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The bill is coming due for ObamaCare and it’s a whopper. According to Medicare Care’s own actuaries U.S. health care spending is about to rocket. Federal meddling in what was once the finest and cost-effective health care system on the planet is nothing new. Back in the 1960s, many Americans paid for doctor and hospital services out of pocket or through modestly priced private insurance. Health care spending was about 6 percent of GDP. Enter President Johnson and Medicare. He bought millions of votes by giving seniors free health care that they never paid for through payroll taxes during their...

President Barack Obama’s top health adviser on Monday called for an end to partisan bickering over Obamacare, saying the public and businesses are sending a clear message to Washington that it is time to move on with implementing the law. “The Affordable Care Act is clearly working,” U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell told a university audience in remarks that unveiled a new administration message about the successes of the healthcare reform law just as the midterm election campaign debate about its future intensifies. “What I’ve been hearing over and over … (is) enough already with the back...

In a bit of dubious cherry-picking, a new Bloomberg article concludes that the Affordable Care Act is losing its effectiveness as a political issue for Republicans and is diminishing as a major issue. How do we know the end is near-ish? Well, so many Americans are "benefiting from the law," theorizes Heidi Przybyla, that political ads are simply not doing the job anymore. This news is somewhat unexpected -- and unpersuasive -- when you consider that a Kaiser Family Foundation poll recently found that only 15 percent of Americans believe Obamacare has directly helped them, whereas 28 percent say it...

Charlie Crist, the Democratic nominee in Florida’s governor race in November, says the Obama administration shouldn’t require proof of immigration status for Obamacare sign-ups. “We need to make this law work for the people depending on it, and the President should suspend this requirement so that no American citizen loses their health insurance due to a bureaucratic requirement,” Crist spokesman Brendan Gilfillan told Politico Thursday. Over 310,000 Obamacare customers have failed to provide proper documentation on their citizenship or immigration status to the Obama administration, after the federal government contacted them between five and seven times about discrepancies in the...

The U.S. Digital Service, comprised of a small team of digital experts, will collaborate with federal agencies to make websites more consumer friendly, to identify and fix problems and to help upgrade the government’s technology. Mikey Dickerson, the former Google engineer who helped fix HealthCare.gov after a disastrous launch will be the administrator of the U.S. Digital Service and deputy federal chief information officer. Specifically, the team will try to bring the government’s digital services in line with the private sector, collaborate with agencies to identify gaps in designing, developing and operating services and providing accountability at agencies. The administration...

Last week, by 2-1 vote, a Washington, D.C., appellate panel ruled that the Obama administration unlawfully changed Obamacare. Meanwhile, on the same day, on the same question, a panel from the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the other way. This issue is headed for the Supreme Court. Michael Cannon, director of health policy studies at the Cato Institute, is -- according to CNBC -- the "intellectual godfather" of what is perhaps Obamacare's most serious court challenge. Cannon says when Congress drafted Obamacare, they made it clear: Tax credits, grants and other subsidies would be available only to those enrollees...

Why is our recovery from the Great Recession so sluggish and so slow? Economists are increasingly focusing on Barack Obama’s signature legislative accomplishment: the Affordable Care Act, popularly known as ObamaCare. Although generally thought of as a measure to insure the uninsured, health reform is affecting the entire labor market in negative ways. As I wrote previously, the employer mandate to provide health insurance will cost almost $6 an hour for family coverage. This health minimum wage (on top of the money minimum wage) raises the cost of labor and will almost certainly discourage hiring. There are two ways that...

Words mean what they say. That's the basis for the decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in Halbig v. Burwell invalidating the Internal Revenue Service regulation approving subsidies for Obamacare consumers in states with federal health insurance exchanges. The law passed by Congress, Judge Thomas Griffith explained, provided for subsidies in states with state-created exchanges, but not in states with federal exchanges. That's factually correct, and under the Constitution, the government can't spend money not authorized by Congress. This has not prevented Democrats from calling the decision "judicial activism," which makes as much sense as...

I don’t get tanning, either outside or inside. I’ve never been a sun-worshipper and can’t stand hot summers. I prefer cold – you can always put more layers of clothes on, you can only take so much off. But just because I don’t engage in something doesn’t mean I don’t see a problem when it’s targeted by protestors, special interest groups, and especially government; and the tanning industry is the latest to have a government-painted bullseye on its back. This issue came to my attention when my friend and former co-worker Ryan Ellis wrote about it in the Washington Times...

WASHINGTON - Republicans have a wealth of political issues that will dominate the 2014 midterm election races and determine their outcome. The national news media has done its best to try to bury these issues, play them down or sugar coat them, but the American people know better. They have persistently put these issues at or near the top of every voter poll in the last six years of Barack Obama's scandal-ridden, trouble-plagued administration. It's hard to break through and overcome the power of the Washington news media that has worked hard to cover up the Obama White House's blunders....

