Free Republic

If the near-collapse of the ObamaCare computer system were temporary, that would be bad enough. But the real problem isn’t the computer system — it’s the law itself. -snip The problem is as it always was: America’s health-care system is vastly complicated and enormously expensive. But it worked fairly well for most people, with some 80 percent saying they were satisfied. That was before ObamaCare, which twists, squeezes and taxes the whole system as part of an incomprehensible plan to “fix” it. The law won’t work because it can’t. It fails for the same reason that all massive utopian plans...

Talking Points: If ObamaCare's liberal friends are calling its launch a "failure," an "inexcusable mess" and "beyond the pale," why are ObamaCare's Republican enemies completely tongue-tied about this unfolding train wreck? Earlier in the week, former Obama press secretary Robert Gibbs called ObamaCare's launch "excruciatingly embarrassing." The Washington Post's Ezra Klein, one of ObamaCare's most shameless boosters, said it was a "disaster" and that the administration deserves "all the criticism they're getting and more." Jon Stewart suggested that Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius lied about why the law's individual mandate couldn't be delayed. True, these liberals have a...

As the realities of Obamacare continue to sink in, more and more people are getting letters from their health insurance providers telling them that their plans no longer comply with federal requirements under Obamacare. We just brought you the story of “Trick Shot Titus” and his family facing significant increases in the cost of their health care plans. Now, a community blogger on the far-left Daily Kos website has penned a blog post complaining that both he and his wife are facing a nearly 100 percent increase in their monthly premiums. He claims he is canceling his insurance and refuses to pay any “f***ing...

".........I am tired of funding Republicans who campaign against Obamacare then refuse to fight. It’s time to find a new batch of Republicans to actually practice what the current crop preaches. The irony in all of this is that Obamacare’s individual mandate is going to be delayed. Just wait. Liberals are already whispering that it has to happen. They can’t get the computers up and running. People aren’t signing up. They whole process is broken. But they also do not want to cave in to the GOP. So they will wait. Barack Obama will wait for the GOP to surrender,...

".......A day that was supposed to bring Washington to the edge of resolving the fiscal showdown instead seemed to bring chaos and retrenching. And a bitter fight that had begun over stripping money from the president’s signature health care law had essentially descended in the House into one over whether lawmakers and their staff members would pay the full cost of their health insurance premiums, unlike most workers at American companies, and how to restrict the administration from using flexibility to extend the debt limit beyond a fixed deadline.............."

Federal officials considered only one firm to design the Obamacare health insurance exchange website that has performed abysmally since its Oct. 1 debut. Rather than open the contracting process to a competitive public solicitation with multiple bidders, officials in the Department of Health and Human Services’ Centers for Medicare and Medicaid accepted a sole bidder, CGI Federal, the U.S. subsidiary of a Canadian company with an uneven record of IT pricing and contract performance. CMS officials are tight-lipped about why CGI was chosen or how it happened. They also refuse to say if other firms competed with CGI, or if...

Last week, CNN's Wolf Blitzer made waves when he opined that the ongoing problems with ObamaCare might be reason to delay the program. "They had three years to get this ready," he said. "If they weren't fully ready, they should accept the advice Republicans are giving them, delay it for a year, get it ready and make sure it works." Blitzer later said he was only referring to the ObamaCare exchange website. But as the rollout continues, there's increasing evidence that an across-the-board delay would make sense — even to supporters of the law.

"We apologize for the inconvenience. The Marketplace is currently undergoing regularly scheduled maintenance and will be back up Monday 10/7/3013." You read it right, 3013. That was the message on the homepage of the New York state health insurance exchange website this past weekend. Yes, the Affordable Care Act (ACA), popularly known as Obamacare, is going through difficult birth pains, as the marketplace websites went live only to crash. The government is not giving out numbers, but informed observers speculate that very few people have succeeded in signing up for any of the plans so far. --snip-- So, while partisan...

Those who buy some health insurance plans on Georgia’s Obamacare exchange won’t get network access to Hamilton Medical Center and most local doctors. In northwest Georgia, only two carriers are selling health insurance plans on the exchange: Blue Cross Blue Shield of Georgia and Alliant Health Plans. Officials at Alliant say exchange customers will have access to all the doctors and hospitals in their regular network including Hamilton and most local doctors. But Blue Cross Blue Shield officials say exchange customers won’t have access to all the providers in its regular network.

