Free Republic

Rand Paul: Most vaccines should be ‘voluntary’ By ADAM B. LERNER 2/2/15 2:42 PM EST Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) waded into the debate over vaccinations Monday, telling conservative talk show host Laura Ingraham that he thinks most vaccines should be “voluntary.” Paul, an ophthamologist and likely 2016 White House hopeful, expressed particular concern over mandatory vaccinations for sexually transmitted diseases. He criticized former Texas Gov. Rick Perry for his executive order mandating that Texas children receive the HPV vaccine. “I’m not anti-vaccine at all,” Paul said, but “I think that’s a personal decision.” Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/02/rand-paul-vaccines-114834.html#ixzz3QhA3J7zr

Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-Fla.) unequivocally declared Monday that Texas is a "crazy state" he never wants to live in, infuriating a Texas lawmaker. Tensions flared between Hastings and Rep. Michael Burgess (R-Texas) during a House Rules Committee meeting to prepare a bill slated for a floor vote Tuesday to repeal ObamaCare. Hastings showed disdain for Texas during a discussion about states' implementation of the 2010 healthcare overhaul and decisions over whether or not to participate in the exchanges. "I don't know about in your state, which I think is a crazy state to begin with," Hastings told Burgess. Burgess immediately...

Cass Sunstein, President Barack Obama’s nominee to head the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), has advocated a policy under which the government would “presume” someone has consented to having his or her organs removed for transplantation into someone else when they die unless that person has explicitly indicated that his or her organs should not be taken. Under such a policy, hospitals would harvest organs from people who never gave permission for this to be done. Outlined in the 2008 book “Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness,” Sunstein and co-author Richard H. Thaler argued that the...

WHEN Theresa Bixby, 63, learned that she had breast cancer four years ago, she reacted as many Americans do. “One of my first thoughts was, ‘will they pay?’ ” she said. But she wasn’t talking about conventional insurance plan. She lost hers when she left her full-time position for part-time work at her church in Greenville, S.C. She was worried about the program that she had joined six months earlier: Christian Healthcare Ministries. Christian Healthcare Ministries is not an insurance company. It is a nonprofit “health care sharing ministry” based in Barberton, Ohio. The cost of membership is far lower...

House Republicans will kick off February with a vote to repeal Obamacare, providing new members the chance to put their opposition on the record as the party chips away at the overhaul and devises some reforms of its own. “We will begin the month renewing our commitment to individual freedom and opportunity,” House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California said Thursday in a memo previewing next week’s votes. The vote will also force Democrats in the minority to reassert their support for Obamacare or break with the White House.

Medical retainer agreements between physicians and patients will not be considered “insurance” in Michigan under a recently passed bill signed into law on Jan. 15 by Gov. Rick Snyder. The idea is to ensure that this innovative way for families to obtain routine medical services at lower costs will not be stifled by the extensive state regulatory structure currently imposed on conventional health insurance policies that cover expensive non-routine care. The rationale for this alternative is that while insurance coverage may be advisable for catastrophic illnesses and injuries, it makes less sense as a way to pay for routine primary...

The latest data on Obamacare analyzed by the Congressional Budget Office shows that 10 million Americans are likely to lose their employer-based insurance by 2021 as companies dump their workers onto the Obamacare exchanges. That's 10 times the number originally projected by the CBO. About 1 of every 16 workers will be affected. The latest CBO report has not garnered a lot of attention, even though it contains the modestly good news that Obamacare is not costing as much as the CBO thought it would in 2010. That said, another reason the left and the administration may not be touting...

The latest data on Obamacare analyzed by the Congressional Budget Office shows that 10 million Americans are likely to lose their employer-based insurance by 2021 as companies dump their workers onto the Obamacare exchanges. That's 10 times the number originally projected by the CBO. About 1 of every 16 workers will be affected. The latest CBO report has not garnered a lot of attention, even though it contains the modestly good news that Obamacare is not costing as much as the CBO thought it would in 2010. That said, another reason the left and the administration may not be touting...

* Stunning figure comes from Congressional Budget Office report that revised cost estimates for the next 10 years * Government will spend $1.993 TRILLION over a decade and take in $643 BILLION in new taxes, penalties and fees related to Obamacare * The $1.35 trillion net cost will result in 'between 24 million and 27 million' fewer Americans being uninsured – a $50,000 price tag per person at best * The law will still leave 'between 29 million and 31 million' nonelderly Americans without medical insurance * Numbers assume Obamacare insurance exchange enrollment will double between now and 2025 It...

... Tragically, a record number of Americans subscribe to some version of this mythology, with 63 percent (67 percent of men polled and 58 percent of women) believing that guns truly do make them safer. The public’s confidence in firearms, however, is woefully misguided: The evidence overwhelmingly shows that guns leave everybody less safe, including their owners. ... That is, in the absence of guns, would-be criminals are not switching to knives or some other weapons to carry out homicide. These results are supported by a host of previous studies that illustrate that guns increase the rate of homicides. The...

