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I have not found one study that says the US health system is number one. While there are pockets of great number one care, we are overall not doing that well. In addition, the prices are astronomical paying 9k per person. What can be done about this? How can we make it a competitive market? Should we make it a single payer system like all the other countries doing better than us?

Before March 2010, health care reform was already a divisive political issue. People chose sides for very personal reasons, which made it a difficult topic to discuss using an indoor voice.

Prices for medicine, doctor appointments and health insurance rose the most last month since 1984. The price increases come amid a broader debate about climbing health care costs and high premiums for Obamacare coverage. [Snip] Medical care costs altogether rose 1% just in August from July, according to the Consumer Price Index, a report on price inflation from the U.S. Labor Department.

A health insurance company has said that Germans are going to the doctor twice as much as they actually need to. But doctors disagree. “We don’t have too few doctors, but actually too much contact with doctors,” KKH CEO Ingo Kailuweit told Bild on Tuesday. “Half of all doctor visits are unnecessary.” The OECD’s Health Statistics report for this year showed that Germans went to the doctor on average more than 18 times in 2008, while another OECD report showed that Germans visited the doctor about ten times each in 2013. This made Germans one of the top ten countries...

Surgeons are speaking out against a Medicare proposal that would require them to use new billing codes to track their work in 10-minute increments during global surgical "packages" that span 10 days and 90 days, reports Medscape Medical News. The "packages" include preoperative and postoperative care as well as the procedure itself.

The body that represents hospitals across England has issued a startling warning that the NHS is close to breaking point because of its escalating cash crisis. Years of underfunding have left the service facing such “impossible” demands that without urgent extra investment in November’s autumn statement it will have to cut staff, bring in charges or introduce “draconian rationing” of treatment – all options that will provoke public disquiet, it says. n an unprecedentedly bleak assessment of the NHS’s own health, NHS Providers, which speaks for hospital trust chairs and chief executives, tells ministers that widespread breaches of performance targets,...

Guy has written extensively about ObamacareÂ’s dismal year. The number of uninsured is expected to spike by 2 million people between 2017-2026, the number of those enrolled came in 24 million under the original CBO projections, a large percentage of those who enrolled in Obamacare were already insured before their previous plans were gutted under the law, and the whole notion that the law is on the verge of total collapse. ItÂ’s a total disaster, yet NBC News, CBS News, and ABC NewsÂ’ evening programs seem to ignore that President ObamaÂ’s signature domestic achievement is on life support.The honorable mention...

The scheduled initial rollout of the Military Health System's new multibillion-dollar electronic health record system has been delayed, at least for several months. The Defense Department is blaming the pause on an “aggressive schedule and issues identified during testing.. The first go-lives “will move in a few months,” the statement said. The proposed new EHR system, called MHS GENESIS since a renaming in April, was to be initially deployed in December at a select group of facilities in the Pacific Northwest. In July 2015, a consortium led by defense contractor Leidos, Accenture Federal Services and Cerner Corp. won the $4.3...

Nearly a third of U.S. counties will be left with just one insurance option next year on the ObamaCare exchanges, according to a new analysis fueling warnings about the impact of the insurance company exodus from markets across the country. The Kaiser Family Foundation study found residents in Pinal County, Ariz., are even at risk of having no insurance options on the exchanges, which provide subsidized plans. Republicans seized on the report Monday to claim that the health care overhaul is not providing the choices promised by President Obama and others. […] The Kaiser Family Foundation study found that overall,...

DNA tests confirm both were given to wrong mothers after being born at Norway House Indian HospitalLeon Swanson and David Tait Jr. are both 41 years old and have just learned they're not exactly who they thought they were. Both wept Friday in Winnipeg as Eric Robinson, a former NDP member of the Manitoba Legislative Assembly for Keewatinook, told media that the two men were switched at birth more than 40 years ago at a hospital in Norway House Cree Nation. "What happened here is lives were stolen," Robinson said. "You can't describe it as anything less than that." Swanson...

BROOKLYN, N.Y., Aug. 29 (UPI) — Hillary Clinton on Monday released a six-part plan to address nearly 50 million Americans afflicted with mental health problems. “Americans with mental health conditions and their families need our support,” she said in her proposal that runs more than 5,000 words. “The economic impact of mental illness is enormous – at nearly $200 billion per year nationwide in lost earnings] —and the human cost is worse.

