AARP Spent Millions Advocating for New Laws That Likely Benefit a Major Corporate Backer

Old Person

AARP, an organization that represents the interests of retired Americans, spent tens of millions of dollars promoting provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) that likely benefit the bottom line of one of the group’s major corporate backers.

AARP spent more than $60 million between 2019 and summer 2022 advocating for a provision that eventually made it into the IRA allowing Medicare to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies over the prices of certain drugs, according to an article posted on the group’s website. The provisions would require the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to negotiate the prices of certain drugs with drug manufacturers starting in 2026.

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Commentary: Limiting Short-Term Health Care Plans Will Hurt Americans

Mike Pirner had emergency gall bladder surgery shortly after buying short-term medical insurance plan (STM), for $150/month. The costs associated with the procedure were $100,000 — Mike only had to pay his $2,500 deductible, which was also his out-of-pocket maximum. President Biden has proposed rules released Friday of the July 4th week that would limit these plans to three months, with one additional month possible. Currently, these plans can last up to three years. 

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Commentary: Republicans Must Not Surrender to Bernie Sanders on Healthcare

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the GOP needs an effective healthcare agenda. There are many policies and programs they could be championing to help families deal with rising costs — especially now with control in the House and a slim Democratic majority in the Senate — but unfortunately, they’ve failed to capitalize on this issue so far.

Republicans are missing an important opening; last year 90 percent of voters said a candidate’s plan for reducing the cost of healthcare would be important to them and 39 percent went so far as to say they would likely cross party lines to vote for a candidate who makes reducing healthcare costs their top priority!

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Bipartisan Pennsylvania Bill Would Allow ‘Personal Option’ Through Association Health Plans

A bipartisan group of Pennsylvania state lawmakers are championing legislation enabling small-business association healthcare plans to offer workers affordable coverage. 

Such plans facilitate lower costs by allowing business and industry organizations to pool their members and negotiate insurance prices. The measure’s author, Representative Valerie Gaydos (R-Moon Township), was among numerous sponsors who told The Pennsylvania Daily Star they experienced firsthand how governmental burdens have made it harder for companies to provide their members with inexpensive medical coverage. Gaydos said this is particularly true since the Affordable Care Act (ACA), signed by President Barack Obama in 2010, heavily restricted association plans. 

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Whitmer: Keep Preventative Health Care Services After Michigan Court Ruling

After a Texas federal judge voided the Affordable Care Act requirement for health care insurers to cover some preventive care services without additional cost, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer directed state government to inform Michiganders which preventative care services are affected.

Whitmer called on the state legislature and Congress to pass laws to help ensure that Michiganders can access services cost-free such as early detection of colon and skin cancer, high blood pressure, and hepatitis. 

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AG Skrmetti Leads States in Opposing Proposed ObamaCare Language Change

Tennessee’s Attorney General is leading the charge against a proposed change to Section 1557 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare). 

Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti will lead a coalition of 20 states in filing a public comment against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’s (DHS) plan to change the wording in Section 1557 from “sex” to “gender identity.” 

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Biden Signs $740 Billion Climate, Tax and Health Care Bill into Law

President Joe Biden signed a $740 billion spending package into law Tuesday, the final step for the green energy, health care and tax hike bill after months of wrangling and controversy, in particular over the legislation’s hiring of 87,000 new IRS agents to audit Americans.

Democrats at the White House Tuesday touted the bill’s deficit reduction of $300 billion over the next decade. The bill includes several measures, including a $35 per month cap on insulin copays, an extension of Affordable Care Act subsidies, and authorization for Medicare to negotiate certain drug prices.

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Democrats Worry About Spike in Obamacare Premiums Ahead of Midterms

Obamacare

As Democrats head into the November midterms with historically low approval ratings, another major factor could arise that will further contribute to the shrinking of their already-slim majorities.

As reported by The Hill, the Affordable Care Act – known colloquially as “Obamacare” – could face a significant increase in premiums due to a lapse in special funding provided by the coronavirus aid bill passed last year. That bill, known as the American Rescue Plan, temporarily increased financial assistance for Americans seeking healthcare through Obamacare; the increase was set to expire just one year after the bill’s passage.

