Free Republic

he protests in Ferguson, Missouri, over the police killing of 18-year-old Michael Brown are eliciting predictable glee from Russian media outlets, some of which are making it seem as if a race war is about to break out in America. An RT article, “Protests Against Police Tyranny have Spread Across the Main Cities of the USA," suggested that the nation is on the brink of chaos as the "rage of Americans ... spreads across the entire country." Sputink i Pogrom, a nationalist newsmagazine, tweeted out, "What do you think? Should Russia grant Obama asylum in Rostov after the Ferguson Maidanites...

MONTPELIER, Vt. - Former Vermont U.S. Sen. James Jeffords, who in 2001 tipped control of the Senate when he quit the Republican Party to become an independent, died Monday. He was 80. Jeffords died in Washington, said Diane Derby, a former aide to Jeffords. He had been in declining health, she said. Jeffords had announced in 2005 that he would not seek a fourth term, citing his and his wife's health problems.

I like to think that very few people despise Obamacare more than me. I don’t like Obamacare because it’s a fiscal boondoggle. I don’t like Obamacare because it’s bad healthcare policy. I don’t like Obamacare because it generated an embarrassingly bad decision by the Supreme Court. I don’t like Obamacare because it is driving people out of the labor force and into government dependency. I don’t like Obamacare because it has increased corruption in Washington. And I don’t like Obamacare because it further enriches and empowers Washington’s political class. But I also like being honest and that means I’m willing...

A pair of congressional Democrats pressed the White House Friday to move forcefully on regulations requiring calorie counts on restaurant menus. The Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) proposed rule mandates labels on restaurants, “similar retail food establishments” and vending machines to combat obesity by helping consumers make healthier choices. The regulations, a requirement of the Affordable Care Act, were first proposed in 2011 and drew hundreds of public comments. The proposal remains under review at the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Meanwhile, dozens of lawmakers have argued that the FDA’s proposed rule goes beyond congressional intent, warning...

Obamacare head Marilyn Tavenner told a top press official to delete an e-mail related to HealthCare.gov during the botched launch, according to documents released Friday. House Republicans are seeking emails from Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services officials to discover exactly how Obamacare and HealthCare.gov’s rollout went so wrong. But it turns out that last October, Tavenner directly told CMS’s communications director, Julie Bataille, to delete an email chain with White House officials about HealthCare.gov and contractor Serco. “Please delete this email-but please see if we can work on call script,” Tavenner wrote to Bataille, upon receiving an email chain...

House Republicans on Friday accused a top Obama administration health official of telling staff to delete an email related to the healthcare law’s rollout last fall. In a letter to Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Administrator Marilyn Tavenner, the Republicans point to an Oct. 5 email from Tavenner to staff about how to handle calls from people applying for ObamaCare. In the first line of the email, Tavenner writes “please delete this email but see if we can work on call script.” Republicans in their letter ask why Tavenner wanted the email deleted, and whether she has asked for other...

A key official overseeing the ObamaCare launch last fall asked a subordinate to “delete” an email exchange on the matter, according to newly released records, fueling Republican concerns that the administration may be hiding internal discussions from Congress. “Time and again, the self-proclaimed 'most transparent administration' has been anything but,” House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton, R-Mich., said in a statement. “And now we know that when HealthCare.gov was crashing, those in charge were hitting the delete button behind the scenes.” Upton and other GOP committee leaders on Friday released an email exchange from Oct. 5, 2013, shortly...

Charlie Crist, the Democratic nominee in Florida’s governor race in November, says the Obama administration shouldn’t require proof of immigration status for Obamacare sign-ups. “We need to make this law work for the people depending on it, and the President should suspend this requirement so that no American citizen loses their health insurance due to a bureaucratic requirement,” Crist spokesman Brendan Gilfillan told Politico Thursday. Over 310,000 Obamacare customers have failed to provide proper documentation on their citizenship or immigration status to the Obama administration, after the federal government contacted them between five and seven times about discrepancies in the...

Earlier this year, supporters of the federal healthcare law known as ObamaCare enthusiastically celebrated reaching its signup goal, with reported enrollment topping eight million Americans. In the months since, however, there has been a noticeable dearth of updates regarding the relative success of the law since its famously rocky implementation. If a recent Investor’s Business Daily report is any indication, there might be good reason for the Obama administration’s silence. **SNIP** Another barometer of public sentiment comes from enrollment numbers reported by individual states. Washington, for example, is the only state that waited until enrollees had paid their first month’s...

the latest Fox News national poll finds voters oppose the law by a 52-41 percent margin. As in the past, the new poll shows that most Democrats favor Obamacare (74 percent), while most Republicans (84 percent) and independents (61 percent) are against it. Voters in every age group are more likely to oppose the law than favor it, with one exception: those ages 65 and over. And that group only favors it by two percentage points. President Obama receives higher job approval ratings on health care than on almost any other issue: 42 percent of voters approve, while 53 percent...

