Free Republic

Cancer patients are to be denied drugs which could keep them alive after the NHS rationing watchdog ruled that they are too expensive. Patient groups said the decision, announced today by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice), would condemn many sufferers of kidney cancer to an "early death". Four prohibited medicines include Sutent, which can prolong life in kidney cancer patients by up to two years. Nice said the drugs were too expensive, at about £24,000/year per patient, for the benefits they offered and would mean the health service was less able to afford more cost-effective drugs...

WASHINGTON — Senator Obama's endorsement of a proposal by Senator Clinton to give health care tax credits to small businesses marks the first policy-related olive branch he has offered to his vanquished rival. The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee unveiled the plan during a speech yesterday in San Diego to the National Council of La Raza, where he touted its potential to expand health care and jobs for Latino businesses and families. Under the $6 billion-a-year plan, small firms that provide health care for their employees would be eligible for refundable tax credits covering as much as 50% of the cost...

Gov. Jon Corzine enacted the first phase of New Jersey's universal health care plan yesterday by mandating coverage for all children within three years and offering affordable, subsidized policies to needy parents. The goal is to cover 1.3 million uninsured state residents by 2011 through a state program administered by private insurers at a lower cost. "For those who are cynical about government and say we don't move and we don't change, I assure you when you look back 10 years from today, you will say we made a great stride forward," Cor zine said before signing the legislation at...

Barack Obama unveiled a $6 billion-a-year plan to provide tax credits for small businesses offering health insurance to employees, adopting an idea proposed by onetime rival Hillary Clinton and targeted at one of the most persistent challenges in achieving universal coverage. The tax credit offers an incentive for small businesses, which helped sink former President Bill Clinton's 1993 plan, which would have required all businesses to contribute toward health costs. Obama's proposed tax credit is an effort to bring this powerful constituency to the Democratic camp by offering carrots, not sticks, toward health coverage. Sen. Clinton concluded the same and...

One year ago today, San Francisco became the first city in the nation to attempt to provide universal health care to its residents. Twelve months later, some city residents wonder why the program is billed as universal when they're still getting turned away. When the Healthy San Francisco program began at two Chinatown clinics July 2, 2007, public health officials said they would swing open the doors to all of the city's 73,000 uninsured residents on Jan. 1, 2008. They anticipated that people would enroll gradually at a pace of about 600 a week, and full coverage would be attained...

As this presidential campaign continues, the candidates' comments about health care will continue to include stories of their own experiences and anecdotes of people across the country: the uninsured woman in Ohio, the diabetic in Detroit, the overworked doctor in Orlando, to name a few.But no one will mention Claude Castonguay — perhaps not surprising because this statesman isn't an American and hasn't held office in over three decades. Castonguay's evolving view of Canadian health care, however, should weigh heavily on how the candidates think about the issue in this country. Back in the 1960s, Castonguay chaired a Canadian government...

What if we bought cars the same way we buy health care? The dealer would say, "Look, we don't really know the price of our cars, but we know you really need one. So, why don't you just come by and pick one up." Then three weeks later you would begin receiving a blizzard of bills — a bill from the people who made the chassis, a bill from people who made the transmission, a bill from the seat maker and the paint people and the folks who made the sound system. ... Gratefully, cars aren't sold that way. All...

My lad is in America waiting for a visa to live there and marry a lovely American lass. He was taken ill and went to hospital where an appendectomy was performed. The bill is $28,000 minimum. We think he has medical cover but we don't know the datils ...is ths figure about right? Anyone out there with any advice?

THE medical establishment is in revolt against Labour's policy of denying National Health Service treatment to patients who pay privately for cancer medicines. The outcry from eminent consultants and doctors' leaders came as news emerged of two more patients whose NHS care was removed while they were dying of cancer. Baroness Ilora Finlay, president of the Royal Society of Medicine, said the issue went to the heart of the purpose of the health service. Finlay's intervention, in an article for The Sunday Times, comes after it emerged that a man dying of kidney cancer had to battle for NHS care...

IRONICALLY enough, the dangers of the liberal health-care agenda are being made clear by the care that a liberal icon, Sen. Ted Kennedy, has received since his brain seizure last month. One day after an MRI detected a tumor, Kennedy was quickly diagnosed with a malignant glioma - a rare and often-fatal form of brain cancer. Less than two weeks later, his tumor was being removed by one of the world's experts in brain cancer at Duke University Medical Center. He'll follow up with chemo and radiation therapy tailored to the genetic makeup of his cancer to keep the cancer...

