Health Care

The Boston Globe highlighted 'overlapping surgery,' provoking outcry and even the Senate Finance Committee. But it's a net good for patients and surgeons-in-waiting.

Years ago, during the long-forgotten administration of George H.W. Bush, I looked in on a friend of mine who had been “tasked”— the military jargon was just then creeping into civilian life – with writing the president’s State of the Union address.

If there were ever an occasion for President Trump to create some buzz for his health care agenda in 2018, it was on Monday morning, in a case of man-meets-moment. Trump introduced new Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar before the Cabinet official’s swearing-in ceremony, one day before…

It's possible Celino Villanueva Jaramillo is the world’s oldest man. Born in 1896, he is now 121 according to Chilean government records, making him four years older than the current Guinness World Record holder, the Guardian reports.

“How will [insert bizarre news events from the past week] change Trump’s approval rating?”

Reduced for the time being to pruning Obamacare, Sen. Lamar Alexander announced 11 Republican cosponsors Thursday afternoon to a health insurer subsidy bill the president may or may not like, conservatives detest, Senate Democrats embrace, and the House speaker has all but dismissed.

President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday aimed at expanding Americans’ access to health insurance choices, the first official step of his pledge to tackle health-care reform solo after repeated congressional failures to pass legislation repealing Obamacare.

In the 1970s, about 10 percent of American workers required licenses to perform their jobs legally. By 2015, that proportion had more than doubled to 22 percent. There is widespread agreement among economists and an increasing awareness among politicians that there is no public-interest…

In the 1970s, about 10 percent of American workers required licenses to perform their jobs legally. By 2015, that proportion had more than doubled to 22 percent. There is widespread agreement among economists and an increasing awareness among politicians that there is no public-interest…

After the healthcare debacle, can GOP lawmakers regroup to pass tax reform? Senior writer Michael Warren talks with host Eric Felten about the Republicans' top legislative priority for the fall.

A bipartisan health reform proposal headlined by Governors John Kasich and John Hickenlooper would preserve Obamacare and instead provide states more flexibility under the existing law, according to an outline of the plan released Thursday.

Congressional Republicans are attempting to pivot away from Obamacare repeal toward tax reform. But they continue to butt heads with a White House that’s unhappy with where they left the health care debate.

From full repeal to skinny repeal to no repeal.

The move would allow Gard to get treatment here if a British court were to allow it.

For many years, starting in elementary school, my mother took me to an ophthamologist for an annual examination. Dr. Itzkovitz was a master in distracting a child just long enough to get a good look at his retina. By the time we arrived, after school, his part-time secretary had left for the day,…

Wisconsin senator Ron Johnson, a Republican wildcard in the upper chamber’s health reform discussions, accused majority leader Mitch McConnell Friday of being duplicitous in his struggle to assemble 50 yea votes to pass the Better Care Reconciliation Act.

A British judge has ruled that an American specialist can travel to the U.K. to examine the terminally ill baby Charlie Gard.

If Senate Republicans are going to pass a bill to partially repeal and replace Obamacare, it appears they'll need everyone but libertarian Rand Paul and moderate Susan Collins to do it.

The Associated Press reported Sunday some accurate, if incomplete information about Sen. Ted Cruz’s health reform proposal. “Cruz’s plan,” the story reads, “… aims to lower premiums for healthy people.” The article provided no additional details, either specifics or their presumed consequences,…

Today on the Daily Standard podcast, senior writer John McCormack talks with host Eric Felten about Ted Cruz’s efforts to amend the Senate GOP’s floundering (okay, foundering) healthcare legislation.

It’s often said that reforming the U.S. health care system amounts to reshaping one-fifth of the economy. It’d follow, then, that voters would hold the GOP’s grotesquely unpopular health bills against its reputation on economic issues. But historic polling shows that the public doesn’t relate the…

Michael Warren is on vacation this week, and Andrew Egger is filling in for him on White House Watch. Michael will be back in the saddle on July 3.

Late Friday night, Utah senator Mike Lee issued a lengthy statement (which is well worth reading in full) ripping and ridiculing the Senate GOP health care bill:

All this time, the national headlines about health care reform in Congress have prioritized the terms “CBO” and “pre-existing conditions.” Not nearly enough attention has been paid to “Medicaid.”

President Trump urged the Senate to eliminate its 60-vote threshold for ending debate on most legislative matters Tuesday morning, though his reasoning appears to be garbled.

A national survey conducted entirely after House passage of the Republican health care bill found that support and opposition to Obamacare is split evenly among Americans.

The latest version of the American Health Care Act continued to leak GOP support on Tuesday, as Republicans stumbled to defend critical details of the bill that Democrats and outside groups have effectively defined as dangerous to sick consumers.

The term "pre-existing conditions" has become a catch-all to describe a certain category of health status, high-cost medical patients, and a popular provision of Obamacare under scrutiny in the health care reform process. It's applicable to all three of these things. But without understanding how,…

Ohio governor John Kasich dismissed changes to the American Health Care Act designed to give states flexibility under Obamacare's insurance regulations on Friday, telling reporters that the House amendment process is a "bouncing ball" he hasn't been interested in following.

The House Freedom Caucus officially backs an updated version of the GOP health care bill that includes a significant amendment co-sponsored by the group's chairman, the conservative bloc's spokeswoman announced early Wednesday afternoon. She did not respond immediately to a Twitter inquiry asking…

Last year Republicans persuaded a majority of Americans that Obamacare should be "repealed and replaced." Even Americans who voted for Hillary Clinton expected that President Donald Trump and Republican congressional leaders would promptly offer a viable alternative to Obamacare. The president's…

Last year Republicans persuaded a majority of Americans that Obamacare should be “repealed and replaced." Even Americans who voted for Hillary Clinton expected that President Donald Trump and Republican congressional leaders would promptly offer a viable alternative to Obamacare. The president's…

In the summer of 1972, two days after the Watergate break-in, Simon & Schuster published Sen. Edward Kennedy's second book, a scathing condemnation of American medicine entitled In Critical Condition: The Crisis in America's Health Care. Composed largely of excerpts from recent testimony before…

At 39, Tom Cotton is the youngest member of the Senate. He was elected from Arkansas in 2014 after two years in the House. And having served in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan as an infantry captain, he quickly emerged as an influential senator on military and foreign affairs.

It was the Huffington Post headline that caught my eye:

In a short briefing of reporters in the Oval Office late Friday afternoon, President Donald Trump said he was "disappointed" and "a little surprised, to be honest," that the American Health Care Act did not have the votes to pass the House of Representatives. Flanked by Vice President Mike Pence…

President Trump is "moving on" from health care after the House scuttled a planned Friday afternoon vote on the White House-backed American Health Care Act, says a senior White House aide.

Congressional members and staffers generally act like their fellow Americans sit around waiting for the Congressional Budget Office to release scoring of major legislative proposals, much like they await the release of March Madness brackets. The truth is that most Americans hardly care what the…

House Republicans revealed draft legislation Monday evening designed to allay conservative lawmakers without spooking moderates, reassure wary voters, and not alienate Democrats too much.

Moments after the president's address to Congress concluded on Tuesday night, Vox ran the following headline: "The president is serious about dismantling the FDA to usher in more medical 'miracles.' That's wrong."

In passing Obamacare, its supporters promised the moon. Obamacare was allegedly going to cost $938 billion over ten years, result in 23 million people getting insurance through its exchanges as of 2017, reduce the typical family's premiums by $2,500 a year, and make sure that if you liked your…

There has been a lot of speculation about what will happen to various people if Obamacare is repealed and replaced with a conservative alternative. Would millions lose coverage, as some have claimed, because they couldn't keep their plan and couldn't afford a new plan? Or would people be freed up…

Part of why Obamacare is so unpopular is that it is neglects the typical American. As Republicans deliberate over an alternative to Obamacare, this provides a huge opening.

Doctors are divided over whether to keep the individual mandate that compels Americans to purchase health insurance. That's according to a study in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Democratic senator Richard Blumenthal said he would vote against Rep. Tom Price to be secretary of Health and Human Services because the Georgia lawmaker and physician is "trying to destroy a woman's right to health care."

It is an amazing fact that the individual mandate to buy health insurance largely originated with policy wonks and politicians on the conservative side of the aisle. This ill-conceived and unconstitutional (despite the opinions of five justices) idea eventually became perhaps the most despised part…

Donald Trump has said repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act should be done "very quickly"—but the issue was nowhere to be found in the president's inaugural address at the U.S. Capitol Friday. Trump's speech, which struck populist themes on trade, immigration, foreign policy, and…

President-elect Donald Trump says his proposal to replace Obamacare will guarantee "insurance for everybody" and "great health care" that is "much less expensive and much better." Here's more from the Washington Post's interview with Trump:

The House approved a budget Friday providing for Congress to axe the revenue-related portions of Obamacare, teeing up a repeal procedure that congressional Democrats are powerless to stop.

A new report, cited in various media outlets, claims that repealing Obamacare would "cost roughly $350 billion" over a decade and "leave no funds available for 'replacement' legislation." In truth, repealing Obamacare and replacing it with a good conservative alternative would cut federal spending…

Vox interviewed President Obama on Facebook Live Friday. He discussed health care, along with the doomed fate of his health care law. One of the more interesting things he had to say was this:

When it comes to trying to decide what the worst part of Obamacare is, there's no shortage of contenders. From a constitutional standpoint, the worst part is its unprecedented individual mandate. From the standpoint of the republic's overall well-being, the worst part is its consolidation and…

Top GOP officials say their first order of business in the new year is to repeal and replace Obamacare. But the first order itself has a clear first step.

