Free Republic

Republican U.S. Sen. David Vitter, running to be Louisiana's next governor, is leaving the door open to a possible expansion of the state's Medicaid program to cover more of the working poor, as allowed under the federal health care law. Vitter said Monday that he's not opposed to the expansion if Louisiana can improve the performance of its Medicaid program and if the expansion doesn't draw state resources away from other spending priorities like higher education.

A Los Angeles Superior Court Judge reversed his own ruling, permitting Casey Kasem’s daughter, Kerri Kasem, to remove her father’s food and hydration (via feeding tube), which will result in his death by starvation and dehydration. Kasem’s wife of 33 years, Jean Kasem, is fighting for the life of her husband, with her attorney, Steve Haney, calling the judge’s decision, “the functional equivalent of a death sentence.”Growing up in the 70’s, I was introduced to Casey Kasem’s easy to recognize voice as each week he counted down “American Top 40″ hits for almost four decades on a radio show heard...

Vietnam veteran Gene Stoesser has been waiting nearly two months for an appointment with a Veterans Affairs doctor to schedule his heart surgery. The 71-year-old former Marine from Glendale, Arizona, went to the emergency room at the VA’s Phoenix hospital on April 28 with chest pains. He said he was told he’d need surgery soon, but has yet to get an appointment. “They sent me home to die,” Stoesser said Tuesday, surrounded by dozens of other veterans at a crisis center set up by the American Legion in downtown Phoenix in a first-of-its-kind event for the nation’s largest veterans group....

National insurance giant UnitedHealthcare plans to cut up to 700 Massachusetts doctors from its physician network for seniors enrolled in its private Medicare plan as a way to control costs, according to company officials. For elderly patients enrolled in the plan, the cuts mean they will have to find a new doctor or eventually switch to a new health plan that covers their current doctor. The move, effective Sept. 1, follows similar cuts made by the insurer to its Medicare Advantage provider networks in 11 other states... There is also pending legislation in Congress to prevent health plans from cutting...

Officials at a Veterans Affairs medical center in Albuquerque say as many as 3,000 patients were assigned to a doctor who didn't actually see them, a New Mexico congresswoman said Wednesday. The officials told U.S. Rep. Michelle Lujan Grisham, D-N.M., that the practice of putting patients without primary care doctors into a separate pool was part of an effort to balance demand and a shortage of doctors at a facility that handled nearly 660,000 outpatient visits last year....

link only: http://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/letters/2014/05/26/bernie-sanders-blocked-va-accountability-act/9614547/

The federal government may reimburse doctors for talking to Medicare patients and their families about “advance care planning,” including living wills and end-of-life treatment options — potentially rekindling one of the fiercest storms in the Affordable Care Act debate. A similar provision was in an early draft of the federal health care law, but in 2009, former Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin took to Facebook to accuse President Barack Obama of proposing “death panels” to determine who deserved life-sustaining medical care. Amid an outcry on the right, the provision was stripped from the legislation. Now, quietly, the proposal is headed...

The deadly rationing scandal at several Veterans Administration hospitals has many politicians running for cover, suddenly suggesting we offer veterans more private-pay options to the single-payer plan of the Veterans Health Care system.But not Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Barack Obama. They’d prefer the entire nation be forced into a single-payer system where the government replaces private insurance, a system that has inevitably led to rationing where it’s been tried.On Monday, Pelosi was interviewed by Time magazine’s Ezra Klein about changes or improvements she’d like to see to Obamacare. Nancy Pelosi: “I have some of my own suggestions that I...

If attacking Obamacare is its number one campaign strategy, the GOP might want to regroup before November. Related Stories Enough already! Voters want Obamacare gag order CNBC Republicans Target Burwell in Obamacare War The Fiscal Times Poll: Health care law still fails to impress Associated Press 10 reasons people didn’t sign up for Obamacare The Fiscal Times After enduring four years of intense political warfare over the president’s health care law, the majority of voters say they want candidates to stop talking about it and move on, a new poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation found. Although the law remains...

