Free Republic

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., told Nevada Public Radio on Friday that Obamacare will fundamentally change their health insurance plans. “You can’t just keep running to the doctor with no deductible,” Reid told KNPR Friday when asked to respond to union criticism of President Obama’s signature domestic accomplishment.On July 12, International Brotherhood of Teamsters President James Hoffa, United Food and Commercial Workers International Union President Joseph Hansen, and UNITE-HERE President D. Taylor, all co-signed a letter to Reid and Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., demanding major changes to Obamacare, which they said was already hurting their members.“We have a problem; you...

Democrats are feeling dispirited as they cast a wary eye toward 2014. Obamacare and the Obama economy are not popular among voters. So with Congress in their home districts during August recess, the president’s post-election campaign organization, OFA, also known as the replacement DNC, has launched “Action August” in hopes of coaxing Democrats into voicing support for the party’s unpopular policies. They claim to be following the Tea Party model, as some have reported. But if that’s true, they’re ignoring the fact that the Tea Party reaction to Obamacare and the president’s threats for higher taxes in 2009 and...

Oregon rations healthcare to Medicaid recipients. Terminal cancer patients are denied chemotherapy to extend life–and now the Oregon rationing board wants to go deeper into the weeds. From Hope Landsem’s Wall Street Journal blog: Liberal states often preview health-care central planning before the same regulations go national, which ought to make an Oregon cost-control commission especially scary. On Thursday a state board could change Oregon’s Medicaid program to deny costly care to poor patients who need it most. Like most such panels, including the Affordable Care Act’s Independent Payment Advisory Board, the Oregon Health Evidence Review Commission, or HERC, claims...

It is painful to witness the expenditure of so much negative energy among people who all say they oppose the law. This law is so bad and so unpopular and its negative consequences so apparent that we would have to be complete incompetents not to be able to make this case to the American people, the majority of whom already agree. Why not rip a page right out of President Obama's political playbook and go directly to the people? It obviously works for Obama, even though he doesn't have the facts or history on his side; there has never been...

Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah) recently wrote a book, "Why John Roberts Was Wrong About Healthcare", which is an excellent and compelling read. Besides providing a gripping argument as to why Justice Roberts was wrong on the ObamaCare ruling, Lee also gives an excellent history and background on the Court and the health care decision itself. American Thinker had the privilege of interviewing the Senator about his book and ObamaCare. His two main arguments in the book point out how ObamaCare has made federalism extravagant and that there appears to no longer be a separation of power among branches. Senator Lee...

When the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (AKA Obamacare) is fully enforced on individuals and families next year, a middle-aged, middle-class couple with three children could be hit with a $9,355 hike in their annual health insurance premiums if their annual household income happens to increase by just $1. Under ACA, all Americans are required to secure health insurance. Those who do not get it through their employer can buy it through government-run health insurance exchanges, which the law requires to be set up in every state. People buying their Obamacare-mandated health coverage through these exchanges will be eligible...

Jen Psaki, blameless State Department spokeswoman, explained that the hasty evacuation of our embassy in Yemen was not an evacuation but “a reduction in staff.” This proved a problem because the Yemeni government had already announced (and denounced) the “evacuation” — the word normal folks use for the panicky ordering of people onto planes headed out of the country. Thus continues the administration’s penchant for wordplay, the bending of language to fit a political need. This would all be comical and merely peculiar if it didn’t reflect a larger, more troubling reality: The confusion of language is a direct result...

Charitable hospitals that treat uninsured Americans will be subjected to new levels of scrutiny of their nonprofit status and could face sizable new fines under Obamacare. A new provision in Section 501 of the Internal Revenue Code, which takes effect under Obamacare, sets new standards of review and installs new financial penalties for tax-exempt charitable hospitals, which devote a minimum amount of their expenses to treat uninsured poor people. Approximately 60 percent of American hospitals are currently nonprofit. Charity for the uninsured is one of the factors that could discourage enrollment in Obamacare, which requires all Americans to purchase heath...