When the U.S. Federal Marshal system was founded, its mission was to execute all lawful warrants as officers of the courts. The main association with marshals is a lone, Wild West-style lawman, like Wyatt Earp or Rooster Cogburn, but the program was started by George Washington and continues to…

The issue of repealing and replacing Obamacare is going to be central to the role of Secretary of Health and Human Services in the Donald Trump administration. The president-elect's choice for the job, Georgia representative Tom Price, has spent plenty of time working on the matter in his role as…

Tom Price, a Republican congressman from Georgia and orthopedic surgeon, is Donald Trump's choice for secretary of Health and Human Services. The New York Times reports:

One of Obamacare's key architects said Wednesday morning that Americans weren't being penalized enough for forgoing health insurance coverage, which he characterized as "probably the most important thing experts would agree on" as it relates to improving the law.

Republicans may have an opportunity to salvage the election on the congressional level by making an explicit pitch to voters that they can stop Hillary Clinton on Obamacare and taxes. Online editor Michael Warren joined MSNBC's Morning Joe on Wednesday to discuss the lessons of 1996, as well as why…

In 2008, the year that Barack Obama was elected as president, the combined annual profits of America's ten largest health insurance companies were $8 billion. Under Obamacare, the ten largest health insurers' annual profits have risen to $15 billion. This is another fine example of the natural…

The Obama administration has tried to put a good face on the news this week that Obamacare premiums are spiking an average of 25 percent for 2017. The department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced the increases under the heading, "More Than 70 Percent of Consumers Can Find Marketplace…

As recently as last month, the White House insisted that illegal immigrants are "are not eligible to collect benefits associated with the Affordable Care Act." But undocumented immigrants accessing the Obamacare website, Healthcare.gov, could be forgiven if they thought otherwise.

Should anyone outside the military be forced to kill? Most people would say no. But with the ubiquitous availability of abortion—and the push to legalize assisted suicide and euthanasia—doctors may soon find themselves required to take lives or risk being booted from the medical profession.

On July 28, 2009, newly elected President Obama made a "guarantee" during an AARP town hall pushing the then-newly introduced Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare:

The words President Obama used to sell his signature initiative, Obamacare—"if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor"—may end up the most memorable of his eight years in office. But according to information posted on Healthcare.gov, this "guarantee" from the president was wholly without…

The Washington Examiner editorial board has declared the legacy of Barack Obama to be a transformed America—one that trusts its government and institutions less than it did when he became president. Here's an excerpt from the magazine's editorial:

In 2010, the New York Times dubbed her our "Quiet Savior from Harmful Medicines." That same year, FDA commissioner Margaret Hamburg presented her with the eponymous Dr. Frances O. Kelsey Award for Excellence and Courage in Protecting Public Health. In 2000, she was inducted into the National…

As Obamacare continues to face numerous setbacks, Tennessee's insurance commissioner declared on Tuesday that its exchange was "very near collapse" after she approved several large premium hikes to keep it in business.

"If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor" was President Barack Obama's signature catchphrase he used to sell the Affordable Care Act to the American people. Now Obamacare's flagship website, healthcare.gov, no longer even addresses the issue.

Recently, there's been renewed interest in reviving the "public option." Loosely, the public option is a policy proposal to create a giant government-run health insurer that would compete with private insurers. The rationale behind it is that a publicly run insurance company would be able to…

Leaders in the health sector from Washington state and Colorado, where marijuana's recreational use is widespread and often ineffectively regulated, know enough by now to take a step back and consider the ill effects. They presented findings and concerns on the health effects of cannabis Thursday…

Aetna announced this week that it will no longer be providing Affordable Care Act "marketplace" insurance plans in nearly a dozen states, including Arizona. Aetna joins other insurers, including Humana, UnitedHealthcare, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Arizona, and Health Net in dropping Obamacare…

In the Wall Street Journal, a physician tells us that

This year marks the 20th anniversary of Hillary Clinton’s It Takes a Village, and given what's written there, Clinton must be sorry she isn't running for president of Scotland. After all, the Scots have been rolling out a law that implements much of her argument, namely that government—or "the…

It seems that Obamacare is not enough for the law's namesake. In a lengthy journal article published Monday, President Obama called on Congress to revisit the policy of allowing Americans to buy government-run insurance plans, an idea that was scrapped during original consideration of the…

The House of Representatives passed a bill Wednesday that aims to prevent the federal government from discriminating against healthcare providers that do not provide abortions.

House speaker Paul Ryan said Wednesday that the House GOP's new Obamacare replacement is focused more on quality than quantity.

Obamacare has caused health insurance premiums to skyrocket. It has caused millions of Americans who liked their health plans to lose their health plans. It has caused doctor and hospital networks to narrow. Now the Wall Street Journal reports that the Obamacare exchanges in Alabama and Alaska will…

If you like your UnitedHealthcare Obamacare plan, that doesn’t mean you can keep your UnitedHealthcare Obamacare plan. That's because the nation's largest health insurer is bailing on the central policy initiative of the Obama presidency.

