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The new health-care legislation that passed the Senate on Christmas Eve is known as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. A different version of health-care reform passed the House last month. There will most likely be a "conference committee" of both chambers named to work out a compromise. But if the Democrats in the House can muster enough votes, they could simply agree on the Senate version -- thereby ensuring quick action to enact the legislation before the president's State of the Union address Jan. 20.

QUEENSLAND researchers believe they have found a way to to control the spread of dengue fever, which afflicts more than 50 million people worldwide every year. The team at the University of Queensland's (UQ) School of Biological Sciences, led by Professor Scott O'Neill, is investigating infecting mosquitoes that transmit dengue fever with a bacterium that shortens their lifespan, limiting their ability to infect humans with the dengue virus. Professor O'Neill said this approach may be even more effective than first thought. "In a surprising development we have found that mosquitoes carrying this bacterium - known as Wolbachia - are resistant...

A car crash victim who was believed to have been in a coma for the past 23 years has been conscious the whole time. Rom Houben was paralysed but could not let doctors know that he could hear every word they were saying, reports the Daily Mail. "I dreamed myself away," said Mr Houben, now 46, who doctors thought was in a persistent vegatative state. Doctors conducted a series of coma tests before concluding that his consciousness was "extinct". But three years ago, new hi-tech scans showed his brain was still functioning almost completely normally. Mr Houben said: "All that...

Merry Christmas Eve y'all! Guess what…? Our lovely Congress has just bestowed upon this nation a most wondrous gift of “universal” health care during this joyous season – a gift that will keep giving and taking. Giving in the sense that never before have we seen such blatant kickbacks and special-interest deals to put another ol’ legislative “victory” on the mantel. Taking in the sense that it’ll be we taxpayers who will reap the long-term consequences of this “reform” through more taxes, loss of medical innovation, and (most importantly) the failure of enacting true, progressive revisions to a restraining, high-cost...

No surprise here....the Senate passed their version of Socialism today: The Senate approved sweeping healthcare reform legislation by the narrowest of partisan margins early Christmas Eve morning, placing President Barack Obama just one step away from signing into law a longtime Democratic priority ~~~ The 60 to 39 tally split directly along partisan lines, underscoring not only the great divide between Democrats and Republicans but also the deftness with which Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) at long last united his fractious caucus by offering key compromises to centrists but keeping liberals in the fold. Deftness me ass. This was bribery...

Attention Fox Network....My Christmas Wish

Democrats are doing a victory lap...But the Democratic celebrations are premature, as Republican despair would be. This battle isn’t over, and opponents of the legislation could still win.

Twas the night before healthcare and all through the night Pelosi and Reid met to unite Their lies and their bribes made with careful design Bought off many people to meet a deadline The voters at home were not sure of this ploy And the media distractions were but a decoy Obama, with teleprompter close by Was campaigning for this the odds to defy But out on the internet there arose lots of chatter We were on to these two on the health care matter Away to the chat rooms they typed up a storm Poll numbers indicate they were...

<p>Changes to Medicare will give the feds control of surgical decisions.Changes to Medicare will give the feds control of surgical decisions.</p> <p>Democrats are touting the American Medical Association's endorsement of President Obama's health plan. But there's an important reason why the American College of Surgeons and 18 other specialty groups are opposed.</p>

Pushing health-care reform through the Senate will hurt Democrats. By now Majority Leader Harry Reid's explanation for how he is getting his health-care bill through the Senate has pinged its way across the country. "I don't know if there is a senator that doesn't have something in this bill that was important to them," he said this week. "And if they don't have something in it important to them, then it doesn't speak well of them." But take these comments two steps further and it becomes clear that how Mr. Reid reached unanimity in his caucus could hurt Democrats more...

The Senate's healthcare bill is fatally flawed, a senior Democrat atop a powerful committee said on Wednesday. Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.), the chairwoman of the House Rules Committee and co-chairwoman of the Congressional Pro-Choice Caucus, said that the Senate's bill is so flawed that it's unlikely to be resolved in conference with the bill to have passed the House. "The Senate health care bill is not worthy of the historic vote that the House took a month ago," Slaughter wrote in an opinion piece for CNN's website. Slaughter argued that while the House bill is far from perfect, the Senate...

