Free Republic

Beleaguered Bay State and U.S. taxpayers coughed up a staggering $35.7 million this year in free emergency health care for more than 52,000 illegal aliens in Massachusetts, sparking outrage from candidates and critics who back a tougher line on immigration. The figures — released by Gov. Deval Patrick’s administration under an order for the Secretary of State’s office and after more than a month of ducking questions — show illegal immigrants who belong to MassHealth Limited received $33.8 million in taxpayer-funded in-patient hospital care this year. They also made 6,160 visits to the state’s overburdened emergency rooms in the fiscal...

According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, those who buy health insurance as individuals or through a small business are about to be socked with huge premium increases, ironically as a result of efforts to make health care reform more palatable.

In the first voter referendum on ObamaCare, Missourians on Tuesday overwhelmingly (by 71 to 29 percent) backed Proposition C which called upon the state to enact a statute to “deny the government authority to penalize citizens for refusing to purchase private health insurance,” an outcome the St. Louis Post-Dispatch described as “rebuking President Barack Obama's administration.” On Wednesday night, however, the ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts skipped the bad news for President Obama – yet all found time to celebrate his 49th birthday. (The Missouri repudiation of a central tenet of ObamaCare came a day after another setback...

PPP has polled Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul for the first time in the potential 2012 Republican presidential race nationally, and their presence reduces support for the other candidates, particularly Mitt Romney. What was a decent advantage for Romney in a three-way race with Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee is now a four-way draw, with Paul in a distant fifth and Romney slipping to a close second. Huckabee has 25 to Romney’s 23, Gingrich’s 21, Palin’s 20, and Paul’s 8, with only 3% undecided versus last month’s 17% with more limited options. Gingrich’s entry into the field erodes Romney’s support...

Here are the facts of Election 2012, as it stands now: Two major Republican candidates are engaged in the serious travel, staff hiring, contact building and general planning that are required to make a credible run for President. That pair is Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor who ran in 2008 and is — and will be for the foreseeable future — the party's front runner, and Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, who was considered for the 2008 veep slot by John McCain. Romney has the stronger hand but some real problems. He retains almost all the strengths he brought to...

From the president’s interview with Katie Couric prior to the Super Bowl: "Look, I would have loved nothing better than to simply come up with some very elegant, you know, academically approved approach to health care. And didn’t have any kinds of legislative fingerprints on it. And just go ahead and have that passed. But that’s not how it works in our democracy." As you can clearly see, this man’s genius is being terribly underutilized here. All of these brilliant solutions to all of these great problems, but the delivery system is unfortunately quite antiquated. And as a result we...