Obamacare is getting a premium check-up — but it’s consumers who are starting to feel sick. After more than a half-decade of the president’s spectacular failure, health care insurers can’t make a living — and Americans are forking over theirs for the most basic of coverage. Now, desperate to stop the financial bleeding, insurance companies are turning to states for permission to raise premiums, in some cases as much as 58 percent!

The gloomy forecast is just the latest chapter in the downfall of the president’s not-so Affordable Care Act. The incredibly shrinking bandwagon known as Obamacare is even emptier now that insurers have hopped off to keep their own companies from crashing. Like UnitedHealth, Humana, and others, the industry has been burning through dollars trying to prop up a system full of sick people. Now, bit by hundreds of millions of dollars in losses, most companies have no choice but to pass the costs on to already strapped customers. On October 1, the states will finalize their premium rates — and policy shoppers are in for their biggest shocks yet. If you thought 2016 was bad, experts warn, it’s nothing compared to 2017’s pricing.

Rates are set to go through the roof, where states are looking at anywhere from a 20-percent spike in premiums to 44 and 58 percent in places like Vermont and Texas. “Making coverage available to everyone regardless of medical history, at the same price and with limited variation based on age, is one of the most popular provisions of the law,” The Wall Street Journal points out. “But it also has increased the cost of insurance for many healthy people, causing a quandary for insurers who are trying to encourage people with cleaner bills of health to buy coverage and offset the costs of sicker enrollees.” Making matters worse, there’s even less competition for lower pricing now that some of the big dogs of the industry are dropping out of the exchange — or dramatically scaling back their involvement.

Of course, none of this is rocket science. Well before 2010, people warned that the system couldn’t sustain itself unless there was an infusion of younger, healthier, paying plan holders. Turns out, that wasn’t something the natural market forces of supply and demand could accomplish. Despite years of pitiful enrollment, the president and his party seem to be in a state of perpetual surprise that Obamacare is collapsing on itself. And while there’s never a good time for news as bleak as this, Democrats have to be sweating bullets (and ballots) over the October 1 rate deadline. With the election looming, the last thing Hillary Clinton wants is to give Americans another reason to vote against her.

Despite the law’s unpopularity, their party’s presidential front-runner stubbornly argues that the law is a “big step forward.” If she continues, her campaign stands to take a big step back, as more people struggle to afford the plans they never wanted to be forced to buy in the first place. “Maybe Democrats think the middle class should just get over double-digit premium increases,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) fired back. “Maybe Democrats think it’s funny that millions of Americans lost their plans because of Obamacare. Republicans think we should work toward better care instead.”

While we don’t know who the next president will be, we know one thing for certain: whoever it is will be inheriting a train wreck of a health care exchange. This is why Americans need to be paying attention. Elections have consequences — some intended, others unintended. If Barack Obama and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) had told Americans what Obamacare would lead to — taxpayer-funded abortion and sex changes, skyrocketing premiums, job losses, canceled coverage, business cutbacks, attacks on conscience, dozens of lawsuits — there’s no doubt the resistance would have been insurmountable.

As far as FRC is concerned, the only way to fix Obamacare is replacing it completely. We won’t rest until human life and the liberties of Americans are protected — not attacked — by our government. If the president’s party won’t listen now, then I guarantee they’ll listen at the ballot booth.

Originally published here.

The Good, the Bath, and the Ugly

Make room for two more on the states’ challenge to the Obama bathroom order! The president’s decree that schools and universities throw open their bathroom and shower stalls to both sexes (or lose federal funding) is succeeding at one thing: uniting the states. The army of opponents is growing now that Kentucky and Mississippi are signing on to the massive, multi-state pushback to the president’s radical gender agenda. In the days since the White House issued its threat, the outrage is only growing. A total of 13 states are standing in between their students’ privacy and a tyrannical White House, even if it means kissing millions of education dollars goodbye: Alabama, Louisiana, Wisconsin, West Virginia, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Utah, Georgia, the governor of Maine, the Arizona Department of Education, Kentucky, and Mississippi.

And for the latter two, the road to the courts hasn’t been an easy one. In both states, conservative governors had to override liberal attorneys general, who were determined to legitimize the president’s overreach. “I strongly encourage our state leaders to shift their focus to issues that are directly impacting our citizens every day, such as education, mental health, roads and bridges, and public safety,” Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood (D) argued. Fortunately, Governor Phil Bryant (R) has a better grasp of what’s directly impacting his citizens every day – and boys infiltrating the girls’ showers and locker rooms is one of them. In Kentucky, Governor Matt Bevin (R) had a similar clash with Attorney General Andy Beshear (D), who refused to lift a finger to fight the rule.

Fine, Bevin fired back. If his top law enforcer was “unwilling to protect” the state, he vowed, “my administration will… We are committed to protecting the Tenth Amendment and fighting federal overreach into state and local issues.” Meanwhile, in North Carolina, where leaders fired the first shots against the Obama administration, Governor Pat McCrory (R) is sick and tired of seeing the states hung out to dry. If the president is going to steamroll the legislature, he thinks Congress should have the courage to stand up and do something about it. In a letter to GOP and Democratic leadership, McCrory wants to know when members will join his state and others in reining in President Obama.

“Once again, unelected officials within the Obama administration bypassed the Constitution, Congress, and administrative law procedures, unilaterally and unlawfully imposing their will and interpretations on each and every school district throughout the United States. The threat of any federal agency to withhold federal funding from any state based on its unilateral and novel interpretation of a federal law is unprecedented and indefensible. These funds were authorized and appropriated by Congress… Due to the inaction of Congress to define boundaries and provide clarity on this important and emerging issue, millions of Americans businesses, educators, and elected leaders continue to live and operate under a chaotic system of conflicting laws, regulations and judicial interpretations…”

Is it any wonder that McCrory has retaken the lead in his reelection polling? This is exactly the kind of leadership that voters are desperate to see. When a quarter of the United States has to sue its own government for holding it ideologically hostage, they deserve Congress’s support. Otherwise, what’s to stop the Obama administration from imposing its will on every issue?

Originally published here.

Brushing up on Our Moral Hygiene

Most of us don’t need a national poll to tell us what the headlines already do: America is headed in the wrong direction. Not just economically, but morally. The two parties disagree on plenty of things, but that’s not one of them. The majority of voters from both parties think the country is in a cultural freefall, Gallup found. “Americans remain far more likely to say the state of moral values in the U.S. is getting worse (73 percent) than to say it is getting better (20 percent).” And that includes the majority of Republicans (84 percent) and Democrats (61 percent). Together, both sides agree that there’s a “decline in U.S. standards and a lack of respect for one another, as well as poor values instilled by parents and reflected among government officials.”

In a nation where states are fighting for their most basic rights, is it any wonder that Americans feel a lack of civility taking hold? But beyond the surface problems, there’s a much deeper issue at work. President George Washington warned of this very thing in his farewell address to the nation, saying: “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, Religion and Morality are indispensable supports.” Liberals have spent years scrubbing faith from the public school to the public square — and then seem surprised when there’s no morality. Washington was clear even then that “…Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.”

To Washington, this wasn’t just a matter of being uncomfortable or pessimistic about the future — it was about the very preservation of the republic. So how do we reverse the trend? Well, fortunately, we don’t have to wait on politicians to do something. We’re empowered to affect the change right where we are: as parents in the home transferring our values to our kids; as churches, performing outreach to people who aren’t hearing the gospel; as citizens, defending our morals in our school boards and city councils. This is exactly why religious liberty matters. As believers, we have to advance Christ and make no apologies for it. As Washington said, the future of the republic depends on it.

Originally published here.