Free Republic

Is this possible? The Wonkblog site shows zero accounts created so far for California, Nevada, Connecticut, Kentucky, Maryland, New York, and Washington.

Well well lookie what the cat dragged in. That's a link to the unsubsidized data dump -- all 78,437 records -- for each county and State under the Obamacare exchange program. I can verify that for at least my state and county the table is correct, since you can now look it up on Healthcare.gov without creating an account first (which I am not about to do.) There are several very interesting statistical facts that come from this. First, if you're "27", the average premium is $266.20/month or $3,194.40 per year. How many 27 year olds have an extra $3,200...

President Obama’s Monday Rose Garden speech replayed the same talking points he has been using for more than three years about Obamacare, while also offering old-tech suggestions, such as telephone hotlines and paper applications, to work around the law’s disastrous website. But enrollment in Obamacare insurance ultimately does depend upon the website’s problems’ being fixed, because the information gathered via phone calls and paper applications must be entered into massive federal government databases to check eligibility. A delay of the individual tax penalties will be inevitable if the site isn’t fixed soon; you can’t penalize people if they can’t...

President Obama promised that, “If you like your health insurance, you can keep it.” But one insurance provider, Florida Blue, is ending about 300,000 policies by sending out cancellation notices to customers. This is about 80 percent of its individual policies in the state, NBC News reports. About 14 million people buy their own coverage because they can’t get it at work. Many have sent notices, according to calls to insurers in several states. Kaiser Permanente in California has sent out cancellation notices to 160,000 people – about half of its individual business in the state. Insurer Highmark in Pittsburgh...

Insurers say the federal health-care marketplace is generating flawed data that is straining their ability to handle even the trickle of enrollees who have gotten through so far, in a sign that technological problems extend further than the website traffic and software issues already identified.

Over the last few days, I have spoken in some detail about the state of the federal Obamacare exchanges with several officials of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (the HHS agency that is running the exchanges), and with a number of reasonably well placed insurance company officials in Washington. The picture they paint of how the rollout of the exchanges has gone is similar in its broad strokes to what has emerged in other reports in recent days, so I don’t think I’ll be breaking much news here, though some of the details have (I think) not been...

The Flaw Known as ObamaCare I read an online article from the New York Times Sunday morning and not surprisingly, in the user comment section, the liberal ObamaCare supporters are putting the blame for this ObamaCare website fiasco on Republicans and 'extremists', "obstructionists', the govt shutdown, 'teabaggers' and other not nice GOP people and groups. When I took a contary position and shifted blame back to the liberal base and politicians in a couple of posts to the Times comment section, my comments were summarily executed and deleted within 60 seconds. Censorship is alive and well at the Times. Truth...

European Commission President José Manuel Barroso’s trip to the Italian island of Lampedusa began with boos and shouts of “shame” and “murderers” from some of the residents, TV footage has shown. In the meantime, lawmakers prepared to re-examine the EU’s border surveillance systems. EurActiv France reports. Barroso, EU Commissioner Cecilia Malmström, Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta and Italian Interior Minister Angelino Alfano paid a visit yesterday (9 October) to Lampedusa, the small Italian island near the coast of which some 270 immigrants drowned in a shipwreck last week. …

Major insurers, state health-care officials and Democratic allies repeatedly warned the Obama administration in recent months that the new federal health-insurance exchange had significant problems, according to people familiar with the conversations. Despite those warnings and intense criticism from Republicans, the White House proceeded with an Oct. 1 launch. A week after the federal Web site opened, technical problems continued to plague the system, and on Tuesday people were locked out until 10 a.m., although some applicants were able to sign up as the day went on. Officials said they were working 24 hours a day to improve the system...

The wildfire that’s been raging in Yosemite National Park for 10 days came within two miles of a reservoir that supplies most of San Francisco’s water on Sunday, Reuters reports. The “Rim Fire,” as it’s called, has already burned 134,000 acres, including 11 homes, and threatened both water and power supplies to the city, about 200 miles to the west. Nearly 3,000 firefighters on the front lines had about 7 percent of the fire contained Sunday.

As problems continue to pile up over the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, summertime polls from Fox News, Gallup and Rasmussen signal that growing confusion over the complexities of the law, how it will be rolled out and how much it will cost is eroding public support. A majority of Americans say they believe the new health care law will increase their medical costs and taxes, according to an Aug. 8 Fox News poll. The survey found 57 percent of those polled felt the way ObamaCare was being rolled out was "a joke." Overall, 63 percent of voters believe...

