Free Republic

The group seeking to invalidate the Affordable Care Act’s subsidies to Americans purchasing health insurance through federally run state marketplaces is asking the Supreme Court to take up the case early. The Competitive Enterprise Institute, the conservative group funding challenges to the IRS rule allowing subsidies to flow to state exchanges, announced Thursday that it was asking the Supreme Court to intervene. The challengers argue that the Affordable Care Act only allows subsidies in exchanges set up by states – an interpretation that could lead to millions of people being unable to afford coverage. Owing largely to Republican resistance, only...

Florida’s largest Obamacare exchange health insurer is boosting its premiums by 17.6 percent, a staggering increase for hundreds of thousands of Floridians. Florida Blue, the Blue Cross Blue Shield insurer in Florida, has the largest market share of any insurer operating on the state’s Obamacare exchange. The company cited higher health costs than expected due to an older customer base which is using more health services than they’d prepared for, according to Kaiser Health News. Patrick Geraghty, Florida Blue’s CEO, had previously warned that the company was under “tremendous financial pressure” and that they’d be seeking significant hikes.

The bad news in California: If you liked your plan and/or your doctor, many of you couldn’t keep either if you had an individual-market plan. The worse news in California: If you liked your premiums, you definitely couldn’t keep those. In the first year of ObamaCare, premiums rose in the Golden State anywhere from 22% to 88% from the previous year — even as insurer networks narrowed so much that consumers had a tough time finding a provider at all: The cost of health insurance for individuals skyrocketed this year in California, with some paying almost twice what they...

The more ObamaCare backers try to attack the D.C. Circuit Court's decision that limits subsidies to state-run exchanges, the more it looks like the two judges on that panel got it right.

UNKNOWN QUESTIONER:“Um, you mentioned the Health Insurance Exchanges for the States. And it’s my understanding that if the States don’t provide them, that the Federal Government will provide them.”M.I.T. economics Prof. Jonathan Gruber:“Yeah, so these Health Insurance Exchanges —once you go on MA-HealthConnect.org and CRS [is] in Massachusetts—will be these new shopping places. And they’ll be the place that people go to get their subsidies for health insurance. “In the law it says [that] if States don’t provide them, the federal backstop will. The Federal Government has been sort-of slow in putting in this backstop, I think partially, because they...

The Supreme Court may soon need to decide whether the federal government can be considered a "state" in our federal republic in the same sense that Iowa, Wyoming and Wisconsin are states. On the face of it, this question may seem absurd. In fact, given any level of reflection, it is absurd. The federal government is not one of the states. But this absurd question was at the heart of Halbig v. Burwell, decided this week by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, and it could soon become a defining issue in American life. Section 1311...

In a major setback for the Affordable Care Act, the D.C. Circuit just released a fractured opinion invalidating the IRS’s rule extending tax credits to federally facilitated exchanges. The case, Halbig v. Sebelius, centers on the portion of the ACA governing the calculation of tax credits. The statute specifies that tax credits are available to most people who purchase a health plan “through an Exchange established by the State under 1311.” (See my earlier posts for a more detailed recap.) About two-thirds of the states, however, declined to establish exchanges. In those states, the federal government stepped in and established...

The Obama administration will continue handing out Obamacare subsidies to federal exchange customers despite a federal court’s ruling Tuesday that the subsidies are illegal. A D.C. Court of Appeals panel ruled Tuesday morning that customers in the 36 states that didn’t establish their own exchange and use HealthCare.gov instead cannot be given premium tax credits, according to the text of the Affordable Care Act itself. (RELATED: Federal Court Takes Down Obamacare: Subsidies In Federal Exchange Are Illegal) But the White House said in response that it will continue handing out the billions of taxpayer dollars in subsidies. White House press...

A federal appeals court on Tuesday dealt a setback to the Affordable Care Act, ruling that premium subsidies provided through the federal health exchange in 36 states are invalid under the writing of the law.Here's the practical effect of the ruling, if it withstands the rest of the legal process: More than 5 million, generally low-income Americans who received tax credits through the federal exchange to purchase health insurance would see their premiums explode.Avalere Health, an independent healthcare firm, released an analysis last week showing that individuals who received premium subsidies for health insurance would see a premium hike of about...

