Free Republic

On a sunny, cold Sunday in November, Victoria Laverde walked up to an information table at Plaza Las Americas in Lilburn and asked for federal help in signing up for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act. It’s exactly what officials under the Trump administration hoped would happen when they made big changes to funding for ACA navigation. The government has made news as it stripped down the grant money, reducing Georgia’s enrollment navigator funding to $499,995, down from $1.4 million last year and $3.7 million in 2016. It’s virtually eliminated advertising, and it fired the major statewide nonprofits that...

As we have noted in earlier correspondence, this change is necessary to expand (public) beneficiaries’ access to preventive services The drug also is very expensive, at nearly $1,676 for a 30-day supply, The proposed recommendations are open for public comment until Dec. 26. Stuart Caplan RN, MAS Lead Analyst Office of Clinical Standards and Quality Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Mail Stop C1-09-06 7500 Security Boulevard Baltimore, Maryland 21244-1850 Already commented: African American Health Alliance, AIDS Action Baltimore, AIDS Alabama, AIDS Alliance for Women, Infants, Children, Youth & Families, AIDS Foundation of Chicago, The AIDS Institute, AIDS Legal Referral...

Govt. healthcare employees in Penn. & Conn. allege coercive payments. A pair of healthcare workers in the Northeast have filed lawsuits alleging that labor leaders have blocked them from resigning even after the Supreme Court ruled that mandatory public sector membership is unconstitutional. William Neely, a Pennsylvania-based psychiatric aide, has accused American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees Local 13 of refusing to honor his resignation. Neely was a dues paying member of the organization for 15 years before requesting to cut ties in July, shortly after the Supreme Court ruled that government agencies could no longer require paying...

The New York Times released a 10-minute video last month entitled “How Capitalism Ruined China’s Health Care System.” The video attempts to blame capitalism for the many problems in China’s health care system. “Under Mao Zedong the Communist state provided free health care for all,” the narrator tells us. “Decades later China adopted a unique brand of capitalism that transformed the country from a poor farming nation into an economic superpower. Life expectancy soared. But the introduction of capitalism and the retreat of the state meant that health care was no longer free.” As a resident of China and a...

Millions of sleep apnea patients rely on CPAP breathing machines to get a good night’s rest. Health insurers use a variety of tactics, including surveillance, to make patients bear the costs. Experts say it’s part of the insurance industry playbook. Last March, Tony Schmidt discovered something unsettling about the machine that helps him breathe at night. Without his knowledge, it was spying on him. From his bedside, the device was tracking when he was using it and sending the information not just to his doctor, but to the maker of the machine, to the medical supply company that provided it...

In a land where matters of public health care are never far from scrutiny and sometimes scandal, the British medical authorities acknowledged on Monday that they were checking the credentials of some 3,000 foreign physicians, after one was convicted of fraud and accused of falsifying qualifications. The case could add to concerns about the safety of patients in Britain’s once-vaunted National Health Service, even as tight budgets and the possible impact of Britain’s pending departure from the European Union have augmented a sense of unease. For more than two decades, Zholia Alemi, 56, worked at health facilities in Britain using...

I recently did an interesting interview with Dan Gorenstein, a health care reporter with station WHYY and NPR's radio business show Marketplace on the issue of tax-financed health care for unauthorized immigrants [1]. The piece that aired did not include any of my remarks, but I thought it would be useful to give readers my perspective on this knotty policy question based on both background research I did to prepare for the interview and follow-on research I did in light of the questions posed in the interview. Current federal policy is to prohibit federal tax funding of health care to...

While Georgians may not yet know who will occupy the Governor’s Mansion in January, there is something Georgians know for sure: They want Medicaid expansion. A recent AJC poll found that 73 percent of Georgians, including 51 percent of Republicans, support expanding Medicaid. Georgians know that expanding Medicaid will allow those without insurance to finally get the coverage they need and deserve. This is true for all Georgians, but is especially true for women, particularly those that live outside of metro Atlanta. The state is currently failing its women. Georgia ranks 48th among the states for health insurance coverage for...

America needs single-payer health care, say progressives. That's a system where government pays doctors and hospitals, and no sick person has to worry about having enough money to pay for care. After all, they say, "Health care is a "right!" "Who pays for it?" asks Chris Pope, "And that's really not a rights question." Pope studies health care systems for the Manhattan Institute. In my newest video, Pope explains that although many Americans think that Canada and most of Europe have single-payer systems, that's not really true. "In Germany, employers provide most of the health care ... just as they...

The 2018 midterms could someday be remembered as the beginning of the Democratic Party’s full embrace of creating a single-payer health care system in the United States. For the first time in American history, a large number of Democrats, many of whom identify as socialists, openly campaigned for the creation of a government-run health insurance model.For instance, Democratic Socialists of America member Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who won 78 percent of the vote on Election Day, championed Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-VT) “Medicare for All” proposal, calling it the “ethical, logical, and affordable path to ensuring no person goes without dignified healthcare.” According...

