Free Republic

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration warned California on Friday that it must stop requiring health insurance plans in the state to provide abortion coverage or risk losing federal money. The move — the latest clash between the White House and the nation’s largest state — opens a new front in a long-running national debate over whether abortion services must be covered by health insurance. It threatens to further restrict Californians’ access to abortion services, which must be offered in health plans that cover individuals and employees of small business in the state. The state’s rules do not apply to larger...

With the current third-party payment structure, you doctor does not practice as much medicine on you as insurance executives and federal bureaucrats do. Americans, who practices medicine on you? The answer may seem self-evident, but it is not. In our current health-care system, millions of nameless, faceless government or private insurance bureaucrats practice medicine on you without a license for medicine.You may think your life is in your doctor’s hands, but it is not. The bureaucrats, not you or your doctor, make your medical and financial decisions. Consider these health-care decisions: DiagnosisTreatment: what, when, where, by whomMedicationsPaying for care Your...

An appellate court ruling that struck down a key pillar of Obamacare on Wednesday amped up anxiety about the future of the law that brought health insurance to millions of Americans. Court appeals are likely and experts say the matter probably won’t be resolved for years — creating uncertainty about the protections were built into the Affordable Care Act. Squirrel Hill resident Amy Raslevich is among the people worrying about the future of the law. “I’m fighting cancer,” the 48-year-old University of Pittsburgh doctoral student said. “I shouldn’t have to fight Congress and the president to stay alive.” In a...

Three-quarters of Californians who are eligible for a subsidy to defray the cost of health insurance either don’t know they qualify or don’t know just how much they could get, and if you haven’t checked, Covered California leader Peter V. Lee wants you to stop what you’re doing and go to the agency’s website by Sunday.

On Tuesday the Supreme Court will consider in Maine Community Health Options v. U.S. whether Congress can limit the spending discretion it has previously granted to the executive branch. Four health insurers have sued the government for not making payments they say they are entitled to under the Affordable Care Act’s “risk corridors.” The temporary program was intended to entice insurers to join the ObamaCare exchanges by minimizing their potential losses and giving them time to calibrate premiums and risk pools. Under a formula in the ACA, relatively profitable insurers for the first three years of the exchanges were required...

Responding to several years of unprecedented fires across California, regulators on Thursday imposed a one-year moratorium banning insurers from dropping policies for homeowners in wildfire-ravaged areas of the state. The move comes amid an exodus of some insurers in communities hard hit by fires, forcing some homeowners to take plans that provide less coverage, sometimes at higher premiums. Some have had to go without insurance altogether. “I have heard the same story again and again. People getting dropped by their insurance after decades,” California Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara said. “To add insult to injury, many struggle to find coverage.” Though...

Rudy Giuliani Snaps At Fox News’ Ed Henry: "THEY'RE GOING TO TRY TO KILL ME" President Donald Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani snapped at Fox News host Ed Henry during an interview Saturday, accusing Henry of covering up news about Joe Biden and Ukraine. “Are you afraid, Mr. Mayor that you could be indicted?” Henry asked. “Oh, wow, how long have you known me, Ed?” Giuliani said, adding, “Do you think I’m afraid? Do you think I get afraid? I did the right thing. I represented my client in a very, very effective way. I was so effective that I’ve discovered...

Kaiser Permanente chairman and CEO Bernard Tyson died unexpectedly in his sleep Sunday, the health care giant announced. He was 60. He rose through the ranks during a 30-year career at Kaiser to become CEO in 2013.

Allstate is expanding and bringing more than 200 new job opportunities to Missouri. The company is hiring for positions in agencies and sales in the Show-Me State, including 20 Allstate agency owners. "We're growing and have an opportunity for entrepreneurs to become agency owners in a very reliable industry," said Travis Peterson, Strategic Deployment Leader. "Candidates don't need an insurance background. We're in search of individuals with a strong entrepreneurial drive and the passion to help households in the communities where they work and live. The ideal candidate wants to build a legacy they can pass down for generations." Allstate...

The number of people without health insurance jumped by 2 million from 2017 to a total of 27.5 million in 2018, according to census data release Tuesday. It’s the first time the census survey reported an increase in the number of people without insurance since 2009, before ObamaCare took effect and vastly expanded coverage. The total uninsured rate increased to 8.5 percent in 2018 from 7.9 percent in 2017. Census officials said the increase was mostly driven by a drop in the number of people, including kids, covered by public programs like Medicaid. The number of children without insurance also...

AARP portrays itself as a classic membership organization, funded by dues in return for representation on a variety of issues. Yet its public financial statements reveal that the group receives the bulk of its revenue from health insurers. In 2017 the group received $627 million from UnitedHealth , the nation’s largest insurer, compared with $301 million in membership fees. The insurance company pays AARP a royalty for the right to brand its plans with AARP’s name and logo. Based on the AARP’s current financials as well as an admission in 2012 by a former director of its Public Policy Institute,...

A cozy alliance between insurers and law enforcement has turned the justice system into the industry’s hired gun and left innocent customers facing prison.... These tactics can be applied with impunity, thanks to legislation in all 50 states restricting the ability of customers to sue insurers for wrongly accusing them of fraud

Should taxpayers subsidize my new, gigantic beachfront house?  Few people realize this is going on, even though mostly everyone (excepting beach homeowners, real estate and rental agents, tourism promoters etc…) would agree that this is folly.Anyone trucking the family on serial pilgrimages to the Atlantic and the Gulf Coast can see that beach houses are getting bigger and bigger, especially after hurricanes strong enough to cause major (and sometimes complete) destruction.This was documented in the technical journal Nature Sustainability late last year—a mere two months after Category 4 Hurricane Michael (ultimately reclassified as a Cat 5) mowed down pretty much every...

Senator Kamala Harris (D., Calif.) released a health-care proposal on Monday that preserves a limited, tightly regulated, private-insurance market, finally articulating her position on the role of the private market after struggling to do so throughout her early primary campaign. Harris’s plan, which comes days ahead of the second round of Democratic primary debates in Detroit, represents a more moderate approach than that championed by Senator Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.), who has called for the total elimination of the private health-insurance market. Like Sanders, Harris would allow every American access to an expanded Medicare program, but she would also seek...

Baltimore drivers are just the worst. Again. For the second straight year, Allstate ranked Baltimore drivers last out of those in the country’s 200 largest cities, adjusting for population density and precipitation. The city dropped into the bottom slot last year in the annual Best Driver’s Report — based on the average number of claims per driver and the company’s Drivewise app, which monitors driver behavior — after being ranked second-worst in 2017...

Joe Biden, who was vice president when President Obama reportedly fixed everything wrong with health insurance in America by signing Obamacare into law, just this week dusted off his old boss’s line at an AARP event, telling attendees, “If you like your health care plan, your employer-based plan, you can keep it. If you like your private insurance, you can keep it.” That same line coming from Obama’s mouth was awarded “Lie of the Year” by PolitiFact, but what’s important is it pits Biden, the alleged moderate, against his socialist competitors who are demanding nothing less than Medicare for All...

“Now is the time for all good political leaders to come to the aid of their party,” said Don Fowler, who helmed the DNC from 1995 to 1997, during Bill Clinton’s presidency, and has backed Hillary Clinton since her 2008 presidential bid. “I think the plan should be developed by 6 o’clock this afternoon.” ... Fowler noted that at one of his first-ever DNC meetings, in 1972, he supported a decision to nominate Sargent Shriver — a member of the Kennedy clan — to replace Thomas Eagleton as George McGovern’s vice presidential nominee, the only time either major party has...

After weeks of anticipation the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) arrested former secretary of the Department of Education of Puerto Rico, Julie Keleher, and former director of Health Insurance Administration, Angela Avila. Other former contractors of the Puerto Rican Government under the Department of Education and Health Insurance Administration were also arrested. Among them, the director of the consulting firm BDO, Fernando Scherer, and BDO subcontractor Alberto Velazquez Piñol. Keleher and other former contractors for Education in Puerto Rico were arrested in Washington DC. Keleher and Avila had submitted their resignations from the Rossello Nevares Administration as recent as april...

You would think the term “Medicare For All” would be a clue, but no.Next time a progressive shows you a poll “proving” that Americans want single-payer, inform him or her that Americans quite literally don’t know what they’re talking about.Which is another way of saying that we may have to enact socialism in order to find out what’s in it:The same poll found that Americans do understand that taxes will go up after Medicare For All passes and that private insurance would no longer be the “primary” way Americans get coverage. But they seem to have convinced themselves that...

The spread of the disease outbreak across borders is one of the necessary factors that could cause one tranche of the World Bank’s IBRD CAR 111-112 catastrophe bond that backs the Pandemic Emergency Financing Facility (PEF) to default and payout some of its principal. The so-called Insurance Window of the PEF, which consists of $105 million of pandemic risk linked swaps and the $320 million of pandemic catastrophe bonds, which provide the necessary reinsurance capital to back the facility, has so far not been triggered by the Congo Ebola disease outbreak as it has remained contained within the single country....