Free Republic

A House Republican on Thursday proposed forcing the Supreme Court justices and their staff to enroll in ObamaCare. Rep. Brian Babin (R-Texas) said that his SCOTUScare Act would make all nine justices and their employees join the national healthcare law’s exchanges. “As the Supreme Court continues to ignore the letter of the law, it’s important that these six individuals understand the full impact of their decisions on the American people,” he said. “That’s why I introduced the SCOTUScare Act to require the Supreme Court and all of its employees to sign up for ObamaCare,” Babin said. Babin’s potential legislation would...

Crony Capitalism: ObamaCare has unleashed a wave of industry mergers that will increasingly restrict access and limit choices for consumers. Worse, it will make government control of the industry all the easier. Does anyone remember President Obama promising that ObamaCare would create a few giant health care oligopolies? Well, it's heading that way.

Now that the Supreme Court has ruled that health insurance consumers can receive federal subsidies regardless of their state’s role in running their insurance market, fewer states may stay in the game.When the Affordable Care Act passed in 2010, most people expected that each state would want to run its own health insurance marketplace. That never really happened, as many states opted to let the federal system, HealthCare.gov, do the work for them. Many of those states that did try running their own marketplaces are starting to think twice.Now, with the Supreme Court ensuring that every state’s consumers will have...

The union that exploited Michigan’s home-based caregivers for the best part of a decade has seen its revenue tumble since the scheme that enabled the exploitation ended. SEIU Healthcare Michigan reported $5,398,383 in dues and fees in 2014. That's just 48 percent of the $11,307,314 it reported for 2012, the last full year during which the union's dues skim was in place. The information was contained in a financial disclosure report the union submitted to the federal government 57 days after the March 31 deadline it is apparently required to meet. The disclosure finally took place shortly after Michigan Capitol...

(CNSNews.com) – The Department of Health and Human Services’ most recent guidelines explaining the “preventive services” mandate under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act—or Obamacare—says health insurance plans must provide co-pay-free pap smears and mammograms to “transgender men.” As defined by the federal Office of Personnel Management: “a person assigned the female sex at birth but who identifies as male is a transgender man.” The guidelines, written as a FAQ sheet, state: Q5: Can plans or issuers limit sex-specific recommended preventive services based on an individual's sex assigned at birth, gender identity or recorded gender? No. Whether a sex-specific...

Days spent in the hospital as an outpatient, rather than being officially admitted, can leave Medicare patients with bigger bills. It's bad enough spending three or more days in a hospital -- undergoing a barrage of medical tests and procedures. Brace yourself for even more pain at discharge if the hospital tells you that you were actually never admitted but were on Medicare "observation status." That designation could cost you big time. Hospitalized Medicare beneficiaries who are under observation are considered outpatients, even if they spend many days in the hospital. If you find yourself in this boat, there's a...

Government Work: Enrollment in Covered California was flat this year, and consumers hate it. But the director still got a huge raise and a fat bonus. So much for ObamaCare rooting out health care waste.

Forecasts: ObamaCare advocates tout a new Congressional Budget Office report saying that ObamaCare's repeal would boost the deficit. But read the actual report. It tells a far different, more disturbing tale about this law.

President Obama's weekly remarks Hi, everybody. As President, I spend most of my time focused on what we can do to grow the economy and grow new pathways of opportunity for Americans like you to get ahead. And we’ve made progress. More than 12 million new private sector jobs in the past five years. More than 16 million Americans who’ve gained health insurance. More jobs creating more clean energy. More kids graduating from high school and college than ever before.

More than 220,000 Oregonians who buy their own health insurance are poised to pay higher premiums next year -- some of them a lot higher. State regulators on Thursday announced rates for people who aren't covered by their employers or government programs. And the news is not good. While some insurers proposed rates similar to or better than this year's, officials are ordering them to be raised -- saying they need to close a sizable gap between what insurers have collected and what they spend on claims. As a result, the least expensive "silver" plan premium available to a 40-year-old...

