Category Archives: Economic Policy: Health Care

Solution… Make Obamacare Voluntary | HughHewitt.com | 1.06.14

In the closing days of 2013, Senator Ron Johnson (R., WI) made national news when he opined that Obamacare could not be repealed.  Too much about health insurance coverage had changed since the program’s implementation commenced on October 1st.  There was no longer a way to go back. Set aside that, judging from the vagueness […]
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Flash: Obamacare Dangerous To Health of Poor | HughHewitt.com | 12.05.13

Well, Halleluiah.  The Obamacare website is up and running. Of course, at only half a million applications processed so far… and accounting for the ones that the system garbled or couldn’t verify or seems to have lost… and anticipating the tens of millions of Americans predicted to lose coverage once the employer mandate kicks in […]
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Obamacare and Snap of the Fingers Government | HughHewitt.com | 11.25.13

Last week a senior Washington political journalist told me this story. According to the journalist’s inside-the-administration sources, a memo went from the Obamacare website developers to the White House several months ago.  It laid out in detail the problems with the now-infamous website and recommended – maybe begged is closer to it – the launch’s […]
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The Cure for Obamacare: The Widely Accepted Alternative and a New Idea to Go with It | HughHewitt.com | 11.18.13

At a luncheon in Washington last week, I stumbled across something new in the Obamacare debate. Most of the attendees were reporters.  The inevitable question came up: If not Obamacare, what?  And when a Republican ran through an answer (equalizing tax treatment of insurance bought through employers and individually; allowing insurance policies approved in one […]
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Scorecard: The Shutdown, the Debt Ceiling, the House GOP and Delaying Obamcare | HughHewitt.com | 10.07.13

If you want to see how the lockstep-with-the-Obama-administration media is trying to spin the American people, pick up Sunday’s New York Times (or click here: http://nyti.ms/15VMXAx<http://nyti.ms/15VMXAx> ).  In the middle of the front page you will find an article headlined: “A Crisis Months in Planning: Conservative Focused on budget as Health Law Weapon.” On a good portion of page […]
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Greek Tragedy in Washington: Obama, Obamacare, Republicans, Ted Cruz and the Shutdown | HughHewitt.com | 09.30.13

Greek tragedy is all about hubris — overweening pride and how it brings men down.  Hubris could be the story of the coming week in Washington but not for the reasons most think. As the whole world knows, this city is fixated on a standoff between the president and Congressional Republicans (all in the House, […]
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Midgame (Not Endgame) for Fighting Obamacare: Seeking Team Ricochet’s Reaction | Ricochet.com | 09.24.13

In response to Ted Cruz’s promised filibuster, critics are shouting “what’s your endgame?” I have a different question, directed in particular to GOP governors and gubernatorial candidates: What’s your midgame? Here is the key fact: We can’t repeal Obamacare until 1) the GOP wins the White House and both houses of Congress (the Senate by […]
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Economic Canaries – and Obamacare is the Cat | HughHewitt.com | 08.22.13

Just as the Washington Establishment is trumpeting the economy’s revival, an alarming other story is gaining traction.  It isn’t a new edition of the headline grabbing “end to the stimulus” tale.  Instead, it is of obscure financial data that may be signaling bad time ahead – and pointing to a cause.  Call it the canary […]
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Flash: Obamacare is Unworkable… For Everyone | HughHewitt.com | 08.14.13

When will the charade stop? The New York Times reports this morning that yet another feature of Obamacare is proving unworkable.  The Administration has postponed to 2015 implementing a feature of the law that limits out of pocket medical costs to $6350/year for individuals, $12,700 for families. Furthermore, the paper adds, “some group health plans will […]
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The Buck Stops Somewhere Else | USNews.com | 07.26.13

Haven’t we seen this act before? This week, President Obama denounced Republicans in Congress who were trying, he said, to destroy Obamacare by mucking up its implementation. You’ve got to admire the president. A man of many gifts – intellectual, rhetorical – but none of his gifts matches that of passing blame. Harry Truman may […]
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Should Conservatives Fight Obamacare – Or Is There Nothing That Can Be Done To Stop It? | HughHewitt.com | 07.09.13

Last night, after a gathering of politios here in Washington, a prominent writer and authority on health care detailed for me the tremendous gloom among Capitol Hill Republicans and conservatives about Obamacare in recent days. The just-announce full-year postponement in implementing the employer mandate was not an admission of failure, I was told, but an […]
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The Best Alternative to Obamacare | USNews.com | 07.09.12

“Repeal and replace” has become the GOP slogan for how to deal with President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act, now that the Supreme Court has declined to declare unconstitutional the unprecedented U.S. government takeover of one-sixth of the economy. But replace it with what? In fact a plan has been circulating on Capitol Hill for […]
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How Chief Justice John Roberts Decoded Obamacare | HughHewitt.com | 07.02.12

Whatever else it did or didn’t do, Chief Justice John Roberts’s Obamacare opinion had the effect of cutting away major deceptions and hypocrisies surrounding the president’s health industry takeover legislation. For from the first, the administration has attempted to protect the truth about the 2,700-page Affordable Care Act with – in Winston Churchill’s characterization of […]
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The Supreme Court and a Plan for Replacing Obamacare, Whatever the Court Decides | HughHewitt.com | 03.26.12

Today the Supreme Court begins hearing three days of arguments on the constitutionality of Obamacare, officially known as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.  For the rest of us, the arguments have been going nonstop since the program was signed into law in March 2010. In a particularly succinct posting this morning (http://tinyurl.com/6sl3yfw ), […]
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A Titanic Struggle Begins | HughHewitt.com | 03.29.10

