Free Republic

Adam Weldzius, a nurse practitioner, considers himself better informed than most when it comes to the inner workings of health insurance. But even he wasn't prepared for the pocketbook hit he'll face next year under President Barack Obama's health care overhaul. If the 33-year-old single father wants the same level of coverage next year as what he has now with the same insurer and the same network of doctors and hospitals, his monthly premium of $233 will more than double. If he wants to keep his monthly payments in check, the Carpentersville resident is looking at an annual deductible for...

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As I mentioned yesterday, the medical device tax that went into effect last January is just one of the many insidious job-killing measures contained within ObamaCare, but it is an especially terrible one. The 2.3 percent excise tax is meant to raise a handsome $30 billion to pay for ObamaCare over the next decade, except that, added bonus: It’s going to stifle innovation and competition in an industry that provides all manner of life-saving medical devices, from MRIs to pacemakers to blood tubes. And this hasn’t just been a Republican refrain, by the way. Thursday night, the Senate voted overwhelmingly...

A growing consensus of IT experts, outside and inside the government, have figured out a principal reason why the website for Obamacare’s federally-sponsored insurance exchange is crashing. Healthcare.gov forces you to create an account and enter detailed personal information before you can start shopping. This, in turn, creates a massive traffic bottleneck, as the government verifies your information and decides whether or not you’re eligible for subsidies. HHS bureaucrats knew this would make the website run more slowly. But they were more afraid that letting people see the underlying cost of Obamacare’s insurance plans would scare people away.

Obamacare is imploding. But thanks to the government shutdown, everyone is talking about the implosion of the GOP instead. The shutdown drama has distracted from the fact that Obamacare’s debut is worse than many realize — and it threatens the fundamental viability of the law itself. The administration claims the Obamacare online exchanges crashed because the Web site got more than 8 million hits in the first week. Please. You know how many people visit Amazon.com every week? More than 70 million. The difference is: 1.) Amazon seldom crashes, and 2.) on Amazon, people actually buy something.

If Washington Post writer, Sarah Kliff, of the WonkBlog had been the music director aboard the Titanic, the last tune played on the deck of the sinking ship would probably have been Happy Days Are Here Again. I make that claim because Ms Kliff has taken upon herself the role as pollyannish cheerleader for the "train wreck" known as ObamaCare. In her latest desperate search for a nonexistent silver lining, Kliff has conjured up what she imagines to be an indication that young people might, could be, maybe, possibly are interested in signing up for ObamaCare. Here is Kliff imagining...

"If you like your health insurance you can keep it," Barack Obama promised the voters on many occasions. About 20,000 part-time employees of Home Depot recently found out how false that promise is. The company announced that it is ending its health insurance coverage for its employees and sending them to the new health insurance exchanges. They will be joined by employees of McDonald's, Disney, CVS Caremark, Staples, Blockbuster, and many others. A lot of these employers have mini med plans with limited coverage. McDonald's, for example, has a plan that limits health insurance benefit to $2,000 but gives employees...

NEW HAVEN, Conn. (WTNH)-- In the midst of major changes in health care, United HealthCare has sent thousands of pink slips to Connecticut doctors. Termination letters went to physicians caring for Medicare patients. Those letters were sent out to doctors caring for 'Medicare Advantage' patients. It's a plan, marketed to Seniors to provide additional services through UnitedHealthCare. A mix of primary care and specialty doctors are affected by it. And it comes at a questionable time. Open enrollment for Medicare starts next Tuesday, and it's still not clear at this time as to which doctors are still in the United...

Obamacare's main signup engine attracted just 6,200 new customers on its launch day and 51,000 after the first weekAt the same rate, the 6-month open enrollment period would sign up just 2 million Americans, including 14 states and D.C., which have their own insurance exchangesThe Congressional Budget Office says Obamacare needs at least 7 million customers to stay afloat financiallyNumerous Obama administration officials have denied seeing any enrollment figures at allMailOnline's sources are two Health and Human Services workers who have access to the data as it's crunchedTexas congressman says anemic national enrollment numbers are 'roughly the population of...

A local Iowa affiliate reports that it could confirm only 5 people in that state have signed up for Obamacare: The "system doesn't seem to be working for most who log-on," says the local reporter. "We tried multiple times on Wednesday to see how long it would take to set up an account to try to shop the rates from the plans. Each time we logged in, within 5 minutes, the system was down." "Also today, the insurance division office in Des Moines told us, 'We cannot say for sure if anyone has successfully signed up through the healthcare.gov website,"...

