Free Republic

Voters in November might be ready to show Democrats what they think about removing choice and hiking costs, as well as their arrogance in determining that a few politicians in Washington know better about their choices than they do. Unfortunately, Barack Obama doesn’t appear to have figured out this problem. In an interview with WebMD, Obama finally acknowledged that, contra his promise, people might not be able to keep the doctors they liked, but that they probably shouldn’t have liked those doctors in the first place:CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE VIDEO “For the average person, many folks who don’t have...

How I pray we don't get so numb to the endless nightmarish stories of Obamacare that we become fatalistic and resigned to its continued existence. As an antidote to that, I submit another update. First, Unite Here -- a major union for the hotel, gaming, food service, manufacturing, textile, distribution, laundry and airport industries -- has issued a report concluding that Obamacare will result in wages being reduced by up to $5 an hour, reduce worker hours and exacerbate income inequality. The report, titled "The Irony of ObamaCare: Making Inequality Worse," states: "Ironically, the Administration's own signature healthcare victory poses...

As a child, I was attracted to anything that dealt with medicine. Many stories featured Johns Hopkins Hospital, and eventually I was privileged to spend 36 years at Johns Hopkins working with brilliant and caring colleagues who dedicated their lives to the art and science of healing. After a storybook career that included thousands of operations and many sleepless nights, I looked forward to retirement, thinking it would be relaxing. However, life throws many curveballs, and sometimes the ordering of our steps is not of our own choosing. I now find myself deeply immersed in trying to heal the health...

Doctors are leaving private practice to become employees of hospitals, according to this story in the New York Times. The decline in private practice physicians actually began a few years ago when changes to Medicare forced many physicians who practiced individually or in small group offices to make the move to a salaried position in a hospital.But there is no doubt that Obamacare has exacerbated the problem. The onerous recordkeeping is one big reason why private practice physicians are becoming extinct. Private physicians can’t afford the extra employees to meet the demands of Obamacare paperwork.Dr, Paul Hsieh explained in a...

FULL TITLE: Terminally sick children have been secretly given deadly overdoses by British doctors in illegal mercy killings, claims retired GP British doctors have secretly killed terminally sick children by giving them 'huge' overdoses of painkillers, it was claimed yesterday. Hours after Belgium became the first country in the world to allow the euthanasia of children, a retired GP suggested it was already happening, informally, in Britain. Dr Michael Irwin told an LBC Radio debate: 'It has happened in this country, very quietly. I know of one or two children over the last few years.'

Three years ago, many predicted that Obamacare would be rejected by the most important people in the health care business -- the doctors! Sadly, those predictions are coming true. Here is the statement of one brave doctor to Aetna Insurance.

Over the past 2 decades, Republican and Democrat Administrations have joined forces to require the use by physicians and hospitals of government-certified, interoperable electronic medical records systems, or EMRs. These online record keeping systems will send personal patient information collected by all participating providers directly to the centralized Office of the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology, a newly created government agency whose job is making the medical records of the American people “inter-operable–” that is, instantly accessible to any “qualified” agency or agent. For example, if the patient of a New Jersey physician should become the victim of a...

CBS News did a report on an especially unpleasant aspect of ObamaCare’s “doc shock,” which is the unraveling of Barack Obama’s Second Big Lie, “if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.”  No, you can’t, and doctors are becoming quite vocal about point out how bad this problem has become:

Congratulations! You have successfully signed up for a truly excellent plan on the Covered California website! It's a really, really great plan. Really. Now, good look finding a doctor who will treat you. Los Angeles Times: After overcoming website glitches and long waits to get Obamacare, some patients are now running into frustrating new roadblocks at the doctor's office.A month into the most sweeping changes to healthcare in half a century, people are having trouble finding doctors at all, getting faulty information on which ones are covered and receiving little help from insurers swamped by new business.Experts have warned...

For the past four months, Sarah Callaway has had to watch as her daughter Greylynn’s body has been wracked by uncontrollable spasms several times a day. “They don’t hurt her. But they scare her, and she cries. And you can’t do anything for her except comfort her,” said Callaway, a Chatsworth resident. “That’s the most frustrating part. I just say to her, ‘I’m sorry I can’t do anything for you. I’m sorry.’” When Greylynn was born six months ago, doctors diagnosed her with a brain malformation and gave her only weeks to live. She survived, but her condition has left...

The prospects for single-payer health care -- adored by many liberals, despised by private health insurers and looking better all the time to others -- did not die in the Affordable Care Act. It was thrown a lifeline through a little-known provision tucked in the famously long legislation. Single-payer groups in several states are now lining up to make use of Section 1332. Vermont is way ahead of the pack, but Hawaii, Oregon, New York, Washington, California, Colorado and Maryland have strong single-payer movements. First, some definitions. Single-payer is a system where the government pays all medical bills. Canada has...

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court has refused a group of doctors' request to block implementation of the nation's new health care law. Chief Justice John Roberts turned away without comment Monday an emergency stay request from the Association of American Physicians & Surgeons, Inc. and the Alliance for Natural Health USA.

Over the last 12 months some 3,000 Cubans, mostly doctors, have arrived in the United States after deserting one of the Venezuelan government´s social programs they staff. This accounts for a 60% increase as compared with 2012. In 2012 there were about 5,000 refugee Cuban doctors and nurses in the United States coming from all over the world. Through December 1, 2013 this figure had surged to 8,000, 98% of them came from Venezuela. These are estimates by Dr. Julio Cesar Alfonso, head of the South Florida group Solidarity Without Borders Inc. (SWB), which helps Cuban medical professionals who try

WASHINGTON — A group of New York doctors is suing insurance giant UnitedHealthcare, charging that it booted doctors from its network to avoid cost hikes imposed by ObamaCare. The company’s decision to kick more than 2,000 docs from its Medicare Advantage network threatens to harm elderly and disabled patients, according to the filing in Brooklyn federal court. “By terminating numerous physicians from the . . . network, United seeks to stem financial losses occasioned by reduced federal payments under the Affordable Care Act,” the suit launched by the Medical Society of the State of New York claims.

Those signing up for private health care coverage on the ObamaCare exchanges may be in for an unpleasant surprise -- they'll have insurance, but they might have trouble getting the doctor to see them. Just as with Medicaid, analysts warn that if payments get too low, many doctors might start refusing to see patients. That will leave more and more patients jockeying to see fewer and fewer doctors. They emphasize, then, that having health insurance won't necessarily translate into access to health care.

Sometimes, surprise findings can be life-saving, for example in the case of an athlete whose brain is scanned after a concussion, and radiologists spot a tumor, Hauser said. Other times, nothing can be done. That same brain scan might show early signs of an incurable condition, Hauser said, and "this young person now needs to live with the knowledge that she may someday develop this neurologic disease." Follow-up testing may do harm. Doctors, researchers and direct-to-consumer companies alike should inform potential patients about the possibility of incidental findings before they undergo a medical test. They should clearly explain what will...

At this point we have no idea how many people will become newly insured under ObamaCare. For the first year out, the number of people with insurance may actually go down! But the administration's goal is to insure an additional 30 million people and eventually a lot of those people will acquire health plans. When they do, the economic studies predict that they will try to double their use of the health care system. Adding to this increased demand will be new mandated benefits. The administration never seems to tire of reminding seniors that they are entitled to a...

In 1945, thousands of soldiers returned to the United States from combat on the Pacific and European fronts of World War II with severe mental trauma. Unable to treat their terrible injuries and illnesses, US Veterans Affairs hospitals lobotomized some 2,000 of them. Wall Street Journal:The Lobotomy Files Part One is telling the story of these soldiers and the misjudged medical process they went through as part of a special project called The Lobotomy Files, the first of which focuses on Roman Tritz. Tritz, a 90-year-old veteran who flew a B-17 Flying Fortress across Nazi Germany, began to hear voices...

As this session of the 113th Congress draws to a merciful close, much of the punditry has picked up on the refrain that this is the “most unproductive Congress in history.” Indeed, this Congress has passed just 28 bills, easily eclipsing the previous record for inactivity set by Congress in 2012, when it passed just 68 new laws. But why, we might ask, is this such a bad thing? Sure, there are things we might have wished Congress had accomplished. Something to address immigration or entitlement reform springs to mind. And it certainly would have produced less chaos if Congress...

Despite being one of the bluest states in the country and one of the first to implement state based Obamacare exchanges, doctors in California are boycotting Obamacare...a whopping 70 percent of them. An estimated seven out of every 10 physicians in deep-blue California are rebelling against the state's Obamacare health insurance exchange and won't participate, the head of the state's largest medical association said. So why exactly the push back? Under Obamcare, doctors are practically expected to work for free. “We need some recognition that we’re doing a service to the community. But we can’t do it for free. And...