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Obamacare Tag

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on June 11, 2016 23 Comments
House Republicans are proposing five changes to ObamaCare while still asserting that they are interested in and working for full repeal.  Still wildly unpopular, ObamaCare highlights the divide between Republican and conservative voters who want it repealed and their representatives on the hill who, while having (show) voted for repeal many times over the past few years, seem less interested in repeal with each passing year. Unlike previous changes Congress has made to ObamaCare (rescinding some funds in the "Louisiana Purchase," ensuring that TRICARE plans are deemed to meet ObamaCare's minimum insurance requirements, and other such moves), the new proposed changes seem to be made with an eye to the long-term. The Hill reports:
The House Energy and Commerce Committee on Friday held a hearing on five bills that would make relatively small changes to the health law, such as changing the documentation required to enroll in coverage or changing how insurers can use someone's age in setting premiums. The moves indicate that Republicans have not ruled out making adjustments to the existing law despite preperations to tout their long-awaited replacement plan for all of ObamaCare, coming from Speaker Paul Ryan’s (R-Wis.) task force later this month.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on June 03, 2016 8 Comments
Barely a month ago, I blogged about a nasty November surprise lurking in the electoral shadows -- monstrous Obamacare premium rate hikes. Huge losses and a supposedly high number of unexpected claims are being blamed for looming rate hikes in the Lone Star State. The average rate hike for Texan consumers? 35%. Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas requested a 58% rate hike for some 603,000 consumers and, "18% increase for 353,000 members who buy plans via the small group market that caters to businesses with fewer than 50 employees," according to Investors.com.

Posted by Mary Chastain on May 16, 2016 6 Comments
The Supreme Court unanimously pushed the Little Sisters of the Poor contraception case back to the lower courts, meaning they do not face fines if they do not provide contraception coverage. Ashley E. McGuire, Senior Fellow at The Catholic Association, released this statement in a press release:
"Today the Supreme Court made it clear that the government still has not done enough to accommodate the conscience rights of the Little Sisters, whose plan they have tried to hijack for things like abortion pills. For now, this is an interim win for the nuns, who just want to get back to their work caring for the poor without interference from government bureaucrats."

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on May 02, 2016 21 Comments
The latest Obamacare gift to consumers? MORE RATE HIKES! images Unfortunately (or fortunately -- depending on where you stand) for Democrats, pending rate increase announcements could not come at a worse time. Open enrollment begins the first week of November, just in time for Obamacare and independent health insurance consumers to take their sticker shock to the ballot box.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on April 25, 2016 11 Comments
Non-profit Obamacare exchanges are a bit fat failure, premiums and deductible continue to soar while benefits diminish, and now, Health Savings Accounts may get the ax. For health insurance consumers with high deductibles, HSAs are a lifesaver. Contributing pre-tax cash to the HSA helps offset out-of-pocket costs. Thanks to final Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) regulations published by Health and Human Services, individuals purchasing health insurance from the exchanges will no longer be able to utilize a HSA.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on April 23, 2016 8 Comments
Kemberlee just reported that country’s largest health insurer will stop participating in some Obamacare markets and that 12 of 23 state exchanges have closed. Covered California, touted as the most successful state exchange, is now experiencing a significant technical glitch that is jeopardizing the health of pregnant women and their unborn children. Due to a computer error, pregnant women are dropped from their Covered California coverage when they report their condition, and are transferred automatically to Medi-Cal (which is not taken by many doctors).

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on April 11, 2016 10 Comments
Towards the end of last year, Obamacare co-ops were dropping like flies. 12 of the 23 taxpayer funded non-profit co-ops created under the Affordable Care Act were shuttered, and the largest of them is under investigation. By the end of 2014, 21 of the 23 non-profit health insurance co-ops created under the ACA were losing money. Enrollment was well beneath expectations in 13 of the 23 plans. And the news isn't getting any better.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on March 25, 2016 8 Comments
Six years ago this week, President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law...with all the arrogance and pomp we have come to expect! Obamacare is still the gift that keeps on giving...fiscal pain, budgetary heartbreak, and unfulfilled expectations. For this magic anniversary, Patrice J. Lee f the Independent Women's Forum walks us down Memory Lane:
During the debate over ObamaCare, President Obama promised –among many things- that the average family premiums would decline by $2,500. Let’s just see if that held up. According to the Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce, Americans in most states face higher healthcare premiums this year under ObamaCare. In 17 of those states, the deductible increases are 20 percent or higher. As for deductibles, those too have spiked. Forty-one states saw average deductibles for ObamaCare plans increase and 17 of them experienced double-digit increases.

Posted by Mike LaChance on March 19, 2016 14 Comments
While speaking to Hillary supporters in Salt Lake City this week, Chelsea Clinton was asked by an attendee if her mother would extend Obamacare benefits to people in the country illegally. Naturally, she said yes. Thomas Lifson of the American Thinker:
Chelsea Clinton reveals her mom thinks it is ‘important’ to extend Obamacare to illegal aliens So any family that can ante-up plane fare for the kids and one or more parent to JFK, Miami, Los Angeles or any other international terminal, or that can sneak across the border, is here to stay, once Hillary becomes president. And in addition to all the other goodies this country bestows upon people with low incomes, now the $600k a year former NBC correspondent Chelsea Clinton has declared that Obamacare will be extended to illegals.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on March 11, 2016 15 Comments
We have continuously chronicled they myriad of symptoms that clearly show the Affordable Care Act is seriously ill. Enrollments have been significantly short of projections. Premiums for health insurance are escalating to the point many Americans can't afford the coverage they were mandated to purchase. Obamacare state exchanges have been closing, and the largest of the co-ops was placed under investigation for under-reporting its financial obligations. Now NPR and Harvard, hardly the bastions of Tea Party activism, have declared Obamacare a failure.
National Public Radio collaborated with Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to survey Americans’ recent experience with health care. As to the Affordable Care Act, the survey’s findings are damning. They suggest that Obamacare has been worse than a complete waste of money.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on January 26, 2016 20 Comments
Obamacare continues to surprise and excite. The surprise is that it's not as "affordable" as promised, and which excites such panic that people just don't bother to sign up in the numbers predicted. The L.A. Times reports:
Reflecting slower than anticipated enrollment growth in health insurance purchased through the Affordable Care Act, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has lowered its estimate of how many people will get coverage through the law in 2016. In any given month this year, about 13 million people on average are now expected to be enrolled in a health plan purchased on a marketplace created by the law, often called Obamacare. That is down from 21 million people previously estimated by the budget office, whose projections about the impact of legislation are closely watched by both parties in Washington.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on January 24, 2016 18 Comments
Democratic presidential frontrunner, Hillary Clinton recently co-opted Obamacare. In spite of her criticisms of President Obama's hallmark healthcare legislation, Clinton told supporters that the Affordable Care Act, affectionately known as Obamacare, was "HillaryCare" first. The Hill reported:
Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton is out with a new defense of her healthcare record — rival Bernie Sanders may have helped write ObamaCare, but it was her idea first. "It was called HillaryCare before it was called ObamaCare,” Clinton told a crowd of supporters at a country club in Vinton, Iowa. “I don't want to start over."

Posted by William A. Jacobson on January 14, 2016 28 Comments
Chelsea Clinton is a highly successful person, for reasons entirely related to the circumstances of her birth, not her qualifications or personal accomplishments. The sweetheart deal she received at NBC came to epitomize the crony political capitalism her parents so effectively turned into a megafortune, as this August 29, 2014, NY Times report reflected:
Ms. Clinton, who is vice chairwoman of the philanthropic organization her father founded, made an annual salary of $600,000 at NBC, according to Politico. She remains on the board of IAC/InterActiveCorp, the digital media company overseen by Barry Diller, a longtime Clinton supporter. In 2011, that position paid an annual retainer of $50,000 and a $250,000 grant of restricted stock.
When Chelsea was the child in The White House, and even after that when she was a private person, she was entitled to privacy and freedom from political attack so long as her political role was limited to trying to make her mother seem human to a skeptical public.

Posted by David Gerstman on January 07, 2016 23 Comments
At a time when tensions in the Middle East are rising, it is perhaps a time to once again review President Barack Obama's qualifications for office. To be sure his qualifications were fabricated, or at least oversold. This wasn't just the doing of the Obama campaign. Campaigns are supposed to do present their candidates in the best possible light. The problem  was that America's supposedly independent media boosted the first terms senator's prospects with little or no skepticism. This was certainly the case in reporting where most reporters bought into the historical aspect of Obama's candidacy as well was the rebuke to Republicans for the failings of the Bush presidency. (If not the failings, then the aspects that the liberal media disagreed with.) For the purpose of this exercise let's look at parts of The Washington Post's 2008 endorsement of Obama. I am using the Post as an example of what we saw so frequetly because even though the Post is a liberal paper, its editorial position regarding foreign policy is generally responsible. However in the Post's enthusiasm for Obama, all caution was disregarded and they promoted a man who did not really exist.

Posted by New Neo on January 05, 2016 17 Comments
[UPDATE 1/6/2016: The answer to the question is yes, the bill will get to Obama's desk. The measure passed.] Remember that slogan, "repeal and replace"? There have actually been quite a few bills passed in the House to repeal Obamacare during the last couple of years, whether you've noticed them or not. Here's an article about it from this past October:
House Republicans pushed forward with another vote to roll back the Affordable Care Act on Friday, passing a bill that would repeal several major pillars of President Obama’s landmark 2010 law, including the requirement that Americans have health coverage. The legislation, the latest of more than 50 bills by congressional Republicans to repeal all or part of the health law, would also halt federal funding for Planned Parenthood. The 240-189 vote will not change anything in the health law or Planned Parenthood, however, as Obama has indicated he would veto the bill if it ever reaches his desk.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on January 02, 2016 11 Comments
One 2016 prediction is very easy to make: Obamacare will continue its trajectory of failure. For example, Covered California has been heralded as one of the greatest state exchange successes for the "Affordable Care Act". The reality is that one-third of California's residents are now using a system that was initially intended for the low income families.
The state's health plan for the poor, known as Medi-Cal, now covers 12.7 million people, 1 of every 3 Californians. If Medi-Cal were a state of its own, it would be the nation's seventh-biggest by population; its $91-billion budget would be the country's fourth-largest, trailing only those of California, New York and Texas. "When the final numbers started coming out, where a third of the population was on Medi-Cal, it went way past anyone's expectations," said state Sen. Ed Hernandez (D-West Covina), who chairs the Senate Health Committee.

Posted by Jonathan Levin on December 23, 2015 23 Comments
Professor David E. Bernstein has written a great last-minute Christmas present or belated Hanukkah gift. Lawless: The Obama Administration's Unprecedented Assault on the Constitution and the Rule of Law is sure to ruin the holiday for whoever reads it - Republicans because it confirms President Obama has run roughshod over Congress and the Constitution, and Democrats because it confirms what they have so long denied.  Which is why everybody should read it, digest it, debate it and institute changes to prevent future presidents of any party from doing such damage again. Bernstein teaches Constitutional Law, among other things, at George Mason University School of law, and his easy facility with technical, legalistic topics makes Lawless accessible and understandable without eliding over details. The picture Bernstein paints so adroitly is of an unprecedented and unlawful consolidation of power in the executive, and a president unrestrained by his own promises, by custom, by standards of legal ethics, by statute or by the Constitution.
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