Free Republic

When it became obvious a couple of years ago that Obamacare would accelerate health care inflation, the law’s boosters began claiming that cost control was never its primary goal. PPACA’s promoters had previously promised that it would reduce annual health care expenses by $2,500 per family while improving access and quality of care. But the facts forced them to abandon that pledge and adopt a safer party line. As expressed by the New York Times, the new story goes thus: “At its most basic level, the Affordable Care Act was intended to reduce the number of Americans without health insurance.”...

Mitt Romney, you're an honorable and accomplished man. You would have been a good president and infinitely better than Obama as a steward of the economy and national security. But, Mitt, we need to talk. You don't get it. You don't really get the basic proposition that freedom works better than government by experts. Sure you believe the concept generally, but there are all those details and exceptions. You hired Jonathan Gruber to guide your health plan. You believe global schemes to reduce carbon will help the climate rather than enrich and empower global elites. You endorsed raising the minimum...

… Using This One Weird Trick! It seems as if everybody’s down on the idea of Mitt Romney running for president again. Even establishment Republicans who aren’t part of the vast Bush claque seem to be hostile. President Obama’s aides mocked Romney’s interest in income inequality, per Politico: (SNIP) “It’s simply never going to be believable to go from car elevators, off-shore accounts and his famous 47 percent comment to the populist income equality warrior.”… (SNIP) After all, there’s one obvious, simple move Romney could make to turn the mockery around, jujutsu style, in a way that would give him...

Though it violates both state and federal law, Massachusetts spent tens of millions of dollars to give illegal immigrants medical care—including prescription drugs, physical therapy and dental services—through its taxpayer-funded healthcare program for low-income individuals. Tax-paying residents of the Bay State should be outraged, to say the least. The information comes straight out of a scathing report that contains the findings of an investigation conducted by Massachusetts State Auditor Suzanne Bump. It reveals that questionable or prohibited medical claims totaling $35,137,347 were reimbursed by the state’s Medicaid agency known as MassHealth. A chunk of it went to non-emergency services for...

Mitt Romney stressed the need to sharply reduce poverty in America Friday night during a speech to members of the Republican National Committee. “Under President Obama, the rich have gotten richer, income inequality has gotten worse and there are more people in poverty in American than ever before,” the former Massachusetts governor told a large crowd aboard the USS Midway Museum on San Diego Bay. He said only Republican and conservative principles, such as focusing on education, fostering strong families and creating jobs, could solve a problem that President Lyndon Johnson first tackled 50 years ago. “His heart was in...

Republicans are shifting their tactics on ObamaCare, an abrupt change from the party’s repeal-only rhetoric that dominated the last five years of debate. The GOP is coalescing around the idea that incremental changes, rather than a sweeping repeal effort, can be more appealing to voters — while also holding out the possibility of hollowing out the law from within.

In 2007, when President Obama announced that he was running for president, he did it in Springfield, Ill., to highlight his supposed connection to Abraham Lincoln. He brought in his biggest fans to cheer him on. When George W. Bush announced in 1999, he did it in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. The Bush campaign, likewise, brought in a big crowd of supporters. John Kerry announced in Patriot's Point, S.C., in 2003, amid a sea of American flags, war veterans and an aircraft carrier in the background. And where was Mitt Romney when he announced on Friday that he was thinking of...

The 2012 Republican nominee for president holds a leads a broad field of GOP potential contenders in the Townhall/Gravis poll conducted Jan. 5-7 among 404 registered Republican voters queried. Note: the polls were conducted using IVR technology and weighted by historical voting demographics. Former Massachusetts governor W. Mitt Romney has never left the hearts and minds of Republican voters and he will hold the dominant position in the race for the 2016 presidential nomination until the other candidates spin up their own campaigns, said Doug Kaplan, the managing partner of Gravis Marketing, a Florida-based pollster and call center that executed...

On Sunday's broadcast of ABC's This Week Democratic strategist and Clinton confidant James Carville predicted not only will Mitt Romney enter the presidential race, but that he will campaign as the "conservative alternative" to Jeb Bush. "Of course he's going to get in and he's going to run against Bush from the right," Carville said on the panel portion of This Week. "I think he has a strategy that he didn't have before. And his strategy is he's the conservative alternative." VIDEO at link.