According to two new studies published Wednesday by the HHS Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC), U.S. physicians and hospitals are rapidly increasing the use of electronic health records (EHRs). The two studies found that in 2013: •Nearly 78 percent of office-based physicians acknowledged they had implemented some form of EHR system. •About half of all physicians had an EHR system with advanced functionalities, nearly double the rate of four years before. •About 59 percent of hospitals had an EHR system with advanced functionalities, nearly quadruple the rate of two years before. The HHS claims that...

A national business group representing the nation’s large employers reported Wednesday that companies desperate to avoid a 40 percent ObamaCare “Cadillac tax” are finding ways to shift the costs to workers. The so-called “Cadillac tax,” now four years away, will affect health plans that spend more than $10,200 per worker. Meanwhile, employers are shifting workers into plans with higher deductibles, just as ObamaCare does in the health care exchanges, and using health savings accounts to help defray the costs.

And they should know because they're the ones not collecting the premiums.Much of the left has been trying its best to push the notion that "ObamaCare is working," largely based on the announced enrollment total of anywhere from 8 million to 10 million that has come out of the White House. Since this was more than the 7 million they originally said they needed to make the system viable, viola . . . success!One problem: They counted everyone who enrolled, without regard to whether enrollees ever paid a premium. If you don't pay the premium, you're not insured and you're...

A spin-off nonprofit with links to a top insurance company is pushing for Obamacare benefits to be extended to illegal immigrants. The health-care exchanges and benefits like taxpayer subsidies for premiums are open to citizens and legal immigrants, but the California Endowment is trying to drum up support in California to formally extend Obamacare to the state’s undocumented immigrants as well. According the group’s website, it was created when Blue Cross of California split into the nonprofit California Endowment and the big-name, big-profit insurance company WellPoint Health Benefits. And of course, WellPoint stands to benefit greatly from Obamacare. WellPoint-Anthem Blue...

A Slidell woman allegedly was trying to avoid paying her hospital bill by using her dead sister's name, birth date, and Social Security number when she checked in to a local hospital last week. At the time, police said she was wearing the deceased woman's memorial shirt.

As a result of YOUR efforts, we WILL repeal every word of Obamacare!

Hundreds of thousands of Obamacare sign-ups are about to lose coverage if they don’t cough up more information about their citizenship and immigration status. Obamacare administrator the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced Tuesday that the agency sent letters notifying 310,000 customers who have failed to fix errors in their citizenship or immigration data that their coverage will be terminated Sept. 30 if they don’t submit proof by Sept. 5. The customers are part of close to 1 million Obamacare sign-ups who submitted applications with citizenship and immigration information that didn’t square with federal records. CMS claims 450,000 of...

President Obama's celebration of 8 million Obamacare enrollees was premature, according to this article in Investors Business Daily. Major insurers are reporting large drop offs in Obamacare paying customers, that could mean the number of Americans insured by Obamacare dropping below 6 million by year's end. ObamaCare exchange statistics should clear up any doubt as to why the Obama Administration has been tight-lipped about enrollment since celebrating 8 million sign-ups in mid-April. Reality, evidence suggests, could require quite a come-down from those lofty claims. The nation's third-largest health insurer had 720,000 people sign up for exchange coverage as of May...

The Obama administration announced yesterday that they are informing 310,000 Obamacare enrollees that unless they can offer proof of citizenship before September 5, they will lose their insurance. The problem: Because of the administration's incompetence, the healthcare.gov website - still not finished - can't determine whether an enrollee is a citizen or not. From Wall Street Journal: "The Obama administration moved Tuesday to cut off health insurance for up to 310,000 people who signed up through the HealthCare.gov system unless they can provide documents in the next few weeks showing they are U.S. citizens or legal residents. Those individuals have...

President Barack Obama's administration is contacting 310,000 Obamacare enrollees starting Tuesday to warn them that they must verify they are U.S. citizens or legal residents -- or their benefits will be cut off. In letters being delivered in English and Spanish, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services instructs the enrollees to provide additional documentation regarding their citizenship or immigration status by Sept. 5. Without that documentation, their health insurance plans will be rescinded Sept. 30. The recipients of these letters are people who have not responded to five to seven previous attempts to obtain their documents, according to a...