In a recent piece at New York Magazine, Jonathan Chait writes that “Republican alternatives to Obamacare have lain just over the horizon for half a dozen years" yet somehow never come into view. He asserts, "The reason the dog keeps eating the Republicans' health-care homework is very simple: It is…

The key domestic policy fight of 2017 will be over Obamacare. If it is repealed, then the centerpiece of the Obama presidency will lie in ruins. If not, then President Obama will have been what he set out to be: a sort of Reagan of the left—a transformative president who will have profoundly…

Scott Brown’s 2010 election to the U.S. Senate was a major moment for opponents of what was to become President Barack Obama's health care law. Brown ran as a Republican in Massachusetts in a special election to replace the late liberal lion Ted Kennedy, and his improbable victory there came in no…

In Thursday’s Republican presidential debate, Ted Cruz called Obamacare "the biggest job-killer in America." Chris Wallace had asked Cruz what he would do to bring manufacturing jobs back to Detroit (the site of the debate) and the rest of the country, and the Texas senator replied, "The way you…

Marco Rubio turned a familiar line of attack against Donald Trump at Thursday night's GOP debate, tripping the Republican frontrunner for repeating the same detail about his health care platform and passing it off as his plan in full.

GOP voters are in a fighting mood. They aren't much interested in business-as-usual, political niceties, or even conservative purity. They want someone who will take it to Washington—someone who will go there and fight for change.

Warby Parker is the most celebrated of the online optical shops upending the traditional eyeglass business. In a market where the average price for a pair of prescription glasses has been near $300, Warby Parker sells hipster-chic frames, complete with lenses, for around $100. Fast Company calls…

The Scrapbook has been secretly rooting for Bernie Sanders for a while now, because, well, he’s not Hillary Clinton. However, we are not without serious reservations about his candidacy. Many of his policy proposals reveal the rich fantasy life of the left, and not even the New York Times can…

In a recent investigative piece on Massachusetts General Hospital, the Boston Globe casts light on the practice, common in certain hospitals, of “double booking" surgeons. In the name of efficiency, a particularly in-demand surgeon will participate in two procedures scheduled at the same time by…

When the Democrats passed Obamacare (without a single Republican vote), part of how they were allegedly going to pay for it was through a "Cadillac tax" on expensive employer-based insurance. Yet, this week, many Republicans are working with Democrats to delay or even repeal this tax. For three…

Obamacare has an incurable preexisting condition: It eats away at the private insurance market on which it relies. That market cannot survive Obamacare's hubristic mandates, and Obamacare cannot survive the collapse of that market. On their present course, both are doomed.

The media are cooing over the news that Medicare will reimburse doctors $86 for half-hour consultations about the kind of treatment patients would—or would not—want should they become incapacitated. Such coverage was slated to be part of Obamacare, but was dropped after it became controversial when…

The Boston Globe reports that Tom Stemberg, the founder of office-supply retailer Staples, has died. Stemberg started Staples with the help of Mitt Romney's Bain Capital investment firm, and the two men became friends.

CNN, which has been on the story of malfeasance and incompetence at the VA for a while now, reports:

It has been clear for some time that Republicans need just two things in order to repeal Obamacare—a winning alternative and political willpower.  The jury is still out on how much of the latter the party possesses.  But when it comes to uniting around a well-conceived alternative that can pave the…

The Republican congressional leadership has been nominally--but sometimes it seems only nominally--committed to repealing Obamacare and replacing it with a conservative alternative.  Now one of the two leading candidates for House majority leader—the number-two position in leadership—is Dr. Tom…

Jake Tapper and CNN pretended during the Republican presidential debate that Obamacare doesn’t exist.  But Republican voters won’t follow suit.  Instead, they are likely to cast their votes largely based on who looks most committed to repealing President Obama’s tenuously perched signature…

At a speech at President Reagan’s alma mater on Thursday, Wisconsin governor Scott Walker challenged his GOP rivals on Obamacare.  Walker highlighted his own Obamacare alternative, promising he would send it to Congress on Day One. Observing that members of Congress “need a little incentive to get…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD has long observed that Obamacare, which President Obama pitched as a great deal for Americans of all stripes, is really only for the near-poor and near-elderly—at the expense of the middle class and the young. While only a small minority has benefitted from the 2,400-page…

So far, the Republican presidential contest has been light on Obamacare, with Scott Walker — who has essentially championed the 2017 Project’s “Winning Alternative to Obamacare” — providing a noteworthy exception.  Since Obamacare is the biggest issue of Barack Obama’s presidency, why are most GOP…

Jeb Bush has said Donald Trump "should be treated like the frontrunner" for the Republican nomination. On Tuesday, the Bush campaign continues to do just that with a short web video aimed squarely at the leading GOP contender's past "liberal" views on taxes, health care, and abortion as well as…

