Americans

Saving Chicago: Reforming city-worker retirement ages

By John Klingner
07/02/2014
The problem Chicago is suffering from one of the worst pension crises in the nation. To begin fixing its failing system, the city should move away from a politician-controlled, defined-benefit system. But another important step is reforming retirement-age requirements. The Chicago systems’ retirement ages don’t reflect today’s fiscal and demographic realities. People are living longer,...

Premiums on the rise for Illinoisans under ObamaCare

By Bobby Shaw
06/27/2014
President Obama came into office promising to reduce health-care costs. Instead of delivering on that promise – to reduce health insurance premiums by $2,500 per year for the average family – premiums have actually increased an average of 30 percent over the last year alone. That’s on top of the broken promises that you could...

The ObamaCare hard sell in Illinois

By Naomi Lopez Bauman
05/23/2014
President Barack Obama is quick to paint an underdog picture when it comes to his fight to push through the Affordable Care Act. He has claimed that: “We didn’t make a hard sell. We didn’t have billions of dollars to spend on commercials like our critics did.” But the federal government directed almost $155 million...

New data show ObamaCare expanded insurance coverage to just 3% of uninsured Illinoisans

By Naomi Lopez Bauman
05/13/2014
Despite the recent back-slapping and self-congratulations from the Obama administration over the ObamaCare health exchange “enrollments,” there is little reason to believe that the health insurance overhaul is going to have a significant impact on expanding private health insurance coverage in Illinois. Based on national survey data, ObamaCare may have expanded private health coverage to...

ObamaCare’s bailout for health insurers

By Naomi Lopez Bauman
05/06/2014
A little known, but important, provision in the Affordable Care Act, or ACA, is turning into a major point of contention between some policymakers and insurers participating in the ObamaCare exchanges. The ACA includes provisions to pay insurers for their financial losses in the ObamaCare exchanges. In response to lawmaker and public pressure, the federal...

The truth behind the ObamaCare numbers

By Naomi Lopez Bauman
04/08/2014
By any measure, the Affordable Care Act has been disastrous. But you would not know it by the administration’s fist-pumping and ball-spiking. The trumpeted headline dominating the news coverage is that the ObamaCare goal of 7 million enrollments was met. But this is horribly misleading. The reality is that the administration has, for months, refused...

Too soon for an ObamaCare victory lap

By Naomi Lopez Bauman
04/02/2014
The ObamaCare inaugural open enrollment ended on Monday just like it began: riddled with technical difficulties. Notorious for a glitch-ridden debut on Oct. 1, 2013, the site was down for several hours on at least two occasions throughout the day on Monday. On top of that, the administration announced last week that individuals who began – but weren’t...

TAGS: ACA: Affordable Care Act

ObamaCare price tag

By Naomi Lopez Bauman
03/19/2014
Like so many promises made to the American public while promoting ObamaCare, the promise that the new health-care overhaul would save the average family $2,500 per year turned out to be false. Not only was this promise repeated over and over, the sad reality is that many families couldn’t keep their health plan and their...

Clock is running out on ObamaCare enrollments: Illinois update

By Naomi Lopez Bauman
03/11/2014
Only one month remains in the ObamaCare open enrollment period for this year. Even though the Obama administration is pulling out all the stops, Illinois is less than half-way to its goal of nearly 237,000 enrollees for 2014. March 31 is the deadline to obtain qualified health-insurance coverage or face a penalty under ObamaCare. Despite...