Free Republic

The Commonwealth Fund has another one of its surveys showing how health care in the U.S. is so much worse when compared with so many other nations. A debate on what health care system is best is well worth having. But it’s hard to take such a debate seriously when the senior vice president for the Commonwealth Fund, Cathy Schoen, makes remarks like this: The U.S. is the only country in the study where having health insurance doesn’t guarantee you access to health care or financial protection when you’re sick. This is avoidable — other countries have designed their insurance...

Yes, he actually said this in the monster New York Times magazine piece that just came out: “We probably spent much more time trying to get the policy right than trying to get the politics right. There is probably a perverse pride in my administration — and I take responsibility for this; this was blowing from the top — that we were going to do the right thing, even if short-term it was unpopular. And I think anybody who’s occupied this office has to remember that success is determined by an intersection in policy and politics and that you can’t...

A mushrooming political battle over ObamaCare involving the White House, two incumbent Pennsylvania congressmen, three Catholic hospitals and a nun has just exploded in, of all places, Scranton, Pennsylvania. Charges from the Scranton medical community of intimidation by the Obama White House and its allies are filling the air. All of this just as Vice President Joe Biden arrives in Scranton today to raise money for one of the participants.

Are you one of the 46 million Americans without health insurance? Well, you may not have that, uh, luxury for much longer. “A federal judge in Michigan on Thursday dismissed one of more than 15 legal challenges to the new health care law, becoming the first to rule that the law is constitutional,” reports The Times’s Kevin Sack. “The central question, which may ultimately fall to the Supreme Court, is whether the Commerce Clause of the Constitution gives Congress the authority to require citizens to obtain a commercial product, namely health insurance. Starting in 2014, the law will require most...

They campaign for and donate hundreds of thousands towards implementation of Obamacare, and then after the legislation becomes law and someone actually READS it, they find out some of the union members will lose their health care insurance since the programs do not meet the medical loss ratio mandate. McDonald's was not the only company to get a waiver. The branch of the American Federation of Teachers in New York City also got a waiver.

Eleven months ago, I wrote about the future physician shortage mentioned in the Wall Street Journal. This was prior to the passage of the Democrat-owned health care legislation and nobody wanted to discuss the issue. A study by the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) notes the shortage will now be worse than expected. For a variety of reasons, the physician shortage is expected to be 50 percent worse than originally expected. Low Medicare reimbursement rates, the increased cost of education, and the fact Congress FROZE the number of Medicare-sponsored resident programs in 1997 are just some of the issues....

Broken record indeed. The only answer President Obama has in response to questions like the one asked yesterday in Iowa is that he knows times are tough, but at least kids have health care until they are 26 and the government took over the “terrible” student loan system. The president answered the "my son's losing hope" question with his standard BS answer ... which means NOTHING to the kid or the mom. They are running on the passed health care legislation and taking over the student loan market! That's REALLY what they are running on!

The Quebec government had the opportunity to be the first province to enact meaningful reform in health care, but instead it got cold feet. By cancelling its planned $25 user fee for seeing a doctor, Quebec caved in to special interest groups that refuse to acknowledge the necessity of changing how we pay for health care in this country. Quebec Finance Minister Raymond Bachand, acknowledging in his budget speech earlier this year that Quebec's health care system is in serious financial trouble, proposed two new measures: the $25 user fee for seeing a doctor, and a new health tax applied...

Six months ago, President Obama, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi rammed Obamacare down the throats of an unwilling American public. Half a year removed from the unprecedented legislative chicanery and backroom dealing that characterized the bill's passage, we know much more about the bill than we did then. A few of the revelations:

All across the United States, health insurance companies like Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield in Connecticut are meeting with state insurance regulators about premiums. During the past couple of weeks, Anthem proved to Connecticut state regulators an average 18 percent premium increase reflected the requirements of federal health care mandates and increased provider costs. Of course, liberals and Senate candidate Attorney General Dick Blumenthal pull the "they are screwing us" card once again.