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Commentary: The IRS Can’t Get the Basics Right, So Don’t Add to Its Authority

All taxpayers are dealing with a disastrous filing season this year, with the IRS backed up on processing millions of returns and refunds from last year and communication from the agency nonexistent at best. But some taxpayers will have an added headache in the future as a result of an unnecessary new paperwork requirement that went into effect this year. Fortunately, however, legislation introduced by Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-TN) would address this issue by removing the burdensome new requirement.

Ever since IRS Commissioner Chuck Rettig claimed last year that the “tax gap,” or the gap between what the IRS collects and what it believes it is owed, could be as large as $1 trillion, politicians and legislators have been scrambling to propose ways to collect all that missing revenue. That’s despite the fact that more sober analyses show that the $1 trillion figure is probably wildly exaggerated, that it is functionally impossible to wholly prevent tax evasion, and that a far greater concern is the IRS’s inability to handle its taxpayer service responsibilities.

But as far as proposals to collect all this supposed “extra revenue” go, most of the focus has rightly been on schemes to drastically increase the IRS’s enforcement budget and allow the IRS to snoop on taxpayers’ financial accounts. But another more targeted change has already gone into effect, and is already causing problems.

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Commentary: The Russia-Ukraine Crisis, the History Our Media Got Wrong

Russia’s looming invasion of Ukraine presents a clear and present danger to the safety of the European Union and a direct challenge to the NATO alliance, but only now are our major media waking up to this dire threat to Western security. We must now confront urgent questions: Did the United States strengthen Russia, did it weaken Ukraine, and did it do so under the nose of these media?

First, a quick run-through of American actions that strengthened Russia. In his 2009 inaugural address, Barack Obama promised to approach adversaries with an open hand, not a closed fist. For this, he won a Nobel Peace Prize, an oxymoronic name, equivalent to the Affordable Care Act.

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Commentary: Democrat Spending Bill Taxes the Rich and the Poor

“No one got everything they wanted, including me, but that’s what compromise is. That’s consensus. And that’s what I ran on.”

That was President Joe Biden on Oct. 28 unveiling his latest $1.75 trillion spending bill—watered down from $3.5 trillion after Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) refused to budge on the topline number—that Congress is expected to vote on this week.

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Commentary: BidenCare Blows ObamaCare Costs Out of the Water

PolitiFact’s 2013 “Lie of the Year” came from former President Barack Obama selling ObamaCare, his massive government takeover of healthcare. “If you like your healthcare plan, you can keep it,” Obama said. That was a lie. Now President Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) want to expand that lie through their $3.5 trillion federal spending blowout pending in Congress. 

Obama also said we could keep our doctors under ObamaCare. Obama lied to me and millions of other people. When I left a full-time job in 2013 for contract work, I switched to an ObamaCare exchange plan. And no, I didn’t get to keep my doctor on that new plan. I also saw the cost of my ObamaCare plan increase by double digit rates for 2014.

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Second Federal Court Blocks Biden Mandate Requiring Doctors to Perform Trans Surgeries Against Conscience

A federal court has blocked President Joe Biden’s mandate that would require doctors to perform transgender surgeries against their consciences.

Judge Reed O’Connor of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas, Wichita Falls Division, granted “a permanent injunction” to the Christian plaintiffs “to be exempt from the government’s requirement to perform abortions and gender-transition procedures.”

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Obamacare Lawsuit Backed by Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody Rejected by U.S. Supreme Court

The U.S. Supreme Court decided Thursday to uphold a 2017 provision part of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), also known as Obamacare, that was challenged by Florida’s Attorney General Ashley Moody, and 17 other states.

The provision nullified an “individual mandate” or “minimum essential coverage” established in a 2012 court decision that was intended to put a tax penalty on Americans who did not purchase health insurance or enroll in Medicaid.

