Free Republic

An attorney for Hobby Lobby Stores said Thursday that the arts and crafts chain plans to defy a federal mandate requiring it to offer employees health coverage that includes access to the morning-after pill, despite risking potential fines of up to $1.3 million per day. Hobby Lobby and religious book-seller Mardel Inc., which are owned by the same conservative Christian family, are suing to block part of the federal health care law that requires employee health-care plans to provide insurance coverage for the morning-after pill and similar emergency contraception pills. The companies claim the mandate violates the religious beliefs of...

The Obama administration’s HHS mandate may force the Catholic Little Sisters of the Poor to cease their U.S. operations, according to Sister Constance Carolyn Veit, the religious order’s communications director.The Little Sisters currently provide group homes and daily care for the elderly poor in 30 U.S. cities.Sister Constance told The Daily Caller that the Little Sisters may not qualify for a religious exemption from ObamaCare’s requirement that employers provide coverage for contraceptives, sterilizations and abortion-causing drugs free of charge to female workers.“We are not exempt from the [ObamaCare] mandate because we neither serve nor employ a predominantly Catholic population,” Constance...

ELYRIA, Ohio — Invacare Corp. said Thursday it is eliminating 143 jobs because of limits on manufacturing at one of its Ohio facilities. Invacare makes wheelchairs, crutches and motorized scooters. It has faced scrutiny from the Food and Drug Administration about facilities where it makes wheelchairs. The company said on Dec. 20 that it had reached an agreement with the FDA and that production at two sites in Ohio would be limited until inspectors certify that they are in compliance with FDA regulations...

Round one to Obama, largely because the justice assigned to hear the arguments for an injunction against the contraception mandate going into effect was Sotomayer. This doesn't mean that the government can't be sued on First Amendment grounds, just that Sotomayer saw no compelling reason to prevent the law's implementation. The Hill: ******** The Supreme Court on Wednesday refused to block the Obama administration's contraception mandate from taking effect. Justice Sonia Sotomayor rejected a request for an emergency injunction that would have shielded employers from the mandate. The request was filed by Hobby Lobby, an arts-and-crafts chain. The company's Catholic...

Illegal Trust - A combination of companies in which the stock (ownership) of the constituent companies (hospitals and insurance companies) is controlled by a central board of trustees (health advisory board), thus making it possible to manage the companies so as to minimize production costs (what the Feds will pay), control prices (redistribute the burdon) and eliminate competition (a single payer system).

The Supreme Court on Wednesday refused to block the Obama administration´s contraception mandate from taking effect. Justice Sonia Sotomayor rejected a request for an emergency injunction that would have shielded employers from the mandate. The request was filed by Hobby Lobby, an arts-and-crafts chain. The company´s Catholic owners say the contraception mandate violates their religious freedom. Hobby Lobby might eventually win on that point, Sotomayor said, but the company didn´t meet the standard for an injunction blocking the mandate from taking effect.

Of the twenty new or higher taxes in Obamacare, below are the five worst that will be foisted upon Americans for the first time on January 1, 2013: The Obamacare Medical Device Tax – a $20 billion tax increase: Medical device manufacturers employ 409,000 people in 12,000 plants across the country. Obamacare imposes a new 2.3 percent excise tax on gross sales – even if the company does not earn a profit in a given year. In addition to killing small business jobs and impacting research and development budgets, this will increase the cost of your health care – making...

To provide all Americans with health insurance, premiums will have to rise to pay for it, Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini told CNBC's "Closing Bell" on Wednesday. "If we're going to insure all Americans, which is a worthy and appropriate cause, then somebody has to pay for it," Bertolini said of the expected premium increases under Obamacare. Bertolini said that insurance premiums could double in some places just on the basis of what types of policies people buy today. He also said that when Obamacare is fully implemented, it won't start the way people had hoped and it won't be cheaper.

A federal appeals court on Tuesday sided with Wheaton College and Belmont Abbey College in a decision related to the ongoing court challenges to the Obama administration's birth control mandate. The court said it would hold the Obama administration to its promise to never implement the current birth control mandate and to create a new rule by August, as part of the court decision. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ordered Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to give it updates every 60 days, beginning in February, until a new rule is issued in August. The...

In another victory for pro-life advocates challenging the pro-abortion HHS mandate in Obamacare, a pro-life Catholic group has won a legal battle in court to get an exemption from having to comply with the mandate. The new mandate compels religious employers to pay for and refer employees for birth control, abortion-causing drugs and contraception in violation of employers’ religious beliefs. On Thursday, pro-life attorneys Robert Muise and David Yerushalmi presented oral argument in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York (Brooklyn) in support of Priests for Life’s request that the court immediately halt the enforcement...