Wisconsin governor Scott Walker is nothing if not a campaign veteran. He’s run and won three statewide races since 2010, including the highly contentious recall election in 2012. In fact, since an unsuccessful bid for the state assembly in 1990 when he was just 22, Walker hasn’t lost an election.…

Jeffrey Anderson, writing at the Federalist, calls Scott Walker's Obamacare replacement proposal a "winning conservative alternative." Here an excerpt:

Hillary Clinton said the lack of medical insurance coverage for gender-reassignment surgery is an issue that's "going to have to be dealt with." At a townhall campaign event in Nevada Tuesday, a woman who said she was the mother of a transgendered person asked the Democratic candidate about…

As Jeffrey Anderson noted in this week's issue of the magazine, the issue of Obamacare featured less conspicuously that one might have expected in the first Republican presidential debate. More broadly, the issue has been less central to the GOP primary campaign than one might have anticipated,…

The man leading the GOP primary polls made it clear on Thursday night that he still has a high opinion of health care systems that are to the left of Obamacare. 

Bill Clinton is fighting to rid the world of AIDS. The former president, and husband to Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, outlines his hard work in a blog post for Medium. 

An Obamacare contractor has been found to be running a "fight club" in a New Zealand prison. The contractor is Serco and the scandal in New Zealand appears to be rapidly unfolding. 

Among the Affordable Care Act’s many features is a tax on high dollar health insurance coverage that is part of an individual’s employment compensation. The thinking is that someone who is self-employed or doesn’t have employer provided coverage pays for health insurance with after-tax dollars so…

The mainstream press corps and (at least privately) many Republicans officeholders have adopted two seemingly irreconcilable positions.  They claim Obamacare is politically toxic for Democrats yet is somehow immune to repeal by Republicans (even after President Obama leaves office).  A recent piece…

Robert Pear of the New York Times reports that:

In the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling in King v. Burwell, most signs point toward Obamacare becoming the defining issue in the 2016 election.  That puts Republicans in an advantageous position, as it’s a lot easier to propose and defend an alternative to Obamacare than to defend Obamacare. …

The Supreme Court’s ruling in King v. Burwell is disappointing. But it also provides a welcome moment of clarity: We can finally dispense with the false belief that the Supreme Court will save us from Obamacare. It is perhaps a blessing for the cause of repeal that all eyes will now turn to the…

In anticipation of the Supreme Court's forthcoming ruling on the Obamacare case, the Republican National Committee is going on the offensive. In a new 66-second web video, which is set to be released later today, Republicans are blaiming the law on Democrats who "pushed through Obamacare." Not a…

After the Democrats passed Obamacare without a single Republican vote, Republicans generally (and wisely) united around the notion that they shouldn’t pursue partial repeal or “fixes” to Obamacare.  Rather than willingly giving Obamacare a newly bipartisan sheen, they publicly committed to…

A review of $2.8 billion in subsidies paid to health insurers on behalf of Obamacare enrollees during the early days of the program could not verify the accuracy of those payments. The Office of the Inspector General found that during January through April 2014, the Centers for Medicare and…

Sarah Ferris of The Hill writes:

Former president Bill Clinton will be the keynote speaker at a conference of health-insurance executives this week. America's Health Insurance Plans, the largest health-insurance provider trade group in the country, is holding its Institute 2015 conference in Nashville this week. Clinton, whose…

Former president Bill Clinton will be the keynote speaker at a conference of health-insurance executives this week. America's Health Insurance Plans, the largest health-insurance provider trade group in the country, is holding its Institute 2015 conference in Nashville this week. Clinton, whose…

Even before the launch of Obamacare, one of the few things that was clear about the program was that the Bush-appointed HHS inspector general, Daniel Levinson, placed self-preservation above his statutory duty to bring public attention to Obamacare’s waste, fraud and abuse. It is a point I have…

In the initial years following Obamacare’s passage, Republicans remained solidly united on one crucial point:  Obamacare needs to be repealed and replaced, not “fixed.”  But some Republicans and center-right pundits have since decided that trying to fix the president’s signature legislation is a…

Assuming a Republican wins the presidency in 2016, his top domestic priority will be—and should be—to repeal and replace Obamacare. The health care overhaul is the cornerstone of President Obama’s project to transform America into a top-down administrative state. The effects of repealing Obamacare,…

The system of federal and state "exchanges" or "marketplaces" that offer health insurance through the Affordable Care Act lean heavily on "navigators" to guide consumers in their choices. Organizations such as community health centers, legal aid societies, social service groups, church groups and…

Every year since 2011, the White House has used tax time to post a "Federal Taxpayer Receipt" showing taxpayers how their federal tax dollars are being spent. President Obama introduced the concept in his 2011 State of the Union address, and Wednesday the White House posted the fifth installment so…

Now that the Supreme Court has held its oral arguments in King v. Burwell, the case has somewhat receded from the headlines.  But conservatives would be wise to use this period between the oral arguments and the Court’s ruling, expected in late June, to encourage Republicans to unite around a…

Sarah Ferris writes, at The Hill, that:

It has now been five years since President Obama signed Obamacare into law — and more than two years and two months since any poll found it to be popular.  The last time a poll found Obamacare to be popular was during Obama’s first term. 