After being without health insurance for two years, Miranda Childe of Hallandale Beach found a plan she could afford with financial aid from the government using the Affordable Care Act’s exchange. Childe, 60, bought an HMO plan from Humana, one of the nation’s largest health insurance companies, and received a membership card in time for her coverage to kick in on May 1st. But instead of being able to pick a primary care physician to coordinate her healthcare, Childe says she repeatedly ran into closed doors from South Florida doctors who are listed in her plan’s provider network but refused...

July 05--Anyone who wants a job next year at Anne Arundel Medical Center -- whether as a surgeon or security guard -- will have to prove they don't smoke or use tobacco. The Annapolis hospital's new hiring policy might be controversial, but it is legal in Maryland and more than half of the United States. And it's a type of job screening that is gaining favor with employers -- from hospitals to companies such as Alaska Airlines -- trying to control rising health costs and cultivate a healthier, more productive workforce. Anne Arundel Medical Center, like a growing number of...

Nevada, buckle up. Over the next few months, you’ll learn how much your health insurance premiums will go up for next year. The early evidence isn’t good — the percentage increase could be in double digits. But that’s nothing compared with what you’ll face in 2017. In May, I released a comprehensive study showing how the Affordable Care Act will likely play out over the next few years. The diagnosis isn’t good. First, the short version. In two years, the ACA’s structural problems will lead to substantial premium increases. Once that happens, Nevadans will likely leave the insurance market in...

Insurance companies operating in New York State's marketplace are expected to ask for double-digit premium hikes next year, according to new filings from the companies. Capital New York reports the average requested increase was 13%. The New York Post reports that number at about 12%. But the bigger insurers are seeking a bigger premium hike — according to Capital, the six most popular plans in New York are requesting an average increase of almost 15%. The Post reports that Excellus Health Plan, which has about 24,000 customers, is requesting a 19.7% hike. MVP Health Plan, which has nearly 33,000 customers,...

Insurance companies that feed into New York’s health exchange system for Obamacare are requesting hikes to patient premiums that are in the double-digits, a New York Post investigation found. The average increase that insurers are considering for 2015 is 12 percent, the newspaper reported. But a large number of these insurers actually want to boost premium payment costs on patients by 20 percent. The rate hikes are curious, the New York Post noted, given the stated goal of Obamacare to rein in runaway medical costs. Insurers, however, blamed the premium increases directly on Obamacare.

WASHINGTON — Federal officials can’t resolve 85 percent of 2.9 million “inconsistencies” on applications for ObamaCare even after nine months of trying, according to new data provided by the administration. Most of the problems involve certifying citizenship and income, key components of the national health plan. But some of the problems are downright nutty. One unidentified state-run marketplace cited situations in which infants and young children were “erroneously identified as incarcerated, according to federal data,” the inspector general for the Health and Human Services Department revealed Tuesday. Just 425,000 problematic applications have been resolved out of 2.9 million that states...

Following the lead of Maryland, Oregon, and, most recently, Massachusetts, Nevada became the fourth state last week to drop its troubled health exchange website after facing serious technological issues and significantly missing the mark on enrollment predictions. Instead of the current enrollment system, Nevada’s Silver State Health Insurance Board unanimously voted to transition to the HealthCare.gov infrastructure for enrollment. This may not be a permanent transition, however, with the state planning to keep its options open for the future, possibly adopting enrollment software that was successful in other state-run exchanges.

Many employers had thought they could shift health costs to the government by sending their employees to a health insurance exchange with a tax-free contribution of cash to help pay premiums, but the Obama administration has squelched the idea in a new ruling.

WASHINGTON — Many employers had thought they could shift health costs to the government by sending their employees to a health insurance exchange with a tax-free contribution of cash to help pay premiums, but the Obama administration has squelched the idea in a new ruling. Such arrangements do not satisfy the health care law, the administration said, and employers may be subject to a tax penalty of $100 a day — or $36,500 a year — for each employee who goes into the individual marketplace.

<p>LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell wants to repeal the Affordable Care Act, but he would not say Friday what that would mean for the 413,000 Kentuckians who have health insurance through the state's health care exchange.</p>

Remember the good old days when the Pentagon was spending [1] only $640 for a toilet seat and $400 for a hammer?Yes, I wrote “only.” (And yes, I understand that the problems at the Defense Department had far more to do with bureaucratic bloat than with genuine fraud or abuse.)It turns out that procurement officers there were, relatively speaking, wise stewards of taxpayer dollars, at least when compared to the Obama administration’s Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. CMS has given the American people the $11,500 paper Obamacare application — and that may be a lowball estimate.On July 1...