Free Republic

If you had to pay $11/month for unlimited health care cost coverage, you might think health care costs aren't a problem. If you are a Democrat and had to pay $55/month for unlimited health care cost coverage, you might support efforts to rein in health care costs. I believe, effective January 1, 2020, Section 36B(b)(2)(A)(ii) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 should read: ‘‘(ii) SPECIAL RULE FOR TAXPAYERS UNDER 133 PERCENT OF POVERTY LINE.—If a taxpayer’s household income for the taxable year is in excess of 100 percent, but not more than 133 percent, of the poverty line for...

Research in recent years has linked a person's physical or social environment to their well-being. Stress wears down the body and compromises the immune system, leaving a person more vulnerable to illnesses and other conditions. Various stressors, from family adversity to air pollution, can lead to inflammation, diabetes and heart disease. But scientists do not fully understand how the association between stress and health plays out at the cellular level. A new University of Washington-led study examines one key stress-inducing circumstance—the effects of social hierarchy—and how cells respond to the hormones that are released in response to that stress. They...

"..it’s now the second largest Ebola outbreak ever documented, and one of the longest running. The outbreak has hit mothers and their young children especially hard, because many sought care for malaria at health centers that unknowingly have Ebola cases. Women have made up 62% of all cases, and 24% were children under age 15. Only about 50% of new infections are in people previously identified as having been in contact with a case, which underscores how the violence has interfered with contact tracing."

The study's 272 participants were randomly divided into two groups. People in one group, known as the intervention group, were advised to weigh themselves at least twice a week during the holidays and to record and reflect on their weight. This group also received 10 tips for managing weight; these suggestions included being careful with portion sizes, limiting alcohol and sugary drinks, and engaging in regular physical activity. This group also received a list showing how much exercise you'd need to burn off popular holiday foods and drinks. For example, it would take 16 minutes of running to burn off...

¹The number of deaths per 100,000 total population. Source: http://wonder.cdc.gov States are categorized from highest rate to lowest rate. Although adjusted for differences in age-distribution and population size, rankings by state do not take into account other state specific population characteristics that may affect the level of mortality. When the number of deaths is small, rankings by state may be unreliable due to instability in death rates.

Drug abuse has a long and storied history in the United States, and we’ve been “at war” with it since 1971 under the Nixon administration. But no matter who is in office, the federal drug budget continues to increase. It’s moved from $23.8 billion in 2013 to almost $27.5 billion in 2017. The current administration seems to be taking a hardline approach to drug use. President Donald Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions have advocated for strict sentences for drug-related offenses, even as far as the death penalty in some cases. Given the uncertain future and lack of significant progress...

Yesterday I finished up my obamacare enrollment. I know, I could auto-renew but year after year I keep thinking "It's gotta get better than this." No such luck. But I discovered yet another thing about our fascist medicine healthcare program that I find disturbing. Monday is cleanup day for my Windows machine so first thing I ran a full anti-virus scan and a CCleaner scan for tracking cookies. As usual CCleaner found and removed about 40 tracking cookies and found no registry issues. Then I moved on to the healthcare.gov renewal task. This was simplified by the fact that we...

Jimmy Gressier wanted to finish in style. And while he did cross the line in a memorable fashion, it was probably not quite in the way he intended. The French runner had an eight second lead on his nearest challenger, Germany’s Samuel Fitwi, as he headed toward the finish line of the European Cross-Country Championships men’s U-23 race, according to European Athletics, the organization that hosts the event. After grabbing two French flags from the sidelines, Gressier, the defending champion, powered toward a final patch of mud just before the tape. Attempting to slide along the mud and across the...

Moon Fahel from San Antonio, Texas, had just gotten home from a martial arts class that he’s been taking for the last 15 years when he answered the phone call from Runner’s World. It wasn’t an anomaly—he stays busy with other classes during rest of the week, too: kickboxing, Zumba, athletic dancing, and BODYPUMP, among others. Plus, he just ran his fifth marathon this past Sunday at the San Antonio Rock ’n’ Roll Marathon. Oh, and he’s 85 years of age. (The word “old” doesn’t have a place in his vocabulary.) “I don’t know what old is,” Fahel said. “If...

Michael Savage was right after all - Liberalism IS a mental disorder. Their brains have now been proven to be completely lacking reactions of disgust in processing images that make conservatives reel with disgust.

Its fundamental principle is giving insurers negotiating power. Imagine if Aunt Sue's insurer had to buy exactly A,B,C,D,E,F,G,H,I and J. The price on each would be high and the total price via premiums would be impoverishing for Aunt Sue. Imagine instead if Aunt Sue's insurer only had to buy at least eight of the ten for Aunt Sue to get a federal tax credit. Each seller would realize that their yearly revenue from Aunt Sue might be zero. Deals would be offered and good deals made. Aunt Sue would probably wind up with all ten and at a much lower...