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Democrats Introduce Two House Bills Expanding Abortion Coverage

Virginia House Democrats have introduced two bills expanding healthcare coverage of abortions. HB 1922, introduced by Delegate Cia Price (D-Newport News) would expand Medicaid abortion coverage and require private employers who offer health coverage to cover abortions. HB 1896, introduced by Delegate Sally Hudson (D-Charlottesville), removes a Virginia prohibition of abortion coverage under Obamacare.

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Former Virginia Attorney General Jerry Kilgore on Barrett: Confirm Now!

In an interview with The Virginia Star, Kilgore shared that Barrett’s nomination was a long time coming.

“A lot of us were looking to the President, hoping he would nominate her last time instead of Kavanaugh [in 2018]. She carried herself so well during her 2017 hearing for the 7th Circuit Court, and she was a former clerk for Justice Scalia. She is a favorite justice for many conservatives throughout the nation.”

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Gade Abandons Trump on Key Immigration Policy in First Debate U.S. Senate with Warner

Senator Mark Warner (D-VA) and Republican challenger Daniel Gade appeared virtually on NBC4 for their first debate. NBC News’ Chuck Todd moderated the debate from Washington, D.C. with a live Zoom audience.
Topics included the Supreme Court nominations, COVID-19, the digital divide, policing, racial justice, immigration, and the election.

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Obamacare Loophole Allows Medicaid Fraud, Costs Taxpayers, Report Says

The Affordable Care Act mandated that states accept a hospitals’ decision on the eligibility of all able-bodied adults who verbally report their income to be below the Medicaid level, which has led to many fraudulent eligibility claims, according to a report published Monday.

The Foundation for Government Accountability (FGA) report examined recently released data from state Medicaid agencies. It specifically looked at the government Medicaid funds that were wasted through false hospitals’ presumptive eligibility (HPE) determinations.

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Report: Millions Lose Health Insurance Because of COVID-19 Shutdowns

More than 5 million people lost their health insurance coverage over the past several months because of COVID-19 restrictions as costs for lifesaving medications and treatments for cancer also skyrocketed.

A new study by Families USA found that more than 5.4 million people who lost their jobs are uninsured, compared to 3.9 million who were in a similar situation during the Great Recession.

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Keith Ellison Asks Supreme Court to Review ‘Illogical And Chaotic’ ACA Decision

  Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison has joined a coalition of 19 states in asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review a recent decision that found the individual mandate of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) to be unconstitutional. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit held in a December ruling that Obamacare’s individual mandate is unconstitutional, but ordered a lower court to decide whether the rest of the law can remain intact. “The individual mandate is unconstitutional because it can no longer be read as a tax, and there is no other constitutional provision that justifies this exercise of congressional power,” said the court. “On the severability question, we remand to the district court to provide additional analysis of the provisions of the ACA as they currently exist.” In the 2-1 decision, the court said that it may be that some, none, or all of the ACA is “severable from the individual mandate.” Ellison has now joined 19 other states in filing a petition that asks the Supreme Court to review the lower court’s decision. “Affordable, high-quality health care is a human right. It’s essential to being able to afford your life and live with dignity and respect,”…

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Report: Ohioans Enrolled in Obamacare Had 20 Percent of Medical Claims Denied Despite Coverage

A new report from the Kaiser Family Foundation has found that, from 2015-2017, 20% of all claims made by individuals covered under the Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare, have been denied. This has led to thousands of patients going “out of pocket” to cover expensive procedures or putting themselves at risk by not getting the procedures performed at all. The report analyzed “transparency data released by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to examine claims denials and appeals among issuers offering individual market coverage on healthcare.gov from 2015-2017.” In 2017, 19% of all health claims filed were rejected. When a claim is rejected, an individual has a right to appeal the decision. However, less than one half of a percent of individuals choose to do so. Of the few that do file an appeal, only 14% are overturned. Depending on the insurer, claim denial rates ranged from 1% to 45%. Due to transparency limitations by insurers, there is little data to suggest why the claims were denied: Issuers use standardized reason codes for claims adjustments and denials; without this information, one cannot distinguish claims denied for reasons of medical necessity, for example, from those denied due to an incorrect…