Obamacare program costs $50,000 in taxpayer money for every American who gets health insurance, says bombshell budget report It will cost the federal government – taxpayers, that is – $50,000 for every person who gets health insurance under the Obamacare law, the Congressional Budget Office revealed on Monday. The number comes from figures buried in a 15-page section of the nonpartisan organization's new ten-year budget outlook. The best-case scenario described by the CBO would result in 'between 24 million and 27 million' fewer Americans being uninsured in 2025, compared to the year before the Affordable Care Act took effect. Pulling...

This announcement actually came out almost a week ago, arriving with little fanfare or notice, given all the other global events which were unfolding. The archivists for the Clinton Library sent notice that they were preparing to release a “huge trove or records” (as Politico put it) relating to Hillary Clinton’s policy work during her time as First Lady in Bill Clinton’s White House. The descriptions here beggar the imagination and probably overshadow the fact that they will just coincidentally be coming out just when Hillary’s expected POTUS run is kicking into high gear. A massive collection of documents related...

Nearly 20 years ago, Carson argued for government-run catastrophic health care and “national guidelines” on how and when the very ill should be treated. Carson himself calls his proposals “fairly radical.” In 1996, Dr. Ben Carson, now a conservative favorite and potential presidential candidate, wrote a paper outlining his vision for U.S. health care. Some of his proposals: nationalized catastrophic care, essentially replacing Medicaid with health care food stamps, and “national guidelines” about when the elderly and terminally ill should receive care. By implementing government-run catastrophic health care, Carson argued, the price of premiums would go down so much...

Paying Your Fair Share:: By: Larry Walker II ::In Tax Simplification, Part II, I expounded on a 2010 Annual Report to Congress, in which National Taxpayer Advocate Nina E. Olson focused on the need for tax reform as the No. 1 priority in tax administration. In particular, she focused on the problem of delivering social benefits through the tax system, which complicates the mission of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), resulting in a dual mission of welfare administration as well as revenue collection. But instead of taking heed, the federal government doubled down, adding a new health care excise tax...

This thread is intended to provide awareness that all of our healthcare patient PHI data(personal healthcare information), medical records, prescriptions, etc. is increasingly shared among hundreds of thousands of healthcare entities that are exempt from HIPAA PHI distribution restrictions. You are not permitted to opt out via a consent form. Cash payment for healthcare services is also frequently recorded, as well. This is a 2+ Billion dollar a year business that is largely unregulated. Healthcare records have huge repercussions that can impact an individual's ability to attain employment and insurance. Healthcare records also influence government and law enforcement action. Many...

Information Leak: President Obama says he wants to improve cybersecurity and privacy. If he actually cared about them, he'd shut down healthcare.gov, which lets dozens of companies collect data on unwitting users. In a speech meant to preview part of his State of the Union address, Obama said: "As Americans, we shouldn't have to forfeit our basic privacy when we go online to do our business." Nice sentiment. But it's not being upheld by his own ObamaCare website. As the AP reported on Tuesday, Healthcare.gov has at least 50 third-party companies that have "embedded connections" to the site, which means...

WASHINGTON (AP) - The government's health insurance website is quietly sending consumers' personal data to private companies that specialize in advertising and analyzing Internet data for performance and marketing, The Associated Press has learned. The scope of what is disclosed or how it might be used was not immediately clear, but it can include age, income, ZIP code, whether a person smokes, and if a person is pregnant. It can include a computer's Internet address, which can identify a person's name or address when combined with other information collected by sophisticated online marketing or advertising firms. The Obama administration says...

The NHS is ‘not fit for the future’ and unless it undergoes radical change it may be forced to abandon free healthcare for all, in the future, the service's top doctor has warned. Medical director of NHS England Professor Sir Bruce Keogh said the NHS must become far less reliant on hospitals and needed a ‘complete transformation’ of the way it operates. Sir Bruce told the Guardian: ‘If the NHS continues to function as it does now, it’s going to really struggle to cope because the model of delivery and service that we have at the moment is not fit...

Though it violates both state and federal law, Massachusetts spent tens of millions of dollars to give illegal immigrants medical care—including prescription drugs, physical therapy and dental services—through its taxpayer-funded healthcare program for low-income individuals. Tax-paying residents of the Bay State should be outraged, to say the least. The information comes straight out of a scathing report that contains the findings of an investigation conducted by Massachusetts State Auditor Suzanne Bump. It reveals that questionable or prohibited medical claims totaling $35,137,347 were reimbursed by the state’s Medicaid agency known as MassHealth. A chunk of it went to non-emergency services for...

Acknowledging the public health impact of racism and deep disparities in the quality and accessibility of medical care for patients of color, a national organization, White Coats for Black Lives, says it’s launching a new effort today, in celebration of Martin Luther King, Jr. Dorothy Charles, one of the group’s organizers and a first year medical student at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine, offers some context in an email: Racism profoundly impacts people of color: the black-white mortality gap in 2002, for example, accounted for 83,570 excess deaths. As future physicians, we are responsible for addressing the...