Photo Credit: APThe bill is coming due for ObamaCare, and it’s a whopper. According to Medicare’s actuaries, U.S. health care spending is about to skyrocket. . .

Back in the 1960s, many Americans paid for doctor and hospital services out of pocket or through modestly priced private insurance. Health care spending was about 6% of the country’s gross domestic product.

Enter President Lyndon B. Johnson and Medicare. He bought millions of votes by giving seniors free health care that they never paid for through payroll taxes during their working years. He also helped lay the foundations for the entitlement state with Medicaid. . .

Today health care spending is more than 17% of GDP. Life-extending treatments are part of the jump, but Germany and Holland spend about 12% and have those. The extra costs in the U.S. are federally mandated giveaways, inefficiencies and abuse — about $850 billion, which is much more than what is spent on defense. . .

Just as Soviet central planning failed to put enough TVs and beef on store shelves, federally managed health care creates long waits to see doctors and lots of opportunities for soft fraud — activities by health care providers that game federal rules — and outright stealing.

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Photo Credit: REUTERSNew Yorkers will have to dig a little deeper into their wallets for health insurance in 2015, state officials announced Thursday.

Rates for individual insurance plans – including those offered on New York’s Obamacare exchange – will rise on average 5.7% in the coming year, the state’s Department of the Financial Services reported. The increases, however, are only about half the amount sought by those insurers in their initial rate requests submitted this summer.

“We closely scrutinized the proposed rate increases insurers requested and reduced them significantly where appropriate,” said Financial Services Superintendent Benjamin Lawsky. “While we have made substantial progress in reforming our health care market and holding down costs, there is much more work ahead. We will continue to engage with consumer groups, insurers, providers, and other stakeholders as we move forward with that effort.”

Lawsky said the new rates are sill, on average, about 50% lower than those charged before New York rolled out its Obamacare health exchange last year. The state held the line on increases despite a projected 8% increase in overall health care costs.

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Photo Credit: Reuters

Because of complicated connections between the new health care law and income taxes, the Department of Health and Human Services must send out millions of new tax forms next year. They’re like W-2s for people getting health insurance tax credits under President Barack Obama’s law.

The forms are called 1095-As, and list who in each household has health coverage, and how much the government paid each month to subsidize those insurance premiums. Nearly 5 million people have gotten subsidies through HealthCare.gov.

If the forms are delayed past their Jan. 31 deadline, some people may have to wait to file tax returns — and collect their refunds.

A delay of a week or two may not sound like much, but many people depend on their tax refunds to plug holes in family finances.

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Photo Credit: AP

Obamacare forced the beleaguered Chicago Cubs to reduce staffing hours for its ground crew, resulting in an embarrassing game cancellation on Tuesday because of the failure to get a tarp on Wrigley’s infield.

Obama’s hometown paper, the Chicago Sun Times reports:

The staffing issues that hamstrung the grounds crew Tuesday during a mad dash with the tarp under a sudden rainstorm were created in part by a wide-ranging reorganization last winter of game-day personnel, job descriptions and work limits designed to keep the seasonal workers–including much of the grounds crew–under 130 hours per month, according to numerous sources with direct knowledge.

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Photo Credit: Jake Harris

House Republicans are seeking emails from Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services officials to discover exactly how Obamacare and HealthCare.gov’s rollout went so wrong. But it turns out that last October, Tavenner directly told CMS’s communications director, Julie Bataille, to delete an email chain with White House officials about HealthCare.gov and contractor Serco.

“Please delete this email-but please see if we can work on call script,” Tavenner wrote to Bataille, upon receiving an email chain which discussed talking points on getting through the then-nonfunctional Obamacare website and the efforts of Obamacare contractor Serco.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee wrote to Tavenner Friday asking why Tavenner directed Bataille to delete the emails and whether she had directed any HHS or CMS staff to delete any other communications or documents about HealthCare.gov.

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Turns Out HealthCare.gov Really Is Full Of Nonsense

It may be the least of HealthCare.gov’s many, many problems, but the Obamacare website still features web pages full of nonsense filler language.

The Weekly Standard located a series of pages on HealthCare.gov that feature ‘Lorem ipsum’ text, a dummy language used by graphic designers to hold a place until the information is ready.

The website’s instructions on “How to appeal a Marketplace decision, directions for immigrants and, most ironically, “Why Health Coverage is Important” are filled with “Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet…” instead of any information on getting health coverage.

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