If you read British newspapers, you know their universal health care system is cutting more and more services. There, everyone's right to health care is becoming the right to no care. Do we want that in the USA? Health care as a right means that people are entitled to medical care services, just like free speech and the right to assemble. We do not have to do anything to get them. They are ours by right, and they are free. We have no responsibility and therefore no personal control and/or need to make decisions.

So Obama does a video walking us through healthcare.gov. My first question. How much money did the federal government spend on this website … especially since all of the information on the site already is readily available on the Internet? Just do a search and you’ll see plenty of private sites that already do exactly what healthcare.gov can do, if not more! Read more...

WASHINGTON – Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst warned this morning that the new federal health care legislation will bust Texas’ budget – saddling state taxpayers with $27 billion in extra costs over the next decade. “That’s an astounding number for us,” Dewhurst told the Texas State Society over breakfast, including a half-dozen members of Congress. “We’re on the hook for all those folks we’ve been trying to get to sign up for Medicaid.” Doubling the state’s Medicaid rolls, he said, will mean that health care claims an ever-bigger share of the state budget. And that segment has already grown from one-quarter...

Here’s an interview that Donald Berwick, President Obama’s appointee charged with cutting $500 billion from Medicare, gave in October 2006: Effective leaders know their deficiencies. How do you address yours? I don’t feel like a leader, so it’s very hard for me to project myself into that situation. But inattention to detail is my biggest defect. I’m always leaning forward into something new. I can create a mess. Luckily, I have people who are willing to create the detail around the idea or, if they’re really smart, know which ideas to ignore. The second defect is more personal uncertainty than...

The legal challenge to the federal health care law will begin in earnest this morning, as Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli lobs the nation's first constitutional arguments against the law in a federal courtroom in Richmond. Cuccinelli and his team will get an hour to argue to a federal judge that the law is an unprecedented overreach by Washington that turns the Founders' intention for a limited federal government on its head. The Obama administration will likewise get an hour to argue Cuccinelli's suit is frivolous and should be tossed from court.

NEW YORK, N.Y. (AP) -- Britain's Prince Harry says the bonds between British and American military veterans are strong but can be even stronger. Harry spoke Friday on the flight deck of the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum in New York City during a reception for U.S. and British veterans and their families. The third in line to the British throne said his country can learn from American advances in veterans' care and rehabilitation.....

12,000 Minnesota nurses launch 1-day walkout MINNEAPOLIS -- Outside Abbott Northwestern Hospital, what was called the largest nurses strike in U.S. history began Thursday to the sounds of "Amazing Grace" played on Michael Redmond's bagpipe. The 50-year-old nurse, wearing a red Minnesota Nurses Association T-shirt and green plaid kilt, said he picked the song because of its history as an old abolitionist rallying cry. He played as night-shift nurses walked off the job early Thursday. BuzzHe said he sees a connection between the old fight against slavery and the strike by 12,000 Minnesota nurses. "The rally cry is that we're...

A hard look at the cost of health carePosted By CHRISTINA BLIZZARD Posted 9 hours ago When economists start dishing out advice about health care -- at the request of the government -- get worried. Very worried. I'm alarmed by a report released Thursday, "Charting A Path To Sustainable Health Care in Ontario," by TD Bank economists Don Drummond and Derek Burleton. It's a warning shot across the bow, especially to baby boomers, seniors and doctors. You cost the health system money? Watch out. You're in the government's crosshairs. The government knows it has to make unpopular decisions. It will...

There is something to Trotsky's vision of man under communism. From all historical appearances, man under a totalitarian state functions differently than a man under liberty. And degrees of man exist as society slowly turns from liberty to slavery. The prevailing view is that man under socialized healthcare will remain the same as man today — a man living under a pseudo-free market. In fact, some even believe that man may progress. In this view, the doctor we see today will, at the very least, remain the same under socialized health care. Don't bet on it. Unlucky Ducks I once...

He must not be talking about employees of medical device manufacturers whose jobs may be on the block. He didn’t mention the large employers who may drop health insurance coverage altogether. And there was no mention of the paperwork nightmare imposed on small businesses. That’s just the tip of the iceberg for the nightmare known as Obamacare.