Free Republic

Editor’s Note: Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry, a conservative writer and fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, is writing a series of columns on uncomfortable truths about health care in America. Some will make conservatives more uncomfortable, others will make progressives more uncomfortable, but most should make everyone uncomfortable. ‘The poor you will always have with you,” says the Good Book. Jesus might as well have been speaking at a health-policy seminar. We don’t, mostly, speak about health-care policy in the cold language of efficiency, productivity, and resource allocation. We also use a moral language about fairness, justice, and righteousness....

Don't let NHS die on its 70th birthday: Experts' fears 'crumbling' health service is at risk of keeling over as early as next yearA damning report says the 'crumbling' health service is straining at the seams and could keel over as early as next yearThe report adds the crisis in social care has led to con­tracts being handed back to local authorities by private firms that say funding is insufficient to provide safe care. Campaigners blame devastating Tory cuts for the staffing crisis that resulted in NHS doctor and dentist vacancies rising by 40% in the past two years. Doctors...

We live in a small world. There are two degrees of separation between you and someone who attended the concert in Las Vegas last Sunday at which Stephen Paddock killed 58 people. That is because you are reading my column and my son's nanny was there with a group of her friends.(luckily, she left before the shooting began, and none of her friends was hit. Spattered with the blood of others, but physically unscathed.) One of many pathologies of a small world is groupthink. I arrived in London shortly after the Las Vegas massacre. I encountered unanimity, right across the...

The Trump administration is taking a hatchet to ObamaCare after failing to pass legislation through Congress repealing President Obama’s signature law. The administration has cut funding for advertising and outreach by 90 percent, raising the odds that fewer people will join the health-care exchanges during the fall enrollment period. It has slashed funds by 41 percent for outside groups that help reach and enroll likely ObamaCare consumers.

President Trump reached out to the Senate Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer, on Friday to propose yet another effort to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, but Mr. Schumer later said he had quickly shot down the offer. Mr. Trump’s phone call, which he announced in a tweet on Saturday morning, was his latest overture to Democrats, after reaching a bipartisan spending deal and forging an unexpected, if tentative, alliance on immigration with Mr. Schumer and the House Democratic leader, Nancy Pelosi. The president has vented frustration with the serial failure of Republicans in the Senate to strike down the...

Under the guise of protecting religious freedom and moral sensibilities, the Trump administration is making it harder for women to get access to birth control. On Friday, it rolled back an Obama-era rule requiring most employers to provide their employees with birth control coverage without co-payments. The mandate, established under the Affordable Care Act, has helped millions of women avoid unwanted pregnancy by eliminating out-of-pockets costs for contraception. Under new rules, the Departments of Health and Human Services, Treasury and Labor will make it easier for employers to deny contraception coverage if they have a “religious or moral objection” to...

For the past century, socialists, progressives, communists, statists, and an increasing number of Democrats have supported the imposition of a government-run socialized medical care system in the United States. Every Democrat president since FDR (except JFK and possibly Jimmy Carter) has spoken in favor of or introduced a plan for socialized medicine. Now, it finally appears that a critical mass has been achieved and the Rubicon has been crossed. A Quinnipiac University national poll on August 3, 2017 reported “Replacing the current health care system with a single payer system in which Medicare covers every American citizen is a...

Approximately one in five Americans are over the age of 65, and that number is quickly growing. As baby boomers reach retirement, many decide to make the move from a primary care physician to a geriatrician – primary care doctors who have special training in offering health care to seniors. The health care needs of people change as they age, and many begin to experience new medical conditions such as arthritis, diabetes, renal failure, or heart disease. Some inevitable signs of aging take place over time, such as a slower metabolism, and lead to a decline in physical activity. Some...

The latest iteration of Obamacare repeal has likely failed. Senate Republicans were unable to pass a watered-down repeal effort that offered states some meager level of federalism in the form of block grants. Now, we're again going to hear a lot of noise about the need to embrace a "bipartisan" approach to fix health care. "Since nearly every promise we made with Obamacare has failed, you now have a responsibility to save it": To many, this might seem like a shamelessly counterintuitive thing to say, but it's very popular among Democrats. The problem is that any effort that further entrenches...

Actress and comedian Julia Louis-Dreyfus announced on Twitter Thursday that she has been diagnosed with breast cancer.

