Free Republic

With less than a month to go, presidential candidate Barack Obama wants to deliver a knock-out punch by hitting John McCain on health care. On Saturday Mr. Obama called his rival's health-care proposal "radical" and, in swing states, he is now blasting it in TV ads. Mr. Obama is also distributing mailers and organizing "Docs for Barack" meetings to rally voters. It's good politics for Mr. Obama. But it's bad policy. Mr. McCain's proposal -- to give every American the tax credit businesses get for buying health insurance -- is the right prescription for what ails our health-care system. The...

The centerpiece of Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama’s health care platform is the creation of a national health plan and a new agency to help individuals purchase private health plans. “We now face an opportunity – and an obligation – to turn the page on the failed politics of yesterday’s health care debates,” Obama said in a speech posted on his Web site. “My plan begins by covering every American.” Obama’s health care platform also includes keen oversight of the health insurance industry, prescription drug reforms, cost-saving strategies, increased medical research and disease prevention. Thomas Gustafson, PhD, senior policy...

New Deal on Medicare by: Bethany Stotts, October 06, 2008 The New Deal policies of Medicare and Social Security started out as small programs in the Thirties, but this year’s Medicare expenditures will total about $391 billion. The Medicare Trustees have issued a “funding warning” for the program in their last two annual reports. According to the Medicare Trustees 2008 statement, “Underlying health care costs per enrollee are projected to rise faster than the wages per worker on which payroll taxes and Social Security benefits are based. As a result, while Medicare’s annual costs were 3.2 percent of GDP in...

Barack Obama's Health Care Record ARLINGTON, VA -- With Barack Obama lying about John McCain's health care plan today, please find below the facts about Barack Obama's health care record: BARACK OBAMA RECENTLY ACKNOWLEDGED HIS PLAN WILL COST AT LEAST $150 BILLION A YEAR Despite What He Claimed Today, Barack Obama Recently Said His Plan Will Cost At Least $150 Billion, Despite Earlier Claims That It Will Cost Much Less: Barack Obama Said On "60 Minutes" That His Plan Would Cost At Least $150 Billion. CBS' Steve Kroft: "How much is it going to cost? $150 billion it's going to...

NEWPORT NEWS, VA. -- As the presidential campaign entered its final month, Democrat Barack Obama issued a sharp assault on Republican John McCain's healthcare proposal Saturday, arguing it would lead to higher taxes for some families and knock as many as 20 million people out of their current insurance plans. The topic provided a new focus for the campaign, as Obama launched four television ads in battleground states criticizing McCain's plan. The candidates have spent the last two weeks sparring over the nation's financial crisis.

In Thursday's vice presidential debate, Joe Biden changed his tune on John McCain's health care plan - but he's still singing off-key. The centerpiece of McCain's plan is to alter the tax breaks the federal government grants those who purchase health insurance. Currently, every dollar your employer spends on health benefits avoids federal payroll and income taxes. If you don't have job-based coverage, you generally get nothing. McCain proposes to eliminate that inequitable tax break and replace it with a universal tax credit. Every individual would get a flat $2,500 tax break, while families would get $5,000, no matter where...

Volunteers In Medicine free clinic stopped accepting illegal immigrant patients in September because Martin Memorial officials say the health system no longer can afford to provide medical tests for them. Martin Memorial Health Systems provides diagnostic services and therapy — everything from blood analysis to body scans — for the Volunteers In Medicine clinic, which provides free care for impoverished, uninsured Martin County residents. Last year, Martin Memorial did $2.3 million in work for the clinic's 1,000 patients. "We have worked closely with Volunteers In Medicine," Martin Memorial spokesman Scott Samples said. "We both agree that neither of us has...

The rule of thumb for fact checkers of Thursday night’s vice-presidential debate was that every time Joe Biden sounded especially confident, he was saying something that wasn’t true. For the most part, these were gross exaggerations or convenient fictions aimed to allow him to make a point he couldn’t otherwise support. How to answer the charge that he and Obama voted for a budget resolution that called for taxing Americans making $42,000? Assert that John McCain voted for it too, although he didn’t. How to argue that we’re paying no attention to Afghanistan? Claim repeatedly that we spend more in...