The former First Lady would get the chance to pilot Mr Obama's reforms of the American healthcare system if she agrees to clear the path to his nomination as Democratic presidential candidate. ... Dee Dee Myers, the former press secretary to President Clinton, said: "It seems clear to me from watching her, and talking to people, that she doesn't really know what she wants." But after 17 months of campaigning, and $150 million (£76 million) spent, the question that haunts the Clinton camp is: how did someone who a year ago had unrivalled name recognition, a legendary campaign organisation and...

Imagine for a minute that Ted Kennedy lived in an America where the government ran health care, and he was what pundits and talking heads like to call a “working class” American. He’s sitting in his kitchen, reading the paper and eating his morning breakfast when he starts convulsing uncontrollably. His wife makes the call for an ambulance, only to be told that the ambulance would be there as soon as their government mandated break was complete. Unlike this British man, who died from a heart attack five minutes from an ambulance station while two ambulance crews took an EU-mandated...

Eye specialist Sarah Anderson works at York Hospital. Her father Ian has been refused Sutent, a new cancer drug, which could provide the only real chance of prolonging his life. Sarah, 40, lives in York with husband, Bill, a computer programmer and their twins, Douglas and Ryan, five. As an ophthalmologist, I have spent my working life in the NHS. And for all its perceived failings, I have been proud of its fundamental role in our society - to provide equality of care for all. Of course, I've heard the term postcode lottery but as a doctor I've only ever...

SOUTH BEND, Indiana -- Well, it took nearly 12 years, but I finally convinced Sen. Hillary Clinton to speak with me on television. Emboldened by Barack Obama's "Rev. Wright" disaster, the senator is aggressively reaching out to independent voters, many of whom watch "The Factor." After meeting and speaking with her face to face, my assessment is that health care is Clinton's strongest issue and Iran is her weakest. Polls show that most Americans are fed up with exorbitant medical costs and a callous insurance industry. So any presidential candidate who offers relief from this mess will get a hearing....

Sen. John McCain on Monday rejected a "big government" takeover of the health care system, saying he wants to empower families to make more medical decisions. "I've made it very clear that what I want is for families to make decisions about their health care, not government, and that's the fundamental difference between myself and Sen. Obama and Sen. Clinton," McCain told reporters in Miami, Florida, referring to the two remaining Democratic presidential candidates, Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. "They want the government to make the decisions, I want the families to make decisions," he said. During a speech...

Sixty Per Cent of Physicians Surveyed Oppose Switching to a National Health Care Plan Written by Cisco Monday, 07 April 2008 With apologies to the leftist anti-war crowd, I will steal and bastardize one of their favorite mantras: “Ackerman lied, health care freedom died.” Now that I have said it, I have to admit that it does not have all of the fluidity of the anti-war slogans. Maybe that is because “Ackerman” has three syllables and “Bush” has just one. Or maybe that is because you need to be a brainless leftist in order to construct a really enjoyable brainless...

I've heard Hillary tell the story many times in campaign speeches, and it rarely fails to bring a horrified gasp from the crowd: An uninsured and pregnant Ohio woman, working for minimum wage at a pizza parlor, is turned away from a hospital because she can't come up with $100. The baby dies, and so does the woman. Clinton talks about how this woman haunts her, and how stories like this show the moral imperative - and the urgency - of fixing a badly broken health care system. (video) Except, it turns out, it didn't happen - at least not...

Once they discover that she is Dr. Kate, the supplicants line up to approach at dinner parties and ballet recitals. Surely, they suggest to Dr. Katherine J. Atkinson, a family physician here, she might find a way to move them up her lengthy waiting list for new patients. Those fortunate enough to make it soon learn they face another long wait: Dr. Atkinson’s next opening for a physical is not until early May — of 2009. Now in Massachusetts, in an unintended consequence of universal coverage, the imbalance is being exacerbated by the state’s new law requiring residents to have...

Five myths of health care Fictions don't become facts through repetition. Keep that in mind next time you hear a politician breathlessly decry the horrors of the American health-care system and then explain how he intends to fix it. Some of the most popular talking points in the health-care debate pass as the gospel truth simply because, well, they're popular — not because they're true. Below, I debunk the five most prominent health-care myths: (1) Forty-seven million Americans do not have health insurance. This figure comes from the U.S. Census Bureau. What most people don't know, however, is that the...

Among the debts reported this month by Hillary Clinton’s struggling presidential campaign, the $292,000 in unpaid health insurance premiums for her campaign staff stands out. Clinton, who is being pressured to end her campaign against Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination, has made her plan for universal health care a centerpiece of her agenda. The campaign provides health insurance to all its employees, their spouses, partners and children – and that wasn’t interrupted by any lag in payments to insurance providers, said Jay Carson, a Clinton campaign spokesman. He said the campaign this month paid off all outstanding bills to...