The Texas crusader let it slip this week that she is badly misinformed on the late-term abortion ban she crusaded against. And she’s not the only misinformed Democratic woman, writes Kirsten Powers. The Democratic star du jour was asked this week to explain the difference between the late-term abortions she fought to keep legal in Texas and the illegal killings by Philadelphia abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell. “I don’t know what happened in the Gosnell case,” she told the Weekly Standard’s John McCormack, who cornered her after her National Press Club speech on Monday. Pelosi then expressed outrage at the line...

Friend, Do you recognize the name Erick Erickson? I wouldn’t be surprised if your answer is “no.” Match the Tea Party's $10,000 Moneybomb | DONATE before MIDNIGHT He’s an ultra-conservative blogger who popped up on the radar earlier this week when he called Texas State Senator Wendy Davis “Abortion Barbie,” a disgusting comment that’s not remotely out of his character. And then yesterday, Erickson raised $10,000 in small donations for Ken Cuccinelli — before 11:30 a.m. We can’t let that kind of momentum build unchallenged. Donate $5 right now to help Terry match the Tea Party’s moneybomb.

Last year NewsBusters repeatedly made the case that members of the press – in particular ABC’s George Stephanopoulos – aided and abetted President Obama’s claim that the Republicans were engaging in a so-called War on Women. In a radio interview with Geraldo Rivera Wednesday, Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said this might have been the case (video follows with transcript and commentary): GERALDO RIVERA: Reince Priebus, the RNC chair was on the Republican, top politician on the Republican side, just saying that if CNN and NBC don’t cancel their planned films about Hillary Clinton, that he’s not going to allow any...

Jobs at Walmart don't pay a lot. Someone at The Nation recently noticed this, and decided to make up a new hourly wage for workers at the mega-uber-superstore chain—$12/hour—and declare their desire to see this wage implemented in an open letter to the CEO. The retail company has issued reams of press releases, funded and touted economic studies, taken to the airwaves, and made other serious efforts to address the criticisms about their compensation practices over the years. But it looks like someone in Bentonville finally snapped: Steven Restivo, a Walmart senior director of communications, sent out a email yesterday...

Jackson Lee Tweets Praise That Staffers Free From Health Care Exchange Requirement August 8, 2013 - 1:15 PM By Penny Starr (CNSNews.com) – Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) tweeted her approval Wednesday for the Obama administration’s decision that members of Congress will not have to join health care exchanges and their health care coverage will be subsidized by American taxpayers. “It’s official: Members of Congress and congressional staff will keep their health subsidies under Obamacare!” Jackson Lee tweeted on her official Twitter account. Jackson tweeted next: “And some staffers will not have to join the health exchanges at all.” The...

Last week, Karl Rove opined that a GOP attempt to defund Obamacare would be analogous to Pickett’s Charge at the Battle of Gettysburg. His analogy was trite as well as inaccurate, yet Gettysburg does contain a lesson for establishment Republicans who oppose defunding. Its moral lies not in Pickett’s disastrous charge, however, but in the failure of Union General George Meade to follow up his defensive Pennsylvania victory by attacking the Confederate forces as they withdrew to the safety of Virginia. Meade’s timidity extended the Civil War by two years and rendered his Commander-in-Chief nearly apoplectic with frustration. Lincoln, who...

News broke Wednesday that, even as the October 1 deadline for Obamacare "marketplaces" approaches, training requirements for Obamacare "navigators" were being scaled back by one-third. With less than two months remaining, the Obama administration is also facing increasing pressure to make sure data privacy and security concerns are addressed with the new system. Now the Department of Health and Human Services is seeking to fill another need relating to the operation of the exchanges: translation services. On Monday, HHS posted a notice looking for small business sources to provide "Telephone Interpretation and Written Document

Last week we ran a story analyzing an op-ed piece that one-time Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean wrote for the Wall Street Journal in which the former Governor of Vermont conceded that the Independent Payment Advisory Board was “essentially a health-care rationing body.” ObamaCare has been controversial from long before it passed by the narrowest of margins and probably no facet has drawn more critics that the IPAB. National Right to Life laid out the rationing problems that are part and parcel of the IPAB from the very beginning (www.nrlc.org/HealthCareRationing/ObamaHCRationingBasicDOCUMENTATION.pdf). Thus it was helpful that Dean admitted there really was...

With a national debate still going on as the new national health care plan (Obamacare) is taking effect, what do federal employees think of the new system? This week, we asked their views on being included in the new health care exchanges. There is apparently little debate among the federal workforce. Federal employees do not want to be part of the new system. Instead, they prefer to keep their current health plan based on a survey with about 2500 readers responding. Employees who are already retired have a much stronger negative reaction to being moved to a new system. Those...

The hits from Obamacare just keep coming. As is typical with progressive liberal policies, us meek peasants have to live in the nightmare world that they have created while the liberal elites and their allies do not have to adhere to the same laws and rules. This was hammered home again this week when it was announced that the federal government would be subsidizing the health insurance premiums of Congressional staffers. The Office of Personnel Management has stated that members of Congress and their staffs would get the federal subsidy on the new government-run "exchanges", but not be "eligible for...

...In 2009, Mr. Obama said: “If you like your health care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health care plan, period. No one will take it away, no matter what.” But that assurance does not apply to Congress. The law requires members of Congress and many of their aides to get their employer-based coverage through exchanges. The administration said this means the exchange where a lawmaker or an aide resides. Thus, a caseworker in the district office of a House member from Chicago might enroll in a health plan offered on the Illinois exchange, while the chief of staff...

Obamacare is an "anti-poverty program" aiding poor blacks and Latinos, especially in inner cities, and will help those minorities win health insurance they otherwise wouldn´t get, according to Harvard´s — and the nation´s — leading expert on poverty. In a paper that marks the 25th anniversary of his groundbreaking study of the poor, "The Truly Disadvantaged," Harvard sociologist William Julius Wilson said that without Obamacare and the president´s first-term stimulus programs, poverty in the nation would be far worse. "Quite frankly, I think that Obama´s programs have prevented poverty, including concentrated poverty, from rapidly rising, Drudge: Megyn Kelly to Take

HHS official: Immigrants who are 'lawfully present' but not citizens qualify for Obamacare subsidies "The Senate’s 'Gang of Eight' bill confers 'lawfully present' status to all illegal aliens inside the United States..."

This is to inform that I just called Reid's office to ask when they will exempt the people from Obamacare as they have exempted themselves. The staffer said to me "We are not exempted from the law ma'am. We are obligated to the same rules as the everyone else ok". I then said to him "So are you telling me the news reports I am reading are not accurate"? He responded "most of the reporting is false, yes. Have yourself a good day." I called him a liar and hung up the phone. You all can do what you wish,...

The GOP division over whether to defund ObamaCare can be summarized in two quotes: This, from Texas senator Ted Cruz: "We can de-fund Obamacare if Republican leaders who tell their constituents they're conservative stand up and act like they're conservative." And in opposition, Ramesh Ponnuru: "[I]f Republicans stay firm in this demand [to defund Obamacare], the result will be either a government shutdown or a partial shutdown combined with a debt default. Either would be highly unpopular, and each party would blame the other. The public, however, would almost certainly blame Republicans. And which blame, according to Ponnuru and those...

Steve Stockman (Texas, 36th District) has responded to Ted Cruz’ challenge to House Republicans by filing a 19 point resolution to defund ObamaCare. Mr. Steve Stockman is not afraid of a fight. “I applaud the dozen Republican Senators who sent a letter to Majority Leader Reid explaining they will not vote for any continuing resolution that funds ObamaCare. But as Senators Ted Cruz and Mike Lee have said, ‘The House must refuse to fund Obamacare’ because every appropriations bill originates in the House and the House is the only chamber that Republicans control. My resolution includes 19 whereas statements that...