All through the health care debate, the Administration and Democratic leaders in Congress promised wavering members that all would be right once they passed the bill. Starting almost immediately, the American people would see that the legislation delivered more and cost less than anyone thought.  And they would respect the majority party’s show of strength. […]
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The Smart Money was Right | HughHewitt.com | 03.22.10

The smart money was right.  The health overhaul bill has now passed both houses of Congress.  When the President signs it later in the week, it will be law. At around four o’clock yesterday, Michigan Democrat Bart Stupak and the White House announced a deal on right to life.  The health overhaul effectively repeals the […]
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Betting Against the Smart Money | HughHewitt.com | 03.15.10

As the week begins, the smart money in Washington is betting that the House will adopt the Senate health care package and send it to the President by week’s end. Count me skeptical. The postponement of the President’s Far Eastern trip was a sign of White House anxiety that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi could not […]
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Amateur Hour in our “Ungovernable” Government | HughHewitt.com | 03.08.10

A great deal of talk has come out of Washington these last few weeks about the nation being “ungovernable.”  What that means, of course, is that the White House can’t find sixty votes for health care overhaul in a senate that their party controls by sixty votes.  So they are pushing the legislation through using […]
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Republicans, Conservative Democrats, the Health Care Summit, and American Exceptionalism | HughHewitt.com | 03.01.10

“Blue Dogs want health care to come up again,” said a long-time veteran of the House in a closed door briefing last Monday.   “So they can vote against it.” Many conservative Democratic members of Congress cast their ballots for the bill last time – and those who did not are widely seen as part of […]
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Health Summit Starting Point: Ban Three Bad Ideas | HughHewitt.com | 02.09.10

How bad have the last few weeks been for Mr. Obama’s White House? You can keep the score in headlines and magazine covers. Covers?  My favorite is The New Yorker’s, with the President in three cartoon panels walking across the water.  In the fourth he’s falling in. Headlines?  Take this one from Monday’s Washington Post, […]
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The March of the Senate Democrats | HughHewitt.com | 12.21.09

As one early morning report puts it, the Senate is now “marching” to passage on Christmas Eve of its version of health overhaul.  Three motions preliminary to a cloture vote have passed 60-40, all Democrats for, all Republicans against.  What does this Democrats-only bill do?  What are the consequences? As it stands today, the health […]
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Reviewing the Health Overhaul Bidding | HughHewitt.com | 11.09.09

Let’s review the bidding now that Obama/Pelosicare has passed the House. As reported here two weeks ago, according to one of the nation’s leading experts on the federal budget, former OBM deputy director and Hoover Institution economist John Cogan, by mid century without the president’s agenda, the federal spending including Medicare and Medicaid are on […]
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“Affordability”, 2010 and the Health Overhaul | HughHewitt.com | 10.26.09

This morning’s Politico (here: http://tinyurl.com/yf8pchm ) headlines “Public Option resurfaces as an affordability issue”.  In the paper version, a bigger headline to the same story explains, “2010 Haunts Health Care Debate”. You may be inclined to say, “duh.”  But though, as Politico also reports, Mr. Obama’s demand for a $900 billion cap on the planned […]
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Conservative Hot Spots in Liberal San Francisco Bay Area Lead Consumer-Driven Health Reform | HughHewitt.com | 10.19.09

The San Francisco Bay Area is, of course, a Mecca of American left liberalism.  But unnoticed throughout the rest of the nation, it is also nurturing ground for free-market intellectuals and home to two major institutions for free-market economic and political thought, the Hoover Institution and the Pacific Research Institute. On Friday night former presidential […]
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Questions for the President Tonight | HughHewitt.com | 09.09.09

When he stands before Congress tonight, the president will almost certainly replace his demand for an immediate “public option” (government-provided insurance plan) with endorsement of a so-called “trigger.”  Under his new plan, failure of health insurers to reduce their rates in some period – probably five years – will “trigger” a public option. His implication […]
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Wednesday’s Speech Won’t Hit Reset Button for Obamacare | HughHewitt.com | 09.07.09

Washington is in a state of something approaching suspended animation this Labor Day weekend. With the president scheduled to address a joint session of Congress on Wednesday, the DC power game is in time out, waiting to hear what Mr. Obama has to say on that brightest stage of American political theater: the joint session […]
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With ObamaCare in a Hole, Will the White House Stop Digging? | HughHewitt.com | 09.02.09

Increasingly in Washington over the last few weeks, we have heard this assessment of the president’s health care upheaval prospects: Something will pass, because the president and his party have such large majorities (nearly 60 percent) in both chambers of Congress that it is inconceivable that they could not bludgeon their way to the necessary […]
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Where Does White House Health Overhaul Policy Go Now? | HughHewitt.com | 08.31.09

On Sunday the Rasmussen organization reported that 42 percent of likely voters had told them they strong disapprove of the president’s job performance.  At this rate it is not out of the question that the new year could see this number break the 50 percent mark. The record strong disapproval – which also must set […]
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Health care too important to be a partisan issue | Orlando Sentinel | 09.14.08

Ever since Franklin Roosevelt first considered including universal health coverage as part of the Social Security Act of 1935, America has seen five attempts to overhaul our federal health system. All have one thing in common: They ended in failure. With eight weeks to go in the presidential campaign, there are signs that this time […]
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Let Consumers Pull the Health-Care Purse Strings | Wall Street Journal | 09.26.89

Some issues get rolling and there’s no stopping them. A case in point is national health insurance, growing in popularity in policy circles even as the nation’s elderly cry for relief from the catastrophic burden of federal catastrophic care insurance. Now, in New York, the Cuomo team has barged into the act. David Axelrod, the […]
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