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(PDF Format) Free Congress Foundation Commentary The Major Incurable Disease – Tort Terror By Marion Edwyn Harrison, Esq. October 21, 2009 Unlike other countries, our Federal system and many of our State judicial systems encourage litigation against physicians and hospitals. The practice of medicine is almost unimaginatively sophisticated, as applicable knowledge continually becomes more complicated and more extensive.

ORLANDO, Fla. (WOFL FOX 35) - A proposed state guideline for dealing with an influenza pandemic is causing quite a stir. The Florida Department of Health is proposing that health care providers, notably hospitals, pull the plug on the most critically-ill patients in order to treat "healthier" patients.

Nurses Plan Strike Over Swine Flu Conditions At Hospitals October 19, 2009 More than 16,000 registered nurses are locked in a contract dispute with officials at 37 Catholic hospitals statewide and plan to strike Oct. 30 out of concern that the hospitals’ lax safety standards put them at risk of catching H1N1 flu. The California Nurses Assn., which is in bargaining talks with San Francisco-based Catholic Healthcare West hospitals, announced the strike this morning. Local hospitals expected to be affected include California Hospital Medical Center, St. Vincent Medical Center, Glendale Memorial Hospital and Health Center, St. Mary Medical Center in...

Florida health officials are drawing up guidelines that recommend barring patients with incurable cancer, end-stage multiple sclerosis and other conditions from being admitted to hospitals if the state is overwhelmed by flu cases.

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Patient Dumping is the practice of dumping those that cannot afford medical services or those that would burden the system onto other medical care providers. At the University of Chicago Medical Center, patient dumping appears to be a routine practice. In 2002, Michelle Obama became the Executive Director for Community Affairs at UCMC. Interestingly, Susan Sher, who hired Michelle for the UCMC gig, currently serves as Michelle Obama's chief of staff at the White House. Shortly after Barack Obama was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2004, Michelle received a promotion to become the Vice President for Community and External...

Reckless disregard for the safety of self or others Impulse control problems Irresponsibility Inability to tolerate boredom Pathological narcissism Shallow affect Deceitfulness/manipulativeness Aggressive or violent tendencies, repeated physical fights or assaults on others Lack of empathyLack of remorse, indifferent to or rationalizes having hurt or mistreated others A sense of extreme entitlement Lack of or diminished levels of anxiety/nervousness and other emotions Promiscuous sexual behavior, sexually deviant lifestyle Lack of personal insight

The uninsured are frequently vilified as “free riders” who receive care but shift the cost onto others—when they are not being portrayed as victims who don’t get as much medical care as some think they should. Thus they deserve punishment by higher taxes if they don’t accept their “individual responsibility” to buy costly insurance—or else public subsidies to buy “coverage” (instead of public payment for care actually received). The problem is purportedly magnified by overuse of the more costly emergency room by uninsured patients who delayed care they should have gotten sooner from a lower-cost primary physician. In fact, the...

MOUNT LAUREL, N.J. — A dozen New Jersey hospitals are paying doctors as an incentive to save the hospitals money.

Health Care: Lost in the kerfuffle about a pro-choice president being honored at the University of Notre Dame was the damage the Freedom of Choice Act might do to the nation's health care.Specifically, how many Catholic hospitals will close and how many Catholic doctors will quit if it becomes law? According to the Catholic Health Association, Catholic institutions make up 13% of the nation's nearly 5,000 hospitals, and employ more than 600,000 people. CHA says one of every six Americans hospitalized in the U.S. are cared for in a Catholic hospital. A lot of federal funds flow through the nation's...

<p>The case against a South Florida hospital that quietly chartered a plane and sent a seriously brain injured illegal immigrant back to Guatemala over the objections of his family and legal guardian was in the hands of a jury Thursday.</p>

Health Reform: If Democrats in Washington think their health care reform with a public option is a good thing, why have they exempted themselves from it? Why isn't what's good for their constituents good for them?During ABC's June 24 infomercial for government-run health care broadcast from the White House, President Obama was asked if he and his family would abide by the restrictions and limitations that came with his proposed reforms. In what Ed Morrissey at HotAir.com called "Obama's Michael Dukakis moment," President Obama refused to make such a pledge and confessed that if "it's my family member, if it's...

