Free Republic

With the U.S. Supreme Court expected to rule next week on King v. Burwell, two Florida Republicans promoted alternatives to President Barack Obama’s federal health-care law this week. US. Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, R-Fla., introduced the “Free Market Health-care Restoration and Coverage Act of 2015” on Thursday which repeals Obama’s heath-care law while keeping subsidies until 2017. "With the King v. Burwell ruling quickly approaching, I introduced legislation that would allow my constituents and Americans across the country to keep their premiums while House Republicans work on a real and permanent solution," Diaz-Balart said.

In a case called King v. Burwell, the Supreme Court will soon decide whether it agrees with two lower courts that President Obama is breaking the law by subjecting 57 million employers and individuals to illegal taxes, and spending the illegal proceeds to hide the cost of HealthCare.gov coverage from 6.5 million enrollees. Today the president delivered a speech designed to cow the Supremes into turning a blind eye to the law. Instead, he offered what for some is the missing piece of the King v. Burwell puzzle. He displayed the very ideological fervor that leads powerful people to break...

WASHINGTON -- About a decade ago, a doctor friend was lamenting the increasingly frustrating conditions of clinical practice.

Link only http://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/2015/05/08/ky-hospitals-obamacare-forcing-cuts-layoffs/26990637/

The U.S. Constitution vests the legislative, executive, and judicial powers in separate branches of the government that are supposed to police each other. But what if one of those branches violates the law in a manner that personally benefits the members of another branch? That’s what has been happening since the day ObamaCare became law in 2010. For more than five years, the executive branch has been issuing illegal subsidies that personally benefit the most powerful interest group in the nation’s capital: members of Congress and their staffs. When congressional Democrats passed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA),...

Full title: Michael F. Cannon gives a lecture on the topic of, “King v. Burwell: Can the President Rewrite the ACA Without Congress?,” at an event hosted by The Show-Me Institute Video at link

This week, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in King v. Burwell, one of four legal challenges to an IRS regulation that purports to implement the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, but in fact vastly expands the IRS’s powers beyond the limits imposed by the Act. Just in time for oral arguments before the Court, Vox’s Sarah Kliff has produced what I think may be the best history of King v. Burwell and related cases I’ve seen. Still, there are a few important errors and omissions.... Kliff reports that all congressional staff involved with the drafting of the...

Most observers of the legal battle over Obamacare’s subsidies are now familiar with the two clips (one video and one audio) in which economist Jonathan Gruber takes the plaintiff’s side, saying only states which set up an exchange will receive subsidies. But a third example of Gruber saying much the same thing has, so far, received very little attention.

The plaintiffs in King v. Burwell claim the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act only offers premium subsidies, as the statute says, “through an Exchange established by the State.” Members of Congress who voted for the PPACA – most recently Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA) and former Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE) – now swear it was never their intent to condition Exchange subsidies on state cooperation. Ironically, Casey’s and Nelson’s decision to wade into the King debate demonstrates why, when a statute is clear, courts traditionally assign no weight to what members of Congress claim they intended a law to say...

Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell is the lead defendant in King v. Burwell, in which the plaintiffs claim the Obama administration is taxing millions of employers and individuals and subsidizing millions of HealthCare.gov enrollees contrary to the plain language of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (a.k.a., ObamaCare). The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in the case on March 4, and will likely rule by late June. If the Court rules against Burwell, 57 million individuals and employers will be freed from those illegal taxes and maybe 4 million HealthCare.gov enrollees will lose subsidies that the...

Tonight, President Obama will deliver his annual State of the Union address to Congress. He will no doubt boast that his administration has enrolled 6.8 million individuals in ObamaCare plans in the 37 states with federal Exchanges — i.e., through HealthCare.gov — and a couple million more in the few states that established their own Exchanges. The State of the Union would also be a good time for the president to be honest with those HealthCare.gov enrollees, especially the roughly 6 million of them who are purchasing coverage with the help of federal subsidies, about the risks to which he...

