Free Republic

Sarai was 25 years old when she died of Wilson’s disease, an inherited disorder that causes liver failure. A liver transplant could have cured her, but she was uninsured and was denied an appointment at two prominent Chicago transplant hospitals, including my own. Sarai’s plight was brought to my attention when a local religious group held a hunger strike advocating transplant access for Sarai and other uninsured patients. When she died, her congregation marched seven miles, holding her photograph and lugging coffins emblazoned with her name, to launch a sit-in in front of Northwestern University Hospital. Her death certificate named...

Many years ago we accepted the UniParty.  Shortly thereafter CTH broke away from political identity framed around arguments of party and personality; we chose to focus on policy and outcomes.  Washington DC is a singular party, a UniParty. We have been explaining, countering and fighting “The Big Club” in DC for years; always following the money. President Trump is the first political entity in our lifetime that not only comprehends the faces of the false arguments (the personalities of false choice and controlled opposition), but more importantly sees the architects behind the Potemkin villages represented by those faces. When it...

So much for Donald Trump’s input, eh? Yesterday, the president tweeted out his strategy for solving the impasse in the Senate over the ObamaCare repeal effort — to split the repeal and replace functions and pass each separately. Senators Ben Sasse and Rand Paul immediately endorsed the idea, although Sasse did want to give the comprehensive strategy a few more days first.

The next president could be dealing with an ObamaCare insurer meltdown in his or her very first month. The incoming administration will take office just as the latest ObamaCare enrollment tally comes in, delivering a potentially crucial verdict about the still-shaky healthcare marketplaces. The fourth ObamaCare signup period begins about one week before Election Day, and it will end about one week before inauguration on Jan. 20. After mounting complaints from big insurers about losing money this year, the results could serve as a kind of judgment day for ObamaCare, experts say. “The next open enrollment period is key,” said...

After providing $2.4 billion in loans to get them started, ObamaCare is now driving several nonprofit insurance co-ops out of business. That, in turn, will leave tens of thousands of people scrambling to find other insurance, while making it unlikely that those taxpayer-subsidized loans will ever be repaid.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld the nationwide tax subsidies under President Barack Obama's health care overhaul, in a ruling that preserves health insurance for millions of Americans. The justices said in a 6-3 ruling that the subsidies that 8.7 million people currently receive to make insurance affordable do not depend on where they live, under the 2010 health care law.< The outcome is the second major victory for Obama in politically charged Supreme Court tests of his most significant domestic achievement. It came the same day the court gave the administration an unexpected victory by preserving...

June 05--Minnesotans got a shock Thursday when the state's health insurers proposed "eye-popping" rate increases for people who buy health insurance on the individual market -- premium increases as high as 70 percent. Democratic-Farmer-Labor Gov. Mark Dayton condemned the increases as "outrageous" and suggested they should be scaled back. Republicans saw them as reason to criticize the state-run portion of that market, MNsure. Here's the background about these premium increases, why they're happening and what they mean: What's proposed? Federal law requires health insurers to disclose any premium increases above 10 percent. Those were released Wednesday, and in Minnesota, there...

President Obama told Senate Democrats in a private meeting that he plans to "play offense" against the new GOP-controlled Congress, showing little hesitation about clashing with Republicans for the next two years. Congressional sources confirmed the comments, made Thursday during a summit in Baltimore, as Republican lawmakers held their own summit in Hershey, Pa. The president, who already has issued a string of veto threats in the opening days of the 114th Congress, indicated he's prepared to keep opposing legislation he finds objectionable. This includes legislation with bipartisan support. Not only has Obama threatened to veto bipartisan legislation authorizing the...

Bob Cusack, editor-in-chief of The Hill, said he was "sure" ObamaCare architect Jonathan "has many, many e-mails that prove he has a very solid relationship with Democrats" on Monday´s "Your World with Neil Cavuto" on the Fox News Channel. "I would imagine that Gruber is a bit shocked by it [Democrats throwing him under the bus], too, and I´m sure he has many, many e-mails that prove that he has a very solid relationship with Democrats and has had for years. They trusted him with putting together the centerpiece of what President Obama needed and wanted in his first term....

Sunday on Fox News Channel´s "Fox & Friends," network White House corespondent Ed Henry asked President President Obama about Jonathan Gruber and the president claimed he had just heard about the ObamaCare architect before walking out on stage in Australia. President Obama said, "I just heard about this. I get well briefed before I come out here. The fact that some adviser who never worked on our staff expressed an opinion that I´ve completely disagreed with in terms of the voters, is no reflection on the actual process that was run. We had a year-long debate, Ed, I mean, go

A lie is apolitical, or at least it should be. If there is one thing that unites clear-headed Americans, it's a belief that our leaders must be transparent and honest. And yet, there seem to be two types of lies in our political discourse: Those that hurt "my party" and "my policies"; and those that don't. We condemn the former and forgive the latter—cheapening the bond of trust that enables a society to progress. This truism came to mind when I read a Washington Post story headlined, "Who Is Jonathon Gruber?" It was an important and workmanlike report on the...

