Free Republic

No one should really be surprised at anything that comes out of Washington, especially if it has to do with Obamacare. Remember what Nancy Pelosi said about the legislation? She famously stated that Congress would have to pass Obamacare to find out what was in the legislation. Well, for once, she was telling the truth. Oh boy, was she telling the truth. Let's see, we have the birth control mandate that has come about as a result of the open-ended regulations that are being written because of Obamacare. One would think our politicians would have been smart enough to not...

The art of jiujitsu is to use an opponent's weight and strength to your advantage. I believe we can further choke the life out of Obamacare by using this martial art technique. Let me explain. Last week, I shared with you that while Republicans' power to repeal Obamacare has been thwarted by the president's re-election, all is not lost. Conservatives can still suffocate the federal monstrosity by supporting individual-to-state efforts to impede its funding and implementation. I noted how, just two weeks ago, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered a lower federal court to take up a lawsuit by the patriots...

States must commit to fully expanding their Medicaid programs to take advantage of generous funding in the federal health care law, the Obama administration said Monday. The ruling affects a federal-state program that covers nearly 60 million low-income and severely disabled people, caught in a tug-of-war between Republican governors and the Democratic administration. President Barack Obama’s health care law expanded Medicaid to cover people up to 138 percent of the federal poverty line, or about $15,400 for an individual. The change mainly affects low-income adults without children at home, as well as low-income parents who can’t get coverage under current...

Health information provider WebMD Health Corp. is expected to cut nearly a third of its workforce, Atlanta Business Chronicle has learned. The layoffs, which will be announced Tuesday, are expected to be "massive” and “across every aspect of the company,” according to a source. An WebMD (NASDAQ: WBMD) insider said the cuts could involve half the Atlanta workforce, according to a source. The company employs about 250 in Colony Square 400 building in Midtown Atlanta. The cuts, which include software development, Information Technology, editorial, video production and sales employees, will affect Atlanta and other offices. New York-based WebMD was founded...

Your medical plan is facing an unexpected expense, so you probably are, too. It’s a new, $63-per-head fee to cushion the cost of covering people with pre-existing conditions under President Obama’s health care overhaul. The charge, buried in a recent regulation, works out to tens of millions of dollars for the largest companies, employers say. Most of that is likely to be passed on to workers...

Your medical plan is facing an unexpected expense, so you probably are, too. It's a new, $63-per-head fee to cushion the cost of covering people with pre-existing conditions under President Barack Obama's health care overhaul. The charge, buried in a recent regulation, works out to tens of millions of dollars for the largest companies, employers say. Most of that is likely to be passed on to workers. Employee benefits lawyer Chantel Sheaks calls it a "sleeper issue" with significant financial consequences, particularly for large employers. "Especially at a time when we are facing economic uncertainty, (companies will) be hit with...

Despite over 2,000 pages of legislative text, many key details of President Obama’s national health care law were left up to regulators to work out, with Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius given the lead role. The Obama administration wanted to avoid issuing potentially controversial health care regulations during an election year, but now that it’s over, regulations are starting to roll out. In a news dump this past Friday afternoon, HHS released 373 pages of new insurance regulations, and buried on page 299 is a proposed 3.5 percent monthly “user fee” to be levied on the premiums...

".... likely in concert with the White House — and to the chagrin of many HHS employees — Sebelius and other senior HHS officials decided that word could too easily get out about the firewall project. If it did, it would alert people to UnitedHealth Group’s having gained a potentially huge competitive advantage — a political concern for the White House on the cusp of the election, especially in light of the crony capitalism charges that have plagued this administration. Therefore, HHS, under Sebelius’s leadership, suspended work on the firewall and told United-Health Group not to alert the SEC to...

<p>The Obama administration is proposing a new way to finance the health law’s insurance exchanges: A fee levied on the insurers who sell in the marketplace.</p> <p>Health and Human Services will operate a health insurance exchange in all states that decline to set up the marketplace themselves. In order to finance the exchange’s operations, new draft regulations released Friday envision health plans paying a “user fee” if they want to sell in that space.</p>

In November, Michigan voters roundly defeated ballot Proposal 2, a union-sponsored measure “…which would have amended the state constitution to guarantee collective bargaining rights to public and private-sector employees.” (1) For the first 2 years of his term, Governor Rick Snyder had consistently advised Michigan organized labor to keep such a proposal off the ballot. “My concern is that [the proposal] could start a whole divisive atmosphere of other people trying to put right-to-work on the ballot,” explained Snyder. (1) Of course those “other people” so feared by the timid governor were fellow Republicans in the Michigan legislature! In point...

