Obamacare
January 4, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
Vice president-elect Pence met this morning with House Republicans. According to what I’ve been told by a member who was present, Pence said that Donald Trump will cut short his inauguration parade so he can go to the Oval Office and rescind many of President Obama’s executive orders. In addition, as I understand it, Trump will take immediate action to begin undoing some of the administration’s regulations. There are limits
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December 31, 2016 — Scott Johnson
By just about everyone’s reckoning, the so-called signature achievements of the Obama years are the enactment of Obamacare and the Iran nuclear deal. They have a lot in common. Both are ruinous and both were founded on an edifice of bald-faced lies. President Obama is the lyin’ king and these are the lyin’ years. We recall the foundational lies of Obamacare: If you like your insurance plan, you can keep
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December 7, 2016 — Paul Mirengoff
James Capretta and Scott Gottlieb of AEI lay out the four reforms around which they say the effort to replace Obamacare should center. They are: 1. Provide a path to catastrophic health insurance for all Americans. Obamacare provides all sorts of health care coverage, including lots of coverage the purchaser doesn’t need (e.g. child birthing care for people not capable of having children). Making people pay for coverage they don’t
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November 29, 2016 — Scott Johnson
In “What happened in Minnesota” I took a look at the most potent issue behind the remarkable results favoring Republicans in the state legislative races, which I noted as to the House races in part 2. I included a powerful ad that ran on the subject of Obamacare, Minnesota style, brought to us courtesy of Governor Mark Dayton. In the brief interview below with WCCO’s Esme Murphy on November 6,
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November 17, 2016 — Paul Mirengoff
While Democrats around the country try to “process” what happened last week, wily Chuck Schumer is planning what will happen next year. The soon-to-be Senate Minority Leader announced that, unlike Republicans during the Obama years, the Democrats won’t reflexively oppose whatever the president proposes. Instead, they will consider each proposal on its merits and work with President Trump when they consider his proposals meritorious. Schumer isn’t just saying this to
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November 14, 2016 — Paul Mirengoff
Our friend Tevi Troy, the author of outstanding books about the presidency, is also CEO of the American Health Policy Institute. During the George W. Bush administration, he served as deputy secretary of Health and Human Services. Tevi, along with Lanhee Chen of the Hoover Institution, has written an op-ed on Obamacare for the Wall Street Journal (it’s behind the Journal’s pay wall). Their piece has two parts — a
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November 2, 2016 — John Hinderaker
The Affordable Care Act’s open enrollment period for 2017 began yesterday. The timing couldn’t have been worse for Hillary Clinton. Across the country, exchanges opened with higher premiums, fewer carriers, less choice and smaller networks. Did I mention higher premiums? Forbes reports: What they’ll discover is a witch’s brew of double-digit premium hikes, restrictive provider networks, and fewer coverage choices. Many exchange customers will have only a single insurance provider
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October 29, 2016 — Scott Johnson
Obamacare premium rate hikes have hit big time in Minnesota, which has gone all in on Obamacare courtesy of Governor Mark Dayton. Governor Dayton professes himself shocked that the Affordable Care Act is “no longer affordable.” Thanks, guy. Gee, who could have seen it coming? Dayton is trying to create some distance between Democrats standing for election to the legislature and the unfolding catastrophe of Obamacare. He must think we’re
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October 24, 2016 — Paul Mirengoff
The Obama administration admitted today that Obamacare premiums will rise an average of 22 percent for the Silver Plan in 2017. The Silver Plan is the Obamacare benchmark upon which federal subsidies are based. The subsidies will shield many Obamacare purchasers from the impact of the increase, but a large of number of purchasers will be hammered. And, of course, taxpayers will be hit as well by virtue of the
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October 21, 2016 — John Hinderaker
Minnesota’s version of the Affordable Care Act is called MNSure. Like all such implementations of the federal law, it has been a disaster. Last week, Minnesota’s left-wing governor, Mark Dayton, created a firestorm when he accidentally blurted out the truth: “The reality is the Affordable Care Act is no longer affordable to increasing numbers of people.” Dayton has been furiously backpedaling away from that comment ever since, but local Democrats
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October 15, 2016 — Paul Mirengoff
President Obama has two signature accomplishments: Obamacare and the Iran nuclear deal. It will be a good while before we see the main consequences of the deal with Iran, though John Podesta’s assessment that it may well lead to nuclear war and represents the biggest appeasement since Munich seems sound. As for Obamacare, Podesta’s pal Bill Clinton’s assesses it as “the craziest thing in the world.” But we need not
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October 15, 2016 — Paul Mirengoff
John has written about how Clinton operatives attributed Chief Justice Roberts’ vote to uphold Obamacare’s individual mandate to political pressure spearheaded by President Obama. The claim appears in WikiLeaks documents. There is little reason to believe that pressure exerted by Obama and his friends had anything to do with the Chief Justice’s vote. Roberts’ decision not to strike down Obamacare’s key provision was consistent with his long held preference for
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October 8, 2016 — Scott Johnson
In the Wall Street Journal Andrew Ogles and Luke Hilgemann argue that “Obamacare’s meltdown has arrived” (their column is accessible via Google here. They take Tennessee as their proving ground, citing state insurance commissioner Julie Mix McPeak approving premium increases of up to 62 percent in a bid to save the exchange set up under the Affordable Care Act. “I would characterize the exchange market in Tennessee as very near
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October 3, 2016 — Paul Mirengoff
Bill Clinton ripped Obamacare during a campaign rally for his wife in Michigan today. Calling Obamacare, “a crazy system” and “the craziest thing in the world,” the former president said “it doesn’t many any sense; the insurance model doesn’t work here.” Clinton went on to say that Obamacare “works fine” for people with “modest” incomes or who are eligible for government subsidies, but “the people that are getting killed in
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October 3, 2016 — Paul Mirengoff
The Obama administration is set to use an obscure Treasury Department fund to bail out big insurance companies that were complicit in the president’s illegal effort to save Obamacare. So reports the Washington Post, though not in these terms. It took Christoper Jacobs at the Federalist to explain what’s really going on. Most readers will recall that in 2013, millions of Americans received notices informing them that their existing health
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September 4, 2016 — Scott Johnson
Stuart Varney demanded an apology from Obamacare architect and propagandist Ezekiel Emanuel last week on FOX News. The lies of Obamacare resume whenever Emanuel moves his lips, but there is therapetic value in Varney’s beatdown on Emanuel. Emanuel retorts: “Your memory is just so poor about how bad the system was before.” This isn’t good for my anger management therapy, but it is a healthy reminder, so to speak, of
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August 31, 2016 — Paul Mirengoff
It’s been a bad year for Obamacare. James Capretta at NRO cites the following news items from the spring and summer: Aetna announced that it is pulling out of eleven of the 15 states where it currently sells products on the ACA’s exchanges because of continued large financial losses from these products. The company has lost $430 million since January 2014 on insurance plans sold through Obamacare, with more losses
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