While long wait times persisted the VA added 39,454 new positions to their payroll between 2012-2015. Fewer than ten percent of these new positions (3,591) were ‘Medical Officers,’ i.e. doctors.

Two Orlando-area hospitals are waiving the medical bills of victims of the Pulse nightclub shooting, praising the community response and saying they want to contribute. [Snip] Orlando Regional Medical Center has treated 44 victims of the shooting - more than any other hospital. The center's parent company, Orlando Health, says it will not charge victims for their treatment, reports Abe Aboraya of member station WMFE. "Instead, the hospital will look at federal and state funds, victims' funds like the One Orlando fund, and private funds raised for victims," Aboraya reports for our Newscast unit. "The hospital will bill insurance if...

It's looking like a lot of people are going to have little Obamacare choice next year.One-third of the United States may have just a single insurer to pick from on Obamacare marketplaces in 2017, an analysis released Friday suggests. Seven entire states are projected to have just one carrier in 2017: Alaska, Alabama, Kansas, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Wyoming, according to research by the Avalere consultancy. And more than half of the country, 55 percent, may end up having two or fewer insurers to choose from on those government-run exchanges, Avalere said. "And there may be some sub-region...

... Now, however, it appears a large reason for the shift in tone was the Department of Justice's lawsuit to block Aetna's merger with rival Humana. A July letter, acquired by The Huffington Post, outlined Aetna's thinking on the public exchanges if the deal with Humana were blocked. The letter from Bertolini to the DOJ outlined the effect of a possible merger on its Obamacare business. ...

Freefall Remember when Democrats, still in the midst of shoving ObamaCare down the throats of an unwilling nation, argued that it would actually be “market-based”? Democrats don’t know anything about how truly free markets work, of course, but their argument was that the ObamaCare exchanges were basically competitive marketplaces in which consumers could shop for the insurance that would make sense for them. OK, granted, it’s a marketplace operating under the artificially imposed and completely insane parameters imposed by the government. And OK, what we commonly call health “insurance” isn’t really anything like a real insurance product. And OK, the...

Many companies are cutting jobs in response to rising health care costs spurred by the Affordable Care Act, according to a new survey by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Roughly one-fifth of service sector and manufacturing company executives said they are reducing the number of workers in response to provisions in the healthcare law... The New York fed surveyed about 100 executives in the manufacturing sector and roughly 150 executives in the services sector located in New York State, Northern New Jersey and Fairfield County, Connecticut... The results add to a bevy of bad news related to the...

Double-digit Obamacare premium hikes projected in 2017 may bode in Donald Trump’s favor, as several swing states are being impacted by double-digit increases under the law and consumers are expected to see the hikes around Nov. 1 — one week before heading to the polls. Trump has promised to repeal and replace Obamacare, but Hillary Clinton has vowed to make the Obamacare exchanges work. Some say the way she would do that is through raising taxes.

It’s so great to be here tonight. I am honored to also be joined this evening by Governor Scott Walker, Chairman Reince Priebus, and Mayor Rudy Giuliani. We are at a decisive moment in this election. Last week, I laid out my plan to bring jobs back to our country. Yesterday, I laid out my plan to defeat Radical Islamic Terrorism. Tonight, I am going to talk about how to make our communities safe again from crime and lawlessness. Let me begin by thanking the law enforcement officers here in this city, and across this country, for their service and...

Aetna, the No. 3 U.S. health insurer, on Monday said that due to persistent financial losses on Obamacare plans, it will sell individual insurance on the government-run online marketplaces in only four states next year, down from the current 15 states. Aetna's decision follows similar moves from UnitedHealth and Humana, which have cited similar concerns about financial losses on these exchanges created under President Barack Obama's national healthcare reform law.

Distributism would be of little practical use if it could not provide useful answers to practical problems of the type we face practically every day. I believe Distributism does indeed provide a useful set of tools to analyze these problems and to devise useful solutions. But the proof of this claim can only come in the analysis of an actual problem. For this example of distributist analysis, I choose the American health care system, which is experiencing great difficulties, difficulties for which no one has yet devised a workable solution.Some sign of these difficulties is shown by the fact that in 2007,...