Obama is lying about McCain's plans again http://www.thebulletin.us/site/index.cfm?newsid=20148771&BRD=2737&PAG=461&dept_id=576361&rfi=8

CHICO — A West Lindo Avenue resident said a second attempt in as many days was made Wednesday morning to steal marijuana from a garden in his backyard. The alleged victim told police he fired several rounds at suspects as they fled in a vehicle on West Lindo at about 4 a.m. Some of the man's neighbors said they heard at least six shots, but didn't see a vehicle. ... [REST OF ARTICLE AT LINK]

The California Nurses Association has begun airing an ad in battleground presidential election states that suggests voters should be concerned about John McCain's health and Sarah Palin's ability to be president if he should die in office. The ad, airing in Colorado, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Ohio and Wisconsin, shows images of McCain and Palin alongside a graphic that suggests a heart monitor. Several charges against Palin are flashed on the screen, including "Opposed ‘Bridge to Nowhere' then kept the taxpayers' money" and "Wants to teach creationism in public schools," alongside a women singing "one heartbeat away." At the end of...

Elizabeth Edwards, the wife of former Democratic presidential candidate and former Sen. John Edwards (N.C.), on Tuesday linked the current economic downturn with problems in the U.S. health care system, the AP/Kansas City Star reports. Elizabeth Edwards, who has incurable cancer, has made several recent public appearances in support of efforts to expand health insurance to all residents. During a conference call on Tuesday, she said that problems with payments of medical bills often lead to home foreclosures, a major factor in the current economic downturn. Elizabeth Edwards also said that residents without health insurance often are less productive because...

Lawmakers and lobbyists who favor mental health parity legislation have said for months that the 110th Congress is the best chance in more than a decade to get a bill to the president’s desk. But the inclusion of the parity provisions in a financial bailout package is another in a series of high-risk gambles that could fell the parity legislation yet again, depending on whether the House clears the Senate’s new package this week. However, now that the mental health provisions have been added, at least one House member — key parity advocate Jim Ramstad , R-Minn. — is reconsidering...

Washington, DC -- Barack Obama claims he is the best candidate when it comes to improving health care for Americans and he touted better health care during the first presidential debate. However, his record is blemished with a vote against extending a health care program to cover pregnant women and their unborn children.

Drug Companies’ Elusive Profits by: Jesse Masai, September 30, 2008 What is the incentive to develop new drugs? What should it be? Those were the two questions emerging out of a book published and launched last week by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) in Washington, DC. The book, Innovation and Technology Adoption in Health Care Markets, was written by Anupam B. Jena and Tomas J. Philipson, both from the University of Chicago. “Cost effectiveness analysis may reduce incentives to develop new drugs. Drug firms may have too low incentives to develop new drugs,” they said in a joint statement. They...

Quick test: Which presidential candidate offers the most radical new approach for health care coverage in the United States? If you listen to the spin-meisters denouncing universal health care as “socialized medicine,” you’d answer Democrat Barack Obama. But by far, the most radical plan belongs to John McCain. The Republican candidate would essentially destroy the foundation on which the current health insurance system is based and replace it with a dubious plan to let the marketplace work its magic. “Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade with banking,...

It is vitally important that our readers circulate this information as widely as possible. Barack Obama, with his own words, conceded the health care reform issue to John McCain. Just one last point I want to make, since Senator McCain talked about providing a $5,000 health credit. Now, what he doesn't tell you is that he intends to, for the first time in history, tax health benefits. So you may end up getting a $5,000 tax credit. Here's the only problem: Your employer now has to pay taxes on the health care that you're getting from your employer. And if...

WASHINGTON - Joe Biden charged Thursday during a campaign stop in Pennsylvania that John McCain's tax proposals for health insurance would be "the largest tax increase in the history of America for the middle class." He was wrong. McCain does propose taxing the health benefits that some 156 million people get through the workplace. That's a major change, because now no income taxes are levied on those benefits, but it's not the whole story. So, as Biden explained, someone who makes $40,000 and gets $12,000 in health insurance benefits would end up paying income taxes on $52,000. But what Biden...

PORTLAND, Ore. - A patient treated for agonizing abdominal pain received this surprising news in the hospital’s paperwork: “Based on your visit today, we know you are pregnant.” Surprising indeed for 71-year-old John Grady Pippen. The staff at Curry General Hospital in Gold Beach gave the retired mechanic and logger the ridiculously happy news this month, along with some pain pills. Hospital administrator William McMillan says an errant keystroke caused the hospital’s computer to spit out the wrong discharge instructions for the grandfather.

LifeNews.com Note: Ken Conner is a pro-life attorney who was intimately involved in the fight to save Terri Schiavo and is the former president of the Family Research Council. He is now the chairman of the Center for a Just Society.A waste. A burden. That is how influential medical ethics expert Baroness Warnock views people suffering from dementia. Lady Warnock, a prominent adviser to the British government, told the Church of Scotland's Life and Work magazine that people suffering from dementia should be allowed to kill themselves rather than continue to burden their families and Britain's National Health Service. Sadly,...

LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- A Shelby County man and his wife said two doctors amputated the man's penis without his consent, and have filed a lawsuit. According to the lawsuit, Philip Seaton, 61, went to have a circumcision last Octoberas part of treatment for a medical condition. Seaton said when he woke up from the procedure, he realized his penis had been amputated. Seaton has suffered mental anguish, pain, and has lost the enjoyment of life, according to the lawsuit. The lawsuit was filed in Shelby County court last week against Dr. John Patterson, who performed the procedure, Dr. Oliver James,...

ORANGE – UCI Medical Center could lose Medicare funding after investigators found that anesthesiologists falsified surgical records, filling them out before patients were ever put under on the operating table. Inspectors found serious deficiencies that "substantially limit the hospital's capacity to render adequate care to patients," according to the certified letter and report sent Aug. 15 to the hospital's administrator. The Register obtained a copy of the public record from Medicare officials after UCI failed to respond to a Sept. 12 request for the report and accompanying information. UCI officials sent the Register an e-mail today – after learning of...

WATERBURY -- Dr. John Conant thinks about early retirement every day. Twenty-three years into his career, the 55-year-old Waterbury urologist loves his profession and his patients, but he's frustrated by the continuing fights with Medicare and private insurers over reimbursement rates, pre-authorizations and other issues. He's not alone. Nineteen percent of Connecticut physicians who responded to a recent survey say they are contemplating a career change. Ten percent say they plan to leave the state because of the practice environment. The survey, which polled 4,000 licensed physicians practicing in the state, drew 1,077 responses. It was commissioned by the Connecticut...

"Canadian officials want to know why a wheelchair-bound man waited for 34 hours in a Winnipeg hospital's emergency waiting room before dying from a bladder infection..."

BALTIMORE – A man alleging a Maryland doctor stapled his rectum shut during an operation — causing him to go without defecating for 17 days — took his federal lawsuit to trial Monday in Baltimore. Ronald Watkins, 64, of West Virginia, is suing Manuel Casiano, a doctor in Frederick County, for allegedly botching a 2004 surgery that left Watkins with permanent bowel problems. “The reason for suing Dr. Casiano is very simple: His rectum was stapled shut,” said Julia Lodowski, who with attorney Emily Malarkey is representing Watkins and his wife, Brenda.

HONEY, used for generations to soothe sore throats, could soon be substituted for antibiotics in fighting stubborn ear, nose and throat infections, according to a new study. Ottawa University doctors found in tests that ordinary honey kills bacteria that cause sinus infections, and does it better in most cases than antibiotics. The researchers have so far tested manuka honey from New Zealand, and sidr honey from Yemen. "It's astonishing," researcher Joseph Marson said of bees' unexplained ability to combine the nectar of flowers into a seemingly potent medicine. The preliminary tests were conducted in laboratory dishes, not in live patients,...

The government paid more than $1 billion in questionable Medicare claims for medical supplies that showed little relation to a patient's condition, including blood glucose strips for sexual impotence and special diabetic shoes for leg amputees, congressional investigators say. Billions more in taxpayer dollars may have been wasted over the last decade because the government-run health program for the elderly and disabled paid out claims with blank or invalid diagnosis codes, such as a "?" or "zzzzz." Medicare officials say even smiley-face icons could have been accepted. The report by Republicans on the Senate Homeland Security investigations subcommittee, obtained by...

…Psst. If I let you in on a little secret, you promise not to tell? Pinkie swear! Alright. I have never been to a political meeting in my life. OK. Now that’s out of the bag, I’ll let you in on another one. Thursday, September 25, 2008 I plan to attend my first Democrat party meeting… and I’m takin’ popcorn and candy. I’m not sure what to expect, but I figure it’ll be pretty cool. I think Whoopie Goldberg is the keynote speaker (I’m told she’s some Jewish chick from the Bronx). She’ll probably drone on about fiscal responsibility and...

In the YouTube video, Angelique Flowers, propped up with pillows, speaks just above a whisper – but her words are strong. "The law wouldn't let a dog suffer the agony I'm going through before an inevitable death. It would be put down. Yet under the law, my life is worth less than a dog's," says Flowers, 31, in her poignant plea to Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to legalize euthanasia. Flowers, a writer who has suffered with debilitating Crohn's disease for 16 years, died in August after she was diagnosed in May with advanced, aggressive colon cancer. She spent much...

Why flip-flop on specific policies one at a time, when a candidate can do so much more efficiently by calling a general retreat? Less than 48 hours after telling CNBC that his health-insurance plan was fully funded and would not get affected by a massive government bailout of the credit markets, Obama has reversed himself and put his expensive federal programs on hold. He also criticized his own running mate on the Today show this morning: Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) said in an interview aired Tuesday that the cost of the mortgage bailout plan may rein in his ambitious plans...

