Lena Dunham, the HBO celebrity and Democratic activist, had an op-ed in the New York Times over the weekend arguing against a regulation under consideration by the Trump administration. According to a leak, conscientious objectors could opt out of the Obamacare mandate that forces American…
The most unpopular part of Obamacare now has a champion in the Republican presidential field. Via the Right Scoop, Donald Trump was asked on Thursday night by CNN's Anderson Cooper, "If…there's no mandate for everybody to have insurance, what's to—why would an insurance company not have a…
Along with the individual mandate to buy insurance, the employer mandate has been one of the more controversial aspects of Obamacare. Implementation of the employer mandate has been delayed twice, and other aspects of the law are being phased in, with "transitional relief" to help businesses cope.…
In January. And this time, presumably, there will be no extension, which has been the administration’s preferred tool in dealing with the more onerous provisions of the Affordable Care Act. There have been some 21 such extensions and perhaps the White House will again come up with a way. But for…
The House of Representatives passed legislation Wednesday afternoon to make the fine/“tax” for violating Obamacare’s individual mandate $0 for this year, and it did so by the wide margin of 90 votes (250 to 160). That’s 83 more than the 7-vote margin (219 to 212) by which Obamacare passed the…
The House of Representatives is scheduled to vote on Wednesday to reduce the fine/“tax” for violating Obamacare’s individual mandate this year to $0. It will be interesting to see how Democrats in both the House and Senate react. President Obama has plainly violated the law—and the constitutional…
There are a lot of Republican politicians who ostensibly favor the repeal of Obamacare. But there are a lot fewer who give the impression of having the ability and determination to lead the way in bringing about that nation-defining result.
Nineteen Democratic senators filed a brief this week with the Supreme Court in support of requiring business owners to pay for contraceptives and abortifacients for their employees over their religious objections.
In a rare moment of candor, the Obama administration has acknowledged that the so-called Affordable Care Act is making insurance less affordable for millions of Americans.
The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with Jeffrey Anderson on how to escape Obamacare.
The White House will not say whether anyone will have to pay the Obamacare penalty in 2014:
The Supreme Court has agreed to hear two challenges to the constitutionality of the HHS mandate that employer-provided health insurance cover certain reproductive services free of charge even over the employer’s religious objections. Of the many who will be closely watching the high court’s…
Minnesota senator Al Franken, a Democrat, opens the door to a delay of the Obamacare individual mandate in an interview with Minnesota Public Radio.
By now it's an understatement to say—as Senate Democrats said to President Obama yesterday—that Democrats face a national "crisis of confidence" in the Affordable Care Act. And their confidence likely wasn't buttressed by the closing weeks of the Virginia gubernatorial campaign, in which the…
Liberal Connecticut senator Richard Blumenthal said this morning on national television that we should consider delaying the Obamacare individual mandate:
Eugene Robinson makes the case for Obamacare by writing, essentially, that it is a done deal. Time to get over it and move on. This is a corollary of the "law of the land" argument, which asserts that the thing has been written in stone and those who are still opposed and favor repeal should quit…
One day away from the launch of the Obamacare marketplaces, the question most on the minds people visiting the Healthcare.gov website is not about coverage, but rather about avoiding the penalty, or tax, for not having health insurance. As of Monday morning, here is how the website listed its "Most…
This week's Gorilla Glue and duct tape patch on Obamacare will, as the headline on Robert Pear's Times article puts it, delay a limit on consumer costs.
Women Speak for Themselves, a grassroots organization of more than 40,000 women for religious freedom, gathered today at Lafayette Square in Washington, D.C. to protest enforcement of the Health and Human Services mandate, which requires employers (including some religious institutions) to cover…
In the fifth year of "recovery," the rule seems to be that the only jobs that are available (to those who are still looking) are not full-time positions. According to a recent Gallup poll:
Speaker of the House John Boehner said it was "unfair and indefensible" that Barack Obama hasn't delayed Obamacare's individual mandate for individuals and families:
As yesterday's comments by President Obama's press secretary Jay Carney highlight, the Obama administration's lawlessness is matched only by its arrogance. In response to those who are calling attention to the administration's striking failure (more than three years and three months after the…
James Capretta is testifying today before the House Ways and Means Committee on the Obama administration's announcement of a delay in Obamacare's employer mandate. Capretta's testimony is an excellent and judicious summary of the implications of the Obama administration's decision, along with a…
After a year spent largely out of the limelight, Obamacare’s individual mandate is back — as the core symbol of Obamacare’s unprecedented threat to Americans’ liberty. In truth, the mandate never really left; it simply faded a bit from public view. The means of its reemergence, however, is clear: …
NBC called the Obamacare employer mandate "poorly written" and a "damaging moment":
CBS's political director compared Obamacare to "a jalopy they are trying to roll out of the driveway here at barely operational" this morning on national television:
The Obama administration must have been hearing some awfully threatening noises from the business community lately, because its unilateral delay of Obamacare’s employer mandate, from 2014 to 2015, is otherwise very difficult to explain. The delay is an embarrassing move for the White House and will…
In a blatant exercise of arbitrary rule, the Obama administration announced this evening that it has unilaterally decided not to implement a key provision of Obamacare on schedule. By law, Obamacare’s employer mandate — its requirement that businesses with 50 or more workers provide federally…
The Obama administration will announce later this week that it is postponing implementation (that would be "enforcement") of the employer mandate feature of Obamacare. Mike Dorning and Alex Wayne of Bloomberg are reporting:
Louisiana state senator Karen Carter Peterson said today that Obamacare critics are inspired by the race of the president of the United States, Barack Obama:
In remarks on the Senate floor, the top Republican in that chamber argues against a mandate for President Barack Obama after his reelection last week.
