Tom Howell Jr.

Sen. Pat Roberts to HHS nominee: No single-payer health care, right?

Sen. Pat Roberts sought assurance Thursday that President Obama's pick to replace departing Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius will not use Obamacare as a back-door to single-payer health care.

May 8, 2014

Sen. John McCain: Burwell new captain of Obamacare ‘Titanic’

White House budget chief Sylvia Mathews Burwell might have a tough job now, but the post she now wants is "perhaps the most thankless," Sen. John McCain said Thursday.

May 8, 2014

Obamacare’s famed ‘Red Tape Tower’ shows up at Burwell confirmation hearing

If anyone doubted that Sylvia Mathews Burwell's confirmation hearing Thursday to replace Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius would be a referendum on Obamacare, the presence of the famed "Red Tape Tower" should prove otherwise.

May 8, 2014

Boston bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s rights were violated, attorneys say

Lawyers for Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev say FBI agents violated their client's rights by questioning him after he asked for a lawyer 10 times from his hospital bed.

May 8, 2014

Harry Reid: Casino magnate Sheldon Adelson ‘not in it to make money’

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is raising some eyebrows in a new TV interview with his assessment of Sheldon Adelson, a big-time political donor from Las Vegas.

May 8, 2014

Rep. Elijah Cummings to Boehner: Tell GOP not to fundraise off Benghazi

Rep. Elijah Cummings challenged House Speaker John A. Boehner on Thursday to order his GOP allies to stop fundraising off efforts to investigate what led to the 2012 attack in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans.

May 8, 2014

GOP support for tea party wing is declining, Gallup poll says

A new poll finds only one in four Republicans or right-leaning independents consider themselves supporters of the tea party, offering another sign the wing's influence is waning after it failed to make inroads during this week's GOP primaries.

May 8, 2014

Congressional Dems to GOP: The Obamacare fight is over

Congressional Democrats on Wednesday called on their GOP counterparts to end their assault on Obamacare, saying sign-ups totaling 8 million and stories from back home show the war is lost and that it's time to move on.

May 7, 2014

Insurers to House GOP: Obamacare enrollment volatile, but higher than your 67% figure

Health insurance executives told Congress on Wednesday that at least 80 percent of Obamacare customers have paid their first premiums by the deadline, meaning that most of the 8 million people who enrolled are actually getting coverage.

May 7, 2014

D.C. Council passes tax on health insurance to fund Obamacare exchange operations

The D.C. Council passed a unique tax on health insurance products Tuesday to ensure its Obamacare exchange remains viable when federal grant funding dries up next year — a concern it shares with 14 states that set up their own health portals.

May 6, 2014

Obamacare enrollment exceeds expectations in nearly half the states

With final Obamacare tallies in, Democratic candidates set back by the law's early stumbles may rely on citing new figures that show sign-ups for private coverage exceeded expectations in red states and toss-up ones that did not exactly embrace the law.

May 4, 2014

Kathleen Sebelius and fierce Obamacare critic, Ted Cruz, sit together at gala

On a night when D.C. politicians are expected to put down their swords, departing Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius found herself sitting down to dinner with the fiercest Obamacare critic in Congress.

May 4, 2014

Nearly half of all states hit Obamacare enrollment goals: analysis

Nearly half the states, or 44 percent, met or exceeded their enrollment expectations under Obamacare, according to a new analysis that assumes about 15 percent of customers will not pay their first premium and effectuate coverage.

May 2, 2014

HHS releases new Obamacare figures, but can’t say how many paid

The Obama administration released a fresh round of Obamacare data for all 50 states Thursday, yet offered no payment data to combat Republican claims that only two-thirds of customers in the federal marketplace have paid their first premium.

May 1, 2014

Health care bills still due for 3rd of enrollees, Republican polling shows

Only two-thirds of people who signed up for health care coverage on the federal Obamacare marketplace had paid their first month's premiums as of April 15, according to a House Republican-led survey of every insurer on the exchange system.

April 30, 2014

CEO of Obamacare website firm: We were ‘never fired’

The chief of CGI Group, the Canadian contractor most closely linked to the flawed rollout of Obamacare last fall, told investment analysts Wednesday the company was not "fired" by anyone in the U.S. and that fallout from the web glitches was overblown in the press.

April 30, 2014

Wellpoint, a big Obamacare insurer, dampens fears of big-time rate increases

Wellpoint, a key insurer on the new Obamacare marketplace, tempered fears on Wednesday of huge rate increases in 2015, saying the mix and characteristics of members from the health overhaul's exchanges are exceeding their expectations.

April 30, 2014

Sen. David Vitter revives effort to make Congress come clean about Obamacare use

Sen. David Vitter of Louisiana has resurrected his bid to make sure Capitol Hill lawmakers and staff do not get special treatment under Obamacare.

April 30, 2014

Enrollment spending much higher in state-run Obamacare exchanges, study shows

A new study shows "striking" differences in state-to-state spending to get the uninsured enrolled in health coverage through an Obamacare exchange, with state-run markets spending nearly $12 more per uninsured resident than states that relied on the federal exchange system.

April 30, 2014

Obamacare website fix will cost feds $121 million

Fixing the Obamacare website to get it ready to handle a second round of enrollments will cost the federal government $121 million, according to Accenture, the contractor hired to repair the glitchy website after the original contractor, CGI Federal, was fired in January.

April 29, 2014