Republicans, emboldened by a new letter from the Congressional Budget Office, accused Democrats on Wednesday of "Bernie Madoff accounting" for double counting the savings from Medicare as a means to pay for the Senate health care bill. As the Senate prepares for a crucial vote before final passage of a massive overhaul bill that Democrats argue will reduce the deficit by $132 billion over 10 years, Sen. Jeff Sesssions, R-Ala, said the nearly $500 billion in cuts to Medicare actually will add $300 billion to the deficit "The real score on this legislation is that it would cause the deficit...

The Ronald Reagan U.C.L.A. Medical Center, one of the nation’s most highly regarded academic hospitals, has earned a reputation as a place where doctors will go to virtually any length and expense to try to save a patient’s life. “If you come into this hospital, we’re not going to let you die,” said Dr. David T. Feinberg, the hospital system’s chief executive. Yet that ethos has made the medical center a prime target for critics in the Obama administration and elsewhere who talk about how much money the nation wastes on needless tests and futile procedures. They like to note...

I stopped eating pork about eight years ago, after a scientist happened to mention that the animal whose teeth most closely resemble our own is the pig. Unable to shake the image of a perky little pig flashing me a brilliant George Clooney smile, I decided it was easier to forgo the Christmas ham. A couple of years later, I gave up on all mammalian meat, period. I still eat fish and poultry, however and pour eggnog in my coffee. My dietary decisions are arbitrary and inconsistent, and when friends ask why I’m willing to try the duck but not...

A city hospital nearly destroyed a New Jersey woman's life and wrecked her marriage after misdiagnosing her with terminal HIV, hepatitis and herpes, according to a bombshell lawsuit. Maria Osorio, 54, of Passaic, said she saw an ad on TV offering a $15 mammogram at Harlem Hospital over Valentine's Day last February and decided to take advantage of the screening. When a nurse offered her a free instant cheek swab and blood test, too, she accepted. That's when she was told she had HIV. "It was horrible. I wanted to throw myself on the subway tracks," she said. The shocked...

A new polling memo offers encouraging news to Democratic senators as they embark on a high-stakes effort to sell health reform to voters following this week’s historic votes. In a strategy memo to be provided to Democratic senators on Tuesday, Mark Mellman, CEO of The Mellman Group, reports that public polls are giving a distorted picture of the level of opposition to health-care reform. That’s because in many of these polls, “opponents” include people who think the current proposals do not go far enough.

Now this will piss you off. Apparently hidden inside the Senate version of ObamaCare is a provision that ensures that any future Congress can not change or repeal this monstrosity:[VIDEO AT SITE] there's one provision that i found particularly troubling and it's under section c, titled "limitations on changes to this subsection." and i quote -- "it shall not be in order in the senate or the house of representatives to consider any bill, resolution, amendment, or conference report that would repeal or otherwise change this subsection." this is not legislation. it's not law. this is a rule change. it's...

Instead of joining us on the right side of history, all the Republicans can come up with is, ‘slow down, stop everything, let’s start over.’ If you think you’ve heard these same excuses before, you’re right. When this country belatedly recognized the wrongs of slavery, there were those who dug in their heels and said ‘slow down, it’s too early, things aren’t bad enough. When women spoke up for the right to speak up, they wanted to vote, some insisted they simply, slow down, there will be a better day to do that, today isn’t quite right. When this body...

Bah Humbug, Mate! Bethany Stotts, December 21, 2009 While the war on Christmas often means eliminating Christian references from this jolly season, some scholars want Santa to get a makeover as well. In a December British Medical Journal article Dr. Nathan J. Grills and illustrator Brendan Halyday question whether Santa Claus is a “public health pariah.” The author, Dr. Grills, openly objects to “multinational capitalists” who use Santa to advertise unhealthy products such as tobacco, alcohol and sweets. “Epidemiologically there is a correlation between countries that venerate Santa Claus and those that have high levels of childhood obesity,” writes Grills,...

Our President has once again jetted off on AF1. Yep, he’s back in Copenhagen to save the world from those evil carbon footprints like the giant ones emitting from his 747. The health care debate is at an impasse, at least for a short time, and can wait until he saves the world—again (yaaaaaaaaaaawn!) Despite the efforts of Senators Joe Lieberman and Tom Coburn, a truncated bill of some kind will probably get passed against citizen wishes by about 60% against VS 35% for. All this will do is glorify the “One” currently residing at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, when he...

