U.S. President-elect Donald Trump named a vociferous critic of Obamacare and a policy consultant on Tuesday to help him overhaul the healthcare system that Republicans have targeted since Democrats enacted sweeping reforms in 2010.

Republican Representative Tom Price, an orthopedic surgeon from Georgia, will be Trump’s Health and Human Services (HHS) secretary, and consultant Seema Verma will lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, a powerful agency that oversees government health programs and insurance standards.

Vice President-elect Mike Pence, arriving at Trump Tower in New York, promised a “busy day” as the team continues filling key positions. The president-elect planned to announce his pick for transportation secretary, Trump spokesman Jason Miller told Fox News.

Trump, a Republican, cast Price and Verma as a “dream team” to help him once he takes office on Jan. 20 with his campaign pledge to repeal Obamacare, Democratic President Barack Obama’s signature health law formally known as the Affordable Care Act.

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer denounced the choice of Price, calling him “far out of the mainstream” in his stance on government efforts such as Obamacare and Medicare, the insurance program for the elderly and disabled, and on Planned Parenthood, a women’s health organization.

“Nominating Congressman Price to be the HHS secretary is akin to asking the fox to guard the hen house,” Schumer said.

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Donald Trump’s triumph in the 2016 presidential election marks the beginning of an uncertain and tumultuous chapter in U.S. health policy. In the election’s aftermath, the immediate question is this: Can Republicans make good on their pledge to repeal Obamacare? The Affordable Care Act (ACA) has persisted largely thanks to President Barack Obama’s protection. With Trump in the White House and Republicans maintaining House and Senate majorities, that protection is gone.
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Obamacare’s vulnerability reflects not only the 2016 election results, but also its shallow political roots. The ACA has achieved much, including a large reduction in the uninsured population. Still, it lacks strong public support and an organized beneficiary lobby, has encountered significant problems in its implementation, and has been enveloped by an environment of hyperpartisanship.1If the ACA were more popular and covered a more politically sympathetic or influential population, if its insurance exchanges were operating more successfully and had higher enrollment, and if Democrats and Republicans were not so ideologically polarized and locked in a power struggle, then an incoming GOP administration would probably be talking about reforming rather than dismantling Obamacare.

Continue reading at the New England Journal of Medicine....

Tucker Carlson interviewed Ezekiel Emanuel on his new primetime Fox News show Tuesday night, an interview the Obamacare architect probably wishes he skipped.

Carlson, who co-founded The Daily Caller, opened by noting “Obamacare is the biggest piece of social reorganization passed in [his] lifetime, and yet it has never, as far as I know, received majority support.”

“Shouldn’t you get buy-in from the public before reorganizing their health care?” he asked.

“The public likes many of the provisions,” Emanuel responded.
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“Yeah, some,” Carlson admitted.

“Wait, did you ask me a question?” Emanuel hostilely shot back at the Fox News host. “Let me answer the question, please. A little respect. The only provision that scores under 50 percent is the mandate, and people haven’t understood that if you want no pre-existing disease, condition, exclusion, you have to have a mandate. Those are inexplicably linked. The public, of course, would like their cake and eat it too, but you cannot have both of those…”

Read more and watch the video at The Daily Caller....

California Attorney General Kamala Harris has launched an investigation into allegations that Wells Fargo & Co. engaged in criminal identity theft when the bank created millions of accounts without customer consent, according to the Los Angeles Times. 

The report is based on a search warrant, served on Oct. 5 and first obtained by the Times, in which Harris' office demands the identities and account information of California customers who had "any accounts, credit cards, life insurance, or other product or service" created without the customer's authorization.

The warrant also demands the names of bank employees who opened the unauthorized accounts and the identities of the employees' managers, including "any and all communications, including email referencing" the bogus accounts.
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Harris' office is seeking the same information for Wells Fargo customers who do not live in California.

Continue reading at NPR.org....

President-elect Donald Trump hasn’t minced words about what legacy legislation would be on the chopping block from President Obama's administration.

From the start, Trump has vowed to repeal ObamaCare within his first 100 days in office. His upset victory early Wednesday immediately raises thorny questions about what’s next for a range of hot-button issues – from the vacancy on the Supreme Court to pending trade deals to immigration policy to health care. 

The Affordable Care Act, commonly known as ObamaCare, has been a GOP target for many years. Trump claimed in the last few weeks of the election that he might even call a special session of Congress to get it done.
“We will do it, and we will do it very, very quickly,” he promised, discussing the ACA. “It’s a catastrophe.” 

Now that he's the president-elect, and Republicans who have tried doggedly for years to repeal the law have retained control of the House and Senate, the party has a potential pathway to unravel the ACA. 

"With unified Republican government, we can fix this," House Speaker Paul Ryan said of ObamaCare on Wednesday. 

Continue reading at Fox News....