THE WEEK THAT WAS THE GOOD, THE BAD THE UGLY GOOD ~ Bush/Trump Funeral relationsBAD ~ Mueller the CreepVERY GOOD ~POTUS meets with three German Automakers including - Herbert Diess, Volkswagen, Dieter Zetsche, Daimler and Oliver Zipse, BMW The Mysterious ~ What was in those envelopes at the funeral???BADDEST(??) ~ Sour faces on Michelle and Pantsuit at Funeral UGLY ~ George Conway POLITICALLY UGLY ~ The Swamp Judiciary Below ~ 41 Dies and is Remembered more graphics on all at post #1 Welcome all you deplorables to this week's edition of the Dose! This is EVERYTHING TRUMP. Administration, family,...

On November 18, 37-year-old José Garcia reached the finish line of the Bakersfield Marathon—but he didn’t cross alone. Before the end, Garcia went up to the sidelines to take hold of his 76-year-old mother-in-law, Odilia Esparza, who is battling late-stage Alzheimer’s disease, so she could finish the race with him. Esparza was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in 2010, and the disease has progressed to the point she can no longer walk, talk, or recognize her family members. But Esparza’s daughter, Daniela, fondly remembers the days before her adopted mother’s illness. While she was not a runner, she was a big believer...

During last year’s Dallas Marathon relay, Dwayne Pickens had only 5.2 miles for his segment, and he was confident that he’d breeze through it, considering he’d run eight miles the weekend before. About two miles in, the breathing issues started. He told Runner’s World that it was a cold morning, so he thought the cool air was affecting his lungs and making it more challenging to breathe. The next thing he remembers is waking up in the emergency room, where he found out that, technically, he’d been dead on the course for about two minutes. Although he’d never had any...

My wife has had Humana for several years and we're both quite satisfied with the service they provide her. And this is not an advertisement for them. Yesterday she got a package with a return label of VRI in Sullivan, Il. I opened it up and inside there was a letter and a USPS return packet with the address label going to Valued Relationships Inc. in Sullivan Il. The one sheet letter said that her PERS service was ending and that the unit was to be returned. PERS stands for Personal Emergency Reponse System. Its the unit you wear and...

The ongoing Ebola virus outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo has now reached Butembo, a city of over one million residents near the Ugandan border, according to the Associated Press. ...So far, there are over 470 confirmed cases and more than 270 deaths due to the viral hemorrhagic fever, which has an extremely high fatality rate. Another 100-plus cases are under investigation, and Congo’s health ministry confirmed an additional 13 cases on Thursday, the highest one-day total since this latest outbreak was declared in August. This Ebola virus outbreak in the Congo is second only to the outbreak in...

She said she was disheartened when she turned to a worldwide registry of donors and none were compatible. "It was 30 million people," she said. "Thirty million people, and no matches for me." So Rabaca and the rest of her family partnered with Be The Match, an organization operated by the National Marrow Donor Program, to encourage people to register to donate bone marrow. Thanks to their fierce campaigning, Rabaca's story spread and gained attention from the likes of country singer Carrie Underwood, who asked her Twitter followers, "who wants to save a life for Christmas?" In a matter of...

A 36-year-old man has died after suffering from chronic heart failure and coughing so severely that he spit out a bright red blood clot perfectly-shaped like the airway passages of his right lung’s bronchial tree. The unidentified patient was receiving treatment in the intensive care unit at the University of California San Francisco Medical Center, according to a Nov. 29 article in the New England Journal of Medicine. During the week of his hospitalization, the man’s cough progressed to coughing up blood and phlegm. And, during a rather extreme hack, he coughed up “an intact cast of the right bronchial...

UNAIDS, under fire over a mishandled sexual assault investigation, suffers from “a broken organizational culture,” where leaders fail “to accept responsibility” and fear among staff is rampant, an expert report said Friday. The Independent Expert Report was created by UNAIDS’ oversight body following a public uproar triggered by the agency’s handling of sexual assault allegations against former deputy executive director Luiz Loures. The findings, based on dozens of interviews and hundreds of staff surveys, said the agency tasked with coordinating the global response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic is led by a secretariat engulfed in “a crisis which threatens its vital...

Baboons can stand in for humans during cross-species transplantation studies. Now, for the first time, researchers have kept baboons alive and healthy for up to six months on transplanted pig hearts. Credit: Paul A. Sounders ========================================================================= In four adjacent enclosures transplantation researcher Bruno Reichart kept four happy baboons. “They can hop around, eat, drink and they are enjoying life,” he says. “They watch TV—their favorite is the cartoon with the chipmunk.” Most importantly, he says, they were healthy and normal—which is astonishing, given the fact that the hearts beating life in their chests were anything but normal for a baboon....