Rob Mitchell, congressional candidate for PA's 8th District responds to this weekend's Senate deliberations on sweeping health care reform legislation....

Senator Nelson of Nebraska cut a special deal. In exchange for agreeing to allow government funds be used for abortions, he got a special deal for Nebraska. The special deal was that Nebraska would not have to pay matching funds for Medicade. All the other 49 states must pay matching funds. Many of those state like my own state of California can not afford to pay those matching funds. Who pays for Nebraska's Medicare casts? All of us who live in the other 49 states. BS, I say. We should not stand by while Nebraska sucks money from all the...

Dedicated scientists are working hard to close the gaps, fix the errors and finally complete the human genome sequence. ...Deanna Church has few distractions from the job that lies before her. On her computer sit 888 open 'tickets', or outstanding problems with the human genome sequence. Although that number fluctuates, it's a not-so-subtle reminder that she and her team at the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) have a long way to go... --snip-- By April 2003, the sequencing had surpassed the international project's technical definition of completion — the sequence contained fewer than 1 error per 10,000 nucleotides and...

Ideal health risk indices — from BMI, blood pressure, blood sugars to cholesterol — are mostly euphemisms for thin and young. Those who believe that their own good health is because they eat “right,” exercise and have perfect numbers are often young and upper-income and not old enough to experience age-related changes. Their genetic good fortune is not evidence of good behavior, either. Evidence-based research to date has shown these health indices are primarily measures of aging, genetics and social stresses, and not significantly malleable with “healthful” diets and lifestyles. With aging, the “ideal” numbers of healthy 20-year olds cannot...

"There’s no way around this. Democrats in the White House and on Capitol Hill have just perpetrated the most criminal rip-off in the history of this country on the American people. And with its passage now a certainty, the only thing left to do is to start working on getting it repealed. Here’s how to do that:1. Republicans need to immediately start a coordinated, national congressional campaign for 2010 that focuses on two promises. One is to finally get federal spending under control, which won’t be an easy promise to sell because they didn’t do anything of the sort...

Nelson’s Nebraska To Receive Extra Medicaid Funds Under Senate Bill This morning’s managers amendment to the merged Senate health bill goes a long way towards satisfying the demands of Democratic hold-out and all-important 60th vote Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE). Nelson has recently complained that the proposed expansion of Medicaid to those earning below 133% of the Federal Poverty Line (FPL) would burden his state of Nebraska and suggested that states should be able to opt-in to the program. Under the current merged legislation (the version unveiled on November 18th), the federal government fully finances care for the expanded population for...

WASHINGTON--Senate Democratic leaders said Saturday morning they have secured the 60 votes needed to ensure passage of health overhaul legislation after reaching agreement with Sen. Ben Nelson to address his concerns with the bill's handling of abortion. "Every Democrat realized...we had to get it done," said Sen. Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat who helped broker the final deal. Sen. Nelson, a Nebraska Democrat, told reporters Saturday he intends to vote for the legislation.

The ultimate sacrilige: on a day we celebrate God's mercy, Hussein's cult will try to replace that love in Bethlehem with an earthly government solution. Welcome to fascism.

Creeping Socialism: The Political Kudzu of Our Time SWD Another autumn closes and each tree with the distinctive leaf, shape, tone and tint of its individual species adds an inimitable beauty all its own to the forest of which it is a specialized part. The oak is not the elm; the elm is not the ash; nor the ash the maple. A singular splendor unique to each variety sets apart and distinguishes it from every other. Yet in concert, the solitary glory of each enriches the full symphony that is the forest. As any traveler in the South knows, however,...

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Elderly men and women who sip on several cups of green tea a day may be less likely to have the blues, hint findings of a study from Japan. Dr. Kaijun Niu, at Tohoku University Graduate School of Biomedical Engineering in Sendai, and colleagues found men and women aged 70 and older who drank four or more, versus one or fewer, cups of green tea daily were 44 percent less likely to have symptoms of depression. Several prior studies have linked green tea consumption to reduced levels of psychological distress. This led Niu and colleagues...