With same-sex marriage and the transformation of Bruce Jenner into Caitlyn Jenner in the world headlines, it’s time to ask what LGBT bioethics would look like. Timothy Murphy, of the University of Illinois College of Medicine,  foreshadows some of the major themes in the journal Bioethics.Bioethics benefits. “Bioethics is better than it would otherwise have been, because people queer in their sexual interests and identities have challenged misconceived concepts of health and disease, challenged obstacles to access and equity in healthcare, and forced attention to professional standards in clinical care, among other things.”Defending LGBT parenting. To show that the battle...

Congress passed Obamacare, and the president signed it. But in spite of then Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s promise, we still don’t know exactly what’s in it. We’re finding out, slowly, but it’s rarely good news. Obamacare was sold as the “fix” for our “broken health care system.” We were told the impact on those happy with their then current situation would barely notice a change, and those without insurance would get it. A win-win for everyone, right? Those promises went out the window right behind the $2,500 average savings on premiums per family President Barack Obama said would...

Fiscal Responsibility: Now we learn that the Obama administration doesn't know whether billions in subsidies it paid out to insurers were appropriate. Yeah, this law is working just great.

As America hears of more doctors leaving the profession, the head of a patient-centered national health care organization based in St. Paul, Minnesota, sees both political parties in Washington making matters worse. “Huge things are happening under the surface that people don’t understand,” says Twila Brase, a public health nurse and the founder of the Citizens’ Council for Health Freedom in this 33 minute video interview with The Daily Caller. “The power of the doctor is becoming subsumed by the government.” America is moving, from Brase’s perspective, from the charitable human “mission of medicine” to a cold, sterile “business of...

The City of Bixby changed insurance deductibles for their employees. One of the changes means that a family now has a $7,000 deductible instead of a $500 one. There is a gap plan available on limited basis. Employees said that no one asked them about the change or if they would prefer to pay higher premiums instead.

WikiLeaks released another chapter of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the still-secret mega-treaty between the United States and 11 other Pacific Rim nations, on Wednesday, two days before a planned vote in the House of Representatives to give President Obama Trade Promotion Authority (TPA, also known as Fast Track).The secret text, ironically (or cynically) titled “TPP Transparency Chapter Annex on Transparency and Procedural Fairness for Pharmaceutical Products and Medical Devices,” appears to confirm the charges of TPP critics who have characterized the treaty as a sellout to “Big Pharma,” the giant pharmaceutical companies.Commenting on the leaked TPP texts, financial website ZeroHedge.com noted:It...

The man playing the role of Edward Snowden in the $300 million Oregon production of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act will not rot in prison for blowing the whistle on former governor John A. Kitzhaber—who in this Left Coast drama was playing the role of Hillary R. Clinton. Michael Rodgers was the interim administrator of the state's Enterprise Technology Services division of the Department of Administrative Services and a man with 200 employees under his sway and 15 years on the books when Feb. 5 Jan Murdock sent him an email directing him to destroy all of the...

Millions of people will be able to see a doctor on their smartphones or laptops for everyday ailments once the nation's largest drugstore chain and two major insurers expand a budding push into virtual health care. Walgreens said Wednesday that it will offer a smartphone application that links doctor and patients virtually in 25 states by the end of the year. That growth comes as UnitedHealth Group and the Blue Cross-Blue Shield insurer Anthem prepare to make their own non-emergency telemedicine services available to about 40 million more people by next year.... Doctors say telemedicine can help improve access to...

Judy Naillon called her insurer several months ago to find out why she was being charged $35 every month for birth control pills. Her friends said they were getting their pills for free under the federal health law. Why wasn’t she getting the same deal? “I’m just really frustrated,” says the Wichita, Kan., piano and violin teacher. When her husband took a new marketing job last fall, “I thought that surely all these insurers must now be covering these benefits.” Naillon, 33, would have to continue to pay a share of the cost of her pills, and the plan wouldn’t...

But here’s another way it might play out: health insurance premiums will soar, people will be unable to afford coverage, and… the public will blame it on President Obama and the Democrats, because they passed this law in 2010 and suddenly health insurance is really expensive. Thing “A” happened, and now thing “B” happened, so Thing “A” must have been a terrible idea. Republicans will say, look at how much the IN-surance costs now! as part of their pitch for electing a Republican president who would eliminate this original sin from the federal code. Republicans always suffer in government shutdowns...