One day soon I will presumably receive a notice from the D.C. health exchange informing me how much my family’s health insurance will cost for 2015. That I’ve not yet been made privy to this salient bit of information mere weeks before I have to decide whether to change providers is a function both…
THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with frequent contributor Adam J. White on his King v. Burwell blog post "Kennedy's Constitutional Concerns, Then and Now."
Three years ago, Justice Anthony Kennedy voted to declare the Affordable Care Act unconstitutional. So it should come as no great surprise that he expressed constitutional concerns in today's ACA case, King v. Burwell.
In their final push to enact Obamacare, Nancy Pelosi urged her fellow Democrats to “pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.” They probably should have found out first. Now they need the Supreme Court to “find” once again in their favor.
"A lot of the liberal commentary about this week’s D.C. Circuit decision on Obamacare is hard to square with the way liberal judges have tended to approach these cases," notes Ramesh Ponnuru. "I have in mind the commentators who say the decision is 'corrupt,' its theory 'preposterous,' and the…
USA Today reports that in much of the country consumers don't even have the option of purchasing an affordable "bronze plan" -- the cheapest tier of insurance available on the federal exchange:
Former president Bill Clinton said recently that Obamacare “only works . . . if young people show up.” But it won’t work—because young people won’t show up. Obamacare gives them too many reasons not to do so.
Though the Obama administration has been promoting the benefits of Obamacare for several years now, one perk of coverage through the exchanges that has gone largely unnoticed is a mandated three-month grace period for unpaid premiums. The rule, however, only applies to those receiving subsidies…
An Ohio company is scrapping health care for 1,000 employees due to Obamacare, WEWS-OH reports:
For over a year it has been common knowledge within the Obama administration that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) could not launch its network of health exchanges for the Affordable Care Act in a minimally acceptable way. That knowledge did not stop the HHS publicity machine from…
President Barack Obama delivered remarks from the White House Thursday morning following the conclusion of the government shutdown and the raising of the debt ceiling. The president praised government as an entity "we rely on" in a "whole lot of ways." He also said that he hoped the country had…
The New York Times looks at some of the Obamacare problems:
"If you've got a doctor that you like, you will be able to keep your doctor," President Obama assured the public as he worked to sell Obamacare in 2010. However, in July 2013, visitors to Healthcare.gov received a less confident "you may be able to" in answer to the question, "Can I keep my own…
As Mike Allen reported this morning, Rep. Tom Cotton, a Republican, is going on the offensive against Sen. Mark Pryor, a Democrat, who recently voted to protect the special subsidy for Congress in Obamacare. Here's video of that ad:
Treasury Secretary Jack Lew refused to answer Fox host Chris Wallace's simple question this morning: How many people have signed up for Obamacare?
The Obamacare exchanges have experienced problems in the startup phase. But this, the administration tell us, is to be expected. Even Apple deals with glitches.
On the very day the Obamacare insurance marketplaces opened for business, a new topic appeared on the HealthCare.gov website:
A Minnesota affiliate reports that MNSure, the state's Obamacare exchange, is down due to a glitch:
NBC announced today that it would be launching a week of programming to help Obamacare get off its feet, according to a press release sent out by the network. The law has been widely opposed by all Republicans and supported by most Democrats, including President Obama.
As full implementation of Obamacare draws near, some aspects of its operation have received relatively little attention. The October 1 launch of the marketplaces, or exchanges, is less than a week away, but outside of supposedly offering a Priceline-like shopping experience for health insurance,…
A new report by the American Action Forum finds that Obamacare exchanges will cost $5.3 billion and 16 million hours in paperwork burdens.
With the launch of the Obamacare Health Insurance Marketplace less than three weeks ago, one of the only functions consumers were already able to access, creating an account, has been taken "offline" for "upgrading."
I have been dismayed, but unsurprised, to see that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is already spinning the launch of its federal health insurance exchange this October. The federal and state “exchanges”—HHS recently rebranded them “marketplaces”—are a linchpin of the…
Thursday morning, the White House announced a new website to answer questions from businesses about Obamacare. Valerie Jarrett wrote about the launch in a blog post titled, "A One-Stop-Shop on the Health Care Law for Businesses Big and Small." However, within two hours, the website had crashed,…
On Friday, the Obama administration dropped another health care implementation bombshell.
Many states are wisely signaling that they aren’t interested in doing the Obama administration’s bidding on Obamacare. As a result, many if not most of Obamacare’s insurance exchanges — the heart of the beast — will have to be set up and run by the Obama administration at the federal level.
On Saturday night, while most sensible people were happily flipping back and forth between the Big Ten championship game, the ACC championship game, and the Oklahoma-Oklahoma State game, the Republican presidential candidates (save Jon Huntsman) appeared at a televised presidential forum in New…
Minnesota Public Radio reports, “A loophole in the federal health care overhaul would allow many employers to game the system by dumping their sicker employees [into] public health insurance exchanges, according to two University of Minnesota law professors.” Such “targeted dumping” of sicker…
While Americans’ support for the repeal of Obamacare remains unwavering, the Obama administration continues to push the implementation of its highly unpopular overhaul. The administration is trying to coax states into implementing Obamacare’s government-run “exchanges” — with some success. But…
The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that the House of Representatives voted yesterday to repeal mandatory federal funding to states to establish Obamacare exchanges. The Inquirer writes: