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Proposed changes include: -- Increasing enrollment fees for retirees under age 65 in the TRICARE Prime health plan, using a tiered approach based on retired pay that requires senior-grade retirees with higher retired pay to pay more and junior-grade retirees less; -- Establishing a new enrollment fee and increasing deductibles for the TRICARE Standard and TRICARE Extra plans; -- Establishing a new, tiered enrollment fee for the TRICARE-for-Life program for retirees 65 and older; -- Increasing pharmacy co-pays while offering incentive costs for use of mail order delivery and generic medicines; -- Indexing fees, deductibles, pharmacy co-pays, and catastrophic caps...

Michigan State University is now mandating that its students be covered by health care insurance, a requirement being phased in with the current freshman class. The mandate has caught the attention of some in the Michigan House of Representatives. A Feb. 15 hearing before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Higher Education has been scheduled to examine the issue. “We're really concerned about this," said House Subcommittee Vice Chair Rep. Kevin Cotter, R-Mt. Pleasant. "This policy is not uncommon with private colleges, but it hasn't been the policy at state universities. A big concern is that MSU would just be the...

Remember, the "compromise�" is that insurance companies will foot the bill for contraception themselves so that religious institutions technically aren't paying for it. That's a minor concession given that the plan will still cover birth control — and it's a nonexistent concession if premiums end up rising to pay for the contraception — but that was the compromise. One wrinkle: What happens if the religious institution is the insurance company, i.e. if it self-insures? Surely they get a conscience exemption in that case, right?Right? House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi said Thursday morning that the government should require self-insured religious institutions,...

"This constitutional trifecta — the state invading the autonomy of religious institutions, private companies and the individual citizen — should not surprise. It is what happens when the state takes over one-sixth of the economy."

What do a breast-implant scandal in Europe and the latest news about Paula Deen, the Southern-fried American chef, have in common? Both demonstrate, in their own ways, what’s wrong with Western health care. The free market alone can’t fix health care—but neither can the government. Instead, government must play a limited role and stick to it, allowing the market to work. That’s not happening today. In Europe, tens of thousands of women have learned that they received industrial-grade silicon—the kind used in mattress filling—for their breast implants. As Britain’s Daily Mail reports, Frenchman Jean-Claude Mas, a butcher’s son, launched his...

Obama administration concludes healthcare law waiver reviewBy Julian Pecquet - 02/16/12 04:12 PM ET The Obama administration on Thursday denied Wisconsin's request for a waiver from the healthcare law's medical loss ratio, while partially approving North Carolina's. With the two decisions, the Department of Health and Human Services has concluded its review of the 17 states that have requested a waiver from the law's requirement that individual market insurance plans spend at least 80 percent of premiums on medical care or give customers rebates. HHS has rejected 10 requests and approved modified applications from seven states. Wisconsin wanted a lower...

Candidates often say things when polling in the single digits that come back to haunt them when they start leading the polls. Last October, Rick Santorum gave an interview with an Evangelical blog called Caffeinated Thoughts, in which he said contraception is “not okay,” and that this would be a public policy issue he would tackle as President. In particular, he said he would “get rid of any idea that you have to have abortion coverage or contraceptive coverage” as a government policy.

The private medical records of more than 21,000 hospital patients at two Orange County hospitals may have been inadvertently made public online. St. Jude Medical Center in Fullerton and Mission Hospital in Laguna Beach -- as well as an additional 9,000 patients in Northern California -- were affected by the security glitch, which allowed people to search and find what were supposed to be private medical records, including names, lab results, medications, allergies, body mass index and demographic information, KTLA-TV reported. ....The security breach went on for an entire year, until an attorney for one patient raised a red flag....

