Free Republic

Social Security will spend more than it collects this year, the program’s trustees said Tuesday, marking the first time in more than 35 years that it will run an annual deficit as it slides toward insolvency by 2034. Medicare’s main trust fund is in even worse shape, scheduled to hit insolvency in 2026 — three years earlier than last year’s estimate, the trustees said. The twin warnings add even more pressure to a budget already strained by last year’s tax cuts and this year’s deal to boost spending on defense and basic domestic needs, leaving few bright spots in the...

House Speaker Paul Ryan, saying entitlement reform is essential to limiting budget deficits, criticized Sen. John McCain on Tuesday for voting last year against the repeal of Obamacare. “The house has passed these bills, but John McCain said no instead of yes,” Ryan said during an exclusive interview with FOX Business’ Maria Baritromo on “Mornings with Maria.”

Former President Barack Obama said Wednesday it is "aggravating" to see the Republican-led Congress continue with its attempts to overhaul Obamacare, efforts he suggested would inflict "real human suffering" on the American people. "When I see people trying undo that hard-won progress, for the 50th or 60th time, with bills that would raise costs or reduce coverage or roll back protections for older Americans or people with pre-existing conditions — the cancer survivor, the expectant mom, or the child with autism, or asthma for whom coverage once again would be unattainable — it is aggravating," Obama said during a keynote...

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) told reporters on Air Force Two on Tuesday that Breitbart News and former White House Chief Strategist and present Breitbart News Executive Chairman Steve Bannon have been critical to passing a state-based Obamacare repeal bill. (snip) Breitbart News has been at the forefront of the new Obamacare repeal legislation. Breitbart News first broke the story in an exclusive interview with former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum.

WASHINGTON — A last-ditch Republican effort to repeal Obamacare picked up steam on Monday as a key senator opened the door to supporting the bill, which is popularly known as Graham-Cassidy. The GOP got a boost when Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who was one of three Republican "no" votes in July that derailed the last GOP health care effort, said he might "reluctantly" vote for the bill if his governor supported it. Democrats and health care advocacy groups opposed to the legislation, which include AARP and the American Heart Association, are taking the latest Republican push very seriously. Republicans lawmakers...

President Donald Trump on Wednesday applauded Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Bill Cassidy’s (R-LA) new legislation to repeal and replace Obamacare through block grants. President Trump released a statement on Wednesday cheering the Graham and Cassidy bill to replace Obamacare. Graham and Cassidy, along with Sens. Ron Johnson (R-WI) and Dean Heller (R-NV), and former Sen. Rick Santorum, unveiled their legislation on Wednesday – otherwise known as Graham-Cassidy-Heller-Johnson (GCHJ). The legislation would repeal Obamacare’s individual and employer mandate, Obamacare’s medical device tax, and deliver health care dollars to the states so that they can design a health care system that...

The Affordable Care Act added millions of mostly poor people to the insurance rolls. But the law is driving premiums so high that middle-class people can no longer afford insurance. Several million are expected to drop coverage in 2018. Under ObamaCare, poor lives matter. Middle-class lives? Not so much. The ACA is actually two laws glued together: a vast Medicaid expansion to cover the poor and a federal takeover of individual insurance markets, previously regulated by states. Since that takeover, individual premiums have more than doubled, and they’re predicted to rise another 25 percent to 35 percent next year. The...

House Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows (R-NC) told reporters on Thursday morning that “11 or 12 governors” support former Sen. Rick Santorum’s plan to repeal and replace Obamacare through block grants. Breitbart News reported on former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum’s plan to block grant health care to the states. Senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Bill Cassidy (R-LA), as well as Rep. Meadows, endorse the plan. During the Thursday meeting at Bloomberg’s D.C. office, Meadows revealed that “11 or 12 governors” support the concept of block granting health care to the states. Santorum told Breitbart News that the plan will allow...

With the shot clock about to expire, Republicans on Capitol Hill may have the ball in their hands again for another chance at what was supposed to be an easy lay-up. Yesterday, Sen. John McCain — who stuck a stake through the heart of the previous ObamaCare repeal effort — announced that he would endorse the only vehicle left remaining. McCain even said that he’d put aside his distaste for operating outside regular order to vote for the Lindsey Graham-Bill Cassidy version of repeal-and-replace: Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said Wednesday that he supports a newer version of an ObamaCare...