Given that Obamacare’s supporters like to take the Congressional Budget Office’s overly optimistic scoring of the president’s signature legislation as gospel, it’s fun to look at how poorly Obamacare is actually doing in relation to earlier CBO projections.  When the Democrats rammed Obamacare…

Ben Sasse of Nebraska, who rode his opposition to Obamacare to a seat in the Senate, has introduced legislation that should help Republicans avoid turning a potential victory at the Supreme Court into a defeat for the cause of repeal.  Sasse’s bill, introduced yesterday evening, is designed to keep…

Five years ago this month — on the night the Democrats passed Obamacare through the House without a single Republican vote — Paul Ryan proclaimed on the House floor, “This moment may mark a temporary conclusion of the health-care debate, but its place in history has not yet been decided.  If this…

Over the past few days at CPAC, Sean Hannity has asked various prospective Republican presidential candidates to list their “top five agenda items.” Former governor Jeb Bush’s list did not include repealing Obamacare.

Usually when the Obama administration is discussing doctors and health issues, Obamacare is on the table. Thursday, however, the White House threw a curve by linking health to climate change. In a new blog post, the White House declares that "7 out of 10 Doctors [say] Climate Change Is Already…

Next Wednesday, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on whether the Obama administration has been illegally providing taxpayer-funded subsidies in 36 states under the guise of implementing Obamacare, and there’s been much debate about what Congress should do if the Court rules that the…

The Obama administration in recent weeks has been trumpeting the number of signups for health insurance through the Obamacare marketplaces for 2015, but at least 90,000 consumers who had coverage last year are losing it. In this week's Affordable Care Act open enrollment report, the Department of…

Morgan True who writes for Vermont Digger  the state’s premier news website, reports that Jonathan Gruber, who so famously helped design Romneycare and Obamacare then bragged about how the “stupidity” of the American voters helped make the creation of his masterworks possible, is in a spot of…

The Associated Press reports:

In an effort to sign up as many consumers as possible for insurance under the Affordable Care Act (or Obamacare), the Obama administration has gone to extraordinary lengths to partner with churches and other faith-based groups, even publishing sample church bulletin inserts, flyers, and scripts for…

BuzzFeed has released the video the website shot this week with President Obama, showing the commander in chief smiling for a selfie stick photo:

The Huffington Post’s Jeffrey Young and Jonathan Cohn declare that “putting together a real Obamacare alternative will take more time — and more genuine interest — than Republicans have.”  In truth, such Obamacare alternatives are already available to Republicans.  These include the 2017 Project’s…

In today’s Wall Street Journal, my friend Tevi Troy and Scott Gottlieb unwittingly demonstrate why King v. Burwell has always been a dangerous case for advocates of repeal.  As they highlight, a favorable ruling at the Supreme Court may give Republicans just enough rope to hang themselves. 

Bobby Jindal isn’t as close to announcing a run for president as some of his other would-be GOP rivals, but that hasn’t kept the Louisiana governor out of the news. In recent weeks, Jindal has spoken out on terrorism (he says, contra Obama, Islam “has a problem”), vaccines (he’s unequivocally for…

In an email sent out this morning to customers, Anthem president and CEO Joseph Swedish addresses the cyberattack on the insurance company he runs. Swedish also reveals that his information was hacked too, not just the information of millions of customers. 

The Oregonian, the biggest paper in the state, is calling for the resignation of Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber as a result of shady dealings related to his longtime girlfriend and fiancée:

Wednesday evening’s Fox News Special Report featured the following exchange between Bret Baier and House Speaker John Boehner:

In a 60 Minutes interview with Scott Pelley, parts of which aired on Sunday, House speaker John Boehner and Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell made it sound like they are no closer to producing the elusive Obamacare alternative than they were five long years ago. 

The deadline to get taxpayer subsidized healthcare is coming up quickly. In an apparent effort to increase enrollment in Obamacare, Facebook ads are running trying to get users to checkout the website.

The New York Times reports that Marilyn Tavenner is stepping down:

The Republicans in congress have some plans for the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) and the Supreme Court will be considering the possibility that that language in the bill itself might, if followed literally, doom the program.  