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Trump Reveals Timeline for Up-in-the-Air GOP Health Care Plan

by Evie Fordham   President Donald Trump put a timeline on his call for Republicans to develop a comprehensive alternative to the Affordable Care Act (ACA) on Twitter Monday night. “Everybody agrees that ObamaCare doesn’t work. Premiums [and] deductibles are far too high — Really bad HealthCare! Even the Dems want to replace it, but with Medicare for all, which would cause 180 million Americans to lose their beloved private health insurance,” he wrote, adding, “[Republicans] are developing a really great HealthCare Plan with far lower premiums (cost) [and] deductibles than ObamaCare. In other words, it will be far less expensive [and] much more usable than ObamaCare.” “Vote will be taken right after the Election when Republicans hold the Senate [and] win [back the House],” Trump wrote. Leading Republicans have been echoing Trump’s ACA criticism but have not pointed to any tangible steps to reset American health care on a large scale. Trump’s declaration that “a really great HealthCare Plan” can wait until after elections in November 2020 grants them time and the possibility of a GOP-controlled Congress. Trump has been focused on health care since his administration made news on that front March 25. That’s when the Department of…

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Nine Years After Obamacare Passed, Agency Finds Numbers Were Wildly Off

by Jarrett Stepman   Democrats defeated Republicans in the Obamacare repeal fight by warning that 22 million Americans would be thrown off their health insurance. They pointed to data leaked from the Congressional Budget Office. Well, it turns out that data was completely wrong. According to a report by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services released Wednesday, the Congressional Budget Office wildly overestimated the number of people who would lose their health insurance with the repeal of the individual mandate penalty. Initial estimates from the Congressional Budget Office said 14 million would drop off their health insurance coverage due to the elimination of the individual mandate. Then, during the height of the 2017 debate over repeal, progressives touted a leaked number from the Congressional Budget Office claiming that 22 million people would “lose” their insurance if Congress repealed the law. [ The liberal Left continue to push their radical agenda against American values. The good news is there is a solution. Find out more ] However, as health care analyst Avik Roy pointed out, what made this number so high was the inflated number of people expected to lose their insurance due to repeal of the mandate – about 73 percent to…

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Biography Reveals New Details Of Roberts’ Obamacare Vote

by Kevin Daley   A forthcoming biography of Chief Justice John Roberts contains the first account of the Supreme Court’s internal politicking over the 2012 NFIB v. Sebelius decision, in which Roberts joined with the Court’s four liberals to uphold the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate. A review of the much anticipated book — the first major Roberts biography — will appear in the March edition of the Atlantic, which disseminates new details of the chief’s scheming in advance of the book’s release. The book relates that in the weeks following the March 2012 arguments, Roberts voted with the conservative bloc to strike down the individual mandate, finding Congress had exceeded its power under the commerce clause by compelling people to buy insurance. Roberts elected to keep the majority opinion for himself — one of the few formal powers of the chief justice is the duty to assign opinions. As time progressed, Roberts grew uneasy and sought a third way. Initially, he hoped Justice Anthony Kennedy — the vaunted swing justice who had negotiated compromise decisions in seminal cases before — would be amenable to such negotiations. Whatever his reputation, Kennedy was not a moderate but an idiosyncratic ideologue, and he was convinced the ACA was unconstitutional.…

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Minnesota’s Betty McCollum Introduces Constitutional Amendment to Make Health Care a Right

Rep. Betty McCollum (D-MN-04) recently introduced an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would make health care a right for all American citizens. The Health Care for All Amendment, H.J. Res. 17, is currently co-sponsored by Rep. Mark Pocan (D-WI-02) and states “health care, including care to prevent and treat illness, is the right of the people and necessary to ensure the strength of the nation.” “The Congress shall have power to enforce and implement this article by appropriate legislation,” the amendment states. In a press release announcing the amendment, McCollum bashed “the Trump administration and Congressional Republicans” for “actively and intentionally sabotaging our health care system,” while stating that “pharmaceutical companies are gouging consumers to extract huge profits.” “Strengthening the Affordable Care Act, expanding federal Medicare and Medicaid programs, protecting women’s reproductive rights, and working to build a system of universal health coverage are some of the steps Congress must take to ensure that the American people have the assurance and stability they deserve when it comes to receiving health care,” McCollum said. She went on to lament the treatment of health care as “a commodity driven by profit” that should not have to “be restricted or rationed according…

