Free Republic

Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) is leading a new push to allow women to buy birth control without a prescription, hoping to deliver on one of the biggest promises of his freshman Senate campaign last year.A half-dozen Senate Republicans have signed onto Gardner’s bill, which would require drug companies that sell contraceptives to file an application to sell their products over the counter. “Most other drugs with such a long history of safe and routine use are available for purchase over the counter, and contraception should join them,” Gardner wrote in a statement. He said his bill would benefit women in...

I received the bill for a single porcelain crown today. It was almost $900. That got me to thinking, what would it cost if you had to pay for all of your body parts one piece at a time? At today's prices, probably way more than a lot of us are worth. God sure was good to us. He gave most of us all the body parts we needed for free. Of course good ol' mom and dad helped! Just something to be thankful for and a break from thinking about all the trouble in the world today.

The news from Africa and the Third World is seldom good, and much of the bad news is about disease born of ignorance, superstition and primitive sanitation, news dispatched by a media addicted to tales of unrelieved gloom, certain doom and inevitable disaster. We were all supposed to be dead by now from strange diseases reduced in the public prints to acronyms and bold initials — AIDS, SARS, MERS, swine flu, avian flu and most recently Ebola. These diseases are rightly feared, but in most places they’re diseases only of a tiny part of the population of a country or...

Proposals set the stage for debate over federal health law’s impact. Major insurers in some states are proposing hefty rate boosts for plans sold under the federal health law, setting the stage for an intense debate this summer over the law’s impact. In New Mexico, market leader Health Care Service Corp. is asking for an average jump of 51.6% in premiums for 2016. The biggest insurer in Tennessee, BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee, has requested an average 36.3% increase. In Maryland, market leader CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield wants to raise rates 30.4% across its products. Moda Health, the largest insurer on the...

Despite fury from lawmakers the day before, Colorado’s health exchange board voted on Thursday to collect millions of additional dollars from all Colorado health insurance customers, even those who have nothing to do with the exchange. On top of that “broad market assessment,” the board also voted to more than double the user fees levied on people who buy insurance through Colorado’s exchange. .. The higher broad market fee is projected to allow Connect for Health Colorado to scoop up about about $20 million in 2016. It has been set at $1.25 per member per month on all health insurance...

Nearly two in three Americans who bought subsidized health insurance on the Obamacare exchanges this year had to pay some of the federal dollars back, according to new data from H&R Block. That's because they presumably collected more federal aid than their income qualified them for. In that case, consumers must either pay some of it back or — in most cases — the IRS will subtract it from their tax refund. Policymakers have expressed concern that low-income people could struggle with paying back the subsidies — or suffer if their tax refunds are greatly reduced because of overpayments. The...

iFixit’s teardown of the Apple Watch has revealed that the sophisticated heart-rate monitor used is actually capable of acting as a pulse oximeter, allowing it to calculate the oxygen content of your blood by measuring how much infrared light is absorbed. This data would be useful for health and fitness monitoring, but the functionality is not currently enabled in the watch. As iFixit notes, there are a couple of possible reasons Apple is not currently allowing to watch to display this data … First, it may simply be that the company hasn’t yet achieved the necessary accuracy and reliability from...

What can be done to ignore a government determined to lie to everyone about a “threat” that does not exist? Not much. Let us begin with the understanding that there is no connection between the climate and health. The climate is something measured in decades and centuries, so what happened in the last century has nothing to do with whether you are sneezing today. The weather surely can help generate health problems. For example in the northeastern states, the Lyme disease season is beginning. Between 1992 and 2010 reported cases of Lyme disease doubled to nearly 23,000 according to the...

A protein which ‘turbo-charges’ the immune system so that it can fight off any cancer or virus has been discovered by scientists. In a breakthrough described as a ‘game-changer’ for cancer treatment, researchers at Imperial College found a previously unknown molecule which boosts the body’s ability to fight off chronic illnesses. Scientists at Imperial College London, who led the study, are now developing a gene therapy based on the protein and hope to begin human trials in three years. “This is exciting because we have found a completely different way to use the immune system to fight cancer,” said Professor...

Another veterans scandal hit the Obama administration Wednesday with the emergence of an internal Veterans Affairs memo that allowed bureaucrats to cook their books and assert they were answering diligently President Obama’s call to reduce the backlog of veterans’ benefits claims. The memo was known inside the VA as “Fast Letter 13-10,” and a government watchdog said Wednesday this “flawed” guidance from VA headquarters in Washington deliberately resulted in making the agency appear it was delivering services and benefits to veterans faster than it really was. The VA inspector general examined the impact of the memo, issued in May 2013,

The Food and Drug Administration is tearing into several Kind fruit and nut bars, blasting the company's claims they are healthy.Apparently there is a federal criterion for what is considered healthy, and Kind doesn't meet it, according to a recent FDA warning letter to the company.The agency singled out the labels for four Kind bars: almond and apricot, almond and coconut, peanut butter-dark chocolate and protein, and dark chocolate-cherry cashew and antioxidants.The agency took aim at several claims that the bars were "healthy," including that they were low in sodium and were a good source of fiber.

'It's going to be the new little wave' For decades, if not centuries, the Amazon dwellers of southern Colombia didn’t make too much of the cacay nut. They fed it to their livestock, used it to treat wounds and chopped down its trees for firewood. But then, a few years ago, the global jet-setting crowd found out what the yellow-ish oil from the protein-rich nut could do for their skin. And suddenly, the cacay (pronounced kahk-ai) has become a red-hot commodity, providing the key ingredient to anti-aging facial creams that can fetch $200 an ounce in beauty shops in Los...

April 15 is right around the corner, and millions of Americans will find themselves paying more in taxes than ever thanks to Obamacare. The law is more than a fundamental change to the country’s health care system. It also is a massive tax hike. As The Heritage Foundation’s Federal Budget in Pictures shows, according to the most recent scores, Obamacare will increase taxes by nearly $800 billion for the period of 2013-2022.

Gov. Scott Walker heads to Europe this week on a trade mission featuring private meetings with business and government representatives in Germany, France and Spain, as he ramps up for a likely bid for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016. The most high-profile event on Walker's itinerary comes Tuesday when he's slated to deliver a 15-minute speech titled "Opportunities for bilateral trade and investment" at the Hannover Messe trade show in Germany. That is the world's largest industrial fair, Walker's office said in the documents detailing the trip provided to The Associated Press. Walker's only other event that's open to...

The team at Oxon Epidemiology and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine analysed medical records from 1,958,191 people aged 55, on average, for up to two decades. Their most conservative analysis showed underweight people had a 39% greater risk of dementia compared with being a healthy weight. But those who were overweight had an 18% reduction in dementia - and the figure was 24% for the obese. "Yes, it is a surprise," said lead researcher Dr Nawab Qizilbash. He told the BBC News website: "The controversial side is the observation that overweight and obese people have a lower...

Scientists Confirm Institute of Medicine Recommendation for Vitamin D Intake Was Miscalculated and Is Far Too Low Released: 17-Mar-2015 10:05 AM EDTSource Newsroom: Creighton University more news from this source Contact InformationAvailable for logged-in reporters onlyCitationsNutrients 2014Newswise — SAN DIEGO, CA (March 16, 2015) - Researchers at UC San Diego and Creighton University have challenged the intake of vitamin D recommended by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) Institute of Medicine (IOM), stating that their Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) for vitamin D underestimates the need by a factor of ten.In a letter1 published last week in the journal Nutrients...

For nicotine enthusiasts, 2015 will be remembered as part of a golden era. Less than 10 years after they were introduced in the United States, e-cigarettes have gone relatively unregulated by health agencies, with companies and users making their own rules in a nicotine-laced Wild West. E-cigarette companies have been advertising their products to adults and children alike, claiming to help smokers quit while simultaneously promoting lollipop-flavored liquids. But now health organizations, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and even city-based public health departments are starting to fight back—not in the form of regulations, but with their own...

Apparently, parents should visit the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) website to find out how to teach their children good eating habits.The agency in charge of the country’s agricultural sector is now in the nanny business, thanks to First Lady Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” initiative to fight childhood obesity, which links to choosemyplate.gov on its website.In the kids’ section of My Plate, advice is dished out on how parents can help pre-schoolers “develop healthy eating habits,” including a warning about praising an empty plate.“Avoid praising a clean plate,” the website states. “Your child should stop eating when he or she...

Complete Headline: EXCLUSIVE: Illegal Immigrant with Drug-Resistant TB to Be Released into US, say Congressional Leaders On Friday, Arizona Rep. Paul Gosar, along with Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick (D-AZ) and Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Jeff Flake (R-AZ), sent a letter to DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson and ICE Deputy Assistant Secretary Saldaña warning them not to release an illegal immigrant with drug-resistant tuberculosis into the general public.

Illinois lawmakers are close to banning — or partially banning — new versions of some of the most popular products on any convenience store shelf. The Illinois state Senate is poised to vote on two proposed laws outlawing powdered alcohol, often called Palcohol, and powdered caffeine. Chicago Democrat Ira Silverstein is pushing the powdered alcohol ban, and the proposal cleared a legislative committee last week. Illinois Watchdog reached out to Silverstein, but he did not immediately return our calls. Silverstein has said, however, that he's afraid for young people. "It's the type of item that can be sprinkled on food...