With just 20 days until Christmas, the White House has sent you seven gifts -- and it's not seven swans a-swimming. You may decide these shouldn't be called gifts. I agree. He's given us a stack of proposed Obamacare rules prepared well before the election and released to the public just two days before, and eight days after, Thanksgiving. In a nutshell, here is what's inside these 871 pages of federal regulatory "gift-wrapping": · Health Insurance Market Rules (131 pp) - rules on ending health insurance (as we know it no pre-existing condition exclusions) and nationalizing coverage, leading to higher...

IBD Editorials Dean Exposes Obama's Need For Middle Class Tax Hike Posted 12/06/2012 06:52 PM ET Taxes: The president says all he wants is for "the wealthiest Americans to pay a little more." But far-left Howard Dean just reminded us Obama wants a lot more from all taxpayers. Interviewed by MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell on Wednesday, the ex-Vermont governor and 2004 Democratic presidential candidate shocked many with comments that really should have shocked no one. "This is, initially, gonna seem like heresy from a progressive," Dean said. "The truth is, everybody needs to pay more taxes, not just the rich. That's...

After making a big deal of publicly supporting the Affordable Care Act, Walmart—the nation’s largest private sector employer—is joining the ranks of companies seeking to avoid their obligation to provide employees with health insurance as required by Obamacare. It was not all that many years ago that Walmart announced, in response to harsh criticism over the low pay provided to Walmart ‘associates’, that the company would provide a healthcare benefit to its part-time, low earning employees. The uncharacteristically generous nod to worker needs was short lived as the company partially pulled back on the commitment in 2011, citing premium rate...

Ann Clwyd, a Labour MP since 1984, has said her biggest regret is that she didn't "stand in the hospital corridor and scream" in protest at the "almost callous lack of care" with which nurses treated her husband as he lay dying in the University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff.

Former House Speaker and Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich said the current GOP would be “incapable of competing” against Hillary Clinton should she run in 2016. Gingrich on NBC’s “Meet the Press” called Clinton a “very formidable” person who is married to “the most popular Democrat in the country.” “If [the Republicans'] competitor in ’16 is going to be Hillary Clinton, supported by Bill Clinton and presumably, a still relatively popular President Barack Obama, trying to win that will be truly the Super Bowl. And the Republican Party today is incapable of competing at that level,” Gingrich said.

Bostwick Laboratories Inc. will lay off 90 of 154 employees in its Orlando lab between now and next August, the company said Friday. In a layoff-warning letter sent to the state, human-resources manager Michael Tenney said the employees would be let go from the south Orlando facility at 7001 Lake Ellenor Drive. Positions being eliminated range from medical technologists, lab specialists and lab assistants to purchasing and distribution specialists. Virginia-based Bostwick, founded in 1999, specializes in diagnosing cancer through such methods as analyzing prostate biopsies and urine tests...

Even if lawmakers somehow stop the Bush-era tax rates from expiring, taxes are still expected to rise on Jan. 1 -- thanks to a trio of new fees tied to the federal health care overhaul. The IRS this past week published rules for some of the first major taxes meant to help pay for President Obama’s massive insurance coverage expansion. Together, they will raise investment and income taxes on top earners and impose a separate -- and controversial -- tax on medical devices. The bundle of fees has been largely overlooked as lawmakers and the White House bicker over the...

Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin (D) says it’s imperative that the state enact an “assisted suicide” bill calling it “a crucial element of a successful implementation of Obamacare.” “Study after study has shown that a disproportionate share of what this nation spends on health care goes for the treatment of persons who are desperately ill,” Shumlin observed. “One way of overcoming this disparity is to channel more of these persons onto a path toward death with dignity.” “For the amount it costs to treat one late stage cancer patient we could provide thousands of others with condoms or abortions,” Shumlin pointed...

Just when you thought yesterday’s dismal jobs numbers couldn’t get any worse -- they did. According to CNSNews.com, nearly seventy-five percent of all civilian jobs created since the beginning of last summer are in the public sector: Seventy-three percent of the new civilian jobs created in the United States over the last five months are in government, according to official data published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In June, a total of 142,415,000 people were employed in the U.S, according to the BLS, including 19,938,000 who were employed by federal, state and local governments. By November, according to data...

It’s a bad omen for free enterprise, prosperity and liberty when normally warring special interest groups such as big business and progressive activists agree on public policy. During President Obama’s first term big business interests led by the pharmaceutical industry joined the union lobby in successfully making ObamaCare the law of the land. Shortly after Obama’s re-election, history may be repeating itself this time regarding energy policy. While it’s known that politics makes strange bedfellows none can be more bizarre than former White House green jobs czar Van Jones and Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson agreeing on a carbon tax....