ATLANTA — The government's top public health agency frequently failed to police its outside experts for conflicts of interest, according to a new government report released Friday. The report looked at how well the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention looked for and dealt with conflicts among about 250 scientific experts who served on 17 advisory panels in 2007. Panel members are supposed to disclose whether they have been paid by — or own stock in — drug companies or other entities that might have an interest in the panel's decisions. The panels provide advice to the CDC on topics...

I have consistently pointed out that ObamaCare will result, within two to three years of its implementation, in a decline in life expectancy in the United States. This is chiefly because ObamaCare looks at healthcare from the macro-position of its proportion to total GDP, without allowing for individual choice. Because the structure of ObamaCare will be decisions at the macro-level in a structure that will be co-opted by the politically connected parts of the health care industry, the connection between patient and individual care will contiue to be cut. It will have little to do with cutting costs since the...

rare disease. Looking for docs etc. am researching on the net. Thought I would check with my Freeper family too. Prayer appreciated. Soup.

And here’s the most outrageous part: at the end of this rush, they want us to vote on a bill that no one outside the Majority Leader’s conference room has even seen. That’s right. The final bill we’ll vote on isn’t even the one we’ve had on the floor. It’s the deal Democrat leaders have been trying to work out in private’

...For instance, the Reid bill (in sections 3403 and 2021) explicitly empowers Medicare to deny treatment based on cost. An Independent Medicare Advisory Board created by the bill—composed of permanent, unelected and, therefore, unaccountable members—will greatly expand the rationing practices that already occur in the program. Medicare, for example, has limited cancer patients' access to Epogen, a costly but vital drug that stimulates red blood cell production. It has limited the use of virtual, and safer, colonoscopies due to cost concerns. And Medicare refuses medical claims at twice the rate of the largest private insurers. Section 6301 of the Reid...

Sen. Tom Coburn has just demanded that the Senate clerk read the single-payer amendment offered by Sen. Bernie Sanders -- and it's 767 pages. Typically, Senators offering amendments will ask for unanimous consent to avoid reading the entire meausure, but all it takes is one Senator to object to demand its reading, and Coburn objected to Sanders attempt to dispense with the reading of the amendment. To give you a sense of how this could delay things, it took the Senate clerk 18 minutes to get through the first 6 pages of the amendment, which were the table of contents....

Feeling a little stressed over the Christmas holiday season? While it may be the official season to be merry, for many, the holidays are a time of stress, loneliness, anxiety and dysfunction according to ThirdAge.com. Family tensions, financial stress and physical demands are three areas that can trigger holiday stress or depression. So what does one do when it's the season to be jolly, but you're feeling anything but jolly?

I wondered earlier today how the specifics of the health care bill emerging from the Senate differ from the plan that passed in Massachusetts under Mitt Romney, and the answer from his conservative critics is fairly clear: The bill isn't any different, writes the American Spectators Phillip Klein. Romney spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom emails over his view: There are some similarities. For instance, the concept of the "exchange" where people can shop for affordable health plans was pioneered in Massachachusetts. But Mitt's Romney's health care reforms are different in several important respects. First, the bill signed by Governor Romney did not...

The White House and Democratic Leadership in the Senate has told Senator Nelson they will close every military base in Nebraska — a threat that is not credible, really — but they have also offered Senator Nelson between $300 million to $500 million in earmarks, according to key hill health care operatives. These hundreds of millions will be available for whatever he wants to spend them on in Nebraska. Given Senator Nelson’s hard core earmarking history as an appropriator, the word on the street is that this is the real carrot that could get Nelson to agree to some cover...

For days now, the health care legislation in the Senate has been stalled. Democrats are divided over a proposed amendment that would let consumers buy pharmaceuticals from abroad. During the presidential campaign, Obama promised to allow such purchases. But earlier this year he announced his opposition in return for pharmaceutical companies promising to spend at least $150 million, and possibly as much as $200 million, to push his health care legislation. President Obama obviously faces a dilemma: either he keeps the campaign promise he made to voters or he keep his later promise to drug companies. Passing the proposed drug...