Vox‘s Sarah Kliff reports that Harvard University’s Theda Skocpol has produced a study purporting to show Congress intended for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act to authorize health-insurance subsdies through Exchanges established by the federal government — even though the statute expressly and repeatedly says those subsidies are available only “through an Exchange established by the State.” Whether the PPACA authorizes those subsidies in the 36 states with federal Exchanges is the question presented in King v. Burwell. The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in King on March 4, with a ruling expected by June. Unfortunately for the...

Tomorrow, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives will vote on a measure that would alter the definition of full-time work, for purposes of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act’s employer mandate, from 30 hours per week to 40 hours per week. I have a few questions about this supposed threat to ObamaCare: This legislation would reduce the burden of ObamaCare’s employer mandatem but it would also increase government spending by making more workers eligible for health-insurance subsidies through ObamaCare’s Exchanges. How is that a policy victory?The legislation would therefore shift part of ObamaCare’s cost from an organized and influential interest group...

Effing the Middle Class:: By: Larry Walker II ::In Part 1, we voiced concern that in constitutional law sense, an excise tax is usually an event tax as opposed to a “state of being” tax, the recent exception to this principle being the "minimum essential coverage" tax under Internal Revenue Code section 5000A as enacted by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Public Law 111–148), whereby an indirect tax is imposed on the condition of not having purchased health insurance coverage.This is not the first time in history the United States has forced its middle class to pay a...

There's a bizarre reason why millions of Americans saw their health plans cancelled in 2013 and, as explained in a new video featuring Robert Graboyes of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, millions more will lose their plans in years to come.

The Obama administration announced new rules under Obamacare on Monday that target nonprofit hospitals’ efforts to get paid by their patients.Nonprofit hospitals, which serve a charitable purpose and are often religiously affiliated, will now be subject to strict rules on when and how they can collect payments from customers, thanks to regulations included in the health-care law. As a condition of their tax-exempt status, these hospitals must “take an active role in improving the health of the communities they serve,” Treasury Department deputy assistant secretary for tax policy Emily McMahon wrote in a blog post Monday. Under the new IRS...

Some 87 percent of people who just signed up for Obamacare are getting financial assistance to lower their premiums, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. That is a jump from 80 percent during the last open enrollment period. ... includes more than 3.4 million people who selected a plan in the 37 states that are using the HealthCare.gov platform for 2015 Full Title: Tax dollars at work: 87% of new Obamacare users given federal aid

While states debate expanding their Medicaid programs under Obamacare, they're wrestling with a looming 2017 deadline — when their taxpayers begin paying for the cost of the expansion. Beginning in 2014, states that agree to expand Medicaid to persons with incomes of up to 138 percent of the poverty line will have the federal government pay 100 percent of the cost. But beginning in 2017, the federal share will fall to 95 percent, and it drops to 90 percent in 2020. This has officials — many of them in Republican-dominated states across the country — worried that they will not...

The Affordable Care Act may become even more of a nightmare with Hillary Clinton in the White House, says Betsy McCaughey, chairwoman of the Committee to Reduce Infectious Deaths and former lieutenant-governor of New York. "Hillary could make it worse," McCaughey said Friday on "The Steve Malzberg Show" on Newsmax TV, referencing Clinton's attempt to launch a heathcare plan when her husband, Bill Clinton, was president. "Hillarycare back in November 1993, all 1,362 pages of it . . . was far more coercive than Obamacare." For example, said McCaughey, a medical doctor, Clinton's plan was far more rigid than President...

What the Individual Mandate means for you and your family:: By: Larry Walker II ::Under the Affordable Care Act, beginning in 2014, State governments, insurers, employers, and selected individuals are supposed to share in the responsibility of providing health insurance coverage. The Act’s shared responsibility provision, also known as the individual mandate, requires you and each member of your family to either: Have minimum essential coverage; or An exemption from the responsibility to have minimum essential coverage; or Pay an Excise Tax. You will report minimum essential coverage, claim an exemption therefrom, or make an excise tax payment when...