In a move that surprised his most loyal supporters and former staff, Mitt Romney told several donors Friday he is seriously considering a third run for the White House… “Mitt has been a terrific leader for the Republican Party, but if he runs again, he’ll have to earn it again,” said veteran Republican operative Phil Musser, a former Romney supporter. His firm is already handling preliminary campaign work for former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, but Musser says he has not committed to a candidate… “Jeb Bush forced everyone’s hand,” said Barney Keller, a Republican strategist. “If he’s serious, Romney needs...

Romney tells donors he is considering 2016 campaign Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee, told Republican donors in New York on Friday that he is seriously considering a third presidential campaign in 2016, ... “I believe Mitt Romney is too much of a patriot to sit on the sidelines ... Zwick said.... Romney’s move, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, comes as former Florida governor Jeb Bush is swiftly snatching up major party donors and operatives as he prepares for an all-but-certain presidential campaign. The former Massachusetts governor held a lengthy meeting on Friday with about 30 major...

Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn said he hopes his GOP colleagues hold off on a vote to fully repeal Obamacare until after Republicans have shown they can govern. “I think it’s important that we demonstrate that we can be productive before we have the inevitable fight over repealing Obamacare,” the Texas Republican said in an interview with CQ Roll Call Wednesday. “We are going to have that vote. But my own preference would be we have it after we’ve been able to demonstrate that we can actually get some things done.”

In baseball, when you get three strikes, you’re out. There have been at least five strikes called against single payer (SP). Shouldn’t we hear from an umpire? Whether you call it single payer, socialized medicine, universal health care, Veterans Administration (VA) Hospital System, ObamaCare, Public Option, or National Health Service, these are all different names for the same thing: government-controlled healthcare. Details vary but all single payer-type systems have one thing in common: a central authority that controls both supply of dollars and providers, as well as demand for goods and services. Strike #1: Italy's price controls In the...

Get your tiny violins out and prepare to play a sad song at the pity party of the week:The effects of laws they call for obviously were never intended to be felt by them: For years, Harvard’s experts on health economics and policy have advised presidents and Congress on how to provide health benefits to the nation at a reasonable cost. But those remedies will now be applied to the Harvard faculty, and the professors are in an uproar. Members of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, the heart of the 378-year-old university, voted overwhelmingly in November to oppose changes...

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.

Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin campaigned on socialist medicine. He promised to turn Vermont into a socialist paradise, complete with “free” healthcare for all. Last week he announced that socialist medicine was too expensive for Vermont. Not even Johnathan Gruber could save the single payer dreams of Vermont socialists. The fact is socialist single payer is too expensive for the people of Vermont. The state has an annual budget of $2.7 billion. Socialist single payer would have added $1.6-2.5 billion to the budget with the latter end of projections more likely. Doubling state expenditures means doubling taxes, with an 8% income...

<p>WASHINGTON — Jeb Bush, who’s seriously considering a 2016 presidential bid, has sprinted to the front of the Republican field in a new McClatchy-Marist Poll.</p> <p>Former GOP nominee Mitt Romney remains on top, with Bush, a former Florida governor, a close second. Take away Romney, and Bush leads the field.</p>

Mitt Romney has become the acid reflux candidate: He just keeps coming back up. There has been poll after poll, story after story and now, over the weekend, a “Ready for Romney” website emerged that may or may not be serious. (I am guessing “Masochists for Mitt” was already taken.) The Mitt boomlet is driven by three major forces: First, the belief that the potential Republican field for 2016 is so weak — even though you can find more than a dozen reasonably serious candidates in it — that Mitt will rise head and shoulders above it. It’s the Simon...

Last month Republicans won a wave election picking up a dozen seats in the House and nine seats in the Senate. Last week the Republicans ignored the will of the voters and voted in favor of President Obama’s budget initiatives. The country is overwhelmingly opposed to Obamacare, so the Republicans fully funded it without making any changes. The country is overwhelmingly opposed to amnesty, in particular the country is opposed to amnesty created by the executive branch alone. Rather than refuse to fund the President’s amnesty power grab, the Republicans are funding it completely. They’re even spending a billion dollars...

Now that Republicans will control both houses of Congress, they will have an opportunity to deal with Obamacare. What should be done? They can begin by repealing the worst features of Obamacare. They can do that by keeping three promises many of them made to voters during the last election: Keep your job; keep your health insurance; and keep your doctor. The most direct way to get rid of all the anti-job provisions of ObamaCare is to repeal the employer mandate. The most direct way to insure that people can keep insurance they like is to repeal the individual mandate....