Free Republic

State-run health insurance markets that offer coverage under President Barack Obama’s health law are struggling with high costs and disappointing enrollment. These challenges could lead more of them to turn over operations to the federal government or join forces with other states.Hawaii’s marketplace, the latest cautionary tale, was awarded $205 million in federal startup grants. It has spent about $139 million and enrolled 8,200 customers for individual coverage in 2015. Unable to sustain itself, the state marketplace is turning over sign-ups to the federal HealthCare.gov for 2016. Twelve states and the District of Columbia fully control their markets. Experts estimate...

The Supreme Court had an opportunity, with its ruling in King v. Burwell, to determine whether the United States is a nation of laws or of men. Today, in a 6-3 decision, the Court ruled that we have devolved into the latter. Although the text of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. Obamacare) clearly states that the government may issue subsidies only through insurance exchanges established by the states, Obama administration bureaucrats unilaterally rewrote that part of the law so that the IRS could dispense such premium assistance through “marketplaces” created by the federal government. The plaintiffs in...

A new poll shows that a majority of Wisconsinites want Gov. Scott Walker to expand Medicaid and to take action to prevent more than 184,000 people from losing health care subsidies, potentially making their health care unaffordable, if the U.S. Supreme Court eliminates subsidies in Wisconsin and 33 other states. The court is expected to render its decision in June. The survey of 1,071 registered voters, commissioned by Citizen Action of Wisconsin, showed that by a margin of by 31 percent — 58 to 27 percent — respondents thought Walker should accept a federally funded expansion of Medicaid, which Walker...

California's health exchange is violating the law by canceling private coverage for up to 95,000 people because they might qualify for Medi-Cal, the state's insurance commissioner says. At issue is health insurance for some of the poorest Californians whose incomes aren't high enough to even qualify for subsidized policies in the Covered California exchange. The state marketplace is notifying thousands of policyholders that their federal premium subsidies for Obamacare coverage will end Dec. 31 and their private health plan won't be renewed starting in January. Instead, these people will be put into Medi-Cal, the state's Medicaid program for low-income residents....

The second open enrollment period for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act is underway, and the law is more unpopular than ever. According to Gallup, a record-high 56 percent of Americans now disapprove of the 2010 law.on Friday the administration unveiled a new one: In large swaths of the country, the price of insurance sold on the federal health exchange is going up. That will force many of those who bought coverage last year to scramble to find a new policy or fork over as much as 20 percentin higher premiums. How's that "affordable" health care working out for you?Republicans...

Liberals are now in damage control mode on the heels of the discovery of not one but two videos of Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber claiming in January 2012 that the subsidies for that program were limited to exchanges set up by the states. Their contention is that while Gruber might have worked closely with Congress to create the Obamacare bill, he is still not Congress. The other claim is that there is no document that backs up what they consider to be merely a Gruber "Speak-O." Newsflash folks! Your humble correspondent has come upon a 2011 General Accounting Office report...

This week, Jonathan Gruber appeared on MSNBC to assert that the DC Circuit appellate court got the ObamaCare statute all wrong in its Halbig decision. Gruber, one of the key architects of the ACA and of the Massachusetts “RomneyCare” law that preceded it, insisted that the state exchange requirement for subsidy payment was purely accidental. “It is unambiguous this is a typo,” Gruber told Chris Matthews. “Literally every single person involved in the crafting of this law has said that it`s a typo, that they had no intention of excluding the federal states.” Two years ago, though, Gruber gave...

Jonathan Gruber, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist who helped design the Massachusetts health law that was the model for Obamacare, was a key influence on the creation of the law. He was widely quoted in the media. During the crafting of the law, the Obama administration brought him on for his expertise. He was paid almost $400,000 to consult with the administration on the law. And he has claimed to have written part of the legislation, the section dealing with small business tax credits. [Text and :59 video SNIP] PS: Possibly the most damning thing about this video is...

[Carter appointee Judge Harry Edwards] prodded Carvin to explain why Congress saw it as such an advantage to have states rather than the federal government manage the exchanges. “Why does it matter who establishes the exchanges?” he asked. “Your argument makes no sense.” He said, “Who cares?” At that point, [GHWB appointee Judge Raymond] Randolph jumped in and said, “Ben Nelson.” Carvin agreed, arguing that Nelson, the former senator from Nebraska, was withholding support for Obamacare, in part, because he wanted exchanges to be state-based rather than federally-run. To get the law across the finish line, the Senate voted to...

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius on Tuesday accused GOP governors of “playing with people’s lives” by refusing to expand Medicaid in their states under ObamaCare. The criticism from Sebelius is the latest example of an effort by Democrats and the White House to take the offense on the issue of healthcare. Separately, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee released a memo on Wednesday, obtained exclusively by The Hill, informing its candidates that “the political landscape around the Affordable Care Act has shifted in Democrats’ favor” and urging them to use the GOP’s calls to repeal ObamaCare against Republicans. “Americans...