It's no accident that Obamacare has become emblematic of the Obama administration overall, because it exemplifies so thoroughly what Obama represents ideologically and functionally. Obamacare symbolizes government largesse, incompetence, inefficiency, arrogance and heartlessness, a government that knows better than you what is good for you. It epitomizes staggering spending, waste and debt. It typifies a government that is too big for its britches, which is crushing your liberties while telling you that it has your best interests at heart and that you can't live without it. It stands for wholesale dishonesty -- something that is entirely different from what it...

While President Obama diverts the nation's attention with his other myriad scandals, the Obamacare Express continues to careen off the rails, leaving a wide path of destruction and rendering its supporters defenseless. The latest outrage, in a yearslong string, is that at least 4 million of the 8 million total Obamacare sign-ups contain flawed applications, according to a report by House Republicans. But this isn't some arbitrarily divined number chosen by Republicans for political purposes. It is based on a chart prepared by federal Obamacare contractor Serco that shows more than 4 million application discrepancies as of May 27. These...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States is re-establishing a law enforcement group to fight those it designates as domestic terrorists, with an announcement expected on Tuesday, Department of Justice officials said. Following hate-motivated shootings such as the one at a Jewish Community Center in Kansas City, Missouri in April, federal prosecutors have pressed the need to coordinate intelligence of such criminals on a national level, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The group will coordinate cases that involve Americans who may be spurred to violence for political or prejudicial reasons.

Liberals wanted a national enrollment system under Obamacare. They might just get it. Right now, 36 states rely on HealthCare.gov, the federal exchange, to enroll people in health coverage. At least two more states are opting in next year, with a few others likely to follow. Only two states are trying to get out. That’s precisely the opposite of the Affordable Care Act’s original intent: 50 exchanges run by 50 states. The federal option was supposed to be a limited and temporary fallback. But a shift to a bigger, more permanent Washington-controlled system is instead underway — without preparation, funding...

Given the myriad boons to gay rights we’ve seen this decade, it’s easy to overlook the fact that the Affordable Care Act is brimming with new regulations that directly benefit LGBTQ Americans. Indeed, I consider it to be one of the most important pieces of gay rights legislation ever passed. new story out of Florida further confirms my suspicion. The Huffington Post reports that two Florida insurance companies are under fire for discriminating against patients with HIV, slapping them with a 40 percent co-pay on each of their HIV drugs, plus a $1,000 deductible per drug per month. (The new...

In theory, open enrollment ends tonight. No longer can individuals without any excuse whatsoever wait to purchase health insurance policies on the Exchanges that will be in effect during 2014. I very much expect we will hear numbers over the next few days such as 6.5 million or 7 million bandied about as “enrollment figures.” Many supporters of the ideas behind the original ACA who have managed to tolerate its metamorphosis over the past year will herald those numbers as signs of success. And, indeed, those numbers are considerably better than many had feared. I, for one, am prepared to...

When any politician speaks before an audience,gloating of all of his success,giving the details/facts of his latest policy,wouldn't you expect him to take candid questions from the press that seats before him?,Well,we all watched Obama make his victory speech this afternoon.But with 25/26% approval of the Affordable Health Care Act,can we assume that 75% of those who saw it were either laughing/talking back,"Yah Right,7 Million Enrollees,My(Fill in the blank).Never the less,being our President refused to take any questions,makes anyone rather suspicious regarding the facts behind this debacle.

Healthcare.gov, the troubled website set up to help Americans choose and enroll in a health care policy, crashed early Monday morning, on the final day to begin the process to apply for health insurance. According to a CNBC story, the website crashed around 3:20 a.m. (ET) Monday. It was  still down as of 7:40 a.m.Monday is the deadline to sign up for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act -- commonly called Obamacare -- before facing a fine.According to the White House, more than 6 million people have signed up since the enrollment period began on Oct. 1. According to...

We have encountered many physicians and friends who don’t recall or recognize just how many interesting coincidences had to fall into place for the Affordable Care Act (ACA) to pass both houses of Congress and gain President Obama’s signature (March 23, 2010). This post serves as an informational overview – a reminder – as to how it all happened and is not meant in any way to be a judgment on the process – however convoluted – or on the final product.

March 26, 2014 10:44 AM Read the Complete List of Obamacare Delays By Alec Torres The Obama administration will announce its tenth Obamacare delay later today, this time extending the March 31 enrollment deadline for people who say they’ve been unable to enroll in health plans in the federal marketplace by the deadline. The extension applies to the federal exchange operating in three dozen states and is expected to last for two or three weeks. Can’t remember what all the delays have been? Politico provided a helpful history of Obamacare delays from most to least recent: March 25: Final enrollment...