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The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear arguments against the availability of exchange subsidies under the Affordable Care Act. Today’s order from the Court granted review in King v. Burwell, one of several cases challenging IRS regulations extending tax-credit subsidies to the states with federal exchanges. Briefings will be submitted over the next few months, and a ruling is not expected until June.

Let’s start with the doctor/patient relationship—the disappearance of which has been lamented by many. The pertinent definition of “relationship” in the Oxford Dictionaries deems it: “The way in which two or more people or organizations regard and behave toward each other.” In one sense, every patient wants to be treated well by his physician, and in many cases, so-called “continuity of care” is most desirable. Likewise, the physician may wish to spend more time with a particular patient, but is forced by economic realities to rush the process. Perhaps, some of this search for the ideal doctor/patient relationship is driven...

More than 25,000 federal employees will lose their health plans next year as insurance providers drop out of the government’s coverage network, according to the Office of Personnel Management. Affected workers will have the option of switching to other plans within the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program, but the number of disruptions will reach the highest level since more than 61,000 enrollees had to change plans in 2009. Insurance providers drop out of the federal workforce’s health program every year, so this year’s changes are nothing new. Companies generally leave the network because they have not attracted enough enrollees to...

Headline: Obama’s Health Law: Who Was Helped Most Writers: By KEVIN QUEALY and MARGOT SANGER-KATZ Dated: OCT. 29, 2014 Tickler: A new data set provides a clearer picture of which people gained health insurance under the Affordable Care Act. Excerpt: ... 10 million more people have insurance coverage this year... Now a large set of data ... The biggest winners from the law include... ... Overall change in uninsured Americans, 2013-14 ... Over all, about 10 million Americans who had no insurance in 2013 signed up for it this year,... ... several charts... People who live in states that... ......

On Monday, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention head Thomas Frieden announced a new policy on health care workers returning from Ebola-plagued West Africa. Parroting President Obama’s Saturday radio address, Frieden cautioned that Americans must be “guided by the science,” not fear. Sorry. The Obama administration’s halfway approach is based on political correctness, not science. And it is a gamble. According to Frieden, about five health care workers fly back from West Africa to the U.S. every day, landing at Chicago, Newark, Atlanta, New York’s JFK or Dulles outside of Washington, D.C. For months, the CDC did almost nothing to...

Health Reform: The New York Times on Monday featured a huge news package claiming that ObamaCare is delivering on all its main promises. But the Bible of the liberal press has badly misled its flock. 'After a year fully in place," the Times story begins, "the Affordable Care Act has largely succeeded in delivering on President Obama's main promises." So case closed, right? After all, a team of New York Times "reporters and data researchers" came to that conclusion. In a word, no. To claim success, the Times gets things wrong or ignores the law's most glaring failures.

The Department of Veterans Affairs is promoting an administrator who advised against publicly disclosing a deadly Legionnaires' outbreak at its Pittsburgh hospital system, the agency told Congress. David Cord, deputy director of VA Pittsburgh Healthcare System since June 2012, will become director of the Erie VA Medical Center within 60 days, the VA informed Congress. The VA disclosed the Legionnaires' outbreak that killed at least six and sickened at least 16 others on Nov. 16, 2012 — two days after Cord told a VA spokesman not to alert the public about it, according to an internal email from the spokesman...

The Star Tribune reported yesterday that the Minnesota Department of Commerce “asked” PreferredOne to lower insurance rates in the MNsure exchange last year. The July 2013 letter referenced in the story reveals the company lowered rates twice in response to Commerce “objections.” PreferredOne ultimately agreed to lower rates by 37 percent from its initial proposal, which resulted in the company offering the lowest rates in the nation. Governor Dayton’s administration celebrated these low rates throughout the year, all of which helped dial down the political heat from MNsure’s botched rollout. “Now,” according to the Star Tribune, “those subscribers face an...

The Obama administration is considering imposing a forced quarantine on healthcare workers who return to the United States from the Ebola hot zone of West Africa, after a New York doctor who treated patients there tested positive for the virus on Thursday. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention spokesman Tom Skinner told Reuters on Friday that a mandatory quarantine is one possible plan under discussion by officials from across the administration. 'There are a number of options being discussed pertaining to the monitoring and mobility of healthcare workers who are returning to the United States from affected countries,' Skinner said.

