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Health insurers warned that a move by the Trump administration on Saturday to temporarily suspend a program that was set to pay out $10.4 billion to insurers for covering high-risk individuals last year could drive up premium costs and create marketplace uncertainty. The Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) “risk adjustment” program is intended to incentivize health insurers to cover individuals with pre-existing and chronic conditions by collecting money from insurers with relatively healthy enrollees to offset the costs of other insurers with sicker ones. President Donald Trump’s administration has used its regulatory powers to undermine the ACA on multiple fronts after...

Bill and Cathy Stapp stand on the deck of their sailboat Kruzin’ Kitty in Alameda. After being told they were eligible for the Covered California health care plan, they learned their income was too high to qualify for subsidized coverage

A federal court has granted a Christian liberal arts college in Pennsylvania a permanent injunction against the Obama-era abortion pill mandate that required the school to be complicit in providing health care coverage that violated its religious convictions. On Thursday, Judge Joy Flowers Conti of the United States District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania granted permanent relief to Geneva College, a liberal arts school affiliated with the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America. Conti ruled that the Department of Health and Human Services Obamacare contraception mandate violated the college's rights under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act by requiring...

Brett Kavanaugh has by far the strongest, most consistent, most fearless record of constitutional conservatism of any federal court of appeals judge in the country. Judge Brett Kavanaugh should be the next Supreme Court justice. He has by far the strongest, most consistent, most fearless record of constitutional conservatism of any federal court of appeals judge in the country. Over 12 years and 300 opinions, he has repeatedly fought for principles of textualism and originalism, reined in regulatory overreach, and ensured that administrative bureaucrats are accountable to the elected president. Nominating Kavanaugh would continue President Trump’s exemplary record of selecting...

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety" What does this quote mean? It doesn't mean anything, when it is disconnected with the full of its author's words. Franklin wrote this in his Reply to the Governor in 1755, but how many people even know that? His letter is less than 2000 words, so it is not a long read. I recommend everybody read the full letter, because that is to the detriment of progressivism. So, what does this quote mean? It only, only means what Franklin himself meant at...

Last year, as insurance prices rose by an average of just over 20 percent around the country, people who qualified for Obamacare subsidies hung onto their insurance. But the increases appear to have been too much to bear for many customers who earned too much to qualify for financial help. According to a new government report, about a million people appear to have been priced out of the market for health insurance last year. The report is the first comprehensive look by the Department of Health and Human Services at people who buy their own insurance but don’t qualify for...

Amy Barrett, the federal circuit court judge who many are speculating could be President Trump’s next Supreme Court nominee, didn’t sound like his biggest fan before the election in 2016. During a November 3rd, 2016 speech at Jacksonville University, Barrett said “who knows” what a Trump court would look like, and even said that she was worried about either candidate choosing another justice. “He’s obviously not bound to do so. I think it would be maybe more of a mixed bag. I think maybe Trump would appoint some that were more in the mold of Scalia, maybe some more in...

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y, on Monday slammed federal judge Amy Coney Barrett, one of the front-runners to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court, by calling her an “activist judge” who could put abortion rights and the Affordable Care Act at risk. “Amy Coney Barrett is a judge on the Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit & on @realDonaldTrump’s pre-approved list for SCOTUS. She passed his ‘litmus test’ on overturning Roe v. Wade & striking down the ACA. Here’s where she stands on Americans' big issues,” Schumer said in a series of tweets Monday. “Barrett attacked the...

President Obama gave a scathing critique of the modern Democratic Party during a fundraiser at the Beverly Hills home of a mega-donor Thursday. The former president was reluctant, however, to take any of the blame for the current state of the Democratic Party. Obama admitted that the only regret he has after being head of the party for eight years was that people loved and focused on him too much. But the majority of Obama’s speech was spent criticizing president Trump. One of the Trump policies Obama took issue with was his effort to kill Obamacare. The healthcare law is...

What is wrong with Nancy Pelosi? As the noose seems to be tightening on her prospects to return to party power after the November elections, the House Minority Leader stumbled over words, suffered brain freezes and stared at reporters during a Thursday press conference. “Last week, soy bean futures hit a nine-year low,” Pelosi told reporters. “Soy boyn— soy bean futures hit a nine-year low,” she repeated, attempting to pronounce the words clearly, accentuating each one with a pointed finger. “Pork producers, corn growers and wheat grawers, growers are reeling, too,” she said before suffering a brain freeze, staring at...