Obamacare website looks "like nobody tested it," programmer says (CBS News) Healthcare.gov launched more than a week ago, and while millions of Americans have signed into the site, not many have been able to actually sign up for insurance because of glitches with the website. Administration officials implementing the new health care law will be on the hot seat Wednesday as the House Oversight Committee hopes to find out what the problems were. Committee Chairman Darrell Issa told CBS News' Jan Crawford that he plans to ask how the mess surrounding the website could even happen. No one knows how...

New ideas that appeal to old principles - the "Tea Party" compares their motivations are often those of the "Boston Tea Party". Too much government, too little say - but even there the similarities stop.For Obama, it will seriously: When to 17 October enters no agreement in budget dispute, the United States is insolvent. Since 1 October, there is no approved budget, the government of the United States is largely closed. The reason: the U.S. has reached its debt ceiling, but can not set this higher. The culprit is a small group with a big effect: The "Tea Party". This...

Don’t want to become a lifelong statistic of the Democrat Party’s Affordable Care Act? The Citizen’s Council for Health Freedom (CCHF) has created an ObamaCare Exchange Opt-Out form which can be emailed directly to the federal Healthcare.gov website. “I declare that I am opting out of any and all participation in the national Obamacare Exchange system.” And the stated reasons should cause every American to question both the legitimacy of the Affordable Care Act and the true intent of its authors. It begins with the question of privacy: “Without my consent, the Exchange will...

One of the big Democrat talking points about ObamaCare is to bleat that it's "constitutional," blessed by the Supreme Court, and is the "settled law of the land." They never explain how this is supposed to intimidate the nominally free people of the Republican from changing or repealing it - presumably it is meant to be taken as the first law in history that must be obeyed without question, forever, more powerful and permanent than the Constitution itself. But it's not true anyway. Andrew McCarthy at National Review reminds us that, contrary to Democrat rhetoric, ObamaCare was not held constitutional...

HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has been President Barack Obama’s main organizer and cheerleader for Obamacare since its inception. But you know the government-run health care plan is bad when the Secretary of the Health and Human Services Department can’t get anyone from her own state to sign up for it. Today, the office of Congressman Tim Huelskamp revealed that according to one of the insurance providers in Kansas, none of the 356,000 uninsured Kansans successfully signed up for insurance on the much-hyped ObamaCare exchanges the first day. Huelskamp has had his own troubles signing up in the exchanges. The Congressman...

Americans know instinctively that when liberals start talking about deficit reduction that’s it’s just a case of the fantods, as Huckleberry Finn would say. And say what you will about old Huck, but he knew a couple of frauds when he saw them. "Hain't we got all the fools in town on our side?," said Huck Finn's fraudulent king in the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. "And ain't that a big enough majority in any town?" It certainly is enough in DC, but the rest of the US isn't so gullible. No matter what liberal “Wonks” like Ezra Klein say about...

On this day, I make the pledge that when my employer drops my health insurance, I will not join the exchange. When the IRS fines me, I will not pay that fine! When that results in the IRS issuing a warrant for that fine, I will not comply! When they knock on my door to enforce the warrant, I will not answer! Eventually, they will kick in my door to enforce the warrant and at that time many will pay a heavy price! The "tolerant and compassionate left" must be willing to shoot me dead to enforce their utopian dreams!...

The Republicans are colluding with the Democrats to “delay” Obamacare until January 2015 and thereby give the Obama regime a chance to smooth out the wrinkles so it “works right”. The delay will also keep the issue from hurting the rats too much during the coming year's 2014 mid-term election campaign. Do some people actually believe that a "delay" is in any way a "win" for Republicans? In return for giving the rats another year-plus to deepen the roots of their communist healthcare and get it working smoother, the Republicans will cave on the debt ceiling. What a deal. Wow,...

<p>The Senate easily overcame Wednesday’s first hurdle to a fizzling GOP strategy to strip funding for President Obama’s healthcare law in exchange for keeping the government running.</p> <p>Top Republicans are now for a new — more modest — way to chip away at the Affordable Care Act.</p>

Dan Joseph went to the Congressional Black Caucus Annual Legislative Conference to find out why people don’t like ObamaCare. Surprisingly, it isn’t because ObamaCare is predictably causing the cost of healthcare to shoot through the stratosphere: Only racism, ignorance, greed, and a liberal media that is not liberal enough could explain the ingratitude of the American people in the face of such a generous gift from our power-mad moonbat rulers as ObamaCare. Unless it’s because of this: