Free Republic

The uneasy alliance between President Obama and health insurers is being put to the test by the troubled rollout of ObamaCare. With the botched enrollment website dragging Obama’s approval rating to record lows and threatening to undermine his biggest legislative achievement, some Democrats say the president should deflect blame onto the industry. The healthcare companies in many ways represent an ideal political target, as they are unpopular and intimately involved in the rollout — and Democrats haven’t hesitated to go after them in the past. Democrats highlighted what they said were the heartless business practices of insurers during the debate...

The bad news keeps coming for Obamacare. Besides the humiliation of a technical rollout that’s forced the president of the United States into the role of Rose Garden pitchman, the law suffered a setback in court Tuesday that could mean even worse news as 2014 gets into gear. obamacare1023slashU.S. District Judge Paul Friedman turned down a Justice Department request to throw out a lawsuit filed by the Competitive Enterprise Institute challenging health-insurance subsidies for individuals and health-insurance requirements for businesses in the 34 states that have refused to set up their own health insurance exchanges, according to the Wall Street...

Health Reform: ObamaCare's efforts to expand insurance coverage and bring down costs depend entirely on convincing young people to buy coverage, while the law gives these people every reason not to. A marketing presentation put together for the administration admits that convincing the young and healthy — who make up 48% of the uninsured — to buy insurance will be difficult, since they "take health for granted" and have a "low motivation to enroll." What it doesn't say is that ObamaCare will give them still more reasons not to buy insurance.

Perhaps the most common question I'm asked about ObamaCare is: "Will I be able to buy my way out of it?" The answer is: "Not unless you're very rich." The plan before the Senate creates a set of 50 state-based insurance "exchanges" that are established as markets for health plans. Consumers must buy policies from their employers or through the exchanges — but, either way, their choice of coverage is limited to one of four basic insurance plans that the government sanctions. Private insurers will still compete to offer policies but must model their coverage on one of these four...