Free Republic

Technical difficulties are still plaguing the federal website for health insurance sign up, but that hasn't stopped dozens of Charleston's homeless residents from signing up for health insurance over the last two weeks. The non-profit agency has a drop-in center for homeless people, some of whom live outside or in shelters. As trained community assisters, Herlihy and other Covenant House staffers were supposed to connect their clients to other helpers that were to actually lead people through the application process. But directing their clients, many of whom have mental illnesses, to other agencies would have been more difficult than leading...

John Kasich repeated his well-worn routine of calling billions in new federal spending “our money” and insisting the Obamacare Medicaid expansion is “what the Lord wants” during a speech this morning at the Cleveland Clinic. “It’s our money! This is not, like, somebody else’s money,” Gov. Kasich said of the Obamacare Medicaid expansion funding he seeks to spend in Ohio... this — like other talking points the Republican governor has used to justify his flight from fiscal responsibility — is not true. “Bringing our dollars back and helping these people to get their lives back is so right,” Kasich said...

Rich Sitko can’t wait to buy a new health insurance plan. Sitko, 64, from Essex Fells, now has an indemnity plan from Aetna for which he pays $1,178 per month with a $2,500 deductible. He believes he will find a less costly option on the new health insurance exchange — the online marketplace created by the Affordable Care Act. His new plan, he said, will still most likely cost close to $10,000 a year and won’t have any of his doctors in network. To get a plan similar to the one he has now, he’d actually have to pay more...

They start showing up at the St. John’s Well Child and Family Center in Los Angeles at 5 a.m. By the time the doors open at 8 a.m., as many as 60 patients are queued up in a line that stretches down the street. In South L.A., where St. John’s is one of the few organizations that makes doctors available to the poor, the lines may soon get much longer. More than 5 million additional Americans are expected to enroll over the next two years in Medicaid, the taxpayer-funded insurance for the poor that’s expanding Jan. 1 under the Affordable...

On Tuesday, Senator Ted Cruz began a filibuster of the worst law passed by the worst President in American history. He vowed to “speak in support of defunding Obamacare until I am no longer able to stand.” And after 21 hours on his feet, in the true fashion of an “anarchist,” as Harry Reid and the mainstream media smeared him, he politely followed parliamentary procedure, yielded the floor, and exited the Senate chamber. The Senator knew there would come a time when he could no longer stand, but Cruz is from Texas, where you can find the Alamo, the Alamo...

An employee for Minnesota’s new health exchange accidentally sent 2,400 Social Security numbers to an insurance broker earlier this month, underscoring privacy concerns with the Affordable Care Act (ACA), and raising additional questions as to the readiness of health insurance exchanges—set to go live October 1st. The first three years of the law’s implementation were not exactly smooth—Avik Roy of the Manhattan Institute recently reported that the White House missed half of the ACA’s legally mandated deadlines. But in the coming months, millions of consumers will interface with the law for the first time via exchanges, renewing the states’ and...

LANSING, Mich. – Today Sen. Patrick Colbeck, R-Canton, introduced the first of two bills to enact a patient-centered healthcare plan to provide a free market alternative that expands access to quality care without expanding government. SB 459 provides the regulatory infrastructure that would enable a low cost, high quality care, free market environment within the confines of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The second bill, which will be introduced shortly, would convert current Medicaid enrollees to low cost, high quality Qualified Health Plans featuring Direct Primary Care Services and High Deductible Health Plans wrapped within a Health Savings Account. The...

The decision by North Carolina policymakers not to expand Medicaid has ignited a firestorm of controversy. Advocates for expansion appear to believe the decision should have been a slam dunk. The N.C. Justice Center assures us that “Medicaid saves lives,” a claim reiterated by Jonathan Oberlander, a health policy expert at UNC-Chapel Hill. Yet Avik Roy, a Manhattan Institute senior fellow, claims that “Medicaid is America’s worst health-care program.” These dueling experts have decades of health policy experience among them. So who’s right? Advocates for expansion point to a New England Journal of Medicine study that found significantly lower death...

Texas will not expand Medicaid or establish a health insurance exchange, two major tenets of the federal health reform that the U.S. Supreme Court upheld last month, Gov. Rick Perry said in a Monday morning announcement. "I stand proudly with the growing chorus of governors who reject the Obamacare power grab," he said in a statement. "Neither a 'state' exchange nor the expansion of Medicaid under this program would result in better 'patient protection' or in more 'affordable care.' They would only make Texas a mere appendage of the federal government when it comes to health care." Perry's office sent...

Christie: ‘I’m Really Glad' that Extortion is Still Illegal in U.S., 'Even When Done by the President’ By Patrick Burke July 9, 2012 Subscribe to Patrick Burke's posts (CNSNews.com) - New Jersey's Republican Gov. Chris Christie said Monday that he was “glad that the Supreme Court ruled that extortion is still illegal in America” and added, “even when done by the president of the United States.” The former U.S. attorney was referring to the recent Supreme Court decision that the Medicaid provision in the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacare, was unconstitutional. At a talk at the Brookings Institution in Washington,...

At least 15 governors have indicated they will not participate in the expansion of Medicaid under the healthcare law, striking a blow to President Obama’s promise of broader insurance coverage. Before Thursday’s Supreme Court ruling, states had the option of either increasing their Medicaid rolls or being penalized by the federal government. The high court struck down that offer as unconstitutional. Governors still have a financial incentive to participate in the expansion of coverage for low-income people, since the government will foot most of the bill through 2016. But the decision is also loaded with politics, particularly for Republican governors...