"Jimmy went to Houston to play a game of one-on-one basketball against Texas Senator Ted Cruz in what we called the “Blobfish Basketball Classic.” The reason this happened is because after Game 7 of the Western Conference Finals, Jimmy showed a picture of Senator Cruz at the Houston Rockets game and he likened him to a blobfish. Cruz did not like that so he challenged Jimmy to a game of one-on-one for charity. It’s been a dream of Jimmy’s ever since he was a little boy to one day play basketball against the most disliked member of the U.S. Senate...

President Trump again mocked Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) on Saturday for McCain’s thumbs-down vote on the Republican plan to repeal ObamaCare. Though Trump did not mention McCain by name, he has attacked the senator several times in recent weeks for his “no” on the GOP measure and has blamed McCain for the collapse of the Republican effort to repeal the act. Trump at a GOP rally in Nevada said McCain went thumbs-down on the bill, a reference to McCain using the gesture to signify his vote. "Nobody talked to him. Nobody needed to, and then he walked in: thumbs-down. It’s...

One of the top issues for U.S. voters is health care. There is a simple solution most of the world is smart enough to recognize but is lost on us: a single-payer system. There are two compelling reasons for a single-payer system. The first is the moral argument that health care security is a right for all of us. The second is a little more complicated, and that is health care economics. Sadly, most Americans do not understand this aspect of the health care debate and how it adversely affects them. Anthem announced its first-quarter profits to be $1.31 billion....

If you’re not a health care policy nerd like me and don’t pay close attention to the fear-mongering commonly found in outlets like The Washington Post and CNN, you may have missed the recent explosion of news stories and opinion articles bashing the Trump administration for allegedly putting Obamacare in grave danger — and doing so in a reckless and legally questionable manner, too.For instance, New York magazine accused the Trump administration of “standing against the rule of law.” The New York Times’ Margot Sanger-Katz wrote a recent Trump administration decision could make it “much more difficult for individuals and...

As a physician whose career in medicine was dedicated to preserving and improving my patients’ health, I know firsthand how important it is for everyone to have access to care. This is a fundamental precept, morally and pragmatically sound, that should be honored by all who seek to transform for the better America’s flawed system of health care delivery. Regrettably, since its passage in 2010, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) has had the net general effect of raising the cost of health insurance while reducing the quality and variety of the services that insurance covers. This is the opposite of...

Democrats are seizing on the Trump administration’s push in court to overturn ObamaCare’s protections for people with pre-existing conditions, hoping to leverage the issue ahead of November’s midterm elections as some Republicans rush to distance themselves from the move. The Department of Justice’s (DOJ) decision to join a legal battle arguing that one of the most popular parts of ObamaCare should be struck down is being viewed by Democrats as a political gift, with the party apparatus quickly using the issue to attack GOP candidates and rally their base. Ever since the DOJ joined 20 GOP-led states last week in...

The Trump administration’s new attempt to have key pieces of the Affordable Care Act struck down in federal court — particularly the ban on insurance companies turning people away or charging them higher premiums based on a pre-existing condition — could have a serious and damaging domino effect throughout the health care sector. Insurance trade groups, health care experts and lawmakers say the fallout is likely to extend beyond the individual market, impacting many of the tens of millions of Americans who get their health insurance from an employer. The Justice Department is arguing in a new court brief that...

Congressional Democrats are seizing on the Department of Justice's (DOJ) decision to not defend key parts of ObamaCare in court, signaling they think the issue could pay political dividends in November. The DOJ, as part of its announcement late last week, argued the law's protections for people with pre-existing conditions should be invalidated because the individual mandate that required people have insurance or pay a penalty is now repealed. Despite a flurry of North Korea news on Tuesday, Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) started his weekly news conference with reporters by talking about health care, saying his caucus would...

A senior career Department of Justice (DOJ) official has resigned, one week after the Trump administration made a controversial announcement that it would argue key parts of ObamaCare are unconstitutional. A DOJ official confirmed to The Hill that Joel McElvain resigned and his last day is July 6, but declined to comment on whether the resignation was due to last week’s announcement. Last week, the DOJ wrote in a filing that it wouldn’t defend ObamaCare’s protections for people with pre-existing conditions. The move broke with historical practice, where the DOJ defends federal laws, and sided in part with a challenge...

Most of the discussion of the Trump administration's decision not to defend the Affordable Care Act — and to urge the courts to throw out its protections for people with pre-existing medical conditions — has focused on what happens to the individual insurance market. But the political impact may be even greater. Why it matters: Protections for people with pre-existing conditions are hugely popular, and the administration may have handed Democrats their strongest health care weapon yet — because now they can make the case that the administration has gone to court to take away protections for people with pre-existing...