WASHINGTON — As the battle over the health care law was grinding on — Republicans no closer to victory than when they forced the government shutdown — a different fight was rising on a recent Saturday from inside Sharkey's, a bar near the campus of Virginia Tech, 260 miles away. Lured by free beer, gift cards and the chance to win an iPad, 100 students heard a pitch from the young staffers of a group named Generation Opportunity: Obamacare is a bad deal and you should opt out. With enrollment in the insurance marketplaces under way, and tens of millions...

.....The Maryland Health Connection enrolled just more than 1,120 people in the first 10 days — compared with more than 9,000 in Kentucky, which has fewer uninsured, and tens of thousands in California and New York. Other states have had similar problems, and the federal site, which serves 36 states, has been bogged down. But Maryland is now being targeted for criticism by conservatives on Capitol Hill and publications such as the Weekly Standard, which highlighted the fact that consumers could not search Maryland Health Connection to see if their doctors participate in the program. Some Obamacare supporters are also...

<p>"..............Bello and her family were among several thousand Houston-area residents who attended an event at Reliant Center on Saturday to learn about their options under the new federal health care law and to get free medical screenings, flu shots and groceries.</p>

The battle for universal healthcare is not over. This is not because of the reason you might suspect – that Republicans will obstinately endeavor to obstruct Obamacare in every way they can (though that seems to be the case). Instead, even after the smoke clears from the government shutdown (presumably with the law intact), the battle over universal healthcare will still not be over, but for a more fundamental reason: Obamacare, whatever its advantages (and despite the right’s worst fears), does not create a system of universal healthcare. Now first, to be clear, this is not to say that Obama’s...

The federal government wants to reduce the number of Americans diagnosed each year with cancer. But not by better preventive care or healthier living. Instead, the government wants to redefinethe term “cancer” so that fewer conditions qualify as a true cancer. What does this mean for ordinary Americans — and should we be concerned? On July 29, 2013, a working group for the National Cancer Institute (the main government agency for cancer research) published a paper proposing that the term “cancer” be reserved for lesions with a reasonable likelihood of killing the patient if left untreated. Slower growing tumors would...

Behold the Hollywood bubble. This week, actress Olivia Wilde starred in an Obamacare propaganda video targeting young people. "You can sign up for health care online in 10 minutes," her co-propagandist chirped as she cheered. Cue the laugh track. Back on planet Earth, Americans nationwide are still struggling with the $634 million online health care exchange nightmare. One reader asked me to share his story. Like me and 22 million other citizens in the private individual market for health insurance, he recently received his You Can't Keep It cancellation notice. Here's what happened when he went online to find alternatives....

NRO on Shutdown:Jonathan Strong �@j_strong 25m Cantor spokesman says Rep Joe Crowley engaged in physical altercation w GOP staffer Joseph Crowley NY-D-14th - Vice Chair of the Democrat Caucus

A trio of centrist Senate Republicans is pushing a plan to reopen the government for six months, extend the debt ceiling until Jan. 31, 2014 and make reforms to ObamaCare. Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) is spearheading the proposal along with Sens. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska). It would address Tea-Party conservatives concerns over Medicare by delaying the medical device tax for two years and creating an income verification program under the Affordable Care Act to ensure only eligible individuals receive subsidies on the insurance exchanges. The delay of the Medical Device Tax would be paid for by extending...

NORFOLK Two former Sentara Healthcare nurse's aides improperly accessed the personal information of about 3,700 patients as part of an elaborate identity theft scheme that netted more than $116,000, according to hospital officials. Sentara Healthcare's chief privacy officer, Greg Burkhart, announced the scope of the data breach Friday after the second of the two men pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court to conspiracy to defraud the government. Although court documents indicate fewer than 250 people fell victim to the scheme, Burkhart said federal investigators have forwarded to the hospital evidence the two men had information on thousands of patients. "We...

Appearing on MSNBC on Friday, Congressman Peter King continued his epic verbal assault on Ted Cruz — and, to a lesser extent, Rand Paul — by describing the Texas Senator as a “RINO” (Republican in name only) and a “fraud.” Speaking with MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell, King called the ongoing government shutdown “the strategy of Ted Cruz” and wondered aloud “why more Republicans around the country didn’t join me in denouncing Ted Cruz” before the shutdown began. “We cannot allow our party to be taken over by the likes of Ted Cruz and Rand Paul,” King continued, describing Cruz and Paul...