"Stupid is as stupid does" -- Forrest Gump Unless you regularly follow conservative media, you may not have heard what one of the architects of the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) thinks about you. Jonathan Gruber is a Massachusetts Institute of Technology health economist who helped craft Obamacare. In a rare moment of unvarnished candor, Gruber told an audience last year at the University of Pennsylvania the law passed because of the "stupidity of the American voter." In what can only be described as a smoking gun -- meaning there is no way to spin his remarks as "out of...

Mr. Gruber has spent decades modeling the intricacies of the health care ecosystem, which involves making predictions about how new laws will play out based on past experience and economic theory. It is his research that convinced the Obama administration that health care reform could not work without requiring everyone to buy insurance. And it is his work that explains why President Obama has so much riding on the three days of United States Supreme Court hearings, which ended Wednesday, about the constitutionality of the mandate. Questioning by the court’s conservative justices has suggested deep skepticism about the mandate, setting...

From The Independent A virus that infects human brains and makes us more stupid has been discovered, according to scientists in the US. Here's the virus at 10000x magnificationAnd here is the astounding result of it being grown in a Petri dish... :-D

IN POLITICS, there’s nothing harder than realizing that it’s time to go. For Democrats Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, that moment has arrived. With the Democrats’ midterm losses, the two 74-year-olds should announce that when this session of Congress ends, they will relinquish their roles as leaders of their respective Democratic caucuses. And if Reid and Pelosi don’t soon come to the conclusion on their own that it’s time to bow out? Well, then, their fellow Democrats, recognizing that you can’t begin a new era with old leaders, should let both know that the time has come to go.

In politics, there’s nothing harder than realizing that it’s time to go. People who have made their careers as Beltway politicians start to think they’ve become indispensable to Washington, when in fact it’s Washington that has become indispensable to them. And so they can’t or won’t recognize when the moment has come to move on to other things. For Democrats Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, that moment has arrived. With the Democrats’ midterm losses, the two 74-year-olds should announce that when this session of Congress ends, they will relinquish their roles as leaders of their respective Democratic caucuses.

Despite Republicans expanding their majority in the House by more than 10 seats, retaking control of the Senate and increasing their strength in state legislatures, Nancy Pelosi denies the midterm elections were a Republican wave. "I do not believe what happened the other night is a wave," Pelosi told Politico. "There was no wave of approval for the Republicans. I wish them congratulations, they won the election, but there was no wave of approval for anybody. There was an ebbing, an ebb tide, for us." Republicans increased their majority to 53 seats in the Senate this morning when the Republican...

The ObamaCare consultant churning headlines this week for questioning voters' intelligence is a stranger to Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the House Democratic leader from California said Thursday. “I don't know who he is,” Pelosi said of Jonathan Gruber. “He didn't help write our bill.” [SNIP] Still, if Pelosi is unfamiliar with Gruber now, that wasn't the case amid the fierce debate as ObamaCare was being crafted. As unearthed Thursday by The Washington Post, Pelosi's website contains entries from December 2009 featuring an extensive analysis of the law's impact on insurance premiums. The author? Jonathan Gruber.

Posted By Bryan Preston On November 13, 2014 @ 7:51 am In Obamacare | 4 Comments Jonathan Gruber’s “stupid” comments have sent the Obama White House into a spin.When this White House gets under fire, it naturally turns to the press outlets that it has used as tools for years, including Josh Marshall’s Talking Points Memo.The name ought to give that site away: It’s not about facts, it’s about spin. Talking points.So the under-fire Obama White House turns to the talking pointers to deliver some talking points on Gruber’s “stupid” remarks.To wit: We were transparent the whole time we were...

Pelosi Suggests Questions About Her Future Are SexistTop House Democrat wonders why Mitch McConnell wasn't asked about stepping down the way she has been. BY BILLY HOUSE November 13, 2014 Nancy Pelosi on Thursday suggested that sexism plays a role in questions over whether she should remain House Minority Leader after her party's election shellacking last week. "As a woman, is there a message here?" asked Pelosi, 74, at a Capitol news conference. Pelosi challenged how many times reporters had asked that of soon-to-be Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, 72, as his party failed previously to capture the Senate majority...