Liberals wanted a national enrollment system under Obamacare. They might just get it. Right now, 36 states rely on HealthCare.gov, the federal exchange, to enroll people in health coverage. At least two more states are opting in next year, with a few others likely to follow. Only two states are trying to get out. That’s precisely the opposite of the Affordable Care Act’s original intent: 50 exchanges run by 50 states. The federal option was supposed to be a limited and temporary fallback. But a shift to a bigger, more permanent Washington-controlled system is instead underway — without preparation, funding...

Rep. Corrine Brown (D-Fla.) says that over 4 million Florida residents will die if Medicaid is not expanded there. “In fact, we’ve got over 4 million people that need medical expansion of health care that we are sending back, that’s going to die because they’re not getting the quality health care that they need,” Brown said during Wednesday night’s Veteran’s Affairs Committee hearing. Brown was being critical of Gov. Rick Scott’s (R-Fla.) move to sue the U.S. Department of Veteran’s Affairs for not allowing state hospital officials to inspect federal medical care facilities. …

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Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki resigned Friday, after more than a month of battling criticism about access to care and tampering with official wait lists at VA health centers. At a meeting with President Barack Obama, during which Mr. Shinseki presented the VA's internal findings of improper scheduling procedures and long wait times across the VA health system, the retired general offered to resign to give a new VA leader the chance to fix the systemic problems at the department. His resignation marks his second departure from public service since his career began in the military in the...

Republican candidates have begun to retreat in recent weeks from their all-out assault on the Affordable Care Act in favor of a more piecemeal approach, suggesting they would preserve some aspects of the law while jettisoning others.

On Thursday’s “Hannity” on the Fox News Channel, former Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) discussed a number of issues related to the news of the day with host Sean Hannity including President Barack Obama and his perceived weaknesses, the friction between the GOP establishment and the Tea Party and her role in the political process. But she also took on the scandal surrounding the Veterans Administration hospitals that has resulted in a number of deaths for American military veterans. (Video at Breitbart.com)

Imagine the press letting a Republican or conservative try to get away with trying to avoid uncondtionally calling something as infuriating and outrageous as the Veterans Administration waiting list scandal a real scandal. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi did that on Monday (HT Patterico and Real Clear Politics) in an interview with Vox's Ezra Klein, who naturally let it slide right on by:

Fox News host Sean Hannity sat down with former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin on Thursday night at the Republican Leadership Conference in New Orleans where she was asked about the unfolding scandal surrounding the Department of Veterans Affairs. Palin blasted the VA for failing veterans and said that “illegal aliens” in the United States often have access to better care than American servicemen and women. “Is the VA a death panel for many?” Hannity asked Palin. “That is what government-run health care will result in,” Palin replied. “Our prisoners at Gitmo,” Hannity said. “There is one doctor for every 1.5...

Four years after its passage, Obamacare has now been largely implemented, and millions have had their coverage disrupted. For years, the administration has propagated a number of myths about Obamacare. Some have already crumbled, and others will fall as Obamacare continues to change the American health system.Myth No. 1: If you like your health plan, you can keep it. Despite President Obama’s promise that “If you like your plan, you can keep it,” about 6 million people have already been notified by insurance companies that their policies are being canceled. That number will grow. Currently, about 19 million people have...

CAMP MEEKER (CBS SF) — A Sonoma County man battling more than a dozen tumors in his body is fighting a new battle with his insurance carrier, who has denied coverage for his treatments. Jeffrey Rusch of Camp Meeker knew the news was bad when an MRI found 20 tumors in his brain. Two days later, a C-T scan at Sutter medical center in Santa Rosa brought another devastating blow, discovering a large tumor in his lungs, and more in his liver and bones. Doctors told Jeffrey he would need to be hospitalized immediately. “My husband was having a lot...

Type “Obamacare rollout disaster” into the Google search engine, and you get approximately 290,000 results, most of them dating back to the days immediately following the catastrophic October 2013 launch of Healthcare.gov. Significantly, however, the most recent results focus on the Judicial Watch release on May 19, 2014. That’s the date Judicial Watch released a 106-page document we obtained on May 1 from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) that reveals the shocking details of the rollout disaster. Though the Obama administration tried to cover up the full extent of the website failure in the days following...