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Eric Swalwell Says Left-Wing Resistance was the ‘Most Significant’ Moment in 2018

by Molly Prince   Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell of California revealed that the most significant moment of 2018 was the anti-President Donald Trump movement. “It’s going to be the footsteps that went from the town squares,” Swalwell replied to Hill.TV’s Krystal Ball when asked in December what was the “most significant moment” of the past year. “They went to the town halls for stopping the repeal of the Affordable Care Act and standing up for other issues as it related to stopping the tax bill,” Swalwell continued. “Then those footsteps went to the ballot box and sent 40 members of Congress to flip the House — 27 of them in their 40s or under.” He also gave recognition to the so-called resistance protests such as the student-led anti-gun March for Our Lives and the Women’s March, which began in 2017 but continued through 2018. The Women’s March has notably faced massive backlash for many of the organizers’ anti-Semitic views. “I think it’s going from the town square to the town hall to the ballot box and bringing change to Washington, D.C.,” Swalwell said summing up his answer. “That was the most significant moment of 2018.” The California congressman is a…

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CNN Contributer Ezekiel Emanuel says Obamacare Ruling ‘Defies Constitutional Logic’

by Nick Givas   CNN contributor Ezekiel Emanuel said on “New Day” Monday that a recent court ruling declaring Obamacare unconstitutional “defies constitutional logic.” “That is a ridiculous ruling and you don’t have to rely on a doctor like me,” Dr. Emanuel said. “Lots of conservative legal scholars think it’s a silly ruling. The main logic there is the mandate is so essential to the law that nothing in the law can stand without the mandate.” A federal judge in Texas ruled Obamacare’s individual mandate to be unconstitutional Friday and said it can no longer be viewed as a congressional tax. “The Individual Mandate can no longer be fairly read as an exercise of Congress’s Tax Power and is still impermissible under the Interstate Commerce Clause — meaning the Individual Mandate is unconstitutional,” District Judge Reed O’Connor wrote in his decision. “And the reason you know it’s a silly ruling is we haven’t had a mandate with any enforceability since we passed the tax law because there’s no penalty anymore and much of the law is going forward. Laws like changing how doctors are being paid, improving the quality in hospitals, investing in better workforce for the health care system,”…

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Sen. Lamar Alexander Says ‘Unlikely’ Supreme Court Would Rule Obamacare Unconstitutional Despite District Court Decision Ending It

U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) said he believes that the Supreme Court will not find Obamacare to be unconstitutional – but even if it did, the federal government can swoop in and provide protections for people with pre-existing health conditions. Tennessee’s senior senator made the remark Saturday following the historic court ruling effectively declaring Obamacare, or the Affordable Care Act (ACA), dead. Judge Reed O’Connor of the U.S. District Court Northern District of Texas on Friday night ruled the ACA unconstitutional based on the individual mandate that requires people to have insurance and how that affects a new tax law that sets the penalty for no coverage to $0. Alexander issued a statement on Twitter that said: “If the U.S. Supreme Court eventually were to agree that Obamacare is unconstitutional — which seems unlikely, however poorly the law was written — I am confident that any new federal law replacing it will continue to protect Americans with pre-existing conditions who buy health insurance.” My statement on the ruling in Texas v. Azar. pic.twitter.com/NrFtFRK9tH — Sen. Lamar Alexander (@SenAlexander) December 15, 2018 The Supreme Court in 2012 said the ACA was constitutional in a 5-4 vote in a case titled NFIB v.…

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Commentary: With His Return to the Senate, Does Arizona’s Jon Kyl Bring with Him Another Chance to Repeal Obamacare?

