Author Archives: Doug Badger

Walls Closing In On Obamacare Lawlessness

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Congress and the courts are losing patience with the government's lawless implementation of Obamacare, which involves unlawful expenditures to subsidize insurance companies. [Credit:forbes.com]

Con­gress and the courts are los­ing patience with the gov­ern­men­t’s law­less imple­men­ta­tion of Oba­macare, which involves the diver­sion of bil­lions in tax­pay­er dol­lars from Trea­sury to insur­ers. [Credit:forbes.com]

The Oba­ma Admin­is­tra­tion is unlaw­ful­ly divert­ing bil­lions of dol­lars from tax­pay­ers to insur­ance com­pa­nies that sell Oba­macare policies.

That is the con­clu­sion reached in a legal opin­ion let­ter writ­ten to the Galen Insti­tute by for­mer Ambas­sador and White House Coun­sel Boy­den Gray. Read more on Forbes.com.

Trump and Friends

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Donald Trump's recent foreign policy speech reflects our love/hate relationship with our allies. Credit: businessinsider.com

Don­ald Trump’s recent for­eign pol­i­cy speech reflects our love/hate rela­tion­ship with our allies. Cred­it: businessinsider.com

“Who the f*** does he think he is?Who’s the f***ing super­pow­er here?”  — Pres­i­dent Bill Clin­ton after meet­ing with Israeli PM Netanyahu in 1996

Don­ald Trump, the GOP’s pre­sump­tive stan­dard-bear­er, shares for­mer Pres­i­dent Clinton’s frus­tra­tion with America’s allies.  And like Clin­ton, Pres­i­dent Oba­ma and oth­ers who have occu­pied the Oval Office, Trump isn’t sure what to do about it. Con­tin­ue read­ing →

Are Penis Thieves Real?

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Seinfeld's George Costanza fretted about "shrinkage." But are penis thieves really a bigger problem? [Credit: businessinsider.com]

Sein­feld’s George Costan­za fret­ted about “shrink­age.” But could penis thieves pose a big­ger prob­lem? [Cred­it: businessinsider.com]

“One of the prob­lems,” author Frank Bures said in a recent Atlantic inter­view, “is this whole dis­tinc­tion between real and not real.”

Bures is the author of The Geog­ra­phy of Mad­ness: Penis Thieves, Voodoo Death, and the Search for the Mean­ing of the World’s Strangest Syn­dromes.  His book exam­ines con­di­tions that the DSM‑V, a man­u­al used to diag­nose and clas­si­fy men­tal dis­or­ders, terms “cul­ture-bound syn­dromes.” Con­tin­ue read­ing →

Obamacare’s Tax-Subsidized Failure

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Here’s some bad news for the insur­ance indus­try: Unex­pect­ed­ly gen­er­ous cor­po­rate sub­si­dies didn’t save com­pa­nies sell­ing Oba­macare poli­cies from bleed­ing red ink.

The worse news: Those sub­si­dies are set to expire in 2017, mean­ing that insur­ers will have to make ends meet with­out bil­lions in hand­outs.  Read more at Nation­al Review Online.

You can also read the Mer­ca­tus Cen­ter study that Bri­an Blase, Ed Haislmaier and I wrote here.

A $5 Billion Obamacare Windfall for Insurers?

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A dozen health insurance co-ops established by Obamacare have so far failed, leaving behind headaches for consumers, providers and taxpayers. Now one of them is suing for more government handouts. [Credit: Manhattan Institute]

A dozen health insur­ance co-ops estab­lished by Oba­macare have so far failed, leav­ing behind headaches for con­sumers, providers and tax­pay­ers. Now one of them is suing for more gov­ern­ment hand­outs. [Cred­it: Man­hat­tan Institute]

Oregon’s health insur­ance co-oper­a­tive is yet anoth­er Oba­macare fail­ure. It squan­dered tax­pay­er-backed hand­outs and loans, dis­ap­point­ed its cus­tomers and now has shut­tered its operations.

But with an audac­i­ty that would make even Don­ald Trump blush, Health Repub­lic of Ore­gon wants more tax­pay­er mon­ey. Its exec­u­tives are suing the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment to demand more gov­ern­ment hand­outs.  Read more on Inside Sources or RealClearPolicy.

Obamacare Does NOT Have A Mandate

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Some conservatives have charged that Marco Rubio has proposed an individual mandate for health insurance. [Credit: ABC News]

Some con­ser­v­a­tives have charged that Mar­co Rubio has pro­posed an indi­vid­ual man­date for health insur­ance. [Cred­it: ABC News]

Some con­ser­v­a­tives have accused Mar­co Rubio of propos­ing an Oba­macare-like man­date on all Amer­i­cans to buy health insur­ance. They’re wrong about Rubio.  And about Oba­macare.  Read more on Nation­al Review Online.

Will HHS Get Away With A $3.5 Billion Heist?

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CMS administrator Andy Slavitt has a $3.5 billion problem. Will Congress and presidential candidates talk about it? [Credit:nextgov]

CMS admin­is­tra­tor Andy Slavitt is plan­ning to short the U.S. Trea­sury $3.5 bil­lion. Will Con­gress and pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates talk about it? [Credit:nextgov]

The Depart­ment of Health and Human Ser­vices (HHS) announced Fri­day night that it was in the process of short­ing the U.S. Trea­sury $3.5 billion.

Well, they didn’t exact­ly announce it.  You had to read between the lines. Con­tin­ue read­ing →

Antonin Scalia, R.I.P.

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Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who died on Saturday, practiced a constitutional conservatism that is out-of-step with today's Right. [Credit: lifenews.com]

Supreme Court Jus­tice Antonin Scalia, who died on Sat­ur­day, prac­ticed a con­sti­tu­tion­al con­ser­vatism that is out-of-step with today’s Right. [Cred­it: lifenews.com]

The arc of con­ser­vatism’s decline was traced in the course of a few hours last Sat­ur­day. That after­noon we learned of the pass­ing of a gen­uine con­sti­tu­tion­al con­ser­v­a­tive, Antonin Scalia. Hours lat­er, we endured anoth­er GOP debate dur­ing which pro­fessed con­ser­v­a­tives trad­ed barbs and insults, now con­sid­ered a suit­able sub­sti­tute for char­ac­ter and sub­stance by a large swath of Repub­li­can vot­ers. Con­tin­ue read­ing →

SOTU: With Malice Toward Some

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President Obama used his last State of the Union address to decry divisiveness he helped instigate. [Credit: CNN]

Pres­i­dent Oba­ma used his last State of the Union address to decry divi­sive­ness he helped insti­gate. [Cred­it: CNN]

Com­plet­ing his sev­enth year as the world’s most pow­er­ful politi­cian, Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma used his final State of the Union address to tell us what is wrong with pol­i­tics: his polit­i­cal oppo­nents. Con­tin­ue read­ing →