Free Republic

About 8 million people have signed up for Year 1 of Obamacare, but millions of others are still falling into the law's "coverage gap." They earn too much money to qualify for Medicaid, yet don't make enough to get federal subsidies to buy private insurance on an Affordable Care Act exchange. The human toll of the coverage gap can be found all too easily in Hidalgo County, Texas, where less than half of non-senior adults had health insurance in 2012. "If Obama did this market so we can get affordable insurance, why are we still having a lot of problems?...

Barack Obama held a press conference the other day during which he took a "victory lap" and taunted Republicans in his typical juvenile fashion: At a press conference yesterday President Obama asserted that when it comes to ObamaCare, the Republican Party "is going through the stages of grief--anger and denial and all that stuff--and we're not at acceptance yet." His endless hubris echoes his "I won" utterance in 2009. Then James Taranto notes this: A Politico reporter asked the president: "Do you think it's time for Democrats to start campaigning loudly and positively on the benefits of ObamaCare?" Watch him...

Should the U.S. keep ObamaCare? Yes No I don't know

“We have eight million people signed up through the exchanges. That doesn’t include the three million young people who are able to stay on their parents’ plan. It doesn’t include the million people who benefited from expansions to Medicaid. So if my math is correct, that’s 14 million right there. You have another five million people who signed up outside of the marketplaces but are part of the same insurance pool. So, we’ve got a sizable part of the U.S. population now that are in the first — for the first time in many cases in a position to enjoy...

When Franklin D. Roosevelt established Social Security, he created generations of loyal Democrats. When Lyndon B. Johnson signed Medicare into law, he built on that legacy, particularly with older Americans. And when George W. Bush instituted a new prescription drug benefit for Medicare, it helped reclaim elderly voters for Republicans. But President Obama’s Affordable Care Act, the $1.4 trillion effort to extend health insurance to all Americans, is challenging the traditional calculus about government benefits and political impact. Even as Mr. Obama announced that eight million Americans had enrolled in the program and urged Democrats to embrace the law, those...

When it comes to the politics of Obamacare, there's really only one question that matters: How many Americans are benefiting from the new health care system, and how many are hurting? Problem is, we know more about the first part of the question than the second. Obamacare's advocates have pushed hard against Republican attempts to highlight Americans who have been particularly hard hit by the new law. "There's plenty of horror stories being told," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said in February. "All of them are untrue." Those advocates have hit back so hard that it appears they are trying...

It has been a triumphant month for liberal journalists who have lived and died with the fortunes of the Affordable Care Act since its passage in March 2010. Ezra Klein and Jon Cohen have declared victory, describing an amazing recovery for the program and for President Obama since the dark days of near-total failure among people trying to sign up on the federal exchanges in October and November.To listen to Obamacare supporters, Kathleen Sebelius leaves her post as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services with her head held high, as her legacy now includes shepherding across...

Washington state has blown past its targets for signing up new Medicaid participants under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The program’s ranks have grown roughly 25 percent in the past six months, helping fulfill one of the act’s key goals to provide health care to nearly all Americans. But with enrollment success comes the challenge of serving more people in a $10 billion program that’s already stretched thin in places. Some of the new enrollees haven’t seen a doctor in years and need help navigating the health-care morass. Medicaid patients already struggle to get care in parts of the state...

The Department of Health and Human Services is proposing a rule that would, if implemented, guarantee that even more Americans who like their health insurance plans cannot keep them. Fixed indemnity plans, which pay insured customers a set amount towards medical expenses and are often cost-effective relative to more comprehensive health insurance, are popular forms of coverage, and potentially becoming more popular in the wake of Obamacare. Health insurance industry representatives say that fixed indemnity plans have been attracting more interest as many Americans look for a way to mitigate against the high deductibles applicable to many insurance policies available...