Addressing a largely Catholic audience Monday night at an event sponsored by the John Carroll Society in Washington, D.C., Cardinal Timothy Dolan emphasized the non-sectarian, non-partisan—catholic with a small “c”—nature of the fight for religious liberty. “It is not some far right, extremist…
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has finally conceded that Obamacare, as it stands under the Supreme Court ruling, "is a tax."
One of the few bright spots in last week’s Supreme Court ruling on President Obama’s health care overhaul was a political one: The opinion written by Chief Justice John Roberts argues that Obamacare is constitutional under the taxing powers of Congress. The Obama administration’s advocate before…
On May 7, 2012, the Rabbinical Council of America (RCA), the largest organization of rabbis in the United States, approved a resolution recognizing that the Health and Human Services (HHS) regulation that mandates employers provide access to contraceptives, abortifacient drugs, and sterilizations…
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has taken a bold stand for religious freedom. In a recent statement, titled “Our First, Most Cherished Liberty,” the bishops call for repeal of contraception coverage mandated by the Department of Health and Human Services. The clarified position…
In light of the bruising that Solicitor General Donald Verrilli took during this week's oral arguments, no one can blame Obamacare's supporters for trying to offer (belatedly) winning answers that the government’s attorney lacked. Two of the early entrants are law professors Akhil Amar and Jeffrey…
Yesterday, we endured an esoteric debate over a jurisdictional statute that practically no one expects to actually affect the Supreme Court's review of Obamacare. Today, by contrast, was the argument we've all been waiting for: the challenge to the constitutional merits of Obamacare's individual…
The solicitor general had an interesting morning. He argued before the Supreme Court's nine justices that Obamacare's individual mandate isn't a "tax"—even though he'll argue tomorrow that the mandate is a "tax." And then the government's top litigator invoked the possibility of incompetent…
On Friday afternoon, the Obama administration released an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to announce it was proceeding as planned with its new federal mandate that abortion pills, sterilization procedures, and contraception must be provided without co-pays under virtually all health care…
Super Tuesday coincides with the 28th consecutive Rasmussen poll showing double-digit support for the repeal of Obamacare. By a margin of 11 percentage points (53 to 42 percent), the poll shows that likely voters from across the political spectrum favor repealing President Obama’s signature…
According to a recent USA Today/Gallup poll, a whopping four out of five swing-state voters regard Obamacare’s individual mandate as unconstitutional. Somewhat incredibly, more than half of all Democrats nationwide (not just in swing states) agree. And voters in every last one of the 88 counties of…
As BuzzFeed’s Andrew Kaczynski reports, USA Today published a health care op-ed by Mitt Romney on July 30, 2009 — just days before the start of the August recess that quickly became the August uprising against Obamacare. In his op-ed, Romney seems to encourage President Obama to move in a slower…
As the liberal website Slate has explained about Obamacare, President Obama's signature legislation "combine[s] an express mandatory insurance requirement with tax penalties . . . for noncompliance." Which is why the Obama "administration’s lawyers have cited . . . the tax . . . power in support of…
Republicans have been critical of the Obama administration's "preventive care" regulation, both before and after its (meaningless) modification Friday. But have our elected leaders and our candidates made the fundamental point? This regulation isn't some kind of weird bug in the software of…
On the last weekend of January, priests in Catholic churches across America read extraordinary letters to their congregations. The missives informed the laity that President Obama and his administration had launched an assault on the church. In Virginia, Catholics heard from Bishop Paul Loverde,…
The Hill reports: “Requiring people to have health insurance is ‘conservative,’ GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney told MSNBC on Wednesday, but only if states do it.” The Hill adds: “The argument aims to improve Romney’s appeal to Republican voters concerned about the healthcare reform plan he…
Over at the Washington Examiner, Philip Klein reacts to a Romney video Ben Domenech highlighted this weekend. In the clip, Mitt Romney, who is responding to a young Mike Warren’s question at Vanderbilt, talks about the similarities and differences between Romneycare and Obamacare and says, among…
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…
A new Rasmussen poll of likely voters shows that 74 percent of independents reject President Obama’s contention that (in the question’s wording) “the federal government [has] the constitutional authority to force everyone to buy health insurance.” Only 18 percent concur with Obama’s reading of the…
The U.S. Supreme Court announced that it will hear a challenge to the Obamacare ruling issued by a 3-judge panel of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. That appellate court panel struck down Obamacare’s individual mandate but not the rest of the legislation, despite the White House’s assertion that…
The majority of the 50 states claim that Obamacare is unconstitutional, the Obama administration claims that it's not, and both sides have now asked the U.S. Supreme Court to decide the question on appeal from a 3-judge panel of the 11th Circuit Court. In August, the panel (made up of two Clinton…
Philip Klein reports: