Photo Credit: Daily Caller

Harkin, a liberal senator who’s in favor of a single-payer health-care system, told The Hill Wednesday that the Affordable Care Act turned out too complicated and doesn’t actually make health care more affordable for most people. As chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, Harkin was instrumental in constructing Obamacare and getting the bill passed, but is retiring this year.

“We had the power to do it in a way that would have simplified healthcare, made it more efficient and made it less costly and we didn’t do it,” Harkin told The Hill. “So I look back and say we should have either done it the correct way or not done anything at all.”

Harkin’s the second high-profile Democrat to pull his support from the law. New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, the third-ranking Democrat in the Senate, said in November that Congress should not have passed Obamacare because the law does not help the middle class.

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Photo Credit: TownHall

The holiday shopping season kicks off tomorrow with Black Friday, the annual mad-dash for good deals and early-morning sales. This year, shoppers in a few states will see something new this year at shopping malls–and its not exactly a hot new store. It’s…Obamacare.

In an effort to boost floundering enrollment numbers, the Department of Health and Human Services has taken to partnering with retail stores, pharmacies and websites to promote the open enrollment period, which lasts until Feb. 15. Enrollment workers will be present on Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, and Cyber Monday to tell shoppers about how to sign up for a plan on the exchange.

Westfield malls in New Jersey, New York, Illinois, Maryland, Connecticut, Florida and Washington will allow navigators and other enrollment workers to both hand out fliers and use other outreach approach methods.

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Photo Credit: Reuters

By Fox News.

Shoppers ready to look for deep Black Friday retail deals could get more than they bargained for this year. Malls in a number of states across the country are allowing health care navigators to set up shop around stores to hawk the benefits of ObamaCare.

It’s all part of a Health and Human Services campaign to snag as many sign-ups as possible. Government reps will be armed with information packets and other promotions to pitch to Americans.

This year’s effort marks a stark shift from last year’s celebrity-heavy campaign used to build up buzz about HealthCare.gov.

As part of the new outreach initiative, Westfield malls in eight states, including California, Florida, Illinois and New Jersey, will let navigators and other enrollment workers hand out fliers and other outreach work to get people to enroll.

The goal is to get 9 million new sign-ups by next year.

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Photo Credit: TownHall

The Obamacare debate, the president said, was officially over. We expressed skepticism over the White House’s stats almost immediately, noting that the official numbers didn’t account for duplicates, non-paying “customers,” and consumer attrition — not to mention the high percentage of “new” enrollees who previously had insurance, but were forced to use Obamacare’s exchanges to obtain plans after their existing arrangements were cancelled under the new law. The last two weeks have witnessed two more blows for the “it’s working!” crowd. First came the sharply revised 2015 enrollment projections:

Fewer than 10 million people are expected to enroll in “Obamacare 2.0” for 2015, the Obama administration said Monday. That’s a significant drop from the original goal. The Congressional Budget Office had projected 13 million, but officials said they expect the ramp up to be slower than the CBO originally thought. The revised goal is 9 to 9.9 million. It raises questions about whether Obamacare enrollment will reach projections down the road. The CBO had projected enrollment would hit 25 million by 2017, but now the administration says it will probably take at least one or two more years to reach that threshold. Officials are realizing it will find it tougher to convince the remaining uninsured to enroll. Many who opted not to sign up this year said the cost was too high.

It’s almost as if many people aren’t too excited about purchasing less-than-affordable coverage that saddles them with high out-of-pocket costs and sparse provider networks. One thing the administration has going for it this year is that the individual mandate tax designed to punish shirkers is rising considerably, although those penalties are still much lower than the costs associated with buying Obamacare health plans. Now we have this embarrassing admission from administration officials, who’ve been forced to reveal how Team Obama inflated its top line enrollment figure…

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