One clear message seems to have emerged from the mid-term elections in the United States: the under-estimation of the political powers of Donald Trump by his opponents is going to have to stop. The idea that he is little more than a racist; the notion that his supporters are Neanderthals; or that his economic boom is a mirage that makes little difference to ordinary people – all of this is blown apart by results that underline across America the political appeal of this President. Like it or not, he is here to stay. And assuming he chooses to run in...

**SNIP** “Today is more than about Democrats and Republicans, it’s about restoring the constitution’s checks and balances to the Trump administration,” Pelosi, 78, said at the election night party in Washington D.C. “It’s about stopping the GOP and Mike—Mitch—McConnell’s assaults on Medicare, Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act, and the health care of 130 million Americans living with pre-existing medical conditions.” Then, raising her fist in the air, Pelosi declared: “Let’s hear it more for pre-existing medical conditions!”

Virginia is facing a huge bill for unexpected Medicaid costs that hamper proposed new spending on things like school improvements or tax breaks for the poor. State officials said Friday that Virginia has about $460 million in unforeseen Medicaid costs. The new costs, first reported by the Richmond Times-Dispatch, are unrelated to Virginia’s recent decision to expand Medicaid eligibility to low-income adults under the Affordable Care Act. Instead, Secretary of Finance Aubrey Layne said much of the new costs stem from faulty forecasts overestimating the benefits of having private health insurers cover a greater number of some of the state’s...

New York congressional candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez had a quick answer when asked how Americans would pay for the 'Medicare for all' plan she and other socialist-leaning Democrats favor: "Just pay for it." In an interview with Jorge Ramos last week, Ocasio-Cortez was asked how she would pay for the multi-billion dollar health care plan promoted by liberal lawmakers like Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Kamala Harris, D-Calif. Ramos noted critics say the the program would be "more expensive" than the current system, to which she answered that people would "just pay for it." “People often say, like, how are you...

If you're considering eating raw or undercooked snails, slugs or centipedes — you may want to think again. Some of these delicacies may carry "rat lungworm," a parasite that can infect critters through rodent feces. Here's what you should know about the parasitic roundworm, Angiostrongylus cantonensis, and how it can be avoided. Where is the parasite found? Rodents have the adult form, with sickened rats passing the parasite's larvae in feces, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says online. How are snails, slugs and humans infected?Infections occur in snails and slugs when they consume the parasite's larvae, the agency says, adding that humans...

A man in Australia has died from rat lungworm caused by a garden slug he ate for a dare eight years earlier. Sam Ballard, who was a promising rugby player, died at the age of 27 after developing a series of complications from the disease. Ballard was 19 in 2010 when he and some friends were drinking wine with his friends in a garden. “We were sitting over here having a bit of a red wine appreciation night, trying to act as grown up and a slug came crawling across here,” his friend Jimmy Galvin told news.com.au. “The conversation came...

Health officials have confirmed 12 cases of rat lungworm disease in the continental United States since January 2011 — including six patients who had not traveled abroad but still contracted the illness caused by a parasite endemic to tropical regions in Asia and Hawaii. [...snip...] The disease is also known as angiostrongyliasis, after the parasitic roundworm Angiostrongylus cantonensis whose larvae hatch in the lungs of rats and then are expelled in the rodents’ excrement. At that point, the larvae can be picked up by snails and slugs, and then passed along to humans if the snails and slugs are eaten...

Centipedes mean business. They can slay animals 15 times their size, even devour whole snakes if they want. But the true horror of the centipede may be something else, hiding unseen inside their many-legged forms: a dangerous parasite, which scientists say has never been observed in these segmented critters – until now. The stowaway in question is the parasitic roundworm Angiostrongylus cantonensis – aka 'rat lungworm' – a food-borne parasite typically found in snails and other mollusks, which has now for the first time been detected in centipedes too. As for the strange reason we know this? It starts with...

Humans have been cooking food since before they were Homo sapiens....but ... There was a raw food festival in Novemeber 20-23, 2008 in Kalapana....and now this.... (From the Star-Bulletin) Jan 5, 2009: ...Halda said he and a friend, Silka Strauch, who live in Black Sands between Pahoa and Kalapana, have been eating raw vegetables and taking precautions by cleaning the produce with a peroxide rinse. He suspects they may have accidentally consumed tiny larvae of slugs lodged in the deep folds of peppers.

Sam Ballard never did anything wrong, if you ask family and friends. The teenager from Sydney’s upper north shore was having a laugh and some red wine with mates in the backyard, “trying to act like grown-ups”. It was 2010 and it was a night that would change his life, and the lives of everybody around him, forever.A slug crawled across the concrete patio and, teens being teens, a dare emerged for Sam to eat it.One of his best friends, Jimmy Galvin, later described the moment. “We were sitting over here having a bit of a red wine appreciation night, trying...