ST. PAUL, Minn.—Minnesota's health insurance exchange is seeking a $55 million federal grant to pay for its operations next year. The board of directors of MNsure met Wednesday to review the grant request. Five previous federal grants to Minnesota's exchange added up to $110 million. The $55 million request would cover salaries for about 166 full-time employees who would work on MNsure operations, and would also cover spending on technology, marketing, customer service, administration and other items. The director of MNsure says that by 2015, the exchange is expected to be able to cover its own operating costs through a...

Privacy: Despite repeated assurances that the ObamaCare data hub is on schedule, a government audit finds that vital security measures to protect private information likely won´t be ready by Oct. 1. The implications are profound. As far back as December 2012, Obama administration officials were insisting that the data hub at the center of the ObamaCare exchanges was nearly finished. Yet all the while, they were pushing back deadlines or missing them altogether, to the point where, unless ObamaCare´s launch is delayed, millions of people´s privacy will be at risk. Obama officials may, in fact, have flat-out lied to lawmakers...

New York’s Joint Commission on Public Ethics (JCOPE) exempted NARAL Pro-Choice New York from requiring non-profit groups disclose names...

The former governor and perhaps future senatorial candidate of Alaska is using her Twitter account to make one thing clear. Ever since she emerged on the national stage, basically everything she has said has been right. She was right about Fannie and Freddie. The tweet: Sarah Palin ✔ @SarahPalinUSA Hey media, now do you get it? http://fb.me/2wOtMgTqo 11:29 AM - 7 Aug 2013 218 Retweets 100 favorites The issue: The "it" to which she refers is her argument in September 2009 that the mortgage companies had "gotten too big and too expensive" for taxpayers. The vindication: The president's announcement on...

Congress has won some partial relief for lawmakers and their staffs from the "Obamacare" health reforms that it passed and subjected itself to three years ago. In a ruling issued on Wednesday, U.S. lawmakers and their staffs will continue to receive a federal contribution toward the health insurance that they must purchase through soon-to-open exchanges created by President Barack Obama's signature healthcare law. The decision by the Office of Personnel Management, with Obama's blessing, will prevent the largely unintended loss of healthcare benefits for 535 members of the Senate and House of Representatives and thousands of Capitol Hill staff. When...

In the wake of a rising tide of pro-life sentiments and sensibilities in America, the utter bankruptcy of the pro-abortion position is being revealed, especially in its more militant forms. The pro-abortion side is now faced with: • The beautiful reality of 3D and 4D ultrasounds, making clear that the fetus in the womb is really a carefully formed, developing baby. It is now impossible to deny that the little one seen with such clarity on the screen is a human life that is about to be snuffed out. • The brutal reality of the houses of horrors run by...

Republican Rep. Ted Yoho said a tax on tanning salons included in President Obama’s health care overhaul law is “racist” against white people. At a town hall meeting in his north Florida district earlier this month, the freshman Tea Party favorite suggested the 10 percent tax was discriminatory because “dark skin” people don’t using tanning booths. “I had a little fun with [House Speaker] Boehner and told him about the sun tanning tax. He goes, ‘I didn’t know it was in there,’” Yoho told his constituents in an audio clip of the event posted on Right Wing Watch, a blog...

In South Carolina, Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham has been attacked in television ads for his support of immigration reform. In Tennessee, GOP Sen. Lamar Alexander is ducking criticism from Tea Party groups that his overall voting record is too moderate. Kentucky’s Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader, faces angry conservatives in his state for not joining an effort by some in his party to block the federal budget unless it defunds Obamacare. For these Republicans, the only uniting factor is that the criticism is coming from their own party. The reasons they are under attack vary from one group to...