In Sickness and In Health by: Malcolm A. Kline, September 23, 2008 Critics in both the media and academia who point to exploding costs and denial of care as maladies afflicting the U. S. health care system are getting part of the story right. “In the last seven years, we’ve had over [a] 100 percent increase in insurance premiums and only a 27 percent increase in earnings,” University of Utah economist Norman J. Waitzman said in a roundtable sponsored by Continuum, the university’s magazine. Waitzman is co-director of the Behavioral Science and Health program at the University. Unfortunately, too many...

An Obama-Biden ad falsely claims McCain says he wants to "do the same to our health care" that "Wall Street deregulation" has done to the banking industry. [snip]the full context reveals that McCain was referring narrowly to his proposal to allow people to purchase health insurance across state lines.

Officials at the U.S. Census Bureau recently released new health insurance figures purporting to show that the number of Americans officially classified as uninsured in 2007 was 45.7 million, down from 47 million in 2006. Despite the decline, the new figure is being spun as proof positive that America's healthcare system is still in awful shape. Advocates of socialized medicine are repeating it ad nauseam, arguing that the main problem with the country's health system is the massive uninsured population. After all, if a whopping 15 percent of the population is uninsured, then the current system must be failing. But...

IN AN AMERICA where any remark hinting of prejudice can force its maker into endless mea culpas, the mocking of a world religious leader ought to invite political suicide. But one religion, the Catholic Church, seems to be exempt -- at least by some advocates of Initiative 1000, which would legalize physician-assisted suicide. Pope Benedict XVI took an anti-euthanasia message to Lourdes last week, saying, "A society unable to accept its suffering members and incapable of helping to share their suffering is a cruel and inhumane society." "Dignity never abandons the sick person," he declared, adding that people must accept...

Kenya Medical Supplies Agency (Kemsa) Western depot has 19 million condoms, but lacks essential drugs. Investigation revealed the Kisumu town storage area had not received vaccines, whose shortage would put the lives of newborns in danger. The depot manager, Mr Geoffrey Alumila, said they had not been given vital vaccines for prevention of polio, tetanus and TB for several months. "The shortage of vaccines and other drugs in public hospitals is as a result of lack of supply," he said, on Thursday. However, he said the delivery of condoms has been constant. "We have 19 million condoms in our stock,...

The wait to see primary care doctors in Massachusetts has grown to as long as 100 days, while the number of practices accepting new patients has dipped in the past four years, with care the scarcest in some rural areas. Now, as the state's health insurance mandate threatens to make a chronic doctor shortage worse, the Legislature has approved an unprecedented set of financial incentives for young physicians, and other programs to attract primary care doctors. But healthcare leaders fear the new measures will take several years to ease the shortage. Senate President Therese Murray, who championed the legislation, said...

Remittances from overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) have eased the impact of the U.S. financial crisis on the Philippine economy, local media reported on Sunday. Diwa Guinigundo, deputy governor of the Philippine central bank, said the OFWs' foreign-exchange remittances have buttressed the local economy even as the global financial markets reeled from the effects of the U.S. subprime crisis, the Philippine Star reported. The U.S. downturn has left giant institutions shuddering, including investment banks Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch, and insurance giant American International Group. "OFWs are now saving and investing their hard-earned money which helps generate economic activity," Guinigundo said....

PENSIONERS with dementia should consider ending their lives to stop “wasting” NHS resources, it was suggested yesterday. Medical ethics expert Baroness Warnock, 84, said senility sufferers were a burden to their families and doctors. And she said there was nothing wrong with them feeling they had a “duty” to opt for euthanasia for the sake of others. She said: “If you are demented you are wasting people’s lives, your family’s lives and you are wasting the resources of the NHS.

ON FEW ISSUES do Barack Obama and John McCain diverge as dramatically as they do on healthcare. Both say they want to reduce costs and expand coverage to the 47 million uninsured. But while Obama wants to build on the existing employer-based system with new coverage plans for families and businesses, McCain aims to move the country away from work-based insurance and toward a system in which all Americans cut their own deals with private insurers. If the national campaign ever gets past lipstick and the collapse of investment banks, these differences on healthcare may get the attention they deserve....

ORLANDO, Fla., Sept. 19 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The White House Writers Group and West Wing Writers have come together from opposite sides of the political spectrum to host a bipartisan forum, America's Health Care At Risk: Finding Cure, on Sept. 17 and 18 at the Hyatt Regency Orlando International Hotel in Florida. Across the nation there is significant agreement that the health care system needs to be fixed and the next president -- no matter who takes office -- will have to approach Members of Congress and find champions on both sides of the aisle to enact change. With the upcoming...

