Free Republic

Yes, Obamacare has raised premiums, caused people to lose their health coverage, raised taxes, and more. But on January 1, Obamacare started digging in for the long haul: putting down the deep roots of entitlement programs. Entitlements—like the big three of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid—are the biggest causes of America’s spending and debt crisis. And Obamacare creates a new entitlement program while expanding another. The creation of a new entitlement: Taxpayer-funded subsidies for millions of Americans Obamacare created insurance exchanges to sell and subsidize government-approved health care plans. Most of those who attain coverage through the exchanges will have...

As if ObamaCare’s botched website, coverage cancellations, and higher costs were not bad enough, the Obama Administration has quietly dealt yet another blow – this time striking millions of the nation’s most vulnerable seniors. Specifically, the Obama Administration has decided to deeply cut funding for the Medicare program’s home health benefit as a way to help pay for ObamaCare. The Administration made this announcement very quietly, waiting to do so until the very end of the last Friday before Thanksgiving, perhaps thinking that most people would not be looking. To be sure, the timing of the Administration’s quiet announcement did...

Christmas Day...a time for family and friends to honor the birth of God's only begotten Son. Christmas Day...the day the birth of one small child forever changed the course of humanity. Christmas Day...the day Michelle Obama asks that as you and your family gather around your tree and eat your Christmas meal that you use that time to talk about health care...to visit the exchanges... and decide which plan is right for you and your family. Christmas Day...a day of the year that is for anything but a discussion on ObamaCare. Barack HUSSEIN Obama, since leaving Jeremiah Wright's 'G-D America'...

An EPIC 10th Amendment showdown is quickly boiling as South Carolina government is fast-tracking legislation that blocks Obamacare at the state level. Daily Caller has the specifics. “It will essentially have five components to it, all of which in my judgment are legal, effective, and within the state’s power to do,” Davis, a Republican from Beaufort, said in an interview. The bill’s main component prohibits agencies, officers and employees of the state of South Carolina from implementing any provisions of the Affordable Care Act, leaving implementation of the national health-care law entirely in the hands of a federal government that...

At a time when Wall Street is absolutely swimming in wealth, New York City is experiencing an epidemic of homelessness. According to the New York Times, the last time there was this many homeless children in New York City was during the days of the Great Depression. And the number of homeless children in the United States overall recently set a new all-time record. As I mentioned yesterday, there are now 1.2 million public school kids in America that are homeless, and that number has gone up by about 72 percent since the start of the last recession. As Americans,...

Can you imagine going through all the trouble to get enrolled in Obamacare, only to find out you aren’t actually covered when you try to use your shiny new insurance? Consumers who made it through the crashes and glitches of the perpetually broken Obamacare enrollment site and were able to sign up for insurance may be in for a rude awakening next month due to a significant problem with the “back end” of the site. The information that insurance companies are receiving through the website is often jumbled or incomplete – and in some cases, it isn’t going through...

The Obamacare website (Healthcare.gov) was taken down for maintenance in order to meet the government’s promised deadline of having it running properly. It’s back up and running now. Sort of. And apparently, it still sucks. Despite the victorious announcement by the Washington Post that the site is fixed and the deadline of November 30th has been met, we are officially calling “BS” on that announcement. Among the failures, as enumerated on Breitbart.com: ■It can only handle 50,000 users at a time ■It loads incredibly slowly ■Small businesses still cannot sign up online (and won’t be able to until the...

when can a president change a law all by himself? By unilaterally declaring that certain provisions of Obamacare will not be enforced, Barack Obama is making a mockery of the U.S. Constitution. For those that have not read it, the U.S. Constitution says that the president “shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed“. So when Obama declares that he will not enforce certain provisions of Obamacare for a year, he is directly violating the Constitution. And as Stanford Law School Professor Michael McConnell wrote back in July, the Office of Legal Counsel for the Justice Department “has...

Do you ever have those moments when you feel validated? I had one of those moments this morning. Finally someone is talking about the secret security force that is mandated by Obamacare. Representative Louie Gohmert (Republican – Texas – 1st District) dropped his bombshell last week on The Janet Mefferd Show. Paul Joseph Watson reports: Referring to a section of the gargantuan Obamacare law which discusses “the president’s own commissioned and non-commissioned officer corps,” Gohmert drew attention to the notion that under the pretext of a “national emergency,” such individuals could be used to impose some form of medical martial...

