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The vast majority of people who bought health insurance through ObamaCare exchanges are satisfied with their plans, according to a new national survey.People overwhelmingly said they felt positively about their choices of doctors and hospitals and their copays for appointments and prescriptions, delivering good news for the Obama administration one year into the law's rollout.More surprisingly, that satisfaction also extended to people’s monthly premiums and annual deductibles, according to data from the Kaiser Family Foundation.Sixty percent of ObamaCare customers said they were satisfied or very satisfied with their monthly premium costs — more than people who bought coverage before the...

When it became obvious a couple of years ago that Obamacare would accelerate health care inflation, the law’s boosters began claiming that cost control was never its primary goal. PPACA’s promoters had previously promised that it would reduce annual health care expenses by $2,500 per family while improving access and quality of care. But the facts forced them to abandon that pledge and adopt a safer party line. As expressed by the New York Times, the new story goes thus: “At its most basic level, the Affordable Care Act was intended to reduce the number of Americans without health insurance.”...

Government employees who receive their health insurance coverage through Aetna will be eligible for sex-change operations next year, the company has announced. […] “Aetna has long been supportive of the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) community,” the company said last month. Aetna is among the first carriers in the federal insurance program that offers coverage for the surgeries. In addition, Kaiser, which enrolled some 240,000 federal workers last year, and the Foreign Service Benefit plan, covering members of the American Foreign Service Protective Association, also cover transgender services. …

One hundred years ago this week, Tsar Nicholas II of Russia and Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany exchanged a series of telegrams to try to stop the rush to a war that neither of them wanted. They signed their notes “Nicky” and “Willy.” Cousins who vacationed together, hunted together and enjoyed dressing up in the uniforms of each other’s military officers when sailing on their yachts, these two great-great-grandsons of Paul I of Russia wrote to each other in English, affirming their mutual interests and outlining an agreement that would have resolved the crisis on terms acceptable to both rulers. Yet...

Climate change is happening, and with that will come more deaths from heat-related illness and disease, according to a report released Tuesday. The report, spearheaded and funded by investor and philanthropist Thomas Steyer, former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, and former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, examines many of the effects of climate change for business and individuals. "One of the most striking findings in our analysis is that increasing heat and humidity in some parts of the country could lead to outside conditions that are literally unbearable to humans, who must maintain a skin temperature below 95°F in order to...

Enrollment: ObamaCare loyalists are trumpeting a new Kaiser Family Foundation survey finding that more than half of those who enrolled had been uninsured. But the survey's findings are nothing to cheer about. First, nobody knows exactly how many ObamaCare enrollees were previously uninsured, because the administration didn't bother to ask for that information when people signed up. So it's been up to pollsters to figure out what happened, and previous surveys showed that only a small percentage of ObamaCare sign-ups came from the ranks of the uninsured. The new Kaiser survey, in contrast, found that 57% of those getting coverage...

Los Angeles Times: The Obama administration has quietly adjusted key provisions of its signature health care law to potentially make billions of additional taxpayer dollars available to the insurance industry if companies providing coverage through the Affordable Care Act lose money. The move was buried in hundreds of pages of new regulations issued late last week. It comes as part of an intensive administration effort to hold down premium increases for next year, a top priority for the White House as the rates will be announced ahead of this fall's congressional elections.

The Obamacare "winning streak" continues apace. Kaiser Health News reports on the increasing likelihood of more and more large employers dumping employees into Obamacare's exchanges. An untold number of employees will discover that they can't keep their plan, especially if they're a high-risk, high-cost employee. The Obama administration estimated that as many as 93 million Americans will lose their existing coverage under the new law, despite what the president promised repeatedly. We wrote about "targeted dumping" back in 2011. Those concerns are now being realized:

Who didn’t see this coming? According to Kaiser Health News, employers are increasingly looking at the benefits of getting out of the health-insurance delivery process. Fueling this interest are ObamaCare-related spikes in health-insurance premiums, plus the opportunity to fix costs and reduce vulnerabilities presented by employees who develop serious health issues: Can corporations shift workers with high medical costs from the company health plan into online insurance exchanges created by the Affordable Care Act? Some employers are considering it, say benefits consultants. “It’s all over the marketplace,” said Todd Yates, a managing partner at Hill, Chesson & Woody, a North...

Sometimes there really are economies of scale. And the nation’s health insurance exchanges may be a case in point. As rocky as its rollout was, it cost the federal exchange, healthcare.gov, an average of $647 of federal tax dollars to sign up each enrollee, according to a new report. It cost an average of $1,503 – well over twice as much – to sign up each person in the 15 exchanges run by individual states and Washington, D.C. Hawaii, with a combination of a poorly-functioning website, a small population overall, and a small population of uninsured, brought up the rear...