Reminds me of an old press conference with Coach Dennis Green... (video)

It's been four years since protests of the president's health care agenda boiled over in town hall meetings around the country. The summer of 2009 marked the rise of the Tea Party movement and set in motion the GOP takeover of the House of Representatives the following year. Groups from all over the political spectrum are hoping to recapture some of that energy this month. 'A Boiling Point'?Before August 2009, town hall meetings — gatherings where members of Congress check in with constituents back home — used to be guaranteed snoozers. But in Michigan that month, Rep. John Dingell, a...

The problems keep stacking up for the partial implementation of Obamacare on October 1. The Wall Street Journal reports this week that the Department of Health and Human Services has cut back on the number of training hours required for the Obamacare "navigators," federal workers who under the health care law are tasked with helping consumers purchase insurance through the state exchanges. Here's the Journal: Grants to hire and train the workers aren't expected to be released for another two weeks for the 34 states where the federal government is running all or part of the marketplaces, which will offer...

(CNSNews.com) – As part of his ongoing campaign to transform New York City into what he calls “Fit City,” Mayor Michael Bloomberg is promoting “active design” for low-income housing developments being built there, including plans to prompt residents to use the stairs and rooftop gardens for growing “healthy” foods. In 2010, the Bloomberg Administration and other public and private sector groups issued the “Active Design Guidelines,” which promotes car-free neighborhoods, encourages “physical movement” inside buildings and “improves access to nutritious food.”The Center for Action Design was launched next as a resource for architects and developers who sign on to the...

Secular Pro-Life condemns a recent comment by comedian John Oliver, who is currently standing in for Jon Stewart on The Daily Show. Oliver implied that abortion restrictions are motivated solely by religion and not by secular concern for the human right to life. The comment came on Monday night’s episode. The segment, which can be viewed here, focused primarily on the Supreme Court’s recent decision weakening the Voting Rights Act. But about four and a half minutes in, the subject turned to abortion. Commenting on a recent North Carolina senate bill that addressed both abortion safety regulations and sharia law,...

DALLAS (CBS 11 NEWS) – Police were called to Baylor University Medical Center’s emergency room, after a dead fetus was found in one of the public restrooms. The discovery was made about 9 a.m. on Wednesday. Dallas Police Child Abuse detectives say they think they have identified the mother and are only describing her as a juvenile. Investigators will only say the fetus was deceased, and have given no details on how developed it was or if it was viable. Hospital visitors are in disbelief that a delivery could happen with potential help so close by.

August 6, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Although Facebook has blocked accounts belonging to Christian ministries, Sarah Palin fans, and a Fox News commentator as offensive, a page that states the “Virgin Mary Should've Aborted” is still going strong. Opponents of the site have organized a Tweetfest on Wednesday, August 7, from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Users are asked to use the #StopFBAntiChristianBias hashtag to draw attention to what the group's founders say is a hypocritical and discriminatory situation. The blasphemous page's administrators – who say they are women in their 20s going by the names “Z” and “Lilith” so believers...

Two of the three largest health insurers in Wisconsin — UnitedHealthcare and Humana — will not participate in the state’s online marketplace under the Affordable Care Act, but 13 insurers are considering selling to individuals and nine insurers have indicated an interest in selling to small businesses.

In the past week, The New York Times Co. announced it was selling the Boston Globe to Boston Red Sox owner John W. Henry, and Washington Post Chairman Donald Graham announced Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos was buying the paper that Graham's family has run for decades. Both papers went cheap. The Times bought the Globe in 1993 for $1.1 billion and is now selling it for $70 million. The price tag on the Post was just $250 million. The combined $320 million market value of these two big-city dailies is about as much as the federal government now spends in...

Major health insurance companies—Blue Cross, Aetna, United, Humana—have fled the Obamacare health care exchanges in various states, which are scheduled to start on Oct. 1. Insurance companies like Aetna and United have said, “thanks, but no thanks” to the public health insurance marketplace set up under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), or Obamacare, which will facilitate government subsidies to individuals and small businesses to buy approved health plans to comply with the law. The ACA requires every American to have health insurance, or pay a penalty. Individuals who are not covered by their employer can enroll in the state or...