The former congressman who shepherded the Family and Medical Leave Act through Congress sought Thursday to debunk Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s (D-N.Y.) claim to the legislation, saying she “never had anything to do with it.” Former Rep. William Lacy Clay, Sr. (D-Mo.) is circulating an email disputing Clinton’s claim that the law is one of her more meaningful domestic accomplishments. The presidential candidate says she helped lobby for the bill’s passage and signing in 1993. But Clay, who was joined by Senate sponsor Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.), said the bill had already passed by large margins when it passed in 1990...

*** Next she'll say that she was threatened by Bosnian snipers disguised as little girls hiding Uzis in the flowers...... NAMES REDACTED Ozone Park *** The master of deceit, Bill Clinton, and his sidekick, Hillary. "I did not have sexual relations with that woman" still rings in my ears. Lavallette, NJ ***What a sick lie. I'm sorry I ever voted for the Clintons and did so twice. If she gets the nod by conniving, I'll be voting for Sen. John McCain. Surfside Beach, NC *** I don't see how anyone can support Clinton now that she has been caught with...

Hillary Clinton regaled reporters for the umpteenth time with her fairy tale about a heroic landing through a hail of sniper fire 10 years ago.....This is pure, calculated fabrication. Lies, all of it. Fraudulence of this scope and severity makes Al Gore's claims that he invented the Internet look downright quaint. Throughout even the most polarizing of political eras, there is one thing both sides have always been able to agree upon: The Clintons lie with abandon......in the 1993 firing of the White House travel staff, investigators concluded Hillary's sworn testimony was "factually false." In 2000, The NY Times...

Maybe, just maybe, it’s now worth at least asking whether Hillary Clinton might wind up as the Democratic candidate for vice president. When the chatter about a Democratic “dream ticket” began last year, it was easy to dismiss. Either Clinton or Obama would win a clear victory in the primaries and, after what inevitably would be a contentious campaign, each would want as little to do with the other as possible. Clinton, if she emerged victorious, would instead choose some kind of national security graybeard to her political right, a retired general perhaps, or maybe even a Republican. Likewise, Obama...

Inside Sylvia de Vries lurked an enormous tumour and fluid totalling 18 kilograms. But not even that massive weight gain and a diagnosis of ovarian cancer could assure her timely treatment in Canada. Fighting for her life, the Windsor woman headed to the United States. In Pontiac, Mich., a surgeon excised the tumour - 35 centimetres at its longest - along with her ovaries, appendix, fallopian tubes, uterus and cervix. In addition, 13 litres of fluid were drained during that October, 2006, operation. And there was little time to spare: Had she waited two weeks, she would have faced potential...

LONDON - A patient was told there was no reason why he couldn't have surgery in a hospital, despite the smell caused by a dead rodent trapped in the building's ceiling. Andrew Cowper was due to have an operation at the Queen Elizabeth II hospital in Hertfordshire when staff "were made aware of a dead rodent in the single storey unit's roof space," the hospital said in a statement. The hospital said its experts concluded that the dead animal was outside the operating theater and posed no risk. But "despite being told that the trust's infection control experts had stated...

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said Thursday he issued new subpoenas to Aetna Inc., Cigna Corp., UnitedHealth Group Inc. and WellPoint Inc., and other health insurers in a broadening investigation of possible fraud costing consumers hundreds of millions of dollars. Cuomo is also looking to subpoena testimony from the chief executives of those companies, as well as from executives of Empire Blue Cross Blue Shield, Excellus, and the combined Group Health Inc. and HIP Health Plan. "The CEOs are responsible for their corporations and these actions had a significant impact on families all across the state," Cuomo told The...

More than 400 Canadians in the full throes of a heart attack or other cardiac emergency have been sent to the United States because no hospital can provide the lifesaving care they require here. Most of the heart patients who have been sent south since 2003 typically show up in Ontario hospitals, where they are given clot-busting drugs. If those drugs fail to open their clogged arteries, the scramble to locate angioplasty in the United States begins. While other provinces have sent patients out of country - British Columbia has sent 75 pregnant women or their babies to Washington State...

As the state of Massachusetts has shown, along with Great Britain and Canada, socialized health care generally runs a higher cost than is initially expected. In order to meet the financial goals, the quality of care offered to the patient is compromised. If either Democrat candidate wins the 2008 election and enacts a universal health care program in America, there is no reason to doubt that we’ll face similar results here. The cost of free health care is expensive not only in monetary terms, but also in the cost of lives.

