Free Republic

Enrollment in Obamacare insurance plans must double over the next year if budget projections by the Congressional Budget Office are to be met. An article in the Washington Times shows enrollment lagging far behind original estimates of where the program should be by 2016, and this will have unknown effects on the trillion dollar projection for the program's cost by 2020. As of June, the Department of Health and Human Services counted 9.9 million customers who have bought plans through the federal HealthCare.gov portal and a handful of state-run exchanges. That puts the administration ahead of it’s own estimates...

In the hospitals, we see the consequences. While the poor and the illegal immigrants get absolutely free care, the middle-class patients are collapsing financially under the strain of their deductibles and their lost income from their time off work, not to mention the additional stress of their illness. In our clinics, sick patients are choosing to forego testing, medicines, and surgery that they need solely because of cost. Instead they are living with their illnesses, often with cheap antibiotics as a means of delaying the inevitable. To make matters worse, the patients getting their health care for free will ask...

Seven months after major glitches in the Washington health exchange were discovered, authorities acknowledge that thousands of state residents still don't have insurance they can use to go to the doctor or fill a prescription. [Snip] Some people aren't being properly credited by the exchange for their insurance payments. In some cases, money and information has been lost somewhere between the exchange and the insurance companies. And some people have been told by their doctors that the insurance company has no record of their coverage.

Earlier this month there was tremendous press attention to new data indicating that enrollment in the Affordable Care Act (ACA)’s health insurance exchanges had surpassed 7 million. The White House took a victory lap while much of the press, desperate to write something positive after months of reporting on website glitches and insurance plan cancellations, characterized the milestone as good political news for ACA supporters. Our national discussion, however, is missing the truly significant story here; what is unfolding before our eyes is a colossal fiscal disaster, poised to haunt legislators and taxpayers for decades to come. It is quite...

Time magazine calls the Affordable Care Act a "broken promise" on the cover of its latest issue. The image splits a pill with "Obamacare" inscribed on it in half, separating "Obama" and "care." The cover story, by Nancy Gibbs, looks at how President Barack Obama needs to fix what has been a disastrous rollout of the federal health law — and fix it fast: So the sign that the Obama presidency had reached a turning point came not when his poll numbers sank or his allies shuddered or the commentariat went hunting for the right degree of debacle to compare...

ObamaCare: Yet another study — this one a survey of America's largest firms — shows why employers will drop health coverage for their workers once they do the math and see how much they can save. It's no longer news that President Obama isn't even close to keeping his promise to preserve the employer-paid health coverage enjoyed by tens of millions of Americans. But that fact bears repeating, especially since it keeps getting confirmed by new data. The latest piece of evidence comes from a confidential survey of Fortune 100 firms. It's a Republican report, produced by the House Ways...