Rep. Scott Garrett (R., N.J.) had a nice gambit just now in a hearing with President Obama’s acting OMB director Jeffrey Zients. First he asked Zients if the Obama budget imposes any new taxes on Americans making less than $200,000. When Zients answered that it did not, Garrett followed up by asking if an individual making less than $200,000 a year opted not to carry health insurance, in contravention of the Affordable Care Act, is the fine associated with that decision a tax? After some hemming and hawing, Zients answered that the fine did not constitute an tax.

‘It’s not about contraception,” thundered GOP presidential contender Rick Santorum. “It’s about economic liberty. It’s about freedom of speech. It’s about freedom of religion. It’s about government control of your lives. And it’s got to stop!” He was talking, of course, about the Obama administration’s recent decisions first to force large religious employers to pay for birth control and “preventive services” (including sterilization and abortifacient drugs), and then to demand that the relevant insurance companies provide it for “free” instead. The “accommodation” — the White House rightly refuses to call it a compromise — is a farce. If you’re paying...

In 1849 and then again in 1852, the Catholic bishops of the United States petitioned the Holy See to grant the archbishops of Baltimore the title of “primate” of the Catholic Church in the United States: an honorific, to be sure, but one that implied that the head of America’s oldest Catholic diocese would enjoy a de facto preeminence as leader of American Catholicism. But the Vatican, nervous that an American “primate” would assert himself in some fashion against Rome, declined to bestow the title (although, interestingly, it didn’t cavil about the title “primate” being given to the archbishop of...

Obamacare -- Just Another Democrat Brick in the 2012 WallBy Patricia Campion 9 hrs ago **SNIP** When the dust settled, Democrats staggered from the election rubble to realize they had received the worst political drubbing in 70 years. On the brighter side, considering the flaccid economy, a growing record deficit, the first credit rating downgrade in United States history, continued stagnant unemployment, having a record number of Americans living below poverty level and dependent on government assistance, a growing list of Solyndra-esque failures, Fast and Furious, the tenuous state of Obama's foreign policy, gas prices rising 83 percent during Obama's...

POLITICO's Juana Summers reports from Rick Santorum's event in Boise, Idaho: Santorum on Tuesday said President Barack Obama and his administration are "elitist snobs," for not supporting Rep Paul Ryan's healthcare plan. The former Pennsylvania senator criticized Obama for not supporting the Ryan plan,and saying it's equivalent to "throwing Grandma off a cliff." "They don't believe you can make these decisions," Santorum said, "because if you were allowed to make these decisions you would obviously jump off a cliff." "Don't you see how they see you," Santorum asked more than 1,000 attendees. "How they look down their noses at average...

WASHINGTON, Feb. 14 (UPI) -- Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said he'll let a bill that would repeal the White House's hot-button birth control mandate be brought up for a vote. Reid had criticized Senate Republicans for offering what he called "extraneous" amendments to the Senate's transportation bill but then said he had agreed to a vote on contraception mandate, The Hill reported. Read more: http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2012/02/14/Birth-control-mandate-repeal-will-get-vote/UPI-78731329257213/#ixzz1mP2m2JPz

First, he came for the General Motors bondholders, but the religious leaders were not GM bondholders, so they did not speak up. Then he came for the oil companies, but they were not oil company executives, and again they did not speak up. Next, he came for control of the nation’s health care system, and again they saw no threat — in fact, many of them supported his plan. We were told we had to pass the plan to could find out what was in it. Then he came for our freedom of religion, and we found out what was...

BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS, February 13, 2012, (LifeSiteNews.com) – As politicians in both political parties debate Mitt Romney’s role in implementing a 2005 statute requiring Catholic hospitals in Massachusetts to dispense Plan B - an “emergency contraceptive” that studies and the pill’s manufacturer have suggested can cause early abortions - a leader in the state’s pro-life movement puts the blame squarely on the former governor. “The injury to the conscience rights of Catholic hospitals was not done so much so much by the church’s ideological enemies on the Left but by the Romney administration,” C.J. Doyle, executive director of the Catholic Action...