LEAD: Ten years after the U.S. started talking about ''family values,'' many wonder why we are still unable to provide decent education, health care and opportunity for all of our children.... ... At this pivotal moment, much can be learned by comparing America's child care system to France's.... ...What we saw was a coordinated, comprehensive system, supported across the political spectrum, that links day care, early education and health care - and is accessible to virtually every child... We found sharp contrasts between the French and U.S. child care systems....In France, mandated paid parental leave for child birth and adoption...

Hillary Clinton just raised her campaign pledge for universal health care to the level of a new Constitutional right, telling a crowd in De Pere, Wis., today that the way things stand in America it’s OK to discriminate against the sick. It’s actually an idea being floated by Wisconsin Rep. Steve Kagen, a doctor who introduced Clinton here at St. Norbert’s College. (She gave him credit.) But Hillary embraced it wholly, and made it her own. “Under our Constitution, no one is supposed to be discriminated against. That’s part of our values, that’s our law in America. Except sick people...

It's Texas or bust for Hillary Rodham Clinton, hubby Bill admitted..... "If she wins Texas and Ohio, I think she will be the nominee. If you don't, then I don't think she can," he told a crowd in Beaumont. Reuters/Zogby showed Obama with a hefty national lead over Clinton, 52 to 38%.....Harold Ickes, one of her top advisers, acknowledged Obama is now the front-runner. FEC filings show Clinton raised $20M last month, to Obama's $36M. She has raised $118M during the campaign. Obama's aides say he's raised an eye-popping $150M this campaign cycle. Roger Salazar, president of Clinton's new 527...

Since 1970, the health care industry has undergone a revolutionary change. Before that time people were overwhelmingly (about 70%) in traditional indemnity plans where patients pay a certain percentage of health care costs. With the passage of the Health Maintenance Organization Act written by Ted Kennedy (D-Mass), very quickly over 70% of Americans were covered by HMOs. The structure of HMOs was also largely different than traditional indemnity plans. HMOs require primary care physicians to act as gatekeepers of advanced care and it empowered insurance companies to challenge the medical judgment of doctors. It restricted choice to those doctors and...

http://boortz.com/nuze/index.html I think that we should give this election a theme. Now I know that the politicians are all using the "change" word. That word was tested in front of focus groups around the country and really rang the bells. Hillary, Barack ... change, change, change. How pathetically stupid. If someone tells you they're going to "change" something, wouldn't you be just the least bit curious as to what in the hell they are going to change from and to? But wait .. that would take a sense of inquisitiveness, wouldn't it? So .. we need another theme. May I...

Most Democrats say "socialized medicine" would be better than the current U.S. health care system, while most Republicans say it would be worse, a poll by the Harvard School of Public Health showed on Thursday. Highlighting philosophic divisions over a top issue in this year's U.S. presidential election, the poll showed most Americans expect the Democratic front-runners to pursue changes that would create a socialized medical system. The survey did not provide a definition of that term and one in three voters said they did not understand it. But more than 70 percent said they understood it to mean "the...

Sen. Hillary Clinton's proposal for reform of the health care system makes a promise: "If you are happy with your current health care coverage, keep your existing coverage."That coverage usually is provided by private insurance companies, which retain a prominent role also in Sen. Barack Obama's reform plan. Ostensibly, the Democratic candidates recognize the importance of private insurance options, and the proposals add a Medicare-like government insurance option to provide enhanced competition driven by supposedly lower administrative costs. The larger reality is very different: The government option would crush competition and render meaningless the Democratic promise to preserve choice. That...

Los Angeles County healthcare officials unveiled a draft cost-cutting plan Wednesday that calls for closing all but one of the county's dozen clinics and reduces services at its six comprehensive outpatient health centers. Officials said a $195-million deficit makes the cuts necessary even under a "best-case scenario" for the badly strapped public healthcare system. The county faces the threat of more reductions in state and federal aid in the next few months. Health department officials have privately floated the possibility of deeper cuts if the projected deficit grows. The current proposal, if approved by the Board of Supervisors, would dramatically...

<p>Back in 1961, Ronald Reagan spoke out against socialized medicine in the above clip. His words are as true today as they were back then. Pass this one along to all your friends, especially those who have bought the "feel good" propaganda foisted upon us by Hillary Rotten Clinton, Michael Moron and other Leftists.</p>

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Fewer American doctors are focusing on primary care, but the decline is being covered by physicians from other countries. The General Accountability Office said Tuesday that as of 2006 there were 22,146 American doctors in residency programs in the United States specializing in primary care. That was down from 23,801 in 1995, the research arm of Congress told the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. "It is troubling to me that the number of Americans pursuing a career in primary care has declined," said Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. Overall growth in the number of primary-care physicians...