Donald Trump is preparing an executive order that would achieve a long standing goal of insurance reform advocates.  The president's executive order will reportedly allow individuals to join group plans from out of state.  Current law allows companies to sell across state linesn but due to red tape and resistance by state insurance officials, most companies refuse to take advantage of the opportunity. The order would allow consumers to join associations and group health plans located in other states. ABC News: Current law allows companies to sell health insurance across state lines, but so far few have offered out-of-state...

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., predicted Wednesday that President Trump would soon move on his own to make health insurance more affordable, after the Senate failed again this week to advance any bill to reform federal healthcare policy. Paul he has been pitching the idea of using the Employee Retirement Income Security Act to let people buy insurance across state lines. That law already allows corporations to buy insurance across state lines for their workers if they are located in several states. Paul's idea is to let individuals form associations and do the same thing, and he said Trump administration officials...

Full title: "Graham-Cassidy is dead. Stop treating Obamacare like the enemy and help get Americans health coverage" We may never know how many Republicans in the U.S. Senate would have voted against the latest ill-conceived and disruptive proposal to ”repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act. But we know the three whose public opposition kept the measure from reaching the Senate floor this week — Susan Collins of Maine, John McCain of Arizona and Rand Paul of Kentucky. Although they disagree sharply over what to do about the ACA, they all deserve the country’s thanks for stopping lawmakers from heedlessly...

The Graham-Cassidy Scam It appears that Graham-Cassidy, the latest "repeal and replace" load of nonsense out of the Republican Party, is doomed. The option to pass such "one party only" supported bills expires on September 30th in the Senate. That's when the reconciliation option runs out, at which point standard rules in the Senate apply -- if there is a filibuster you need 60 votes to proceed, and obviously you won't get them without at least some people crossing the aisle. Graham-Cassidy, in summary, would take Medicaid and turn it into a block grant -- in other words, a pile...

Well, here we are in that last possible moment for healthcare reform under budget reconciliation. That simply means the GOP controlled Senate has until the end of this month, just a few days, to come to a consensus on a healthcare reform legislation that owns up to their promise. They had promised to repeal and replace Obamacare for, what, seven years or so? They had stated they just needed the House of Representatives…done. Then they decried, we need to have the US Senate…granted. Then they pleaded, please give us the White House…trifecta. And then Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell of...

John McCain has once again shown he has no loyalty to his party, his friends, or to his voters. In likely torpedoing what may prove Republicans’ last effort to rid the country of ObamaCare, McCain evinced the nostalgia of an old man for better times. He wants the Senate to operate as it once did, with bipartisan comity and regular order. Yes, and I’d like to return to the days when kids were addicted to twilight stickball rather than video games. Those gentler times are long gone. What we have now is a bitterly divided Congress, and country. Democrat leaders...

A significant deadline is approaching. The federal fiscal year ends on Sept. 30 and with it this year’s opportunity to use reconciliation to reform and replace ObamaCare. Time is running out to make changes that will devolve any power back to the people and the states, a component of federalism. For Republicans, it may be the last chance to fulfill any aspect of the promise that they have campaigned on for over eight years. Hesitant politicians in Congress should support this effort through the Graham-Cassidy bill, despite its shortcomings. Senator Rand Paul, a physician, has argued for a complete repeal...

U.S. Sen. Susan Collins all but said she would vote “no” on an Affordable Care Act repeal bill on Friday morning at an event in Portland. “I’m leaning against the bill,” the Maine Republican said after listing a series of serious deficiencies in the Graham-Cassidy repeal bill. “I’m just trying to do what I believe is the right thing for the people of Maine,” Collins said. She said Graham-Cassidy undermines pre-existing conditions, a major flaw in the bill. “I’m reading the fine print on Graham-Cassidy,” Collins said. She said insurers could charge sky-high rates to people with pre-existing conditions. “The...

GLENWOOD,GA ― If you want to watch a rural community die, kill its hospital. After the Lower Oconee Community Hospital shut down in June 2014, other mainstays of the community followed. The bank and the pharmacy in the small town of Glenwood shuttered. Then the only grocery store in all of Wheeler County closed in the middle of August this year. On Glenwood’s main street, building after building is now for sale, closing, falling apart or infested with weeds growing through the foundation’s cracks. Opportunity has been dying in Wheeler County for the last 20 years. Agriculture was once the...

This summary describes key provisions of a proposal by Senators Graham, Cassidy, Heller, and Johnson. drafted as an amendment in the nature of a substitute to HR 1628, the House-passed bill to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA).