Free Republic

For over a decade, Americans have been force-fed a medicine that was supposed to heal our healthcare system. Instead, like a treatment with devastating side effects, the Affordable Care Act has left millions of families sicker financially than before they took the first dose. The prescription label promised affordability, but the bill that arrives each month tells a different story. While Democrats held the government hostage during the longest shutdown in American history over their precious ObamaCare subsidies, working families continued hemorrhaging money to insurance companies. The enhanced subsidies that progressives fought to protect are set to expire at year’s...

Few people lie awake at night worried about the federal debt. So the Republicans' plan to allow "temporary" COVID-19-era enhanced subsidies for Obamacare to expire because of their exorbitant cost won't win many votes. It will save Uncle Sam money. A staggering 93% of premiums are currently paid directly by the federal government to the insurance companies, reports the Paragon Health Institute. But will it win votes in the coming midterm elections? No. Democrats are gloating that reducing the subsidies will mean higher costs for enrollees and an increase in the number of people who go without insurance. Sen. Chris...

Their record isn’t just spotty; it is downright awful. The Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act of 1986 was designed to prevent “patient dumping” by hospitals of emergent patients without insurance. The unintended consequences of that law are hotly debated. What is not in controversy is the hospital lobby’s insistence that the law drives up their operating costs.That argument has done decades of service to protectionist policies that limit competition and protect prices.Then there is the Affordable Care Act. It was a compromise between advocates of “universal health care” and the “Third Way” or “New Democrats” who viewed big...

Earlier this year, when Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) began reporting on massive amounts of fraud in our social programs, the Democrats scoffed at him. They ran before any camera they could find to claim breathlessly that Musk was going to take away Social Security and leave Grandma out in the cold.That's not true, of course. Musk and DOGE were trying to not only save America from fiscal ruin, but to make these programs sustainable for the people who actually need and paid into them — the American taxpayers.Democrats, on the other hand, seem to view those programs...

It starts with a call. A sore knee, a lingering cough, a changing mole - nothing urgent - but not quite ignorable. The receptionist is polite, but the first available appointment is three weeks away.For millions of Americans, health care begins with a wait. For many, walk-in clinics have replaced family medicine.“People have started to accept that,” Dr. Dorothy Serna, a primary care physician who left traditional practice for a concierge model, told The Epoch Times. “They think, ‘I can’t get my doctor, so I won’t even try. I’ll just go to urgent care. I’ll wait. I’ll Google it.’”Such scenarios...

After successfully holding strong in the face of a Democrat-led government shutdown over Obamacare, a cabal of House Republicans is now waiving the white flag on the issue.On Thursday, nearly three dozen Democrats and Republicans introduced a proposal to extend taxpayer-funded Obamacare subsidies. As Federalist Senior Contributor Christopher Jacobs has regularly reported in these pages, these Biden-era subsidies — which are set to expire at the end of this year — have been a complete and total disaster. Spearheaded by Reps. Josh Gottheimer, D-N.J., and Jen Kiggins, R-Va., the measure “would extend and reduce the tax credits in a two-step...

An analysis of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), commonly known as Obamacare, has unveiled massive fraud that could be costing American taxpayers billions of dollars, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) said in a report released on Dec. 3. Under the program, the federal government pays credits to health insurance companies, called advance premium tax credit (APTC), on behalf of eligible Obamacare participants to reduce their monthly premium payments. In plan year 2024, almost $124 billion in such credits is estimated to have been paid out to insurance companies, accounting for around 19.5 million enrollees. The GAO report...

Sen. Josh Hawley is pitching his colleagues — and President Donald Trump — on a new health care plan. The Missouri Republican’s proposal comes as his party is grappling separately over what its strategy on health care should be as the Senate stares down a floor vote next week onHawley believes his new bill, which would allow all tax payers to deduct up to $25,000 per person in medical expenses, would help offer Republicans an agenda to coalesce behind while boosting the GOP’s affordability message heading into an election year. The bill also allows out of pocket spending on premiums...

Glenn Medical Center in Willows closed Oct. 21 after losing “critical access” status for being 3 miles closer to the nearest hospital than rules require. The closure strips emergency care from a poor farming community, eliminates 150 jobs and puts rural residents at risk of preventable deaths. Many other California hospitals also face risks of closing because of federal healthcare cuts affecting cash-strapped rural healthcare systems. These are questions that elected officials and policymakers may soon be confronting in rural communities across California and the nation. Cuts to Medicaid funding and the Affordable Care Act are likely to roll down...

The ACA obscures the true costs of healthcare. The government shutdown revealed just how much.Since the enactment of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), health insurance premiums have steadily increased, as has healthcare’s proportion of the gross domestic product (GDP). In employer-sponsored insurance, escalating premiums are the primary driver for stagnant take-home wages. The structure of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and employer-sponsored insurance conceal the true cost of healthcare. The recent government shutdown exposed this underlying flaw to public scrutiny. Should the premium tax credits lapse as expected, the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) projects that premiums for Americans will increase...

President Donald Trump is reportedly delaying his healthcare plan after House Republicans pushed back on his idea to extend Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) told Trump that the subsidy extension is a no-go for many Republicans in Congress. The Wall Street Journal reported that the speaker “cautioned the White House that most Republicans don’t have an appetite for extending enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies , according to people familiar with the matter, showing how hard it will be politically to stave off sharp increases in healthcare costs next year for many Americans.”This comes after the...

I started writing my blog in 2009, largely in response to America electing an anti-American president. During those first few years, I talked a lot about Obamacare. The thing was a disaster from day one; indeed, in an omen of things to come, Obama’s team spent four times more building a website that didn’t work than Apple did developing the iPhone.Image created using AI.The worst part about Obamacare? The fact that it was a solution to a problem that didn’t exist.In 2013, I wrote the following:Obamacare was passed in 2009 (sic) in reaction to anecdotal examples of Americans who couldn’t...

As families gather to celebrate Thanksgiving, many worry about the impossibly high cost of health insurance. Let’s play a game of What If? (It will be fun, I promise.) What if healthcare dollars currently going to insurance companies were paid instead to the consumers themselves? Would good things result, or bad? This “what if” exercise was prompted by President Trump’s offhand suggestion to give ACA subsidies “directly to the people...[instead of]...BIG, BAD insurance companies”? (Republicans are currently considering this idea but only for the ACA.) Specifically, what if all the money called employer-sponsored health benefits that presently goes to insurance...

Friday on “Democracy Now!,” leftist political activist Noam Chomsky said President Donald Trump’s supporters at his rallies remind him of listening to the crowds at Hitler’s Nuremberg rallies. Host Amy Goodman asked, “Can you talk about what he’s threatening to do right now? First, they reject the WHO tests, that would have been critical, and now saying they’re going to defund the World Health Organization.” Chomsky said, “Well, this is typical behavior of autocrats and dictators. When you make colossal errors, which are killing thousands of people, find somebody else to blame. And in the United States, it’s, unfortunately, the...

"The bottom line is this: Under this law, the share of Americans with insurance is up, and the growth of healthcare costs is down. And that's good for our middle class, and that's good for our fiscal future." - President Barack Obama, 4/26/2016

11/4/2013 - During an OFA summit, President Obama addressed claims that health care reform forces people off their original plans.

Dr. Mehmet Oz, head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said that the Trump administration may look at multiple options for extending health care subsidies that are due to expire soon.A key issue that kept the government shut down for more than a month was the COVID-19 pandemic-era health care subsidies that will expire at the end of the year. Democrats in Congress had wanted to add an extension to a stopgap bill to fund the government, but did not succeed in that effort.“The president’s willing to look at all options,” Oz said on Sunday during an interview...

Lawmakers are racing toward a mid-December deadline, with Republicans hoping to present side-by-side legislation with Democrats’ plan to extend ACA subsidies.President Donald Trump has again promised a “far better and far less expensive” alternative to the Affordable Care Act, and Republicans are rushing — again — to deliver one.For weeks throughout the longest government shutdown in history, Trump avoided negotiating with Democrats on the health care concerns fueling their standoff. Now lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are speeding toward a self-imposed deadline of mid-December to hold dueling health care votes.Democrats maintain the simplest and most popular option is...

While a number of industrialized nations provide health care through a single payer (government run) system, others have made a public-private system the model they use to guarantee health services to all their citizens. One of those nations is Israel which (as it turns out) has a lot to teach the United States on how to operate a universal health system that is based on both private and public inputs. Israel adopted its national health system in 1995 requiring all permanent residents be provided a standard basket of services including physician care, hospitalization, prescription drugs and dental care for children...

The right’s warnings about Obamacare proved prescient, yet Democrats keep doubling down on a failing system they refuse to admit they broke. Just over 15 years ago, when the Democrat-controlled House and the Democrat-controlled Senate were debating the healthcare proposals offered by the Democrat president, nearly everyone on the political right was unified in opposition. It may well have been the last time the right was united on anything, but it was indeed unified and resolute. Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann (MN) warned that “This monstrosity of a bill will not only destroy the private healthcare market, it will lead to massive...