Even in the giddy afterglow of the new Congress, when all things seem possible, few Republicans seriously think that the Affordable Care Act will be repealed in 2015.  More realistically, various politicians have averred that a Republican Congress may have the wherewithal to repeal some of its more…

President Barack Obama's brief trip to Phoenix Thursday included an off-schedule trip to a housing development and a policy speech at a local high school. But, as NBC affiliate KPNX noted in its report, the president's motorcade drove past the campus of the Phoenix Veterans Affairs hospital, which…

It may be the administration’s signature piece of legislation and the foundation upon which its legacy will be built, but there are plenty of people who are not happy with the Affordable Cave Act.  For instance, there are the members of the faculty of Harvard University who, as Robert Pear of…

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is looking for vendors to run its "National Data Warehouse," a database for "capturing, aggregating, and analyzing information" related to beneficiary and customer experiences with Medicare and the federal Obamacare marketplaces. Although the…

With the announcement Monday of a five-year, $563 million contract award to Accenture, the Healthcare.gov contractor that rescued the Obamacare marketplace after 2013's disastrous launch, the total cost of the site will well exceed $2.2 billion. The new award is on top of the $1.7 billion in…

Prominent Democrats have been lining up to rue the day when they went all in on the Affordable Care Act.  First, Senator Charles “Chuck” Schumer said it was bad politics from the get-go.  No votes in it.  Then, Senator Harry Reid, who will be losing the title “majority leader” and the various…

The House Committee on Foreign Affairs announced the introduction of legislation today to prevent foreign diplomats from receiving Obamacare.

There's more Obamacare bashing from the political left today. This time it's from outgoing Senate majority leader Harry Reid. 

Along with the primary goal of expanding the availability of health insurance, the Affordable Care Act aims to make the use of Electronic Health Records (EHR) universal. This plan actually began with the 2009 stimulus (the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act), which included the Health…

Less than four weeks before the launch of 2015 open enrollment for Obamacare, the government agency that runs Healthcare.gov suddenly realized the Marketplace site was heading for a repeat of last year's debacle. Documents show that on October 19, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services…

New York senator Chuck Schumer criticized President Obama's passage of Obamacare. It "made no political sense," Schumer complained yesterday at the National Press Club. “Unfortunately, Democrats blew the opportunity the American people gave them.” 

In 2005, the King-Drew Medical Center in Los Angeles, which served primarily low-income African American and Latino patients, closed its trauma unit. In 2001, D.C. General Hospital, the only public medical facility in the nation’s capital, closed its doors after nearly 200 years. At least 26 urban…

Senator Chuck Schumer of New York said Tuesday that he and his fellow Democrats made a mistake in pursuing health care legislation that eventually became Obamacare. Bloomberg Politics's Kathleen Hunter has the story:

Alex Wayne at Bloomberg reports that:

Last week, yet another damaging video emerged of Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber talking about Obamacare's "Cadillac tax." The health care law assesses a hefty 40 percent tax on costly, so-called "Cadillac" insurance plans exceeding $10,200 for an individual and $27,500 for a family. However,…

Meghan Hoyer and Tom Vanden Brook of USA Today report that:

Lucy McCalmont at Politico writes that "Support for Obamacare continues to decline, with the law hitting a new low in approval, and a new high in disapproval, as the second enrollment period has opened for Americans, according to Gallup.

New and returning customers to Healthcare.gov this year will have one less option if they run into difficulties. In the run-up to the initial launch in 2013, the Obamacare website promoted a "live chat" feature in addition to the toll-free phone number to be available 24/7 to answer questions:

Two well-placed sources on Capitol Hill say that the Congressional Budget Office effectively used Jonathan Gruber’s model to score Obamacare.  That model favors government mandates over market competition and claims that essentially the only way to achieve a large reduction in the number of…

The White House is incensed, mad enough to spit, and angry as a mashed cat at Jonathan Gruber for saying that the Affordable Care Act had to be sold to the “stupid” electorate by deceptive means.  It seems that once the bill was passed and signed into law Mr. Gruber couldn’t stop talking about how…

As reported in Government Executive, in a new study:

The most widely quoted professor of the recent news cycle, Professor Jonathan Gruber of MIT now says:

Jonathan Gruber, a key architect of Obamacare (and also of Romneycare), has been caught on camera by the Daily Signal offering up insights on the “stupidity of the American voter” and on the importance of using a noble lie (or lies) in passing Obamacare. 

As 2015 open enrollment for Obamacare nears, Healthcare.gov has been telling consumers that "plans and estimated prices for 2015 coverage will be available in early November." Although signup is not possible until November 15, the website promises this "window shopping" experience will come sooner:

President Obama has always wanted to be a historic president.  In an election that was driven by Obamacare, he took another big step toward that end on Tuesday — just not in the way he intended.

It is becoming increasingly clear how important it is to liberals to try to insulate Obamacare from what is shaping up as another “shellacking.”  Sure, a few months after House Democrats passed Obamacare (over unanimous Republican opposition), they lost more House seats (63) while also losing…

WRTV reports that around 30,000 are going to lose their health care plans due to Obamacare in Indiana:

The Obama administration is suddenly a champion of states' rights when it comes to the Ebola quarantine controversy.

