newsletter

The Tennessean: BlueCross requests rate increase of 19 percent in 2015 Meanwhile, Cigna is requesting an average rate increase of 7.5 percent in 2015, while Kentucky-based Humana would like to boost marketplace rates by an average of 14.4 percent…In 2014, the least-expensive version of the silver plan — the most popular of the exchange plans — was $160.62 a month in Davidson County. At a 19 percent increase, the new rate would be $191 a month. BlueCross has the majority of...

Huffington Post: White House: Employers Must Disclose Objections To Covering Birth Control The White House on Thursday sent a message to companies that want to opt out of covering birth control, saying those employers are required to be transparent about their objections. The Department of Labor updated its website to indicate that closely held for-profit corporations must include in their insurance plans "a description of the extent to which preventive services (which includes contraceptive...

NPR: Patients With Low-Cost Insurance Struggle To Find Specialists Understandably, a lot of [Dr. Sawhney's] patients picked lower-cost plans, she says, "and we're running into problems with coverage in the same way we were when they were uninsured." One of her patients is a Chinese immigrant to Houston who purchased a Blue Cross Blue Shield HMO silver plan. Soon after, he was diagnosed with stomach cancer. Sawhney found an oncologist to coordinate his treatment, but she and the oncologist ran...

McAllen Monitor: Texas sees rise in Medicaid signups [Also known as the "woodwork effect" this was anticipated but often brushed aside by Obamacare supporters] More than 80,000 additional Texans have enrolled in Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program since the rollout of the Affordable Care Act last fall despite Republican state leaders’ decision not to expand eligibility to poor adults, according to federal figures. The 80,435 new enrollees as of May — mostly...

The New York Times: Why Improving Access to Health Care Does Not Save Money (Huh!? Where has this dose of reality been hiding for the past 5 years? Conservatives and libertarians have been screaming about it for years – even Politifact somewhat understands it) One of the oft-repeated arguments in favor of the Affordable Care Act is that it will reduce people’s need for more intensive care by increasing their access to preventive care. For example, people will use the emergency room...

The Wall Street Journal: What the HHS Reports on the Health Exchanges Didn't Cover One HHS report examined data from federally run exchanges through Feb. 23 and from state exchanges through last December. Put another way, federal auditors tallied data from the months when the exchanges experienced middling to sluggish enrollment—not the periods when the greatest number of applications were completed. The inspector general’s report indicates that federally run exchanges had 2.9...

From Washington Times: I have three questions for my Democratic colleagues in the Senate: Should Congress be able to ban books? Should Congress be able to ban films? Should Congress be able to ban groups such as the NAACP, the National Rifle Association and the Sierra Club from speaking?The answer to all three questions should, unequivocally, be “no.” But, sadly, 46 Democrats in the U.S. Senate are supporting a constitutional amendment to repeal the free-speech provisions of the...

Investors Business Daily: 3 Obamacare Funding Cliffs Imperil Coverage, Access [Obamacare supporters terminated funding for these three priorities to make the bill score better. This may present an opportunity to preemptively call them out for misleading the American people and to demand we stop funding a law we cannot afford and that the American people don't want. Inevitably, Democrats will try to wait until the last minute when Republicans have their hands "forced" to re-up these expiring...

CQ: Court Decision Could Push Effort to Shut State Health Exchanges [likely this week] the U.S Circuit Court for the District of Columbia may rule on whether federal subsidies to buy insurance can only be given to the residents of states that have established their own health law insurance exchanges. Such a decision, if upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court, could shrink the number of states with their own exchanges, according to Michael Cannon, the Cato Institute analyst who has led the charge to...

ABC News: Vet Finally Gets VA Appointment, Two Years After His Death The Department of Veteran Affairs is apologizing for finally responding to a hospital appointment request letter, two years too late. Suzanne Chase of Acton, Massachusetts, has been working to put the pain of losing her husband, Douglas Chase, to brain cancer, almost two years ago. In 2012, a year after her husband’s diagnosis, Chase attempted to move his care in Boston to a nearby veteran’s hospital in Bedford....

From The Hill: Erwin Chemerinsky is a passionate liberal and a distinguished scholar and dean. We have been opposing counsel before the Supreme Court, and I consider him a friend.Sadly, last week he wrote a column in the Hill that called me a liar and attacked my effort to defend the First Amendment from Democrats who are seeking to regulate political speech.It is unfortunate that public debate has descended to the point that such personal insults are commonplace.It is particularly unfortunate...

From Jerusalem Post: Hamas must be expelled from civil society, and America should do everything it can to support Israel for as long as it takes to find the terrorists and ensure justice is carried out.On Monday, June 30 the bodies of three Jewish teenagers – Gil-Ad Shaer, Naftali Fraenkel and Eyal Yifrah – were found by the IDF not far from the bus stop where they were kidnapped on June 12. Reports tell us they were shot shortly after their abduction.This grim circumstance shows...

The persistent march of terrorists and tyrants around the globe gives us reason to reflect on the precious gift of freedom we have been given and must continue to safeguard. In signing the Declaration of Independence, 238 years ago, our Founding Fathers defied an intolerable King and proclaimed a God-given right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Those men signified to the world that, although they yearned for peace, they would not submit to despots. Their demand for liberty offered...