The House is getting set to pass the 21st Century Cures Act (H.R. 6). The bill has good intentions. It is trying to do great things by reforming the patent process to streamline the research and production of drugs - getting them to patients faster, which will save lives. Unfortunately, the bill also creates a new spending program with some dubious offsets that make the overall bill difficult for conservatives to support.

California is now considering scrapping its state-run Exchange and moving over to the federal run health care exchange after spending $900 million in federal grant money on its Covered California ObamaCare exchange and running a deficit of $80 million in just the first four months of this year.

The proposed Obamacare premium rates for 2016 are likely to see many double digit increases from the largest providers. The states with the largest increases, as proposed, are New Mexico (51%), Tennessee (36%), Maryland (30%), and Oregon (25%). The final rates will be lower, but they may very well remain in the double-digits because insurers are seeing their first full year of claims data from ObamaCare’s exchanges, and the pool of insurance consumers on the exchanges are tending to be older and sicker than they were hoping to see.

In March, the state of Hawaii was notified that it was out of compliance with the Affordable Care Act because its Health Connector – the state-run insurance exchange - wasn’t financially stable at the outset of the year. Plagued by technical difficulties, a lack of enrollment, and higher-than-expected costs, Hawaii’s exchange is in danger of becoming the latest to fail, which would force the state to default to the federal exchange website.