Obama administration spends millions to put a new blush on Obamacare

By Wendy N. Powell, contributor

Photo: CDCThe Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) is becoming increasingly less popular with Americans and concurrently less partisan in Washington.

Many in Congress who supported the law are changing their support consistent with the public sentiment, and because concerns are rising about political futures over support for what was once marketed as the answer to American health care woes.  

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Potential gift to GOP and the public: Reid seeks exemptions for ObamaCare

Even the politicos who passed the ObamaCare Tax Bill, presented under the misleading, ridiculous title the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, apparently don’t want the bill messing up their own healthcare and wallets.

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The Medicare Free Wellness Visit: I’d Rather See a Veterinarian

By guest contributor Marilyn M. Singleton, M.D., J.D.

A friend went in for his Medicare free “wellness visit,” compliments of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). He assumed it was like a doctor’s annual check-up. After all, when he took his dog to the vet for a wellness visit, little Sparky was examined and tested for worms. So my friend made the mistake of asking the doctor to listen to his heart and lungs – just because that is what we expect physicians will do. Then he got a bill.

Neither my friend nor his physician realized that if the patient was actually touched during the free wellness visit, it ceased to be free.

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Have Dems overlooked need to edit ObamaCare text?

The section in HR3590 (ObamaCare) still calls a tax a penalty. The language is technically illegal. (Snip: U.S. Government)After the Supreme Court changed aspects of the mandate in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act most call ObamaCare from a penalty to a tax, it seems logical to change the wording in the bill. Have Democrats overlooked the need to edit their health tax bill?

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ObamaCare update: Actor Jake McClain Tweets bill as Dems prepare for more fallout

Actor Jake McClain is Tweeting every word in the ObamaCare Tax Bill. (Snip: @JakeMcClain)The ObamaCare Tax bill may be the biggest favor Democrats have ever done the Republican party. A quagmire of regulations, more than a dozen new taxes and arcane language in the legislation point to chaos, confusion and nasty surprises for those of us not in the federal political class.

Actor Jake McClain gets it.

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HIT tax in ObamaCare expected to drive up premiums even more

Photo: Debora Cartagena/CDCIn the massive Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act popularly called ObamaCare, health insurance companies will be taxed based on their net premiums written in the fully-insured market. What does the HIT tax mean for consumers?

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and John Barrasso (R-Wy.) believe the tax comprising Section 9010 would send premiums “skyrocketing for America’s small businesses and families.”

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Expert weighs federal “boatloads of money” vs. higher costs for states in Medicaid expansion

Charles Blahous is a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center and public trustee for Medicare and Social Security. (Photo: Mercatus Center at George Mason University)Governors across the U.S. are making decisions about whether to expand Medicaid to cover more poor people or to move them into federally funded health exchanges. After the 2012 elections, some governors surprised their states by reversing positions on the expansion.

The Supreme Court decision on the ObamaCare Tax Bill—affirming the individual mandate could stand if it was repositioned as a tax rather than a penalty—made Medicaid expansion optional.

Charles Blahous, a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center (George Mason University) and public trustee for Medicare and Social Security, analyzed choices facing the states.

Either way, higher costs are coming.

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