Oh, did we say Obamacare required 30 weeks of training for its “navigators”? We really meant 20: Opening day for the new health-insurance marketplaces is two months away, but efforts to recruit and train workers to help people enroll are barely off the ground in many states. With time running short before enrollment kicks off Oct. 1, the Obama administration last week cut back on training requirements for these ‘navigators.’ Officials were concerned there might not be enough time to do more-extensive training before the health-insurance exchanges open … Three weeks ago, the administration said navigators would need up to...

Despite anticipation that members of Congress and their staffs would have to obtain their own healthcare just like the rest of America due to President Obama’s massive healthcare regulatory act, it appears that Congress and their staffs will now be provided with full healthcare subsidized by taxes, and additional government debt. Initially, it was understood that Obamacare would require members of Congress and their staffs on capital hill to go through government exchanges which are supposed to begin on October 1st, but apparently a recently discovered provision in the Obamacare law requires Congressmen and their staff to be covered by...

Speaking at a campaign-style rally last month at an Amazon plant in Chattanooga, Tenn., President Obama ridiculed Republicans’ economic agenda, claiming that “wasting the country’s time by taking something like 40 meaningless votes to repeal Obamacare is not a jobs plan.” The president has a bit of a point about the futility of those 40 votes. Given the unwillingness of the Senate to even consider changes to the health-care law, continued repeal votes are more an exercise in political theater than in policy. However, by that measure, the president’s giving countless speeches calling for higher taxes and more government spending...

Joe Scarborough has yet again scaled his soap box to mock those of us in the conservative blogosphere. He described us today as a bunch of "very stupid people" living in their mama's basement who write "really stupid things" about him. The thin-skinned Scarborough has often derided his blogging critics as Cheetos-chewing cellar-dwellers. He was at it again this morning, depicting them as people who if not in mama's basement would otherwise be wandering the streets in their pajamas. View the video here.

Note: Videos and photos included. SNIPPET: "In 1967, at the Cubberley High School in Palo Alto, California, World History teacher Ron Jones was asked about the Holocaust by a student. "Could it happen here?". According to the press release accompanying the latest retelling of the events that followed, "Jones came up with an unusual answer. He decided to have a two week experiment in dictatorship. His idea was to explain fascism to his class through a game, nothing more. He never intended what resulted, where his class would be turned into a Fascist environment. Where students gave up their freedom...

Tens of thousands of ObamaCare navigator jobs are opening up as part of the health insurance exchanges that are being constructed around the country. It is reported that these jobs will start around $20 per hour and go all the way up to $48 per hour for the federal exchange. The states that are creating their own exchanges will be responsible for hiring and training their own navigators and assisters so details of what they may be paid are hard to find. ObamaCare Navigator Job Qualifications You will not have to have a college degree to have this job but...

Nothing is free in politics, but there is some question when you pay the price. That’s been a saying of mine for many years, though I may have unconsciously plagiarized it from someone else. I think it applies to Obamacare. My American Enterprise Institute colleague Norman Ornstein has been shellacking Republicans for trying to undercut the implementation of the Obama health care legislation. He calls it “simply unacceptable, even contemptible.” He points out that Republicans in the past haven’t tried to undercut or derail major legislation of this sort. That’s correct, as a matter of history. You won’t find any...

The whole “BroChoice” campaign — and the notion that supporting abortion is a good thing for men to do because it allows them to get out of the responsibility of becoming a parent by pressuring their partner to have an abortion– continues to expand. Rollie Williams, who calls himself a comedian, writer, and biochemist on the website Upworthy, says Oregon is the best state in the nation to have sex in because it’s laws are the most pro-abortion. That’s what he says in a piece titled, “Why Oregon Just Became The Best State To Have Sex In” under the headline...