Jon Kyl

by Robert Romano   Former Senator Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) has been appointed by Arizona Republican Governor Doug Ducey to replace the late John McCain. With the new appointment comes a new opportunity for Republicans to complete one of their key 2016 campaign promises: To repeal and replace Obamacare before the 2018 midterms. In 2017, despite promising to do so if elected and working for months on end, Congressional Republicans failed to pass legislation that would do away with the 2010 health care law signed into law by former President Barack Obama. One piece of legislation to repeal key elements of the law failed by one vote in the Senate, the so-called “skinny” repeal. One of the missing votes was McCain’s whose rejection came as a shock to many observers. Other legislation by Senators Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Bill Cassidy (R-La.) failed later in Sept. 2017 with Senators Susan Collins (R-Maine), Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and again, McCain, opposed. Since that time, Republicans lost the Alabama Senate seat, trimming their majority to a slim 51 to 49. If there were any vote to repeal and replace Obamacare on budget reconciliation, Republicans could only afford to lose one senator. Senator Kyl could be a different story…

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Republican Dave Joyce Releases Bizarre Campaign Ad Distancing Himself from Trump

David Joyce

In a risky political move, Rep. Dave Joyce recently tried to distance himself from President Trump in a congressional district that the president won by 12 percentage points in the 2016 Election. Joyce, who is seeking reelection in Ohio’s 14th Congressional District, recently released an ad in which he touts his vote against repealing the Affordable Care Act. “When Republican leaders in Congress tried to take away protections for pre-existing conditions, I said no,” Joyce states. “I won the the fight to fund the Great Lakes restoration, and when President Trump tried to take it away, I said no again.” “I’m Dave Joyce, and I approve this message, because I’ll do what’s right for northeastern Ohio, even if it means standing up to my own party,” the ad concludes. Joyce, however, regularly voted to repeal Obamacare before Trump took office, and his campaign website used to tout a record of voting for repeal more than 30 times, Cleveland.com reports. In a state that Trump won by by 8 points, the ad seems out of place, leaving Joyce’s spokesman, Dino DiSanto to explain that “Joyce will do what is right for his district, no ifs and or buts—doesn’t matter party affiliation…

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How Medicare’s Private Plans Surpass the Traditional Program

doc nurse senior patient

by Dr. Kevin Pham and Robert E. Moffit   Medicare Advantage, a system of competing private health plans, is surpassing the traditional Medicare fee-for-service program in delivering high quality, cost-effective medical care for senior and disabled citizens. The prominent research firm Avalere recently published a major study showing that Medicare Advantage generally outperformed traditional Medicare. This was especially so in caring for the most challenging patients who suffer from chronic conditions and complicated medical problems. Major structural differences between traditional Medicare and Medicare Advantage largely account for the differences in performance. Traditional Medicare, enacted in 1965, pays doctors and other medical professionals on a fee-for-service basis, meaning that the government reimburses medical professionals a specific fee for every one of thousands of services provided to Medicare patients. After almost two futile decades of trying to control costs, in the 1980s Congress overhauled hospital and physician payment. In 1989, Congress created a new physician payment system in which the government would reimburse Medicare doctors based on a calculation of the putative value of individual medical services—including the resources and time required to provide them—and capping the payment. This bizarre reimbursement formula, plus subsequent payment updates, proved faulty. Medical stakeholders compromise the entire process because they also are involved in setting the prices of Medicare’s services and continuously fight to evaluate their own services higher, leading to questionable fee schedules, confusion, and inefficiency. For years, traditional Medicare’s payment system generated perverse incentives, allowing hospitals, for example, to overtreat their patients, delivering more care and more services, more reimbursements, and higher revenues. Congress created Medicare Advantage in 2003 as…

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House Votes Overwhelmingly To Kill Obamacare’s Tax On Medical Devices

Obamacare

by Julia Cohen   A bipartisan majority in the House voted to repeal President Barack Obama’s 2.3 percent medical device tax Tuesday. The repeal passed 283-132, with 57 Democrats and all but one Republican voting in favor. North Carolina Republican Rep. Walter Jones was the sole Republican against the bill. “Minnesota’s innovators can breathe easier since we’re one step closer to ending the medical device tax for good,” Minnesota Republican Rep. Erik Paulsen, the bill’s sponsor, said in a Tuesday press release. “Today’s vote shows strong bipartisan support for lifting this burden on innovators in an industry so important to Minnesota. I’m more optimistic than ever we’ll be successful in giving these job creators the certainty and predictability they need to thrive.” The repeal will reduce federal tax revenue by about $22 million over the next 10 years, according to a Wall Street Journal article. The tax was temporarily rolled back in 2016, and Congress extended the rollback to 2020. Paulsen’s bill makes the repeal permanent. “This bipartisan legislation will make healthcare more affordable and ensure Americans have access to the most innovative life-saving and life-improving medical technology,” Speaker Paul Ryan tweeted Tuesday. Good news→ The House just voted to repeal Obamacare’s Medical Device Tax. This bipartisan legislation will make…

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Feds Freeze ‘Obamacare’ Payments; Premiums Likely to Rise

Obamacare

The Trump administration said Saturday it’s freezing payments under an “Obamacare” program that protects insurers with sicker patients from financial losses, a move expected to add to premium increases next year. At stake are billions in payments to insurers with sicker customers. In a weekend announcement, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said the administration is acting because of conflicting court ruling in lawsuits filed by some smaller insurers who question whether they are being fairly treated under the program. Risk adjustment The so-called risk adjustment program takes payments from insurers with healthier customers and redistributes that money to companies with sicker enrollees. Payments for 2017 are $10.4 billion. No taxpayer subsidies are involved. The idea behind the program is to remove the financial incentive for insurers to cherry pick healthier customers. The government uses a similar approach with Medicare private insurance plans and the Medicare prescription drug benefit. Major insurer groups said Saturday the administration’s action interferes with a program that’s working well. The Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, whose members are a mainstay of Affordable Care Act coverage said it was “extremely disappointed” with the administration’s action. The Trump administration’s move “will significantly increase 2019 premiums for…

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Three Common Ways Governments Misuse Statistics and What You Can Do About It

US Capitol at night

by Andrew Berryhill   Government agencies and researchers produce endless reams of statistics. While statistics can be valuable, they can be easily misrepresented. A 2017 study on the use of statistics in news characterized the problem as such: “The constant supply of data produced by think tanks, government agencies, independent researchers, academics and others is a significant and a potentially healthy democratic resource. But the time constraints that characterize modern news production put considerable pressure on journalists, who have to interpret the sometimes highly complex methods and meanings behind statistics, reporting data even-handedly and with clarity.” Without critical and educated evaluation of statistics, the public could be misled by information that’s misused, incomplete, or manipulated. Unfortunately, it seems that manipulation of statistics to further an agenda is becoming more common throughout society. Bad information propagated by government agencies especially is affecting policy decisions and harming the public when news outlets report it with insufficient examination. Here are three common ways governments and modern society in general misuse statistics. 1. “Predicting” the Long-Term Effects of Complicated Legislation: Obamacare When the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) tried to predict the effects of the Affordable Care Act (commonly known as “Obamacare”), it was utterly wrong on numerous points. The CBO released…

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Opponents Fighting Obamacare Deal to Force Tax-Paid Abortions

Anti-abortion activists are mobilizing against an emerging congressional compromise on that they contend could allow hundreds of thousands of taxpayer-funded abortions. At issue is a program under the Affordable Care Act meant to help customers with incomes below 250 percent of the poverty line pay deductibles and other out-of-pocket health care expenses. It has been in legal limbo since a federal judge ruled last year that Congress never authorized the so-called cost-sharing reduction payments. Sens. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Patty Murray (D-Wash.) have been working on legislation to codify those payments.

