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About 1.6 million people who signed up for coverage this year under President Barack Obama’s health care law dropped out by the end of March, according to administration figures released late Thursday. The report from the Health and Human Services department said some 11.1 million people were still signed up. But that’s a drop of nearly 13 percent from the 12.7 million who initially enrolled for subsidized private coverage this year. Those dropouts failed to seal the deal by paying their premiums. …

Although there are many reasons to oppose the normalization of homosexuality, this reason alone would be enough: it represents an enormous risk to human health. According to a recent and extensive survey, homosexuals have "excess health problems" compared to sexually normal people. They suffer disproportionately from "impaired physical and mental health, heavy alcohol consumption, and heavy cigarette use." The National Health Interview Survey, which has been conducted since 1957, included a question about sexual preference for the first time in 2013 and 2014. The results are astounding and alarming for anyone who cares about people who are trapped in a...

MIAMI —The man on the table at Ryder Trauma Center in Jackson Memorial Hospital has been shot four times, in the forearm, chest, flank, and thigh. Dr. George Garcia spends two hours operating on him, removing bullet fragments, closing blood vessels and repairing tissue. By the time he’s tied the last suture it’s 2 a.m. Garcia tosses his blood-stained gloves in the trash and goes out to tell the victim’s father his son will be fine. Then Garcia’s pager signals that an ambulance is on its way with another shooting victim. And so, he heads to the observation bays to...

Nurses with convictions for crimes of violence, sexual offenses and drug thefts are able to evade detection in six states, which have far fewer protections in place than most states when it comes to licensing healthcare workers ... While candidates for jobs such as massage therapists or private investigators are required to submit a fingerprint for checks against state and FBI conviction records, the nurse licensing systems in Colorado, Wisconsin, New York, Vermont, Maine and Hawaii rely on self-disclosure and complaints. The porous process allows nurses disqualified from obtaining licensure in other states to obtain a license in one of...

Three US healthcare organisations are reportedly being held to ransom by a hacker who stole data on hundreds of thousands of patients. The hacker has also put the 650,000 records up for sale on dark web markets where stolen data is traded. Prices for the different databases range from $100,000 (£75,000) to $411,000. ... The organisations that data was stolen from are known to be based in Missouri, Georgia and the midwest. The attacker told Motherboard that he would not name the organisations, to give them a chance to pay up. The news site said it had checked 30 records...

If there is a positive side to the rise of ISIS, it is that the West has had its head jerked from the sand and has been made to witness a bottomless, bloodthirsty evil: crucifixions, beheadings, enslavement of women, live burial of children, mass executions. But as one analyst writes, this violence is not “whimsical, crazed fanaticism, but a very deliberate, considered strategy” – one that seems to derive in part from a book called The Management of Savagery. In the spring of 2004 a strategist who called himself Abu Bakr Naji published online The Management of Savagery: The Most...

No sooner had it seized the Iraqi city of Mosul and surrounding villages, than the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) began outlining how it would govern its dawla (state). The best way to get a sense of ISIS’s blueprint for state-building is to look at how it has ruled al-Raqqa governorate and other territory in neighboring Syria. The group’s first move is often to set up billboards around town that emphasize the importance of jihad, sharia, women’s purity, and other pietistic themes. The group also has a surprisingly sophisticated bureaucracy, which typically includes an Islamic court system and...

President Obama has repeatedly demonstrated that there’s an extra special place in his heart for incarcerated criminals, but this is a bit much. The administration spends a lot more money on the medical care of jailed convicts than retired seniors on Medicare, active U.S. military personnel or veterans, including an extra $100 million in one year alone, according to a federal audit released this month. The Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) consistently pays outside doctors and hospitals more to treat inmates than Medicare or other federal agencies would pay for the same services, according to the report which is the...

“The US Department of Health and Human Services and the Cuban government on Monday signed a memorandum of understanding to encourage cooperation between the two countries on health matters…“Cuba has made significant contributions to health and science,” HHS Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell said in a statement. “This new collaboration is a historic opportunity for two nations to build on each other’s knowledge and experience, and benefit biomedical research and public health at large.”Tell it to Tuvalu, President Obama and Secretary Mathews-Burwell. Tuvalu is a group of Pacific islands (big atolls, actually) north of Fiji and east of New Guinea formerly...

The millennial generation still hasn't figured out healthcare. It can be prohibitively expensive and painfully confusing yet required by law, so how do they deal? They skip healthcare, struggle to pay bills and ask mom what to do, according to a new report by the nonprofit Transamerica Center for Health Studies. The center's findings, based on a survey of 1,171 adults aged 18-36 in the United States, also found that those who lacked health insurance were disproportionately female, people of color, younger, less educated and unemployed. The proportion of millennials who don't have health insurance has declined significantly in recent...

Remembering the Forsaken Written by Francis Slobodnik    Tuesday, 12 January 2010 18:51   A Review of the book The Forsaken, An American Tragedy In Stalin’s Russia by Tim Tzouliadis     In times of social and political turmoil, it is not uncommon for men to grasp for what appear to be easy solutions. Oftentimes, these impulsive decisions can have disastrous consequences. There is nothing meritorious about change in and of itself. The virtuous person prayerfully reasons through the options before making decisions. Men with little virtue grab desperately for anything that, on the surface, appears will improve their...

There are some Catholic bloggers and commentators saying that it is okay to vote for Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton because, even though they are pro abortion, they are “pro life” on other issues. Health care is a “life” issue, they argue. A living wage is a “life” issue. Good treatment of immigrants is a “life” issue. Torture is a “life” issue. This is a lie. Do not be taken in by it and do not propagate this lie. Use your common sense. Health care, immigration reform, gun control, a living wage, torture and care for the poor are not...

We conclude that (hospital) CEOs are heavily driven to perform on government pay for performance metrics, but less so to metrics that currently fail to correspond to a reimbursement requirement. (Conclusion first here) Truven Health Analytics™ and Mercer teamed to investigate whether there is a correlation between CEO compensation and hospital performance on a balanced scorecard. The study showed there is a strong alignment for the highest level of performance. However, the study also found that 80% of hospitals do not perform well on a balanced scorecard. Instead, compensation appears to be designed to incent the CEO to pursue metrics...

More than 92,000 Coloradans will lose their Obamacare health care coverage in 2017 as four leading insurance companies scale back or eliminate their plans while others propose rate hikes of as much as 40 percent. Insurance holders with individual plans through Anthem, UnitedHealthCare, Humana and Rocky Mountain Health Plans will need to find new coverage for the 2017 coverage year, according to a Monday statement from the Colorado Division of Insurance. ... the news came as a devastating blow to the state’s already-shaky insurance market. Colorado is one of 14 states that opted to launch its own Obamacare exchange instead...

Daily Caller News Foundation VA Proposes To Remove Ban On Transgender Surgery For Vets Jonah Bennett National Security/Foreign Policy Reporter The Department of Veterans Affairs has proposed to a rule to remove the ban on transgender sex change surgery for veterans, which has existed since the 1990s. According to the proposed regulation, gender reassignment surgery wasn’t previously considered medically necessary for gender dysphoria, a condition transgender individuals claims makes them feel as though they were born in the wrong body and assigned the wrong gender.

One obstacle preventing Americans suffering from mental illness from obtaining the treatment they need is a stigma associated with having a sullied bill of mental health.States can overcome this obstacle in part by expanding digital access to mental health care providers. This would allow patients to obtain preventive and maintenance mental health care from the convenience and comfort of their homes.The stigma surrounding mental health problems is prevalent on a webpage hosted by the educational nonprofit group Mental Health America aggregating social media posts with the hashtag #mentalillnessfeelslike. “The struggle of having illness is speaking up about what is affecting...

Venezuela is running out of just about everything. Food, medicine, electricity, toilet paper, condoms -- you name it. ( Full title ). And over the weekend at least two large international airlines -- Lufthansa and LATAM -- said they will suspend service to Venezuela in the coming months due to the economic crisis. The widespread scarcities and fleeing businesses reflect a country in crisis. "There's a shortage of everything at some level," says Ricardo Cusanno, vice president of Venezuela's Chamber of Commerce. Cusanno says 85% of companies in Venezuela have halted production to some extent. Venezuela's economy is spiraling into...

When healthcare is expensive, the Amish culture of autonomy and thrift may be a way to balance communal support and individual responsibility. Sara Talpos finds out more. The Allegheny Plateau, sprawling across northern Pennsylvania and beyond, is an ecosystem of forested hills, with land that supports black bears, bald eagles and wandering turkeys, as well as a patchwork of wild herbs: burdock, jewelweed, chamomile and sheep sorrel. Cellphone reception is spotty and gas stations are few and far between. Tucked away among the streams branching from the Cowanesque river is a cluster of small white and tan buildings, including the...

Obama decided to commemorate Memorial Day (after denouncing the US military from Vietnam to Japan) by calling for "good healthcare" for veterans. President Obama called for veterans to receive better healthcare and good-paying jobs during a Memorial Day speech at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington National Cemetery. “We have to be there not only when we need them, but when they need us,” Obama told the crowd of survivors who have lost loved ones in battle.

Drive-By Post: Remember those death panels? Well, they are here. I can speak from experience. Patients are being denied services based on the dictates of the state. It's called "prior authorization".