<p>In yet another revealing moment for nationalized health care, a highly respected British ethicist said that dementia sufferers should get euthanized in order to preserve resources for healthier people. Baroness Warnock, described as “Britain’s leading moral philosopher”, said that the government should license people to be “put down”</p>

Two hospitals in Australia are serving vegetarian meals because of unpaid meat bills, a provincial legislator says. Kevin Humphries, a member of the New South Wales parliament, told the Melbourne Sun-Herald that the Greater Western Area Health Service, which operates the Gilgandra and Coonabarabran hospitals, owes money to a number of suppliers.

People should be able to say if they wish to die, Baroness Warnock says People with dementia should be able to end their lives if they feel they are a burden to others or to the NHS, according to a respected ethicist. Baroness Mary Warnock, who has made similar calls in recent years, first made her remarks in a Church of Scotland magazine. She told the BBC she believed there were many who "sank into dementia when they would very much prefer to die". But Alzheimer's charities called her remarks "insensitive and ignorant". Around 700,000 people in the UK...

With the President Bioethics Council expected to meet soon over a proposed law protecting the conscience of pro-life healthcare workers, an association of Christian physicians is urging the public to weigh in on the highly debated issue before the deadline for public comments ends next week.   The proposal by the Department of Health and Human Services calls for stronger protections for health professionals who refuse to participate in abortions or dispense emergency contraception or birth control because of personal, moral or religious beliefs. The regulation would require hospitals receiving federal funds to guarantee that, in their hiring process, they do...

NEW YORK, NY - WebMD, the leading source of health information, has teamed up with the nonpartisan Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) to help educate WebMD’s visitors about issues that are prominent during the 2008 general election debates. WebMD will gather questions for the second presidential debate – a Town Hall format to be moderated by NBC News’ Tom Brokaw. During the debate on Tuesday, October 7, the moderator will ask questions from audience members and may include health-related questions that are submitted online at WebMD. WebMD will use its election message board (www.webmd.com/askthecandidates) to gather questions for consideration by...

Commentary by Dr. Paul A. Byrne, M.D.http://www.thelifeguardian.orgWe are bombarded with propaganda that encourages organ donation. For an organ to be suitable for transplantation it must be taken from a living person. Recent reports in the literature include: Dr. KG Karakatsanis of Greece evaluated current clinical criteria and confirmatory tests for the diagnosis of "brain death" to determine if they satisfied the requirements for the irreversible cessation of all functions of the entire brain including the brain stem. He reviewed medical, philosophical and legal literature on the subject of "brain death." He presented four arguments:  Many clinically 'brain-dead' patients maintain...

What kind of "change" does Barack Obama want? He seeks to transform America into Canada. Mr. Obama is not proposing "new politics," but is a champion of the well-known, already enacted policies in the Great White North. His proposals are more reflective of Canadian values than American national ideals. For example, Mr. Obama's economic plan consists of attempting to redress the disparities of wealth in the United States. He also wants to help the middle class, whom he states has been "squeezed" in the last decade. He rails against overpaid CEOs and an economy that is "out of balance." He...

The veteran Government adviser said pensioners in mental decline are "wasting people's lives" because of the care they require and should be allowed to opt for euthanasia even if they are not in pain. She insisted there was "nothing wrong" with people being helped to die for the sake of their loved ones or society. The 84-year-old added that she hoped people will soon be "licensed to put others down" if they are unable to look after themselves. Her comments in a magazine interview have been condemned as "immoral" and "barbaric", but also sparked fears that they may find wider...

Cloud computing puts your health data at risk By Stuart J. Johnston The advent of "in the cloud" medical records services, such as Microsoft HealthVault and Google Health, promises an explosion in the storage of personal health-care information online. But these services pose sticky privacy questions — unless you know how to protect your personal medical records. ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Private health data goes public by mistake Part of consumers' reticence to sign up for electronic personal health-care records — with or without services "in the cloud" — has to do with a handful of recent high-profile...

Anne Royalty, associate professor of economics at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI), is one of four scholars who have published a critique of Senator John McCain’s proposed health insurance reform plan. McCain’s reform package “would eliminate the current tax exclusion of employer payments for health coverage, replace the exclusion with a refundable tax credit for those who purchase coverage, and encourage Americans to move to a national market for nongroup insurance,” according to the critique abstract. Results of the change will “tend to raise costs, reduce the generosity of benefits, and leave people with fewer consumer protections,” the researchers said....