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Repealing Obamacare’s Individual Mandate Won’t Cause Doomsday Democrats Promise

If Congress moves forward with repealing Obamacare’s individual mandate through tax reform, it would likely not lead to the coverage losses that some of the program’s supporters tout. The Senate is currently proposing repealing the Affordable Care Act’s mandate that all Americans purchase health insurance or pay a penalty through its tax reform proposal, a proposal…

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Commentary: The Scandalous Truth About Obamacare Is Laid Bare

by Jeffery A. Tucker   It’s not just that Obamacare is financially unsustainable. More seriously, it is intellectually unsustainable, even though this truth has been slow to emerge. This has come to an end with President Trump’s executive order. What does it do? It cuts subsidies to failing providers, yes. It also redefines the meaning of “short term” policies from one year to 90 days. But more importantly–and this is what has the pundit class in total meltdown–it liberalizes the rules for providers to serve health-coverage consumers. In the words of USA Today: the executive order permits a greater range of choice “by allowing more consumers to buy health insurance through association health plans across state lines.” The key word here is “allowing” – not forcing, not compelling, not coercing. Allowing. Why would this be a problem? Because allowing choice defeats the core feature of Obamacare, which is about forcing risk pools to exist that the market would otherwise never have chosen. If you were to summarize the change in a phrase it is this: it allows more freedom. The tenor of the critics’ comments on this move is that it is some sort of despotic act. But let’s be…

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Lamar Alexander Sets Aggressive Senate Committee Goal of 10 Days to Lower Obamacare Premiums

  At the first of four hearings of the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions over the next week, Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-TN) set an aggressive goal of 10 days to make the Affordable Care Act (ACA) Section 1332 Innovation Waivers easier, which could result in lower premiums in the individual insurance market for 2018. The bi-partisan committee of 23, with a one Republican majority includes Republicans, by rank, Lamar Alexander, Johnny Isakson (GA), Bill Cassidy, M.D. (LA), Pat Roberts (KS), Mike Enzi (WY), Rand Paul (KY), Todd Young (IN), Lisa Murkowski (AK), Richard Burr (NC), Susan Collins (ME), Tim Scott (SC), and Democrats, by rank, Patty Murray (WA), Al Franken (MN), Tammy Baldwin (WI), Tim Kaine (VA), Bernie Sanders (VT), Michael Bennet (CO), Chris Murphy (CT), Maggie Hassan (NH), Robert Casey, Jr. (PA), Sheldon Whitehouse (RI), Elizabeth Warren (MA). The three-hour hearing held Wednesday, a day after the Senate returned from their regularly scheduled August recess, was named “Stabilizing Premiums and Helping Individuals in the Individual Insurance Market for 2018.” Witnesses for the hearing, in addition to Tennessee’s Julie Mix McPeak, Commissioner, Tennessee Department of Commerce and Insurance, were four other state insurance commissioners: John Doak,…

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Economist Stephen Moore Blasts Senator Lamar Alexander and ‘Turncoat’ Republicans During Nashville Visit

Tennessee Star

  NASHVILLE, Tennessee — Free-market economist Stephen Moore slammed U.S. Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN) in a speech Saturday when talking about “turncoat” Republicans who did not support a recent Republican-led Senate effort to repeal Obamacare. He said the Tennessee senator is “leading the charge” to preserve Obamacare in some form. Last month, Alexander was one of seven Republicans to vote against a strong repeal amendment sponsored by Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY). “What he is doing right now behind the scenes is a betrayal,” said Moore, the senior economic contributor for FreedomWorks and a fellow at the Heritage Foundation. Moore is a frequent commentator on TV and a former Wall Street Journal editorial board member. Moore spoke at a breakfast hosted by the Tennessee Republican Assembly at Glenwood Baptist Church in Nashville. The meeting was to be held at Dairy King next door, but had to be moved because of rain damage at the restaurant. Business leader Andrew Puzder, who was at one point President Trump’s nominee for labor secretary, also spoke at the event. “This is a very dangerous moment right now,” Moore said. “If Lamar has his way, we will permanently enshrine Obamacare into the budget. We will never get rid of…

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