As the health-care industry rushed onto the Internet in search of efficiencies and improved care in recent years, it has exposed a wide array of vulnerable hospital computers and medical devices to hacking, according to documents and interviews. Security researchers warn that intruders could exploit known gaps to steal patients’ records for use in identity theft schemes and even launch disruptive attacks that could shut down critical hospital systems. A year-long examination of cybersecurity by The Washington Post has found that health care is among the most vulnerable industries in the country, in part because it lags behind in addressing...

This March will mark three years since Obamacare became law, and it still has not had any serious effect on most Americans' lives. That's the way President Obama and the law's Democratic authors planned it; they conveniently pushed the dislocations and unhappy consequences of national health care well past their re-election campaigns. But Obamacare will be here soon, with an Oct. 1, 2013, start of enrollment in insurance exchanges and a Jan. 1, 2014, deadline for full implementation. The political results could be deeply painful for Democrats. During the campaign for Obamacare, President Obama pledged repeatedly that his health care...

That´s not to say it´s excusable, just that the appalling neglect of 38 patients at the Alexandra Hospital in Redditch is the logical result of the NHS´s untenable management structure. Imagine if everything at Tesco´s was free but rationed, and subject to delivery delays of several months. Then throw in the fact that there are no other free alternatives. You would have a nightmare on your hands--huge queues, attracted by the free goods, then further stretched by the long delays. Imagine how the staff would then behave--harrassed by the limitless demand of customers, but also in a tyrannical position of

With President Barack Obama reelected to a second term, the health care reforms passed during his first term are set to take effect. And some employers are now facing the fact that they’ll be forced to offer health coverage to all employees who work more than 30 hours a week. Here in the Midlands, Lizard’s Thicket owner Bobby Williams is in that position. His company made the decision to cut new employees to 28 hours a week. Long-time employees will continue to work 40 hours a week, he says. “Absolutely they’re upset about it,” he says of the workers whose...

. . . America's constitutional tradition of federalism may serve as the anaconda to choke a growing leviathan. As Justice Kennedy wrote in Bond v. United States, "[b]y denying any one government complete jurisdiction over all the concerns of public life, federalism protects the liberty of the individual from arbitrary power." "Alabama has become one of those States that is on the first line of defense," said Palmer, particularly in regards to Obama's signature health care legislation, which 14 states including Alabama have passed constitutional amendments against. Furthermore, at least 25 states have refused to establish state exchanges, and a...

With President Obama's triumph in November, many political observers sounded the death knell for the "full repeal" movement fighting against ObamaCare. Despite lingering controversy and general unpopularity, the president's victory and a large Democratic majority in the Senate made the law appear safe at last. Is it? In a sense, it is. Full repeal almost certainly won't happen while President Obama is in office, and attempts to reform the law will struggle to gain traction as long as progressives keep their hold on the Senate. If the law won't be repealed before its true implementation in 2014, and if reform...

In the standoff over the fiscal cliff, all the discussion has been about the Bush tax cuts. There has been no discussion about the ObamaCare tax increases. That's a mistake. Five of the tax increases Americans will face on January 1 are new taxes created under the Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare). And they are not just for the very rich. Three of the five will hit people who are solidly middle class.The new ObamaCare taxes will hit everything from dividends and capital gains to day care and services for special needs children. They will increase the tax bill for those...

Maybe we need the 26.5% cut in Medicare. Maybe then docs would wake up out of their politically correct slumber and decide to actually once again devote themselves and their practices to their patients, instead of to political schemes, insurance and hospital collusive bureaucracy. Those docs who do not care can get a job with the hospital or government. Their patients will know who the docs are working for, and it is not always them. Others like me will continue the Osteopathic tradition of providing excellent care in an independent private practice setting where no one stands between me and...

Today, a federal court denied a request to temporarily stop enforcement of the abortion pill mandate, which would force the Christian-owned-and-operated Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., to provide the “morning-after pill” and “week-after pill” in its health insurance plan, or face crippling fines up to $1.3 million per day. “The Green family is disappointed with this ruling,” said Kyle Duncan, general counsel for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty. “They simply asked for a temporary halt to the mandate while their appeal goes forward, and now they must seek relief from the United States Supreme Court. The Greens will continue to...