Free Republic

In an op-ed penned for Breitbart, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) explained that President Donald Trump's upcoming executive order--which would legalize the sale of health insurance across state lines--would come at zero cost for the taxpayer and would enable 28 million people "left behind" by Obamacare to purchase insurance cheaply. According to Paul, the executive order will create "Health Associations," which would allow people to create groups similar to large corporations in order to get lower premiums on their plans. Paul said that these Association Health Plans will "be among the biggest-free market reforms" of the healthcare industry in decades, and is...

Arguing for protection of religious freedom, the Trump administration has opened the door for employers to withdraw from the Affordable Care Act mandate requiring them to provide birth control coverage at no cost to employees. Under new rules issued by Department of Health and Human Services, religiously affiliated institutions that find the requirement opposed to their religious principles, or nonreligious employers who find it morally objectionable, can stop providing this coverage. The birth control mandate when first issued under the ACA exempted only houses of worship. This provoked a host of lawsuits among which was that of Hobby Lobby, a...

Cue the funeral bagpipes. My fourth health insurance plan is dead. Two weeks ago, my husband and I received yet another cancellation notice for our private, individual health insurance coverage. It's our fourth Obamacare-induced obituary in four years. Our first death notice, from Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield, arrived in the fall of 2013. The insurer informed us that because of "changes from health care reform (also called the Affordable Care Act or ACA)," our plan no longer met the federal government's requirements. Never mind our needs and desires as consumers who were quite satisfied with a high-deductible PPO...

Former President Obama decided to voice his frustration at attempts by members of Congress to repeal his flawed health care law, noting that it’s “aggravating” to see our leaders try to inflict human pain on the population. He was speaking at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s Goalkeepers event. The purpose of Goalkeepers is to accelerate world progress and highlighting figures that are joining the movement to spur global change.While he didn’t specifically name the political party or persons involved with repealing his health care overhaul that he says saved lives and ensured that 90 percent of Americans have health...

The danger of a Republican bailout of Obamacare is mounting with every passing day. Moderate Republicans calling themselves the Problem Solvers Caucus are quietly negotiating with Democratic leaders Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer to throw a multibillion-dollar lifeline to the Obamacare insurance exchanges. This bailout, of course, would be an epic betrayal by the Republican Party, which has promised to repeal and replace the financially crumbling health law. Obamacare's apologists object to the term "bailout" for this rescue package. The left prefers the euphemism "stabilizing the insurance market." They claim this is merely a payment to low-income families to help...

RUSH:”Anthem Insurance to Exit Nevada’s Obamacare Exchange and Almost Half of Georgia’s Counties in 2018 — American health insurance giant Anthem announced [yesterday] that it will exit the Obamacare exchange in Nevada and will stop offering plans in roughly half of Georgia’s counties next year.” There’s something that didn’t make this story. Certain Anthem customers in New York City and state have recently received an email — a letter, if you will –from Anthem saying, “Guess what? “We’re ending your coverage. We are terminating your policy. Your options are to go get a private policy at this elsewhere location.” But...

Previously, we have written how important it is to restructure our health insurance system after the dishonest, unnecessary and destructive law passed by a fully-partisan vote known as Obamacare. We have defined the fact that this is a team effort by Republicans which would orient the insurance market back toward consumer choice and save us from a downward spiral toward government control over the entirety of our healthcare system, handing over the future of our individual health to faceless know-it-all bureaucrats. Yet despite that, three senators -- Murkowski, Collins and McCain -- vainly thought they were wiser than everyone else...

What do we take away, then, from the earthquake on the Senate floor last week, with wisps of smoke still rising from the ruins of Republican efforts to do something -- anything -- likely to rationalize the health care mess? We take away, or should, the lesson that government can't do everything, and when it tries to, you get something approximating Obamacare: too big and complex to succeed, unless you redefine success to mean: "We're getting there, OK?" Well, no. It's not OK at all. At the center of national attention, currently, are the Republicans' busted plays. Repeal and replace?...

Sen. John McCain offered an explanation Friday for why he joined Democrats and two of his Republican colleagues in voting against the “skinny” repeal of Obamacare, saying he did not believe it would “actually reform our health care system.”"While the amendment would have repealed some of Obamacare’s most burdensome regulations, it offered no replacement to actually reform our health care system and deliver affordable, quality health care to our citizens,” McCain said in a statement."The Speaker's statement that the House would be ‘willing’ to go to conference does not ease my concern that this shell of a bill could be...

The reason Republicans can't "come together" on a repeal-and-replacement plan for Obamacare is that the American people haven't come together on what they want. True, polls show Obamacare remains unpopular. But the various Republican replacement proposals have polled even worse. And when you break down the answers, Obamacare is unpopular-ish. Americans, for example, like the idea of preventing insurance carriers from denying coverage to people who have pre-existing conditions. Similarly, polls show that Americans like compelling an insurance company to keep a child on a parent's policy until the child is 26 years old. Americans wish to prevent insurance carriers...

It's no great revelation that Republicans have bungled the Obamacare repeal bill beyond belief. What's killing Republican reform efforts are the headlines projecting that some 20 million people will lose their health insurance under virtually any GOP plan. These numbers are complete fabrications, but all voters hear is that people will suffer under the Republican plan. That's why the GOP must change the narrative and focus on the three C's of health care reform: choice, competition and cost reduction. Lowering premiums through choice and competition will make health insurance more affordable for tens of millions of Americans. Obamacare promised these...

Until now, I haven't been too concerned about the Republican Party's difficulties in passing a health care reform bill because delays have resulted in improvements to the proposed legislation. But enough is enough. No more games. It's time to quit the finger-pointing. Neither congressional leaders nor President Trump have done enough to whip votes and sell the bill. A major overhaul of Obamacare, whether a full repeal, or a repeal and replacement, is imperative for Trump and congressional Republicans. More than any other, Obamacare is the issue that has galvanized grass-roots conservatives since 2010, and the Republicans' failure to...

RUSH: President Trump gave a little speech before the luncheon that he had with GOP senators up at the White House, and this is so long overdue. Well, let me just stick with the facts here. Trump, in giving his speech to these Republicans at the White House lunch, laid out the horrors of Obamacare. You know, everybody talks about how it’s imploding and everybody talks about how it’s disintegrating and how premiums are rising and insurance companies are pulling out exchanges and the exchanges are dwindling away. But nobody details the actual horrors of this. So Trump’s decided to...

"What's in it for them?"Start thinking of the answer to this important question as you read this column.Remember the famous Las Vegas advertising slogan, "What happens here, stays here." Well it doesn't.Las Vegas is the crossroads of America. The tourist capital of America. The convention capital of America. The fastest growing big city in America. The retirement capital of America. The melting pot of America. What happens here is symbolic of the corruption, fraud and "rot" happening in the GOP across America.Our own Nevada GOP U.S. Senator Dean Heller wants to fight to keep Obamacare.And our own Nevada GOP Governor...

After Senate Republicans unveiled their ObamaCare replacement on Thursday, ABC smeared the bill during World News Tonight with claims that people were going to pay more for less and that Medicaid was being cut. On Sunday, Clinton lackey George Stephanopoulos took to his show, This Week to continue their smear campaign. “The President right there said no cuts in Medicaid … Why is the President going back on his promise,” he rudely yelled at Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway. According to Stephanopoulos, “A lot of senators have questions about the Senate bill. Particularly those cuts in Medicaid. More than $800 billion.”...

The Democrats' comprehensive meltdown after their fifth straight election loss is a spectacle worth savoring. They're vacillating between denial and self-flagellation, between consuming depression and delusional optimism. Some are even blaming hacking for the loss. Don't let them fool you; they did not expect carpetbagger Jon Ossoff to lose to Karen Handel in the special election for Georgia's 6th Congressional District. If they had, they would not have poured unprecedented millions into the race. No one but gambling addicts intentionally waste that kind of money. For all the talk about President Donald Trump's being in trouble, the Democratic Party is...

It's finally official. The Affordable Care Act is a public-policy flop of epic proportions. That's the only possible conclusion from the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Kansas City announcement last week that it will drop out of many markets in Kansas and Missouri. The firm lost $100 million under the Obamacare insurance exchanges from 2014 to 2016. This is another body blow to the government-insurance system Barack Obama created in 2010. Blue Cross is one of the biggest health insurers in the nation, and now 25 more counties in these states will have no insurer left. Nearly every news...

The moment the Congressional Budget Office released its score of the Obamacare repeal bill passed recently by the house, hysterical partisan voices began their hue and cry. Under this baneful new reform, headlines wailed, "23 million would lose health coverage." That isn't actually what the nonpartisan CBO's report said. But politicians and activists know a powerful rhetorical point when they see it. And there's great danger when such a potent point can be made that all resolve to do something necessary will collapse into a puddle of political cowardice.Lawmakers should not allow alarmism to distract their attention. Obamacare is shredding...

Now that House Republicans have passed a revision/repeal of Obamacare, the Left has turned convulsive.  Predictions of bodies strewn on the streets and picked up on oxen-driven carts have been offered by elected officials who want us to take them seriously.  Let us review the current state of health insurance in America.What Obamacare did was six basic things: 1.     Provide that your child can be on your health insurance until the age of 26.  I am not sure why this is so wildly popular, if it truly is.  This is not Italy where young men live at home until they...

I give up. Ten minutes after I started watching the Senate intelligence committee hearings Thursday morning, I got so frustrated I started looking for a good cartoon show. What's so aggravating about these staged Congressional hearings is that you know what the Republicans and the Democrats are going to say before you even turn on the TV. If it's healthcare reform, the right side says it's going to replace Obamacare with something that works - but then they can't sell their conservative ideas to the public and they don't have the courage to really try. Meanwhile, the left side says...