For those of us who emigrated from those nations whose societies suffered not only overwhelming destruction, but a devastating loss of freedom and liberty, we can only warn our fellow citizens that the country is going down a road that is becoming eerily familiar. It is not hyperbole to say that we see someone in the White House whose character reflects the worst and most dangerous traits to be found in a national leader, and we are stunned that the majority of the American people do not understand what is happening to the most successful society in the history of...

On January 20, 2012, the Obama administration announced a clarification – one of many – on its requirement that all insurance policies must cover contraceptives, sterilization, abortions, and abortion-causing drugs (such as RU-486). From the beginning, there had been a foolish assumption that Obamacare would not cover abortion – Bart Stupak and others even voted for it on the president’s commitment that it would not. As if anyone with an ounce of sense would ever believe that this president would ever take a position contrary to one of his party’s most dependable and key constituents, the abortion lobby. When, over...

According To This Study You can do as well working one week a month at minimum wage as you can working at a $60,000-a-year, full-time, high-stress job President Obama in 2008 tried very hard to vilify "rich people" making over $250,000 per year. Since he desperately needs more than those middle class business owners, he has now upped the ante and is charging harder than ever after millionaires and billionaires, even though he has already received sizable donations from millionaire Wall Streeters. They can rest assure that Obama will be paying them back with interest if he is reelected. This...

Full Article less graphics EWTN Sues Obama Admin EWTN SUES Obama Admin In a remarkable decision, EWTN is suing the Obama Administration over the Contraception Mandate. This extraordinary act, as well as near unanimous outcry from other Faiths, is sparking a Religious Liberty controversy that the Obama Administration, seemed willing to take on. "We had no other option but to take this to the courts," says EWTN President and CEO Michael P. Warsaw. "Under the HHS mandate, EWTN is being forced by the government to make a choice: either we provide employees coverage for contraception, sterilization and abortion-inducing drugs and...

Two of the nation’s most prominent attorneys general sparred Thursday over federal health care reform in a precursor to next month’s U.S. Supreme Court battle on President Obama’s signature legislative achievement. Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, a staunch critic of the Affordable Care Act, and his Massachusetts counterpart Martha Coakley, whose state’s health care law served as a model for the federal law, offered vastly different visions for how the high court will ultimately decide the case in June during a forum at the National Press Club. Cuccinelli, a Tea Party darling, predictably opined the Supreme Court would ultimately rule...

Illinois Democratic Rep. Michael Quigley said the Catholic Church should support President Barack Obama’s decision to implement the “mainstream” rule. California Democratic Rep. Xavier Becerra, a Catholic, called on the Catholic bishops to stop speaking out against the rule. “I hope that the bishops in my church will stop telling all the parishioners who believe in the Catholic faith that this is a violation of their religious freedom,” said Becerra.

The White House struggled Wednesday to contain the growing uproar over its birth-control mandate, with Democrats peeling off one by one in what has become an increasingly divisive election-year controversy. Still, one senior Democratic aide said the plan has put some lawmakers in an “awkward position.” “A lot of Democrats just don’t want to talk about it and be in the position of defending it,” the aide said. “It’s horrible timing.”

Sorry, Ann. I have adored you as a commentator, as you know, and appreciate your kind words about me in the past. But in discussing the individual mandate in your piece last week, "Three Cheers for RomneyCare," you honestly don't know what you are talking about. In the process, you are transgressing on my own work and past policy achievements, and grossly undermining the policy and political case against Obamacare. Read on, and I will explain in full. It was me, working for and with conservative health policy guru John Goodman, who first rang the alarm bell for conservatives over...

Killer material in Minnesota on the eve of the big vote in the midwest. I tried to find longer clips online but these snippets from CNN are the best I can do. ABC: “Gov. Romney is dead wrong on the issue of the day and he should not be the nominee of the party,” Santorum said in a hotel ballroom across the street from the hospital, adding the issue of health care is “central to our country, central to this race specifically why Gov. Romney is absolutely incapable of making the case against Obamacare successfully.”…“The problem is, we have a...

The office of the Chief of Chaplains of the U.S. Army forbade Catholic chaplains from reading, in Sunday masses, a letter about a controversial Obamacare mandate from the Catholic Church’s military archbishop. The move, which amounts to the head of Roman Catholic military chaplains calling the Obama administration un-American, will set the stage for a philosophical conflict between Catholic soldiers and their commander-in-chief. In the forbidden letter, Archbishop Timothy Broglio encouraged Catholics in military congregations to disobey a federal government mandate — part of President Obama’s health care overhaul — requiring Catholic employers to provide health coverage that includes “sterilization...

Pelosi: 'I Don't Want To Pay For It...Surcharge' The Rich For Doctors Visits and Unemployment Benefits http://www.breitbart.tv/pelosi-on-unemployment-benefits-extension-id-rather-not-pay-for-it/

Tennessee and Georgia resist health care reformby Mariann Martin published Sunday, February 5th, 2012 With less than a year before state legislation must be in place to implement a critical part of national health care reform, Tennessee and Georgia, along with 18 other states, have not made substantial progress toward meeting federal deadlines, according to reports from several nonpartisan organizations. In states with conservative leadership, such as Georgia and Tennessee, the deadlines have put state leaders in a Catch-22. They hope the U.S. Supreme Court will overturn the Affordable Care Act this spring or summer or that the election of...

When the administration announced earlier this month that it would stick to its decision to require religiously-affiliated employers to provide their employees with insurance that covers contraception, the national Catholic reaction was, to put it mildly, less than supportive. All across the country, Catholic bishops wrote and read letters to their flocks that read, “We cannot — we will not — comply with this unjust law.�Today, a CNSNews.com reporter asked Nancy Pelosi whether she would stand with her fellow Catholics and oppose the law or whether she would stand with the administration and support it. The former Speaker of the...

During the debate over ObamaCare, more than one critic charged that government panels would make life and death decisions affecting patient care. Now it seems the Obama administration is contemplating something that is even scarier: doctors would be given immunity from malpractice lawsuits, but only if they practice medicine according to government guidelines. The pressure would be enormous. Have you ever met a doctor who wanted to be sued? The original "death panel" charges were not entirely baseless. Former Senator Tom Daschle, who wrote the blueprint for health reform, advocated a "comparative effectiveness" agency that would decide which medical procedures...

1st Amendment: Catholic bishops on Sunday issued a response to ObamaCare's mandates on providing contraception in violation of conscience and religious freedom. The message was simple: We will not comply. It was hardly a profile in courage when the Obama administration, hoping to kick the issue down the road past the November election, announced last Friday that Catholic hospitals and other religious institutions will have an extra year to comply with a new requirement that most health plans provide contraceptive benefits at no cost to their members. On Sunday, America's Catholic bishops in an open letter to their parishioners and...

| Feb 02, 2012 | Terry Jeffrey Posted on 02/02/2012 7:05:30 AM PST by Dr. Brian Kopp Romney Told Catholic Hospitals to Administer Abortion PillsTerry Jeffrey TownHallFeb 02, 2012A defining moment in Mitt Romney's post-pro-life-conversion political career came in his third year as governor of Massachusetts, when he decided Catholic hospitals would be required under his interpretation of a new state law to give rape victims a drug that can induce abortions. Romney announced this decision -- saying it was the "right thing for hospitals" to do -- just two days after he had taken the opposite position. The story...

I am a medical sociologist, which means I study the health of whole societies. I've spent more than 20 years studying the best possible ways to address alcohol problems in societies -- what works and what doesn't to protect people from harm. I work as a professor in the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine and at the UCSF Clinical and Translational Science Institute. This allows me to connect with other scientists who come from very different backgrounds but who want to work together on big problems -- think of a Manhattan Project, only one focused on protecting...

Ann Coulter wrote an article today called “Three Cheers for RomneyCare” where she defended Mitt Romney and RomneyCare. Mark Levin decided to read her article, fresh off the presses, on the air and go through it line by line, “reeducating” her on why RomneyCare is not only wrong, but a big problem for Mitt Romney and all of Massachusetts. This is the rebuttal in its entirety. It runs 30 minutes: Here is the MP3 direct link: Levin MP3

Ann Coulter wrote an article today called “Three Cheers for RomneyCare” where she defended Mitt Romney and RomneyCare. Mark Levin decided to read her article, fresh off the presses, on the air and go through it line by line, “reeducating” her on why RomneyCare is not only wrong, but a big problem for Mitt Romney and all of Massachusetts. This is the rebuttal in its entirety. It runs 30 minutes:

The Republican-led House on Wednesday voted to repeal a financially troubled part of the 2010 health care law that was designed to provide affordable long-term care insurance. The House vote comes months after the Obama administration suspended the Community Living Assistance Services and Support program, known as the CLASS Act. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius in October said she was unable to find a way to make the program financially solvent. Still, the White House has said it does not support repealing the program, under which workers would pay a monthly premium during their careers and collect a...

Ronald Reagan’s 1961 Coffeecup speech – full text Now back in 1927 an American socialist, Norman Thomas, six times candidate for president on the Socialist Party ticket, said the American people would never vote for socialism. But he said under the name of liberalism the American people will adopt every fragment of the socialist program. There are many ways in which our government has invaded the precincts of private citizens, the method of earning a living. Our government is in business to the extent over owning more than 19,000 businesses covering different lines of activity. This amounts to a fifth...

Barbara Boxer has taken to the pages of the Huffington Post to explain why the administration’s mandate that all insurers provide birth control, including drugs that induce abortion, advances rather than restricts, religious freedom. If you like Orwell’s Newspeak, Boxer’s writing is a thing of beauty and will certainly be a joy forever as a model of obfuscation and deceit. I think it deserves a nice fisking, I really do:

Yesterday in the Huffington Post, Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., taught us an important lesson: Health care can be free! For example, she wrote, “When President Obama announced that because of health care reform, birth control would soon be available for free in new insurance plans, you would have expected universal approval.” She also wrote, “Finally, (Obama’s) decision will help working families by giving them access to free birth control.”

Here’s a bold prediction for the new year. By 2020, the American health insurance industry will be extinct. Insurance companies will be replaced by accountable care organizations — groups of doctors, hospitals and other health care providers who come together to provide the full range of medical care for patients. Already, most insurance companies barely function as insurers. Most non-elderly Americans — or 60 percent of Americans with employer-provided health insurance — work for companies that are self-insured. In these cases it is the employer, not the insurance company, that assumes most of the risk of paying for the medical...

Romney will not distance himself from RomneyCare. Here's why: Romney wants to impose RomneyCare on all 50 states!! That is absolutely correct. He's already recruited Florida's Attorney General Pam Bondi as his healthcare czar to get it done. Romney claims that he wants to repeal ObamaCare, but he's already lined up Pam Bondi to head up his national healthcare task force to push RomneyCare on all 50 states. After all that has been said and written about socialized healthcare and individual mandates, Romney and Bondi, still LOVE RomneyCare and should he become president will attempt to impose it on ALL...

Republican Former Massachusetts Governor Willard Mitt Romney and Bain Capital and Numerous Health Care Corporations Today's Wall Street Journal summarized the investments made by Bain Capital, a venture capital and private equity firm lead by Governor Romney, The Wall Street Journal, aiming for a comprehensive assessment, examined 77 businesses Bain invested in while Mr. Romney led the firm from its 1984 start until early 1999, to see how they fared during Bain's involvement and shortly afterward. Among the findings: 22% either filed for bankruptcy reorganization or closed their doors by the end of the eighth year after Bain first invested,...

The Beacon Hill Institute study found that, on average, Romneycare: •    cost the Bay State 18,313 jobs; •    drove up total health insurance costs in Massachusetts by $4.311 billion; •    slowed the growth of disposable income per person by $376; and •    reduced investment in Massachusetts by $25.06 million. And remember that RomneyCare relied on FedGovCare as a sturdy crutch: “He also noted the state’s health-care costs have been heavily subsidized by billions of dollars in federal aid through a Medicaid waiver program.”

Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi who's fighting to repeal ObamaCare appeared on Greta, tonight, defending RomneyCare. She says Romney’s health care plan is not the same as ObamaCare and, in fact, Romney's plan reduces costs. She goes on to say that Romney wants all states to impose similar laws (including mandates) and that she and is all for it. She went on to explain that she's going to be on Romney’s Health Care Advisory Team when he’s president! What this means is that while Romney may say he wants to repeal ObamaCare, he actually agrees with it. He believes that...

Rick Santorum supported the idea of "requir[ing] individuals to buy health insurance" when he ran for U.S. Senate in 1994, according to a local feature article comparing the candidates during that election cycle. "Santorum and [his opponent] would require individuals to buy health insurance rather than forcing employers to pay for employee benefits," The Morning Call (Pa.) reported in 1994. The Morning Call noted that Santorum had also called for a MediSave account and had opposed so-called "sin" taxes. If true, the distinction between requiring people to buy health insurance and an individual mandate might be lost on the voters...

Under attack for his healthcare plan in Massachusetts, Mitt Romney tried to downplay the issue. Responding to attacks over his healthcare plan in Massachusetts, former Gov. Mitt Romney said the plan is “not worth getting angry about” in Thursday’s Republican debate. Former Sen. Rick Santorum (Penn.) hit Romney over a plan that has many similarities to President Obama’s Affordable Care Act, often refered to by Republicans as "Obamacare." RELATED ARTICLES Santorum hits Romney on healthcare

Population increase is a natural sign of political health. By that measure, Baltimore has been sick a long time. Six straight decades of depopulation have reduced the city by a third. The "experts" assert that immigration is the key to a population rebound. In his Persian Letters, Montesquieu reflects on the fate of the great cities of Constantinople and Isfahan: "People, attracted for a thousand reasons, ought to flock to them from every direction. Yet they are decaying internally and would long since have perished, had not their sovereigns in almost every century caused entire new nations to enter and...

We got an email from a reader who reminded us of Newt Gingrich’s 2007 book “A Contract with the Earth,” full of the usual green stuff. I imagine Gingrich hasn’t mentioned the book since for good reason. He “repented” of his global warming hugging TV spot with Pelosi, but only after being criticized for it. If criticized for the book, he’d probably do the same. What that means, we will leave you to figure out.

Obama to shift strategy on healthcare in 2012By Julian Pecquet - 01/22/12 07:10 PM ET President Obama, who offered to work with Republicans last year to revamp the healthcare reform law, is expected to adopt a much different tone in Tuesday’s State of the Union address. Bruised from the huge GOP electoral gains in 2010, Obama said he wanted to work in a bipartisan fashion on healthcare in last year’s speech. Republicans scoffed at what was called an olive branch, and worked to repeal the entire law. While the GOP-led House passed such a measure, the legislation was defeated in...

A crude new method of making methamphetamine poses a risk even to Americans who never get anywhere near the drug: It is filling hospitals with thousands of uninsured burn patients requiring millions of dollars in advanced treatment — a burden so costly that it's contributing to the closure of some burn units. So-called shake-and-bake meth is produced by combining raw, unstable ingredients in a 2-liter soda bottle. The influx of patients is overwhelming hospitals and becoming a major factor in the closure of some burn wards. At least seven burn units across the nation have shut down over the past...