It's probably just coincidental that bad numbers about President Obama's much-coveted healthcare legislation came out late last week when few people were paying attention. This is the absolutely crucial healthcare reform plan that simply had to be drafted, discussed, debated, amended and passed before early August. It's supposed to cover millions more Americans and reduce the nation's soaring medical costs. Turns out, not. Here's a little chapter review before semester finals:

New federally financed drug research reveals a stark disparity: children covered by Medicaid are given powerful antipsychotic medicines at a rate four times higher than children whose parents have private insurance. And the Medicaid children are more likely to receive the drugs for less severe conditions than their middle-class counterparts, the data shows... --snip-- The F.D.A. has approved antipsychotic drugs for children specifically to treat schizophrenia, autism and bipolar disorder. But they are more frequently prescribed to children for other, less extreme conditions, including attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, aggression, persistent defiance or other so-called conduct disorders — especially when the...

A natural glue that sticks mussels to rocks and boat hulls has inspired US scientists to develop a new type of medical adhesive for use in pancreatic islet transplantation, an experimental medical procedure for treating patients with type 1 diabetes. The glue, developed by Phillip Messersmith's team at Northwestern University in Evanston, consists of a branched poly(ethylene glycol) core with catechol-derived end groups. Speaking at the Materials Research Society's meeting in Boston last week, Messersmith explained that the catechol functional group plays a key role in the solidification and adhesive capabilities of the marine blue mussel Mytilus edulis' adhesive proteins. 'Catechol in the presence of an...

December 10, 2009 Palin on Obama Speech: 'I Liked What He Said' December 10th From CNN Associate Producer Martina Stewart (CNN) – Sarah Palin had some rare praise Thursday for President Obama after the president delivered his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech in Oslo. But the former Republican vice presidential nominee added that she would like to see the president act more like his predecessor, George W. Bush. "I liked what he said," Palin told USAToday in an interview after the speech. Palin said the president's remarks had a familiar ring. "I thumbed through my book quickly this morning to...

Polled support for the health care plan wending its way through Congress continues to crash downward in the polls. And before you say it, it's not just Rasmussen, which has actually been pretty much in the middle of the other polls. Here's where we stand as of today. For reform advocates, this is not good news. At 40% approval, it probably passes. At 30% approval--what Social Security reform enjoyed by the time it imploded--it's not going to no matter how the Senate massages their plan. Democrats cannot pass a bill this large on a straight party line vote if the...

More on Politics >> * That Grand Health Care Compromise? Jerry Nadler Has His Doubts * With Sampson's Support, Malcolm Smith Might Just Hang On * Unless He Wins the Governor's Race, Paterson Wants to Be on The View * Between Andrew Cuomo and a Balanced Ticket * The Elephants and the Ants All year, the biggest fault-line in the health care debate has been the public option–a proposed government-run insurance plan that Americans without access to group coverage would be eligible to sign up for. To liberals, it has been the reason for doing health care reform, an innovative...

A temporal twist to a therapeutic technique could block old terrors. Fearful memories can be wiped out for at least a year using a drug-free technique, according to a study done in the United States. The technique exploits the way that human brains store and recall memories. When a long-term memory is recalled, it goes through a brief period of vulnerability, after which it must be stored anew to be remembered again. While the memory is in its fragile state, it can be modified or disrupted. Studies in animals1 have used drugs to interfere with this reconsolidation process, stirring hope...

"I cannot think of anything, domestically, that would do more harm to our country and to the people of our country, and to future generations, than the health care bill thats being promoted right now. Nobody in this country wants this defeated more than I do." -U.S. Senate Republican Whip Jon Kyl The Arizona Senator made the statement on the heels of this: Tea Party Support ( http://teapartysupport.com ) and the Social Security Institute ( http://socialsecurityinstitute.com ) joined forces yesterday to blast out a million-and-a-half email messages asking people to demand that Republican Senators stop assisting Harry Reid to ram...

A new analysis, using H1N1 deaths in the United States in the spring and projecting likely outcomes for this fall, shows that a typical -- or possibly even a milder flu season than average -- should have been expected. The finding begs the question: Has swine flu been oversold? The new study, done by researchers at Harvard University and the Medical Research Council Biostatistics Unit in the U.K., says swine flu cases in the spring indicated a flu season that might be, at worst, slightly worse than normal. "It would have been great to have that back in June," said...

President Barack Obama is spending almost $600 million to build community health centers and to make medical records easier to find. The White House on Wednesday painted the spending -- part of the $787 billion stimulus bill the president championed during his first days in office -- as a way to add jobs to a struggling economy. Officials also linked it to the administration's broader push for an overhaul of the nation's health systems that remains unfinished in Congress.