What type of health care system should the US have? The current system is fine A complete free market from providers to payers A complete socialised system from provider to payer a single payer system with some price regulations an insurance system with some price regulations I like the ides proposed in your article

How Arnold Schwarzenegger's overhaul plan was doomed by the Legislature's liberal-conservative partisan crossfire -- The defeat last month of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's proposal to overhaul California's health care industry was a disappointing failure for the governor on the one issue he had put at the top of his agenda for an entire year. But the proposal's demise was also a vivid confirmation of Schwarzenegger's diagnosis of what ails the Legislature. The bill died in a partisan crossfire, opposed from the beginning by conservative Republicans and ultimately killed by liberal Democrats. It was a centrist approach in a Capitol where centrism...

Clinton Care 2.0: Clinton's new health care proposal is as intrusive as the 1993 version by Clint Bolick Largely lost amidst attention over Super Tuesday was Sen. Hillary Clinton's admission on Sunday that her proposed universal health care program would come with a huge dose of government coercion. Associated Press reported that Clinton said she would achieve universal coverage by "going after people's wages" and "automatic enrollment." The healthy must support the sick, the senator insists, and must be forced to join a government health insurance program willingly or not. Ironically, liberals who are fighting for government-compelled health care are...

Two trends bedevil America. One is taxes. The second, more important, is marriage. Those who pay no taxes have no check on their appetite for services. If somebody else is paying, nothing’s unaffordable. At the federal level, 41 percent of the U.S. population is totally outside the income tax system, according to the Washington-based Tax Foundation. Since 2000, the number of filers with no tax liability, zero, has increased from 29 million to 42 million in 2005. Of 132.6 million returns filed in 2005, only 90.6 million paid taxes. The rest got back all they’d paid in — and more....

I’m not a Hillary-hater. She’s been an outstanding senator. She hung tough on Iraq through the dark days of 2005. In this campaign, she has soldiered on bravely even though she has most of the elected Democrats, news media and the educated class rooting against her. But there are certain moments when her dark side emerges and threatens to undo the good she is trying to achieve. Her campaign tactics before the South Carolina primary were one such moment. Another, deeper in her past, involved Jim Cooper, a Democratic congressman from Tennessee. Cooper is one of the most thoughtful, cordial...

Will Sen. Hillary Clinton garnish the wages of people who can afford health insurance but refuse to buy into her universal health care plan? The Democratic presidential hopeful tried to duck the question Sunday when ABC's George Stephanopoulos asked her about wage-garnishing three times but she didn't rule it out. Pressed a third time on the wage-garnishing question, Clinton said,"we will have an enforcement mechanism - whether it's that (wage garnishing) or it's some other mechanism through the tax system or automatic enrollments."

THE ISSUE: Bill Clinton's business dealings; and refusal to disclose his charity's donors. **** ........most amusing is that, regardless of how much slime they add to the headlines, there's a 50/50 chance this dog-and-pony act could occupy the White House again. Scandals are second nature to the Clintons - and apparently to a large segment of voters. NAMES REDACTED The Bronx **** Bill Clinton's apparent influence-peddling in Kazakhstan pales compared to the mysterious funding sources for his $165M presidential library. The pervasive scent of "quid pro quo" follows the Clintons wherever they go.......Manhattan **** If Hillary becomes president, will First...

Election '08: Sen. Hillary Clinton says she learned a lesson from the the failure of her 1990s universal coverage task force. Actually, she's simply become a bit more subtle with her approach.Clinton would still force the country to participate in a national system, in part by requiring everyone to buy health care insurance. Should any — ostensibly free — Americans refuse, she would consider having the government garnish their wages. This would apply, she says, only to those who can afford the premiums but who refuse to buy coverage. And who determines who can and cannot afford to pay? Naturally...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton said Sunday she might be willing to garnish the wages of workers who refuse to buy health insurance to achieve coverage for all Americans. The New York senator has criticized presidential rival Barack Obama for pushing a health plan that would not require universal coverage. Clinton has not always specified the enforcement measures she would embrace, but when pressed on ABC's "This Week," she said: "I think there are a number of mechanisms" that are possible, including "going after people's wages, automatic enrollment."

Will Hillary Clinton as president tap into workers' wages to achieve her goal of health insurance for all Americans? The possibility exists as the candidate was pressed on the matter during a television interview today. Speaking on ABC's "This Week" program, the Democratic senator from New York said she might be willing to have wages garnisheed if people refuse to buy health insurance. "I think universal health care is a core Democratic value and a moral principle, and I'm absolutely gonna do everything I can to achieve that," Clinton said. "I think there are a number of mechanisms" possible, including...