On health care, the president's pile of broken promises keeps getting higher. Consider this gem from Aug. 20, 2009: “Let's be clear about the fact that nobody has proposed anything close to a government takeover of health care.” Well, yes, somebody did. President Obama is now well on his way to orchestrating the federal government's takeover of Americans' health care. Commandeering the resources of major federal departments, particularly the Department of Health and Human Services and the IRS, the administration and its allies in Congress have created numerous federal bureaus, commissions and programs and have issued thousands of pages of...

Earlier this week, bad news arrived in mailboxes across New Jersey, as people discovered their health-insurance plans had been wiped out by ObamaCare. Plans that didn’t measure up to the mandates imposed by the Affordable Care Act were being canceled, despite President Obama’s infamous vow that “if you like your health care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health care plan, period. No one will take it away, no matter what.” How many folks in New Jersey were affected by this latest failure of Obama’s campaign promises? Oh, only about eight hundred thousand or so. The Star-Ledger reports this...

When President Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act on March 23, 2010, it was the starting gun for a massive federal effort to get the new system up and running. The administration had deliberately allowed for three and a half years for the launch, October 1, 2013. That’s a long time. It’s 1,288 days. You would think in that length of time, we could have brought a system online that would not be bedeviled with “glitches.” And more glitches. By comparison, FDR had 912 days from the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941, to D-Day,...

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...

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius had a front-row view of the problems plaguing the website that the government established to allow people to shop for health insurance under Obamacare. Sebelius and Steelers Chairman Dan Rooney were at an enrollment and education event on Thursday at Heinz Field to promote Healthcare.gov, but people who showed up encountered problems in signing up for coverage on the website. Unable to handle heavy online traffic and riddled with technical glitches, the website has been a source of criticism of the Obama administration and the new Affordable Care Act since its start on...

A classroom of 14 and 15-year-old Illinois high school students was assigned the task of deciding the fate of ten fictional characters in an exercise that critics called a lesson in death panels. The assignment was part of a sociology unit for freshmen and sophomore students at St. Joseph-Ogden High School in St. Joseph, just east of Champaign. The story was first reported by Champion News. The lesson involves 10 people who are in desperate need of kidney dialysis. “Unless they receive this procedure, they will die,” the lesson states. But there’s a problem. The local hospital only has enough...

It's gotten little attention, but it's true: The individual mandate in the Affordable Care Act requires all Americans to have health insurance or face penalties, but members of medical-sharing ministries are exempt from the individual mandate that will be enforced beginning in 2015. It's there because of the work of then-Congressmen Tom Perriello, a Virginia Democrat and Sens. Max Baucus, a Montana Democrat, and Republican Charles Grassley of Iowa, who fought to add the exemption to the law. It's the same principle that allowed for the Amish to be exempted from the individual mandate—with the crucial difference that it's a...

Canadian provincial health officials last year fired the parent company of CGI Federal, the prime contractor for the problem-plagued Obamacare health exchange websites, the Washington Examiner has learned. CGI Federal’s parent company, Montreal-based CGI Group, was officially terminated in September 2012 by an Ontario government health agency after the firm missed three years of deadlines and failed to deliver the province’s flagship online medical registry. The online registry was supposed to be up and running by June 2011. Officials at the U.S. government's Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services awarded six technology contracts worth $87 million to CGI Federal for...

.........Ryan’s office said that merely convening a conference or agreeing on a budget would not be enough to reopen the government or raise the debt ceiling, however. “A budget resolution doesn’t have the force of law. So passing a budget resolution wouldn’t reopen the federal government. And it wouldn’t raise the debt ceiling, either. To open the government, pay our bills today, and make sure we can pay our bills tomorrow, we will need to do a lot more,” House Budget spokesman William Allison said. A leading Democrat slammed a budget conference under the threat of a continued shutdown and...

Health Reform: The White House says it will fix all the ObamaCare glitches and soon everything will be working fine. That's about as believable as all the other ObamaCare promises. If anything, problems are getting worse. Six months ago, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told lawmakers that everything was on track for a successful ObamaCare launch on Oct. 1. Now, after a week of massive technology meltdowns that even the ObamaCare-backing USA Today called "an epic screw-up," Sebelius wants us to believe this is actually good news: Traffic to the site exceeded "even optimists' expectations." And all that...

WASHINGTON -- A majority of physician practices (55.5%) hold an "unfavorable" or "very unfavorable" view of the impact the Affordable Care Act's (ACA) health insurance exchanges will have on them, a survey of more than 1,000 group practices showed. Almost as many (40.2%) said they were still evaluating their options or planning not to participate with insurance products sold on the exchanges, according to a survey that the Medical Group Management Association (MGMA) released Monday at its annual meeting. Those still weighing their options cited the risk of low reimbursement rates (85%), financial liability during a 90-day grace period for...

Crucial to the success of the Affordable Care Act's (ACA) health insurance exchanges is the participation of 2.7 million uninsured 18-35 year olds, sometimes referred to as the “young invincibles.” With lower than average incomes and generally good health, “young invincibles” are more likely to forego health coverage than others, or be attracted to plans offering basic coverage at minimal prices. Due to the ACA’s sweeping market reforms, rates for low-premium plans have increased exponentially between 2013 and 2014. In fact, on average, a healthy 30 year old male nonsmoker will see his lowest cost insurance option increase 260 percent....

The employer mandate for health insurance has been delayed until 2015, and the individual mandate is under attack in the House and may eventually be delayed as well. These mandates are at the very heart of the ACA and are based on the quite absurd notion that lack of universal insurance coverage is the biggest problem facing American health care. If only… The biggest problem facing American health care is that we are paying drastically more than any other country in the world for our care, but our outcomes on average are markedly inferior. The single most important reason for...

Lord Deben, chairman of the Committee on Climate Change, condemned the media for seeking to balance climate change proponents with sceptics. He warned that a number of climate sceptics were given too much coverage, and said the media should recognise that a balanced report should have "some rationality" within it. Evidence in favour of climate change is so strong, he said, that it could be compared to evidence linking smoking to cancer or evidence that the Moon Landing was not staged. He said: “When you’re discussing the science of climate change, you really shouldn’t go off to Australia because you...

Irony: While President Obama refuses to consider any delay of ObamaCare, his liberal base is waking up to the fact that "free" health care is awfully expensive. And that they're the ones getting stuck with the bill. This would be funny if it weren't so hazardous to the country. The news is full of stories of people — many of them ObamaCare supporters — who are only now discovering what Democrats managed to impose on the country. A story in the San Francisco Chronicle, "Health Insurance Shoppers Suffer Sticker Shock," notes how one resident, Shelly Ross, "was looking forward to"...

.............For President Barack Obama, glitches involving his signature legislation are an unwelcome twist. A devoted smartphone user, his political campaigns were models of high-tech efficiency. Yet the problems that have surfaced so far with healthcare.gov don't even involve the site's more complicated functions. Allowing consumers to browse anonymously was one of the recommendations of Enroll UX 2014, a $3 million, 14-month project to design an optimal user experience for the insurance marketplaces. The well-known San Francisco design firm IDEO led the project and undertook extensive consumer interviews to create an easy-to-use site. "The first thing people said to us is,...

The three adult children of radio host Casey Kasem have filed a legal petition to gain control of his health care. The filing says Kasem is suffering from advanced Parkinson’s disease and is being isolated from his children, friends and family members by his wife. The petition for conservatorship filed Monday brought a long-running family feud into the courts. The applicants, Julie, Kerri and Mike Kasem, contend that Kasem’s wife Jean refuses to tell them the name of their father’s primary care physician and they are unable to check on his condition. …

Maryland's Health Connection, the state's Obamacare marketplace, has been plagued by delays in the first days of open enrollment. If users are able to endure long page-loading delays, they are presented with the website's privacy policy, a ubiquitous fine-print feature on websites that often go unread. Nevertheless, users are asked to check off a box that they agree to the terms. [snip] .......Any information that you provide to us in your application will be used only to carry out the functions of Maryland Health Connection. The only exception to this policy is that we may share information provided in your...

As a candidate for president, Barack Obama sold his signature universal health care plan with the promise that it would "cut the cost of a typical family's premium by up to $2,500 a year." Now that the Affordable Care Act exchanges are open for business, voters are finding that the biggest problem with Obamacare isn't that some Web sites crashed last week but that the Obama promise of big savings for the average family was too good to be true. Now that the exchanges are open for business, people who already have individual coverage have something new to not like:...

[snip] ...Bruce Cain, a political science professor at Stanford University, said the current crisis has played out differently from the last government shutdown in 1996, when Democrats were judged the clear winners. “It’s probably very hard for the average citizen to figure out exactly how much blame to put to one party versus the other, but they get the sense at this point that it’s more the Republicans’ fault,” he said. “There’s a lot of confusion out here about that and I think Republicans have done a pretty good job of fighting back and making it seem like the intransigence...

Don’t look now, but as Obamacare’s critics are focusing incessantly on the abortive rollout of the law’s health-care exchanges,the Left is moving the goalposts in the broader debate—and rather spectacularly, too.[snip]New York’s Jonathan Chait,meanwhile, chimed in with the rather amazing claim that “it is true—and nobody has ever denied this—that the hypothetical 25-year-old male will pay higher insurance premiums under Obamacare,” and then proceeded to explain that this was a net positive because,over the course of one’s life, the benefits one would reap from the system would outweigh the losses. Chait is,of course, entirely within his rights to argue this....

Six days into the launch of insurance marketplaces created by the new health-care law, the federal government acknowledged for the first time Sunday it needed to fix design and software problems that have kept customers from applying online for coverage. The Obama administration said last week that an unanticipated surge of Web traffic caused most of the problems and was a sign of high demand by people seeking to buy coverage under the new law. But federal officials said Sunday the online marketplace needed design changes, as well as more server capacity to improve efficiency on the federally run exchange...

On CNN, former tennis player Martina Navratilova praised "one good thing" about growing up under Communism: "we had government health care." Navratilova slammed those who shut down the government "because we don't want for people to be healthy? We don't want people to be taken care of? It's crazy."

An Arizona man with an incurable form of leukemia has received notice from his insurance company that his plan is being terminated due to regulations from the “Affordable Care Act.” -snip Back in 2006, he found out he had an incurable form of leukemia that requires ongoing treatment until he dies. In 2012, his treatment bill was more than $350,000. But because of his insurance, his out-of-pocket was only $4,500. That’s about to change because Michael just got a letter from his insurance carrier saying as of January 1, he would be dropped from coverage because of new regulations under...

Obamacare- What happens if I don't pay the penalty?

ORLANDO -- Since its launch on Oct. 1, the kinks in the website for people to sign up for insurance through the Affordable Care Act continue to get sorted out. Some are finding out there is information needed on hand before getting insurance. The process can be tougher than signing up for a new credit card. “They knew that I purchased pet insurance? Wow,” said insurance representative Michael Grace as he followed the steps to sign up. Grace has been advising people on new insurance plans available through the Affordable Care Act. The process is becoming clearer now that more...

One mystery of the government shutdown is why Republicans are so apoplectic about the Affordable Care Act, a piece of legislation that aims to make health insurance more affordable for millions of Americans. One theory is that the Republican leadership is scared that Obamacare actually won't be as bad as they have been saying it will be — that, in fact, Americans (including Republican constituents) will quite like it. If Americans like Obamacare, the theory goes, this will be a big blow to the Republicans' big sales pitch over the past 30 years, which is that more government is always...

FB Healthcare.gov FB PageI know a lot here frown on FB, however, if you have an account and wish some leisurely reading of some very pissed off Americans, check out the comments section of the page. Smackdowns galore for your viewing pleasure.

On Thursday, the government's official Obamacare Facebook page was riddled with people expressing sticker shock over the government's high cost premiums after struggling for hours to wade through the technical failures vexing Obamacare exchanges all across the country. "I am so disappointed," wrote one woman. "These prices are outrageous and there are huge deductibles. No one can afford this!" The comment received 169 "likes." "There is NO WAY I can afford it," said one commenter after using the Kaiser Subsidy Calculator. "Heck right now I couldn't afford an extra 10$ [sic] a month...and oh apparently I make to [sic] much...

You can go to alternate free exchanges and without registering find the cost of an ACA plan for you. Many of us buy insurance in the individual market (self employed). If you follow the link above, it explains how to compare plans between 2013 and 2014. Please quote a plan for 2014 and compare it to your existing plan or a 2013 plan from the website. Then twitter it with the instructions explained in the link. Then we can all get a Transparent display of the real cost. And maybe, if enough of us do this, it will help more...

HOUSTON — Thanks to Texas' new senator, Dale Huls is out of a job - at least for now. Yet Huls has never been prouder that he voted for him. "Without Ted Cruz this doesn't happen," said Huls, a NASA systems engineer who was among roughly 3,000 federal employees furloughed from Houston's Johnson Space Center after tea party Republicans triggered the partial government shutdown. "This is something Americans have to get used to," said Huls. "Even if it affects your livelihood, you've got to stand up." Perhaps more than anywhere else, Texas embodies the factors behind the shutdown: big government...