Former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum told Breitbart News in an exclusive interview on Monday that he is working with a broad coalition of Republicans in both the House and Senate, along with several governors, to develop a new effort to repeal Obamacare. The effort, which comes after serious tumult with prior legislation in both the House and the Senate, would devolve power over healthcare away from the federal government and back to the states. It would allow each of the 50 states to individually craft their own plans, and would mirror the effort led by Santorum in the mid-1990s which...

Liberals and leftists have spent the last few months fighting a rearguard battle to protect the Obamacare status quo against attacks from the right. But after the death of Republican efforts to overhaul the health care system, opposition forces should shift their focus to what’s next. Preserving Obamacare is not enough. The time has come for universal health care through a single public health insurer that covers everyone in the country. In the course of defending Obamacare, centrist pundits and institutions made a moral argument about the brutality of health uninsurance that also renders our current system totally indefensible. The...

Rep. Tom Garret (R-VA), along with a dozen Freedom Caucus members, announced his intent to file a discharge petition that would put a clean repeal of Obamacare before the House. The House Freedom Caucus repeatedly argued that the best path to repealing Obamacare revolves around a simple repeal of Obamacare and then replacing the Affordable Care Act with a free-market alternative. Congress passed a clean repeal bill of Obamacare in 2015 only to have it vetoed by President Obama. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), a former chairman of the Freedom Caucus, reintroduced the same legislation in 2017. However, Congress has not...

WASHINGTON — With their bill to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act in tatters, Senate leaders on Tuesday pushed to vote on a different measure that would repeal major parts of President Barack Obama’s health law without a replacement — but that plan appeared also to collapse.

House Freedom Caucus chairman Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC) is joining with President Donald J. Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in pushing for Congress to send a clean repeal of Obamacare to President Trump’s desk now, and work on the replacement later. Meadows, who is making the call in an exclusive statement to Breitbart News, joins them as both Trump and McConnell called for clean repeal of Obamacare to go to Trump now and a replacement later after the Senate health bill failed late Monday. When Sens. Jerry Moran (R-KS) and Mike Lee (R-UT) came out against the bill—joining...

Republican Sens. Shelley Moore Capito (W.Va.) and Susan Collins (Maine) said on Tuesday that they will not support moving forward with the plan to repeal ObamaCare with a delayed replacement. "My position on this issue is driven by its impact on West Virginians. With that in mind, I cannot vote to repeal ObamaCare without a replacement plan that addresses my concerns and the needs of West Virginians," Capito said in a statement. Collins added to NBC that she is still a "no" on proceeding to the House-passed bill, which would be used as a vehicle for any Senate action. The...

This is breaking on McConnel's twitter feed. Statement to abandon repeal/replace for a straight repeal with a 2 year delay to replace.

Vice President Pence on Monday said congressional Republicans should pass a “repeal only” bill if they can’t come to a consensus on legislation to replace ObamaCare. “If they can’t pass this carefully crafted repeal and replace bill — do those two things simultaneously — we ought to just repeal only,” Pence said in an interview with Rush Limbaugh. Pence’s comments echoed those made by President Trump, who last month suggested that he was open to repealing ObamaCare first and developing a replacement plan later. However, White House legislative director Marc Short on Monday said, "we still believe that the bill...

(CNSNews.com) – Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), a repeal-and-replace advocate, says he wants to expand the number of people who get health insurance at a cheaper price. “But I would do it through freedom of choice,” Paul told “Fox News Sunday.” I would do it through the marketplace, buying groups across state lines, and letting people save more money in HSAs. “And I think the problem with Republicans now if they have insufficient confidence in what made America great. That's capitalism, freedom of choice, competition.”

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is rejecting President Trump's suggestion on how the Senate could promptly pass its ObamaCare overhaul measure -- by immediately repealing the 2010 heath care law and replacing it later. snip He also riffed on Trump’s winning campaign slogan, saying, "It's not easy making America great again, is it?"

Thursday on Fox News Channel’s “Fox & Friends,” Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) said he and his GOP colleagues in the Senate were still at “impasse” on the legislation being considered to repeal and replace Obamacare. “I still sense we’re at impasse,” Paul said. “And I said yesterday at lunch with our Republican caucus and everybody kind of laughed because there is still quite a bit of disagreement. There’s basically two factions. There’s conservatives like myself who don’t want new federal programs, we want to repeal Obamacare. And then there’s some of the moderates who kind of want to keep some...