Rep. Colleen Hanabusa (D-HI) says her constituents are "frustrated and embarrassed" by Hawaii's failed Obamacare exchange, which cost taxpayers $204 million and signed up only 8,000 people. On Wednesday, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) announced it will launch an investigation into Hawaii's busted Obamacare program. "This is not a partisan issue, this is an economic issue," said state Sen. Sam Slom. Hawaii Gov. Neil Abercrombie previously predicted "hundreds of thousand of people" would sign up for Obamacare in the President's home state. On Thursday, President Barack Obama tried to rally Democrats to support his unpopular Obamacare program. "I think Democrats...

A New York woman suffering from a neurological disease that has required four brain surgeries has been dropped by all of her doctors and denied medications due to her Obamacare plan. "I've been vomiting. I lost 22 pounds. The pain is unbearable," said Margaret Figueroa, 49, on Wednesday. "My medication helps me function during the day." Figueroa suffers from a disease known as Arnold Chiari Malformation and Syringomyelia. Even though the Obamacare plan she purchased assured her that she was covered, her insurance card was denied when she went to fill her prescriptions. Then she learned that none of her...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The average premium for an Obamacare benchmark plan will rise slightly in 2015 and increase about 6 percent a year during the rest of this decade, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) said on Monday in a report the White House trumpeted as proof its healthcare reform was working.The forecast, contained in a new CBO report on President Barack Obama's landmark healthcare law, suggests that insurance premium hikes under Obamacare may not be as severe as predicted by Republican opponents and some health insurers.

Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear had ten days to veto the General Assembly’s agreement to defund ObamaCare in Kentucky and start a huge fight for today and tomorrow, but he didn’t do it. Now, he must accept reality and start taking down the Kentucky Health Benefit Exchange. At the top of page Page 124 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act it states “No federal funds for continued operations … In establishing an Exchange under this section, the state shall ensure that such Exchange is self-sustaining beginning on January 1, 2015, including allowing the Exchange to charge assessments or user...

Count Ted Cruz among the unimpressed about the HHS claim that over seven million Americans enrolled in ObamaCare by the end of the open-enrollment deadline. Javier Manjarres conducted a short telephone interview with Sen. Cruz, pointing out an earlier story broken by talk radio host Drew Steele about notification letters from HHS of ObamaCare auto-enrollment and questioned whether those were part of the HHS calculations. Cruz called this part of the mystery around the “funny numbers” coming out of the Obama administration, and wondered how many of the 7.1 million were only partial sign-ups:CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE VIDEO The...

When David Jolly beat Alex Sink in a recent special election for a Florida congressional seat, the knee jerk reaction from the GOPe’s pet pollsters was to immediately warn the Republican rank and file that Jolly didn’t win because of Obamacare. “Who are you going to believe, us or your lying eyes?” came to mind. Phonies like Karl Rove pontificated about how winning elections requires more than simply getting on the right side of issues voters care about and hammering that message home. Hey, who knew there was more to winning elections than supporting the things voters want and opposing...

Study estimates impact of controversial changes that raised treatment threshold

No, I'm not suggesting anyone should burn a draft card (or the student union) or stage a sit-in in the office of Secretary Kathleen Gilligan Sebelius. Those who feel Obamacare will adversely affect them should conduct a "sue-in". They should file individual lawsuits challenging the law on grounds it will harm them as individuals. The class action lawsuits various states filed against the law didn't force the courts to deal with the hardships the law would create for some individuals. Individual cases can present the courts with actual evidence of individuals who would be adversely affected being forced to purchase...

I never wanted to be a pawn in President Obama’s absurd and irresponsible attempt to mandate, regulate and complicate the American health care system. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much of a choice. I was a casualty of Mr. Obama’s Big Lie. You know the one: “If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan.” By the time my plan vanished, the only individual health insurance plans available had been captured by the tentacles of Obamacare. Signing up for insurance was harder than making sense of Donald Trump’s hair. It took more than 20 attempts over four...

What good is “insurance” if it means you can’t find a doctor to treat you? -snip- My shiny, never used Horizon health card is as effective as a dollar bill during the Great Depression. In fact, an expert tells CNN, “I think of (Obamacare) as giving everyone an ATM card in a town where there are no ATM machines.”