Premiums for Obamacare’s “benchmark” plans will rise by 37 percent and choices will dwindle in 2018, with eight full states having just one insurer to choose from, the Trump administration said Monday in a report detailing the federal marketplace known as HealthCare.gov. However, the average tax credit that many consumers use to afford coverage will rise…
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After several feuds with both Democratic and Republican lawmakers, President Trump said the fighting can be helpful in getting things done. “Sometimes it helps, to be honest with you,” Mr. Trump said in an interview on Fox Business that aired Monday. “Sometimes it gets people to do what they’re supposed to be doing, and that’s the…
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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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Despite another failed attempt to deliver on a seven-year Republican promise to repeal the nation’s health care law, U.S. President Donald Trump vowed Wednesday to continue to pursue a repeal, insisting Senate Republicans have enough votes that would be cast at a later time. On Twitter, Trump stressed that the numbers exist, “with one Yes vote…
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One of the most enduring lessons from the Obamacare fiasco, is that to win a political battle it is best to keep the message simple. If there are too many moving parts to a plan, if Americans don’t understand what the politicians are doing, or if there are parts of a bill they don’t like, it…
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The Kaiser Family Foundation, a prominent health care think tank, styles itself as a non-partisan research organization, yet the majority of its board, including Obamacare architect Kathleen Sebelius, donate to Democratic candidates and causes. The highly-cited Kaiser organization (it is not connected to insurance company Kaiser Permanente) is referred to as non-partisan in its research on…
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A couple of weeks ago, there was a protest in front of Senator Lamar Alexander’s Nashville home. The group that protested is called, “Moral Movement Tennessee.” A number of years ago, the left decided they could make mileage by calling themselves, “moral.” Conservatives have not seriously challenged the left on this. And with the help of the enemy media, the left has wrapped themselves in this cloak of, “morality.” As with all liberals, they have morality in name only. “Moral Movement Tennessee” has an agenda that reads just like the various bat guano crazy Democrat groups. They want single payer healthcare, they want massive tax increases, increase voter fraud and pretty much destroy Tennessee as a favorable business environment. Every Western morality teaches that theft is wrong, yet this is exactly these liberals want to do. Liberals are notoriously cheap. They want everything for free and hate to give to charity. These same liberals who would lecture real Americans about “morality” want to take from others by force. This is called taxation and the Libertarians are on to something when they tell us taxation is theft. Charity is a part of morality. But forced charity is not moral. It…
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Consumers in at least two states face the prospect of double-digit increases in health insurance rates next year, as insurers attempt to price premiums amid uncertainty, including from Congress and President Donald Trump on the fate of Obamacare. Also driving rate increases is the fact that the millions of Americans enrolled on Obamacare’s exchanges are sicker…
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