"......“People see incompetence when they look at this,” said Michael Short, a spokesman for the Republican National Committee. “Everyone that’s associated with it is going to have to deal with the consequences of this terrible law, including the state legislators who created these exchanges and the governors in charge of running them.” Last month, the Republican National Committee filed public-records requests in Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota and Oregon seeking information about compensation and vacation time for the exchange directors, four of whom have resigned. All five states have Democratic governors whose terms end this year. Three of them — Gov....

The Washington Post's Ezra Klein has found what he thinks is a bright spot amid the gloomy Obamacare news. When you hear what he's enthusiastic about, you'll perhaps understand why I wonder if there is any common ground at all between liberals and conservatives. Klein reports that Obamacare's "biggest success" is that 4 million new enrollees signed up for Medicaid as of November and the number should be even higher when December's statistics are tallied. "If the point of health care reform is covering people who need health insurance, the expansion of Medicaid should be a huge win." Sorry,...

The federal Healthcare.gov website, serving 36 states that chose not to build their own sites, has been - to quote its boss, Kathleen Sebelius - a "debacle." Its estimated cost to taxpayers stands at $394 million so far and will likely rise as the "tech surge" pours millions of additional taxpayer dollars into trying to fix the site. But federal taxpayers are on the hook for a sum more than 10 times greater - $4.3 billion - for state exchange websites. And some of them are even more spectacular failures than the federal site. The final cost to taxpayers of...

The Wall Street Journal reports today on the latest “Obamacare” glitch to emerge—this one striking at the heart of the law’s coverage expansions: Less than two weeks before the launch of insurance marketplaces created by the federal health overhaul, the government’s software can’t reliably determine how much people need to pay for coverage, according to insurance executives and people familiar with the program…. -snip- Less than two weeks before the exchanges “go live,” officials at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) are months behind schedule and scrambling to “fix” the software that will run exchanges in 36 separate...

Major health insurance companies—Blue Cross, Aetna, United, Humana—have fled the Obamacare health care exchanges in various states, which are scheduled to start on Oct. 1. Insurance companies like Aetna and United have said, “thanks, but no thanks” to the public health insurance marketplace set up under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), or Obamacare, which will facilitate government subsidies to individuals and small businesses to buy approved health plans to comply with the law. The ACA requires every American to have health insurance, or pay a penalty. Individuals who are not covered by their employer can enroll in the state or...

Montana Senator Max Baucus, who led the effort in Congress to pass Obamacare, is now referring to it as a “coming train wreck”. Baucus has announced he will not to seek re-election in 2014, perhaps to avoid the inevitable embarrassment of this pending disaster. He’s not alone in his concern. The prospect that too few Americans will enroll in the program, thus rendering it unfeasible, has the administration fearful that Baucus is right -- it may actually end up derailed. These enrollment fears have prompted the creation of dubious non-profit organizations to promote Obamacare. Enroll America and Organizing for Action...

The alleged motivation behind the deceitfully named “Affordable Care Act” is that there are millions of medically uninsured in the US. Of course the appropriate solution would be to address that need without crashing healthcare for the rest of the population. But somehow that approach was overlooked. What if there was a concept by which we could treat those millions, providing them with better care, shorter wait times, less bureaucracy and an improved doctor/patient relationship, all while reducing Medicaid spending by $1 billion or more per state per year? Not only is this possible, but the type of facility which...

Thousands of people with serious medical problems are in danger of losing coverage under President Obama's health care overhaul because of cost overruns, state officials say. At risk is the Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan, a transition program that's become a lifeline for the so-called uninsurables -- people with serious medical conditions who can't get coverage elsewhere. The program helps bridge the gap for those patients until next year, when under the new law insurance companies will be required to accept people regardless of their medical problems....

Thousands of people with serious medical problems are in danger of losing coverage under President Barack Obama's health care overhaul because of cost overruns, state officials say. At risk is the Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan, a transition program that's become a lifeline for the so-called "uninsurables" — people with serious medical conditions who can't get coverage elsewhere. The program helps bridge the gap for those patients until next year, when under the new law insurance companies will be required to accept people regardless of their medical problems. In a letter this week to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius,...

(CNSNews.com) - Here comes another legal challenge to Obamacare: On Thursday, a group of small business owners and individuals in six states sued the federal government over an IRS regulation that they say goes beyond the "plain language" of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). In a nutshell, the plaintiffs argue that federal subsidies intended to help lower-income people afford insurance are going to states that should not get them. The way the Affordable Care Act is written, states that refuse to set up their own health care exchanges are not eligible for the federal premium subsidies. But the IRS rule...