Can corporations shift workers with high medical costs from the company health plan into online insurance exchanges created by the Affordable Care Act? Some employers are considering it, say benefits consultants. "It's all over the marketplace," said Todd Yates, a managing partner at Hill, Chesson & Woody, a North Carolina benefits consulting firm. "Employers are inquiring about it and brokers and consultants are advocating for it." And the health law might not prohibit it, opening a door to potential erosion of employer-based coverage. "Such an employer-dumping strategy can promote the interests of both employers and employees by shifting health care...

Who didn’t see this coming? According to Kaiser Health News, employers are increasingly looking at the benefits of getting out of the health-insurance delivery process. Fueling this interest are ObamaCare-related spikes in health-insurance premiums, plus the opportunity to fix costs and reduce vulnerabilities presented by employees who develop serious health issues: Can corporations shift workers with high medical costs from the company health plan into online insurance exchanges created by the Affordable Care Act? Some employers are considering it, say benefits consultants.“It’s all over the marketplace,” said Todd Yates, a managing partner at Hill, Chesson & Woody, a North Carolina...

Remember this chart when Democrats continue to talk about the need to keep ObamaCare but just fix its “problems.” The main reason offered for allowing the government to force everyone to participate in the command health-care economy was to make it easier for the uninsured to get coverage. If that’s the case, why do the uninsured actually hate ObamaCare more than the rest of America? Via Instapundit, who writes that “the rubes are catching on“:Note what’s happened since the implementation of ObamaCare. In September 2013, positive reaction still edged out negative reactions. By November, despite the supposed high enthusiasm for...

People buying coverage through the new health care exchanges in East Tennessee are paying nearly a third less than the national average and less than half what's being charged in the nation's most expensive markets, including South Georgia. A new study by the Kaiser Family Foundation ranked Chattanooga and Knoxville among the 10 cheapest markets to purchase individual plans offered through the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. A 40-year-old buying the most popular "silver" plan offered through BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee can get it for $181 a month, $78 a month less than the U.S. median price for...

A new Kaiser Family Foundation report says Florida’s decision not to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act - often called Obamacare - means that more than 700,000 low-income Foridians could remain uninsured in 2014. The Kaiser report says in states deciding to expand Medicaid nearly all low-income residents will be covered, but in states like Florida there will be a coverage gap. The report says some low-income residents earn too much to qualify for Medicaid, but not enough to receive tax credits to help them afford coverage under healthcare exchanges. Florida officials decided against Medicaid expansion saying it would...

As consumers weigh coverage options available in the newly launched federal health insurance marketplace, three of the largest medical associations in Texas have raised concerns about the uncertainty of provider networks offered by health plans in the marketplace. “Physicians, they just want to know who's walking through their door and what kind of coverage they’re going to have,” said Lee Spangler, vice president of medical economics at the Texas Medical Association. “They’d like that uncertainty to be settled.” The uncertainty of the provider networks also creates a hardship for consumers, many of whom consider whether their current doctor is covered...

Just prior to the president's ObamaCare pep rally in the White House Rose Garden, Monday morning, U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) released the following statement regarding Obamacare's failure to live up to Obama's many promises: Today President Obama will draw the media’s attention to a handful of persons who have applied for Obamacare while ignoring the untold number of Americans who are losing the plans they liked because of Obamacare. Yesterday, Kaiser Health joined numerous other news outlets by confirming a new victim of Obamacare: Americans who are receiving cancellation notices from their insurers due to the Affordable Act. “Health...

Down in South Texas, health care providers are reporting an unusual problem with the federal marketplace: Many patients don’t have email addresses and, therefore, can’t sign up online. The Brownsville Community Health Center had 50 people show up on Tuesday ready to sign up for health coverage -- many even brought pay stubs and income documentation -- but not a single one of them had an email address. "If you don’t include an email address, they won’t let you through," said Christela Gomez, the special projects coordinator and lead certification application counselor at the center. Although the center considered helping...

The following is a screen shot of the comments section at Healthcare.gov and is circulating on the web. Among other startling facts, the user indicates that his fine for electing to 'opt out' of 0bamacare is $4,037.00 and would be attached to his tax return:

NPR's Emily Kaiser tweeted out a portion of Esquire's website Wednesday morning. Though it has since been fixed, on the twelfth anniversary of the September 11 terror attacks, this is what Esquire readers woke up to -- the unforgettable photo of a World Trade Center worker who has just leapt to his death next to a cutesy blurb about "Making Your Morning Commute Look More Stylish".