Without offering an alternate theory for President Obama’s 42 percent approval rating — which was about the same even before it became obvious his foreign policy had tanked — the mainstream media is insisting that Obamacare isn’t driving this election.  But Republican ads in Senate races say…

The possibility of Ebola breakouts in major American cities raises difficult questions of public health, public safety, and civil liberties. So it is no great surprise that states' efforts to quarantine persons exposed to the decision would be met with threats of federal lawsuits. More interesting,…

A Georgia man confronted Georgia Democratic Senate candidate Michelle Nunn over the rising cost his health care plan because of Obamacare:

Healthcare.gov continues to prepare for open enrollment beginning on November 15, hoping to avoid a repeat of the disastrous launch in 2013. Apparently the preparations include extra "scheduled" maintenance. Wednesday morning, the site displayed a message reading, "The system isn’t available right…

Hospitals seeking guidance from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) on clothing and equipment to use to protect health care workers dealing with known or suspected Ebola patients may have to wait another day for official recommendations. As THE WEEKLY STANDARD noted this morning, hospitals are…

In the wake of their passage of Obamacare, the Democrats have repeatedly claimed two things: Republicans don’t have an alternative, and in any case the health care debate is over. But a Washington Post editorial published Saturday makes it clear that neither of these claims is true.

Valerie Richardson of the Washington Times reports:

Analysis of Congressional Budget Office projections by the Senate Budget Committee finds that Obamacare will increase the deficit by more than $100 billion over the next decade.

In a few minutes, Democratic Senate candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes of Kentucky will meet with the editorial board of the Courier-Journal in Louisville. Campaign memos recently obtained by THE WEEKLY STANDARD show how Grimes and her staff prepare for these meetings, requiring the red-state…

In 2009, Walmart, the left-wing think tank Center for American Progress, and the Service Employees International Union, wrote a pro-Obamacare letter touting “the promise of reduced health care cost increases” that would come from “health care reform.”  Walmart and friends wrote, “We are for shared…

The Ebola outbreak has grabbed the attention of the country if not the world in recent days, but the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is also concerned about a more mundane, but still potentially deadly problem: the flu. Thursday, the agency began seeking sources for "Medical…

Jared Meyer writes at e21 that he:

A new poll finds that three-fifths of likely voters support the repeal of Obamacare.  A large plurality — 44 percent — wants to see Obamacare repealed and replaced with a conservative alternative. A much smaller group —16 percent — wants to see it repealed but not replaced. Less than one in three…

Even before the Healthcare.gov website disaster unfolded in October 2013, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) had been looking to the future. HHS announced in June of that year that Hewlett-Packard would be replacing Terremark, a Verizon subsidiary, as the main contractor hosting the…

A new poll from Public Opinion Strategies, commissioned by Independent Women’s Voice, finds that people who care about the issue of Obamacare really don’t like Obamacare.  On the flip side, people who like Obamacare really don’t care about it very much.  That’s a bad combination for pro-Obamacare…

A new poll finds that 58 percent of likely voters are “more likely” to support members of Congress who vote to stop Obamacare’s taxpayer bailout of insurance companies.  Half of that 58 percent (29 percent) are “much” more likely to do so.  Meanwhile, only 15 percent of likely voters are “less…

A new study from the American Action Forum finds that "1.9 Million Americans [Are] Falling into the ACA Created 'Family Glitch.'"

Jeffrey H. Anderson, writing for National Review Online:

An NBC affiliate in Virginia reports that nearly 250,000 people in that state will lose their health care plans due to Obamacare:

Obamacare’s defenders are busy declaring victory again.  Ezra Klein is touting a new survey of Obamacare benchmark premiums in some regions of the country as evidence that the law is defying the predictions of critics and working to cut costs rather than increase them.

The Department of Health and Human Services announces another $60 million for Obamacare navigators, a press release from that federal bureaucracy states.

2017 Project executive director Jeffrey Anderson issued a memorandum this morning reporting that the nonpartisan Center for Health & Economy has "scored" the group’s alternative to Obamacare. THE WEEKLY STANDARD readers are familiar with the broad case for the alternative (see here and here), which…

In July, a hacker gained access to a computer server used to test code for the federal government's Obamacare website HealthCare.gov, according to a Thursday report by the Wall Street Journal's Danny Yadron. Although the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) stressed no data was taken and…

Given that I’ve probably published more articles critical of Obamacare than anyone alive, I’m often asked to speak to conservative audiences about our new health law. Last month, I was at the big grassroots confab of Americans for Prosperity, the Defending the American Dream Summit. I asked the…

Slowly but surely, the anti-repeal wing of the Republican party is starting to reassert itself.  The latest effort comes from Lanhee Chen, who was the top policy advisor on the Mitt Romney campaign.  As readers will likely recall, that campaign refused to advance an alternative to Obamacare, failed…

The Palm Beach Post reports that Florida Blue CEO Pat Geraghty is characterizing as “unfair” Marco Rubio’s argument that American taxpayers should not be forced to provide a bailout for health insurance companies that lose money under Obamacare.  It’s not entirely clear whether Geraghty thinks it’s…