Connecticut placed six West Africans who recently arrived in the United States under quarantine for possible Ebola exposure, a move that comes as the United States starts new restrictions on those coming from the countries hardest hit by the deadly virus. The family of six West Africans, who arrived Saturday and were planning to live in the United States, will be watched for 21 days, Connecticut state health authorities said Thursday. Officials have yet to say where the family came from. ... Ebola fears have also touched one of the world's most reclusive countries, North Korea, which will bar entry...

Submitted by Brandon Smith of Alt-Market.com, One of the most dangerous philosophical contentions even amongst liberty movement activists is the conundrum of government force and prevention during times of imminent pandemic. All of us at one time or another have had this debate. If a legitimate viral threat existed and threatened to infect and kill millions of Americans, is it then acceptable for the government to step in, remove civil liberties, enforce quarantines, and stop people from spreading the disease? After all, during a viral event, the decisions of each individual can truly have a positive or negative effect on...

At least 4,877 people have died in the world's worst recorded outbreak of Ebola, and at least 9,936 cases of the disease had been recorded as of Oct. 19, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday, but the true toll may be three times as much. The WHO has said real numbers of cases are believed to be much higher than reported: by a factor of 1.5 in Guinea, 2 in Sierra Leone and 2.5 in Liberia, while the death rate is thought to be about 70 percent of all cases. That would suggest a toll of almost 15,000.

I have spent a little time compiling links to threads about the Ebola outbreak in the interest of having all the links in one thread for future reference. Please add links to new threads and articles of interest as the situation develops. Thank You all for you participation.

Mayor Bill de Blasio is asking his health policy team to formulate a plan for how the administration can better reach immigrant communities and connect them to health care. Led by Lilliam Barrios-Paoli, the deputy mayor for health and human services, the new working group will submit a list of recommendations in the coming months, outlining a plan to better reach immigrants—both documented and undocumented—who are not eligible for traditional health care options like Medicaid and Medicare, nor insurance plans available through the Affordable Care Act.

The empirical evidence of an airborne Ebola Strain is overwhelming Hat Tip GWP - Patrick Sawyer was the American businessman, who contracted Ebola while working in Liberia, then collapsed after he got off a plane to Nigeria and died July 25. He was the first patient in Nigeria with the Ebola virus. The Nigerian authorities have refused to release the names of other passengers on the plane with Mr. Sawyer, or notify the media of their status.

U.S. Army warns of potential 'airborne' Ebola Virus could be transmitted by means other than contact NEW YORK – While Centers for Disease Control and World Health Organization officials continue to insist Ebola cannot be transmitted by air from one person to another, an Army manual clearly warns the virus could be an airborne threat in certain circumstances. The handbook published by the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, USAMRID, titled “USAMRID’s Medical Management of Biological Casualties Handbook,” is now in its seventh edition. The most recent edition was published in 2011, with more than 100,000 copies distributed...

Kevin LoriaOctober 6, 2014 The idea that Ebola could go airborne is terrifying. Once you are infected, few diseases are more likely to kill you — and death by hemorrhagic fever, diarrhea and vomiting often accompanied by bleeding and organ failure, sounds particularly awful. At present it's hard to get infected — healthcare workers and family members caring for victims are at highest risk — but that would change if the virus were to mutate so that it could be transmitted through the air while keeping its present lethality. That's a nightmare scenario. But it's more the stuff of bad...

Bloomberg - link and title only.

<p>Muslim burial practices are being blamed for the spread of Ebola.</p> <p>Remains of Secretary General of The Nigeria Supreme General for Islamic Affairs and Seriki of Egbaland, Alhaji Lateeef Adegbite at his burial in 2012.</p> <p>Islam requires family members to personally wash the corpses of loved ones from head to toe. This practise is putting more Africans at risk to catch the disease that is spread by body fluids.</p>

Pot smoking — and its stereotypical associations like munching on carbohydrates and other treats — seems like it’d be your teeth’s worst enemy. And now some Colorado dentists are saying more research needs to be done on how smoking pot can affect dental health, including causing an increase in cavities. “We’ve been finding more cavities in our patients who are smoking more than a few times a week,” dental hygienist Julie Baukus at LoDo Dental says. The journal of the American Dental Association finds smoking marijuana can lead to abnormal growths and lesions inside the mouth. Some Colorado dentists are...