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Obamacare Tag

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on October 25, 2016 11 Comments
Surprise! (But only if you haven't been paying attention.) At the beginning of May, I blogged about the looming October Obamacare surprise -- seriously nasty rate hikes.
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 Mike LaChance on October 22, 2016 10 Comments
Obamacare architect Dr. Ezekiel 'Death Panel' Emanuel is back. This guy has an amazing ability to blame all the problems of Obamacare on everyone but the party which passed it and the president it's named for. He also agrees with some of Bill Clinton's recent remarks on the law. The Washington Free Beacon reports:
Obamacare Architect on Bill Clinton’s Criticisms: ‘I Think He Has a Point’

Posted by Mike LaChance on October 17, 2016 15 Comments
The AARP has started airing a series of ads meant to cause concern about the future of Social Security. It's odd for them to show so much concern after pushing the financial disaster known as Obamacare. The Huffington Post is angry about the advocacy group's use of "conservative scare tactics." From their report:
Nation’s Largest Seniors Group Is Using Conservative Scare Tactics On Social Security Television viewers across the country have been treated to some scary advertisements about the future of Social Security. “Our next president needs to take action on Social Security, or future generations could lose up to $10,000 a year,” the narrator intones, as ominous music plays in the background.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on October 11, 2016 24 Comments
One of the biggest surprises of the Sunday debate was the moment that Obamacare came up as an audience-member question. Hillary Clinton basically said she'll mend it, and Donald Trump vowed to end it. Gone are the days of, "if like your plan, you'll keep your plan."

Posted by Mike LaChance on October 07, 2016 31 Comments
Obamacare has faced some new problems, including the rising cost of premiums and the shrinking pool of providers participating in the program. Additionally, not enough young healthy people have enrolled to offset the costs created by less healthy older people. Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, one of the chief architects of Obamacare and the center of controversy over the "death panel," knows who's to blame... Republicans. You know, the party the Democrats excluded from the law's creation and had nothing to do with its passage. He appeared on the Kelly File and made his case. Real Clear Politics reports:
Architect Of Obamacare Blames Republicans For Law's Problems Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, one of the architects of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), joins Fox News Channel's Megyn Kelly to discuss some of the problems with the law.

Posted by Mary Chastain on October 04, 2016 20 Comments
Republicans have fought against Obamacare from the beginning, but now Democrats have started to pile on. President Bill Clinton recently lashed out at the system at a rally in Michigan:
“You’ve got this crazy system where all the sudden 25 million more people have healthcare and then the people are out there busting it, sometimes 60 hours a week, wind up with their premiums doubled and their coverage cut in half,” Clinton said. “It’s the craziest thing in the world,” he said.

Posted by Mike LaChance on September 28, 2016 16 Comments
It's been seven years since the passage of the Affordable Care Act and the White House is still having trouble selling it to Americans, especially Millennials. The problem is that Obamacare needs the money of healthy young people to survive, so the White House is trying a new push. The Business Insider reports:
The White House is kicking off a big push to fix Obamacare's largest problem Obamacare needs millennials, so the White House is going after them. The White House, the Department of Health and Human Services, the secretary of education, and private groups convened in Washington on Tuesday for the Affordable Care Act Millennial Outreach and Engagement Summit.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on September 26, 2016 16 Comments
I recently noted that President Obama's climate change edict for our national security strategists shows that he does not take warfare against American opponents seriously. However, the President takes citizen opposition very seriously. For example, he is unleashing one of his most potent tools against Americans opting out of purchasing Obamacare. Over 20 million Americans opted to pay a penalty rather that purchase health insurance. So, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has just sent them a formal letter suggesting they make a different choice.
...Getting a letter from the IRS can be a threatening and nerve-racking experience; it seldom is seen as a suggestion and more of a threat. But at President Obama’s direction, the IRS is “reaching out” to people who paid the tax penalty for not buying mandatory health insurance or who claimed an exemption in hopes of “attracting” more people to sign up for ObamaCare insurance. The government is particularly interested in compliance from healthy young people.

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on September 18, 2016 1 Comment

Early predictions of ObamaCare's failure were ignored, yet a new government report shows that American families are—as predicted—having trouble affording and accessing health care. The Washington Free Beacon reports: Obamacare enrollees had trouble affording and accessing health care as well as understanding how to use their plans,...

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on September 06, 2016 16 Comments
While he was running for Senate in the 2012, Ted Cruz spoke extensively on the virtues of portable health insurance -- insurance not associated with any particular employer, but insurance that works more like vehicle insurance or homeowner's insurance. Though the idea is not unique to Senator Cruz, in a world where Obamacare is causing premiums to sky rocket, coverage to lessen, and government-sponsored co-ops to flop, portable health insurance is becoming a frequent visitor in health insurance reform circles. "More insurance plans will move with the person, not the job. That's real health security," said Speaker Ryan recently, explaining his new health care proposal. "This is not the twentieth century where you have the same job for your entire career, your entire life. You move around, you bounce around. We want to have a twenty-first century system that's portable with the person."

Posted by William A. Jacobson on August 26, 2016 27 Comments
Single-payer healthcare is the Democrats' holy grail, because it put the government completely in charge of one-fifth of the economy and every single person's healthcare. It's total control, but at least as of 2008, it wasn't a platform on which Obama could run. But as this early video shows, single-payer was always the goal. Similarly, failed 2014 NY-23 Democratic challenger Martha Robertson was a big single-payer supporter. But in NY-23, a Republican +4 district that has a hardcore liberal Ithaca-area contingent from which Robertson hailed, single payer won't fly. So Robertson didn't run on single payer, she ran on Obamacare. But in moments of candor uncovered by Legal Insurrection, Robertson admitted that Obamacare was just the stepping stone to single payer.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on August 16, 2016 10 Comments
The more than 800,000 Americans who purchase their insurance from one of Aetna's exchange plans will be out of luck once this year is over. Health insurance giant Aetna announced late Monday evening that they would be scaling back their Obamacare exchange offerings to a paltry four states. The reason? Losses amounting to more than $430 million.

Posted by Mike LaChance on July 17, 2016 32 Comments
Now that Obamacare co-ops are collapsing and Bernie Sanders has spent months revving up Democratic Primary voters on the idea of "free" healthcare, Obama is suddenly open to the idea of a public option in Obamacare. Some might think this was the goal all along. The Wall Street Journal reports:
President Obama Pushes for ‘Public Option’ in Affordable Care Act President Barack Obama, reviewing his signature health law six years into its implementation, is suggesting Congress and his White House successor add a government-run, or public, insurance option to the Affordable Care Act and increase federal financial assistance for people to buy coverage.

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."
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