Free Republic

Go Ahead...You Own It I had an "interesting" debate on Twitter last night with someone who is involved in the health insurance game in some way and apparently has cancer patients as clients. He is a strong shill for (supporter of) the "Obamacare Repeal/Replace" process by his own admission. The debate was plenty fun and decent right up until I pointed out that on the math the Federal Government spent $1,417 billion last fiscal year on Medicare and Medicaid, up from $380 billion in 1998, which incidentally was 37% of all federal spending last year -- and it's accelerating at...

House Speaker Ryan should resign his post, says Lou Dobbs, the anchor of Lou Dobbs Tonight on Fox Business Network. Dobbs Tweeted his resignation call Tuesday morning after Breitbart posted a pre-election recording of Ryan saying he would never defend President Donald Trump, and as multiple GOP legislators walked away from Ryan’s Obamacare replacement proposal, the American Health Care Act. In the audiotape, recorded Oct. 10, 2016, Ryan told his fellow GOP legislators that ““I am not going to defend Donald Trump—not now, not in the future.” Ryan spoke shortly after the public heard the Access Hollywood tape of Trump’s...

Sarah Palin, the first major GOP figure to endorse President Donald Trump, is calling out House Speaker Paul Ryan for what she says is “RINO-Care'...in her first interview on the topic, coming on Breitbart News Saturday on SiriusXM 125 the Patriot Channel this weekend... “I do want to speak about this, but I am tempted to say not another word from our fearless leaders about this new form of Obamacare that I’m going to call RINO-care—not another word from them until we are definitively told that there is no provision whatsoever allowing Congress to exempt itself whatsoever with this law,”...

Our big spending national government—whether Republican, Democrat or whatever—ran up a national debt approaching ten trillion dollars during the 220 and some odd years prior to Obama taking office. During Obama’s 8 year term, our big spending government nearly doubled that debt. No one’s fault (cough, cough), but we and our posterity are now staring at an unbelievable, unmanageable, unsustainable, unpayable mountain of twenty trillion dollars in accumulated debt with no let up in sight! In fact they want to continue the wholesale printing and spending of money we don’t have and they’re planning on raising the debt ceiling to...

It's a legislature for God's sake! What, not so much as a comma can be altered? It's perfect just as it is and any change would disrupt the "delicate balance" that they cobbled together in secret?? They couldn't allow any thorough debate or amendment in committee?? It was released on Monday, voted on in committee on Wednesday and Thursday, and now members are being threatened if they vote no on the floor, even though their input is not being allowed in the rush?? As usual, the Establishment, that is, the Ruling Oligarchy is expending all its efforts to create a...

There is a line worth noting in David Brooks's column today: "The Republican plan will fuel cynicism. It's being pushed through in an elitist, anti-democratic, middle of the night rush. It seems purposely designed to fail." Quietly, the idea that the House bill is designed to fail is percolating around Washington. I've heard it from a half-dozen people now. The law's construction is shoddy. The outreach has been nonexistent. The hypocritical, hyper-accelerated process is baffling. Nothing about it makes sense. But if you flip the intention — if you assume Republican leaders want to see a repeal-and-replace bill die in...

Paul Ryan’s Obamacare-lite plan will replace Obamacare’s health mandate penalty with an even larger penalty. Avalere Health reports that the Ryan plan’s insurance penalty eclipses Obamacare’s penalty. Paul Ryan’s Obamacare-lite plan will replace the individual mandate penalty with a premium surcharge for failing to maintain health insurance coverage over 63 days. Individuals without insurance face a 30 percent surcharge of their monthly premium. The penalty will fill the coffers of the insurance companies instead of the government. Obamacare imposes penalties for those who go without insurance for more than three months. The IRS imposes penalties based on income, and the length...

WASHINGTON -- House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) was chief lobbyist for the Republican Obamacare replacement bill Thursday, but conservatives and moderates in the Senate were indicating that their votes may not be there. Ryan spent his weekly press conference giving a lengthy professorial lecture on the basics and benefits of the American Health Care Act, assisted by visual aids. "We are going to repeal and replace Obamacare and we're going to do it with a three-pronged approach. Number one is what we're talking about right now... that's called reconciliation. That's the American Health Care Act. There are only so many...

Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) on Friday warned GOP opponents of the party’s healthcare plan that the measure’s failure could derail progress on other key aspects of Republicans’ policy agenda. In an interview with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt, Ryan said that a defeat of House Republicans’ bill repealing and replacing ObamaCare would be “momentum killing,” essentially having a domino effect on planned tax reform efforts, among other party goals. “Think of legislation as one train track with a bunch of trains on the track,” Ryan said. “If you don’t get these trains through the system, it slows everything else down."...

The Affordable Care Act was based on government coercion of individuals and redistribution of wealth. So, too, is the Republican plan to “replace” it. “An applicable individual shall for each month beginning after 2013 ensure that the individual, and any dependent of the individual who is an applicable individual, is covered under minimum essential coverage for such month,” said Obamacare. This section of the law was clinically entitled: “Requirement to Maintain Minimum Essential Coverage.” It was not a choice the government offered individuals. It was a command. It said the “individual shall.” If the “individual” did not comply with this...

House Speaker Paul Ryan is openly targeting House Republicans with television advertisements—while conspicuously not hitting Democratic members—to try to browbeat them into supporting his healthcare legislation. The ad then cuts to President Trump’s recent address to a joint session of Congress, where Trump says he wants to “repeal and replace Obamacare.”

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASEMarch 07, 2017 AFGE asks President Trump to avoid ‘party politics’ in fight over the Affordable Care Act WASHINGTON – In response to the introduction of the House’s plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, American Federation of Government Employees National President J. David Cox Sr. issued the following statement:“President Trump and his allies in Congress have shown their true colors in what is yet another attack on working families. The American Health Care Act is a cruel retraction of coverage that will end up depriving millions of Americans coverage they have come to rely on.“This...

The White House on Wednesday questioned the work of the independent Congressional Budget Office (CBO) ahead of its widely anticipated estimate for the GOP's bill to repeal and replace ObamaCare. White House press Sean Spicer said the scorekeeper was “way off last time” in its cost estimate of the Affordable Care Act, arguing its numbers on the Republicans’ replacement should not be taken as the final word. "If you're looking at the CBO for accuracy, you're looking in the wrong place,” Spicer said. Spicer indicated the Trump White House plans to release its own estimate of the bill through the...