We’ve got a serious problem on our hands and it’s one that many Obamacare apologists refuse to admit. The Patient Affordable Care Act is an unprecedented catastrophe in the making. While millions of Americans are losing their health care coverage within weeks, the health care exchanges advocated by Obamacare supporters are in shambles. So far, a little over 100,000 people have signed up. Moreover, what’s important to understand is that none of these people have yet paid a premium, so in essence, those are preliminary numbers. When the monthly bill comes due, we’ll see how many people actually have...

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is fuming over Senator David Vitter’s efforts to expose members of the Senate and House who exempt themselves and their staff members from the negative impacts of ObamaCare they are forcing on the rest of us. By Thursday, November 14, Sen. Vitter (R-La.) had Sen. Reid almost ready to blow a gasket. On Tuesday, November 12, Vitter had held up a unanimous consent vote needed to move a pharmaceutical bill forward. On Thursday, Vitter asked for unanimous consent agreements to have a vote on his legislation called the “Show Your Exemption Act,” which would...

Oh the shame of it all as one day after the Obama administration announced that only 26,794 people had enrolled in ObamaCare, in a calculatingly and vicious move against the American peopleÂ…a move done solely to try and salvage the 2014 elections for the DemocratsÂ…Barack HUSSEIN Obama, looking defeated and dejected, did what he does best as he again LIED and deceived the American people at yesterdayÂ’s press conference. You know what press conferenceÂ…the one he was over a half hour late to. Facing a bi-partisan revolt over ObamaCareÂ…his now on life support signature piece of legislation Â…with its...

Just a suggestion… Maybe next time we should read it to find out what’s in it. Would that be too much to ask? Maybe it would be considering the length of the legislation but this is getting silly. Last Friday I reported that The Obama Administration was letting labor unions off the hook on a $25 billion Obamacare Tax that was supposed to reimburse insurance companies for the losses incurred by accepting preexisting conditions. Thanks to Obama that money will now come directly from taxpayers’ pockets in the form of higher premiums. You don’t expect the insurance companies to lose...

President Barack Obama announced a fix to the vexing problem of canceled health insurance policies Thursday, saying insurers don’t have to cancel plans next year just because of the Affordable Care Act. Insurers can continue the plans for 2014 on two conditions — they have to tell people just what their plans don’t cover, and they have to tell people that they do have the option of going onto the health insurance exchanges to buy new plans with federal government subsidies and perhaps even to go onto Medicaid. "Insurers can extend current plans that otherwise would have been cancelled in...

Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness – these are our recognized rights as demonstrated by the Declaration of Independence. Americans have the right to live, to be free, and follow their dreams as long as it does not deprive their fellow citizens of the same. Constitutionally, there is no ‘right’ to healthcare. But as a society, we have coalesced around the notion that a decent society should provide access to decent healthcare. Unfortunately, the prescription for greater access and lower cost, The Affordable Care Act AKA Obamacare has done nothing to provide greater access or lower cost. In...

Now that Obama thinks he has successfully remade the American economy and permanently transformed the relationship between the citizen and government, he is working on restructuring society itself. He plans to move on from Obamacare to immigration deform. Conservatives must ensure that the focus remains on Obamacare. No immigration-related legislation. Period. The idea that we can craft a positive bill with Obama in the White House, irrespective of your view on the issue, is absurd. However, there is one thing we can learn from the immigration debate. Almost every supposed precondition for amnesty and the pathway to citizenship under the...

Cheryl K. Chumley reports for The Washington Times, Oct. 21, 2013, that Consumer Reports — the magazine that tests and rates products — has harsh words of advice for those trying to enroll in ObamaDoesn’tCare via the official website, Healthcare.gov. Consumer Reports began testing the Unaffordable Care Act’s website since the site’s launch day to test its ease of use. But from the beginning, Consumer Reports experienced problems same as those of countless Americans. The site would slow to a crawl, then crash. On Oct. 8, the Consumer Reports writers said: “One week in, Healthcare.gov is barely operational.” By...

If anyone is still so deluded as to think Obama actually cares about the poor, this should extinguish your delusion for good. The (un)Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare and more truthfully should be called Lucifercare, will fine charitable hospitals that provide healthcare for poor people — for free. The fines can be as high as $50,000. After that, Lucifercare — via its minions in the IRS — will remove the nonprofit status from those hospitals. Currently, some 60% of U.S. hospitals are nonprofits. Of those, a sizeable number are Catholic. 615 Catholic hospitals account for 12.5% of community...