Jeb Bush has lately been defending his brother George — the former president — against Donald Trump’s criticism, and George is raising funds for Jeb’s presidential campaign. What all this fraternal support obscures is the extent of the policy differences between the two. Despite his reputation for moderation, on issue after issue Jeb has taken positions that are significantly to the right of his brother’s — and of every other president in recent memory.
Three states are firing the latest volley in the court battles over ObamaCare with a new lawsuit filed Thursday over the law’s fee on health insurers.
Texas, joined by Kansas and Louisiana, is suing the Obama administration over the alleged “unconstitutional Obamacare tax.”
Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) are vowing to oppose any fast-track bill repealing only parts of ObamaCare, narrowing the path for the legislation to pass the Senate.
The House is set to vote on Friday on a bill under a fast-track process known as reconciliation that would repeal several parts of ObamaCare. The reconciliation process allows a measure to pass the Senate with 51 votes, instead of the usual 60, and get through to President Obama’s desk, where it would face a veto.
The cataract of insurance co-op failures—nine down, 14 to go—has liberals defensive over ObamaCare. Most amusing is their attempt to blame this debacle conceived by liberals and perpetrated by liberals on, yes, Republicans.
Now that Paul Ryan is the presumptive new leader of the House of Representatives, what happens next? The single biggest domestic policy issue the country faces is Obamacare. So far, Republicans in Congress haven’t done anything very useful in addressing it. The House has voted 54 times to repeal some or all of Obamacare – knowing all the while that none of these votes would go anywhere. Yet neither the House nor the Senate has held a single serious hearing on the worse defects in the health reform law.
The House on Friday passed a budget bill that would dismantle key parts of Obamacare and strip federal funds from Planned Parenthood for a year. House members voted 240-189 to pass the bill, which would repeal the Affordable Care Act’s requirement for all Americans to obtain health insurance and for employers to offer it to their workers. It also would end a tax on medical devices.
The federal health insurance exchange that serves consumers in 38 states will open for browsing Sunday. The site will be faster and easier to use, and it will allow consumers to calculate their out-of-pocket costs, Department of Health and Human Services officials said Friday. A key feature of HealthCare.gov won’t be ready, however. Consumers who want to search which doctors and prescription drugs that different plans cover won’t have that new tool available yet. Officials wouldn’t commit to whether it would be available before the third open enrollment for the Affordable Care Act exchanges starts Nov. 1.
Federal investigators from the Government Accountability Office said on Thursday that they had discovered many errors in eligibility decisions under the Affordable Care Act that had led the government to pay for duplicate coverage for some people and an excessive share of costs for others.
The investigators said some people were getting subsidies for private insurance at the same time they were enrolled in Medicaid.
It’s crunch time for thousands of small business owners who must comply with requirements of the health care law for the first time.
Companies with 50 to 99 full-time employees must offer affordable insurance to employees and their dependents starting Jan. 1. They must also file tax forms with the government by Jan. 31 detailing the cost of their coverage and the names and Social Security numbers of employees and their dependents. While companies of all sizes are subject to the law must file the forms, smaller businesses without big staffs to handle the paperwork may have to hire someone to do it — at a cost of hundreds or thousands of dollars.
Nearly 67,000 customers of Consumers’ Choice Health Insurance will have to shop for new insurance at the end of the year when the company shuts down its operations in 2016.
The state Department of Insurance made the announcement on Thursday. The company and the state agency did not give specifics on what precipitated the closure, only saying a look at long-term sustainability showed problems.