since its party line passage and subsequent signing on March 23, 2010, the Affordable Care Act has been altered more times than anyone can count. After the law was passed so we could “find out what’s in it,” in Nancy Pelosi’s phrase, the law’s requirements have been subject to constant alterations and revisions, much like Ms. Pelosi’s facial features. Like all legislation, Obamacare’s popularity reflects the effectiveness of its implementation, or lack thereof. According to a recent CNN poll, the bill remains deeply unpopular: 57 percent of Americans oppose it. And for good reason: each new poll has followed the...

But until the GOP advances an alternative that can provide the answer to Wasserman Schultz’s question, the Democrats can be confident that, while Obamacare might get tweaked, changed, or “fixed,” it won’t get repealed. Four years after the Democrats passed Obamacare in clear defiance of public opinion, it still remains to be seen which Republican(s) will take the lead on repeal — by championing a well-conceived alternative that can bring it to fruition. Just because Republicans don’t have an answer to Wasserman Schultz’s question, however, doesn’t mean there isn’t one. Indeed, the 2017 Project has advanced a conservative alternative to...

Doctors groups fear their members won’t get paid because of an unusual 90-day grace period for government-subsidized health plans and are urging physicians to check patients' insurance status before every visit. “This puts the physician and their patients in a very difficult situation,” said Dr. Ardis Dee Hoven, president of the American Medical Association (AMA), which advised physicians Wednesday about how to minimize their risk. “If a patient is being treated for a serious illness, that requires ongoing care,” she said. “The physician is having to assume the financial risk for this. That’s the bottom line.” If an enrollee in...

EDITED Health industry officials say ObamaCare-related premiums will double in some parts of the country, countering claims recently made by the Obama administration. The expected rate hikes will be announced in the coming months amid an intense election year, when control of the Senate is up for grabs. The sticker shock would likely bolster the GOP’s prospects in November and hamper ObamaCare insurance enrollment efforts in 2015. Political operatives will be watching premium increases this summer, most notably in states where there are contested Senate races. In Iowa, which hosts the first presidential caucus in the nation and has a...

Participants in the federal high-risk pool created in the health law will have another month to find coverage, the Obama administration announced Friday. This is the third extension for the program, known as PCIP, which was previously set to close Dec. 31, 2013. Existing funds will be used to cover the extension. In a notice posted on the Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan website, officials announced that program enrollees who have not yet purchased coverage through the health law’s online marketplaces, or exchanges, could keep their current coverage until April 30 while they continue their search. But they must enroll in...

The Obama administration is requiring health plans in Obamacare insurance marketplaces to include a more robust offering of care providers in 2015 after some early backlash over limited networks in the health care law's first year. Health plans selling on the federal marketplaces in 2015 must include 30 percent of area "essential community providers," which are usually health centers and other hospitals serving mostly low-income patients. That's up from a 20 percent requirement in 2014, the first year of expanded overage under the health care law. The federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which oversees the marketplaces, will also...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: I've got so much stuff here today, folks, and I'm trying to figure out which I want to do first. Here's Obama with deportations, and here's Obama with determining who gets overtime, all of this is a distraction. It's all a distraction from what's happening with the economy and with Obamacare. I guess this is the big deal to me. We have this massive electoral victory on Tuesday in Florida, Florida 13. And I'll be damned if the Republican establishment is not doing its best in high gear to tell everybody, "Hey, don't think that Obamacare was...

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said Sunday that Republicans will repeal the controversial healthcare law after President Obama leaves office in 2017. Cruz became of the face of an unsuccessful effort to eliminate the healthcare law last year that resulted in a government shutdown. Most Republicans backed off the repeal-or-shutdown position after sustaining political damage during the two-week standoff in October, but Cruz promised on Sunday during an appearance on ABC News’s “This Week” to continue trying to get rid of Obamacare during the remainder of the president’s term. “I’ll give you one scenario where it could [be repealed before Obama...

ATLANTA, Mar. 3, 2014 – Today, the Georgia state house of representatives passed a bill which bans the state from participating in significant portions of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). House Bill 707 (HB707), introduced by Rep. Jason Spencer, pushes back against the ACA in five ways. It passed the house in a late-night vote of 115-59. Specifically, HB707: 1. Prohibits any state agencies, departments or political subdivisions from using resources or spending funds to advocate for the expansion of Medicaid. This provision works hand-in-hand with HB990 to make it more difficult to expand Medicaid. HB990 would require legislative approval...

**SNIP** The distraction of Ukraine and the media’s numbness to the stream of Obamacare travails is providing time and a smokescreen for Obama to prepare a big announcement for after March 31, 2014: The BIG PUNT, i.e. a delay in the individual mandate. The White House and their Democratic allies must realize that they are on a trajectory to lose the Senate in 2014 and are likely coming to terms with the idea that delaying the individual mandate is one way to attempt to change that path. Look for the president to bite the bullet and give in to the...

If you’d like the government to change something about Obamacare, give the White House a ring. They’re in a flexible mood. President Obama this week approved yet another delay to provisions in the Affordable Care Act, giving insurers until 2016 to sell a type of insurance policy that’s supposed to be banned under the health-reform law. The ban, which was supposed to begin this year, would prevent insurers from selling bare-bones plans that might be affordable but don’t abide by 10 “essential service rules” required under the new law. When insurers began canceling such coverage last year, however, several million...

The Obama administration is dropping some new hints about how it has moved money around to fund Obamacare without Congress — but not nearly enough to put the controversy to rest. Forced to reveal more details under a provision tucked in this year’s bipartisan budget deal, the Department of Health and Human Services declared Friday how it used Secretary Kathleen Sebelius’s authority to move about $1.6 billion in departmental funds around last year — the Cabinet secretary’s version of looking for change under the couch cushions and hitting the jackpot. But HHS didn’t say exactly how it spent the money,...

A Republican congressman is calling for the federal government to hire a full-time watchdog for ObamaCare, amid ongoing concerns about fraud and mismanagement. Rep. Peter Roskam, R-Ill., introduced a bill on Thursday that would create a "Special Inspector General for Monitoring the Affordable Care Act (SIGMA)." He told Fox News the position is needed to follow the money. "There's very specific criteria that the special inspector general is required to produce and follow up on," Roskam told Fox News. "But the point is it needs to be done holistically and in a larger context. It's just a common sense approach...