ObamaCare is poised to “destroy the foundation of the 40 hour work week that is the backbone of the American middle class.” And that’s the president’s supporters talking. The dire warning came last month in a letter from three of the nation’s most influential union bosses to Democratic leaders in Congress. “The unintended consequences of the ACA [Affordable Care Act] are severe,” the labor leaders bemoaned. “Perverse incentives are already creating nightmare scenarios.” Specifically, they noted, “the law creates an incentive for employers to keep employees’ work hours below 30 hours a week, and many of them are doing so...

American greenies imagine they can save the planet by stopping construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, but in the real world they will expose Mother Gaia (and human beings) to greater harm by forcing more oil to be transported by rail. Pipelines are far safer than rail transportation, as we are reminded by the horror that engulfed much of the town of Lac-Megantic, Quebec in flames. Thirteen people are known dead, but as many as 50 are missing, while charred bodies still are being pulled from the ruins. This reality should haunt the nightmares of greenies, people generally given to...

George W. Bush isn’t a man to gloat. If we were, his message to Africans, as he visits the continent at the same time as President Obama, would be: “Miss me yet?” The answer, according to the Washington Post, is a resounding “yes.” Consider this passage from the Post’s story “Bush AIDS policies shadow Obama in Africa”: [A]cross this continent, many Africans wish Obama was more like Bush in his social and health policies, particularly in the fight against HIV/AIDS — one of the former president’s signature foreign policy aid programs. Bush poured billions of dollars into the effort to...

After a children’s magician said he was harassed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture over a permit for the rabbit he used in his act a few years back, Marty Hahne probably figured it couldn’t get any more intrusive than that. USDA Reportedly Orders Childrens Magician to Produce Disaster Plan for His...Rabbit (Credit: Marty Hahne web site) Silly, Marty… Now the Ozark, Mo.-based illusionist is saying the trick’s allegedly on him, as he notes in an email to blogger, Bob McCarty (emphasis added): My USDA rabbit license requirement has taken another ridiculous twist. I just received an 8 page letter...

The north Indian state of Uttarakhand, blessed with nature’s bounty- it has the Himalayas and some of India’s mightiest rivers run through it- was the scene of nature’s fury this week as flash floods and landslides caused a devastation that is being dubbed as a ‘Himalayan tsunami’. Amid the torrential monsoon rain, rivers overflowed, destroying homes and trapping thousands of people in the debris. Television coverage saw entire buildings toppling over and being swept away in raging rivers. An overwhelmed state government was hard put to cope, forcing the federal government to press 10,000 troops from the army into servicing the...

WEST, TEXAS — The Federal Emergency Management Agency is refusing to provide money to help rebuild the small Texas town where a deadly fertilizer plant explosion leveled numerous homes and a school, and killed 15 people. According to a letter obtained by The Associated Press, FEMA said it reviewed the state's appeal to help West but decided that the explosion "is not of the severity and magnitude that warrants a major disaster declaration." The blast killed 10 first responders and brought national attention to the agricultural community. President Barack Obama traveled to the area to attend a memorial service for...

At least nine people have died after a series of tornadoes slammed through the Oklahoma City area Friday, with at least 100 people injured, while heavy flooding hampers recovery efforts. The state medical examiner's office confirmed Saturday morning that the death toll had risen to at least nine, including at least two children. Meanwhile the Oklahoma State Department of Health reported that Oklahoma City-area hospitals treated 104 people. More than half of those were people who had been cut or pierced. Law enforcement officers and Red Cross damage assessment workers are heading out to view damage in the city and...

MAULDIN: Japan Is On The Brink Of Disaster John Mauldin, Thoughts From The Frontline May 26, 2013, 9:08 AM I wrote several years ago that Japan is a bug in search of a windshield. And in January I wrote that 2013 is the Year of the Windshield. The recent volatility in Japanese markets is breathtaking but characteristic of what one should come to expect from a country that is on the brink of fiscal and economic disaster. I don't mean to be trite, from a global perspective; Japan is not Greece: Japan is the third-largest economy in the world. Its...

... Obama is planning a Sunday visit to Moore, Oklahoma, the city decimated by a powerful tornado that killed at least 24 people and flattened a wide swath of the community... ...plans to meet with survivors of Monday's storm, as well as first responders who rescued as many as 100 children and adults buried in the rubble.