Acting CMS Administrator Andy Slavitt has a lot of explaining to do. And a lot of listening. In recent months, the agency issued draft rules carrying out what's intended to bring transformational change to the way Medicare pays physicians. It also rolled out a slew of experiments with payment and delivery reforms, including its first mandatory demonstration programs. In the process, Slavitt has become highly visible on social media and in person, and he has developed a reputation for unusual candor in conversations with healthcare leaders and clinicians. Slavitt spoke last week with Modern Healthcare managing editor Gregg Blesch. This...

The good people of Colorado must be smoking something these days. That’s the only explanation for the decision by 156,000 of the state’s more than 3 million registered voters to endorse a November ballot initiative that would create a statewide single-payer health care system. Patients in single-payer systems elsewhere must withstand low-quality care and long wait times. To fund all that failure, they pay sky-high taxes. If Colorado’s voters approve this single-payer measure at the polls this fall, they’ll experience these realities firsthand. Single-payer systems control costs by using government power to ration care. In Canada, where I grew up,...

Islamic supremacy is arriving in medical settings using stealth means, or what is often referred to as creeping sharia. Common themes include Muslim health care workers refusing to uphold infection control protocols, Muslim medical students refusing to study topics they deem forbidden according to Islamic law, Muslim visitors in hospitals ignoring hygiene guidelines to protect patients, and hospitals bending over backwards (or is it forwards?) to accommodate Muslim demands above and beyond anything done for members of any other religious or demographic group. Also covered are outright acts of violence perpetrated by Muslim men who attack hospital personnel. Islamic supremacy...

Hundreds of millions of dollars are spent annually in Georgia on uncompensated care for the uninsured. The uninsured may not have coverage but they do get sick; one way or another, we all pay for their care in a way that is terribly inefficient. • Money should follow people. It is important to support the institutions and providers that make up Georgia’s safety net, but solutions should be people-centered, not institutioncentered. • Innovation requires flexibility and choices. Micromanaging every last detail is a recipe for the status quo. The accompanying table shows the most recent data on the average enrollment...

It's not just United Health, Blue Cross/Blue Shield and boutique commercial insurers initially praised by the president as a model for his massive healthcare experiment. The trend of health insurance providers losing money on Obamacare's disproportionately older and sicker (and therefore more expensive to cover) enrollees is a nationwide problem that's driving companies out of the individual market and forcing rates upward. Fewer choices, higher costs, and disappointing enrollment statistics. Via John Sexton, here's a Politico report on the 'Affordable' Care Act's unstable, unsustainable status quo: For the insurance companies doing business in the state–the ones issuing policies to those 600,000 people–Obamacare has turned into a financial sinkhole....

Leading from behind is a business concept where leaders steer their organizations much as shepherds guiding their flocks, from behind. It is contingent on a basic reality, “One can lead from behind only if one knows what lies ahead and what it will take to get there.” President Obama’s foreign policy style has been described as “leading from behind” particularly in the Middle East. Another view of Obama’s style: “A foreign policy of hesitation, delay and indecision.” One look at the current Middle East shows how that is working out. Shifting from foreign to domestic affairs, how has the President’s...

The nation’s health care tab this year is expected to surpass $10,000 per person for the first time, the government said Wednesday. The new peak means the Obama administration will pass the problem of high health care costs on to its successor. The report from number crunchers at the Department of Health and Human Services projects that health care spending will grow at a faster rate than the national economy over the coming decade. That squeezes the ability of federal and state governments, not to mention employers and average citizens, to pay. Growth is projected to average 5.8 percent from...

Inquiring minds are diving into Kaiser Family Foundation reports on health care. The charts and stats are not pretty, and they are sure to get worse.

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".

When Maryland business owner Thomas Kunkel first learned about the Affordable Care Act, he was excited about the prospect of the new health care law. “From the small business standpoint, it was actually one of the first times I felt like a bit of a social program might actually benefit a small business,” he told The Daily Signal. “Usually it’s the opposite.” Kunkel owns Full House Marketing and Print in Edgewood, Maryland, and employs 21 full-time workers and up to 10 part-time employees. While he doesn’t provide them with health insurance, Kunkel cuts his workers a monthly check through a...