The civil case against a Florida hospital draws to a close this week. A relative of an illegal alien sued Martin Memorial Medical Center when it repatriated the man after treating him for nearly three years at an un-reimbursed cost of $1.5 million. The relative/legal guardian wants an unspecified six-figure judgment for alleged false imprisonment and nearly $1 million in economic damages for the medical care he has not received since 2003. That’s when Martin Memorial paid $30,000 to charter a jet to take Luis Jimenez to a medical facility in Guatemala. Jimenez now lives with his mother. Carol Plato,...

While Barack Obama presses for health-care reform, Sean Hannity looks at his wife’s efforts to reform medical care at the University of Chicago Medical Center as its vice-president. In a lengthy segment on last night’s show, Hannity reports on the Urban Health Initiative, a program ostensibly intended to provide the kind of change in health care that President Obama says his program will deliver nationally — fewer emergency room vists, better wellness and prevention care, and lower costs. However, the people in Chicago see the UHI differently. In practice, it looks more like a patient-dumping scheme to avoid dealing with...

The nation's hospitals agreed last night to contribute $155 billion over 10 years toward the cost of insuring the 47 million Americans without health coverage, according to two industry sources. The agreement that three hospital associations reached with White House officials and leaders of the Senate Finance Committee is the latest in a series of side deals that aim to reduce the cost of revamping the nation's health-care system and to neutralize influential industries that have historically opposed such reforms... Most of the savings -- about $100 billion -- would come through lower-than-expected Medicare and Medicaid payments to hospitals, said...

WASHINGTON (AP) - With health care legislation at a crossroads, the nation's hospitals are near agreement with a key lawmaker and the White House to pick up part of the cost of President Barack Obama's plan for expanded coverage, officials said Monday. The precise size of the deal was not available, although several days ago, talks were focused in the range of $150 billion to $155 billion over a decade. These officials said under the emerging agreement, hospitals would accept lower-than-anticipated payments under Medicare and Medicaid, the federal health care programs for seniors and the poor.

DAVIE, Fla. — When the sharp pain shooting through Lisa Strong's back got worse, she thought it was another kidney stone and expected the discomfort to pass. This time was different. Through a series of mistakes, miscommunications and misdiagnoses, she wound up having her arms and legs amputated. She sued the doctors, who essentially blamed one another for what everyone involved agrees were profound errors. Everyone except the jury that ruled against Strong.

A Tucson hospital's health-care package promises affluent Mexican women the chance to have their babies in posh surroundings with access to the latest medical equipment. But the marketing materials leave out a key draw in the arrangement: U.S. citizenship for the newborn. Tucson Medical Center's "birth package" gives an official nod to a generations-old practice of wealthy Mexican women coming to U.S. hospitals to give birth. Mexican families do the same thing at all local hospitals, but TMC is the only one actively recruiting their business. The practice is legal, but offensive to some advocates of tougher U.S. immigration standards.

For patients with prostate cancer, it is a common surgical procedure: a doctor implants dozens of radioactive seeds to attack the disease. But when Dr. Gary D. Kao treated one patient at the veterans’ hospital in Philadelphia, his aim was more than a little off. Most of the seeds, 40 in all, landed in the patient’s healthy bladder, not the prostate. It was a serious mistake, and under federal rules, regulators investigated. But Dr. Kao, with their consent, made his mistake all but disappear. He simply rewrote his surgical plan to match the number of seeds in the prostate, investigators...

The White House said Saturday that President Obama intends to pay for his health care overhaul partly by cutting more than $200 billion in expected reimbursements to hospitals over the next decade — a proposal that is likely to provoke a backlash from cash-strapped medical institutions around the country. Mr. Obama has insisted that his plan will not add to the federal deficit, and he had already set aside in his budget what he calls a $635 billion “down payment” toward the overall 10-year cost of the overhaul, which is expected to top $1 trillion. But Republicans and some Democratic...

A computer worm that has alarmed security experts around the world has crawled into hundreds of medical devices at dozens of hospitals in the United States and other countries, according to technologists monitoring the threat. The worm, known as "Conficker," has not harmed any patients, they say, but it poses a potential threat to hospital operations. "A few weeks ago, we discovered medical devices, MRI machines, infected with Conficker," said Marcus Sachs, director of the Internet Storm Center, an early warning system for Internet threats that is operated by the SANS Institute.

Doctors and hospitals would see big changes in how they're paid and what they're expected to do under proposals lawmakers will consider Wednesday as they narrow options for health care legislation. Senators on the Finance Committee will meet behind closed doors to review policy options aimed at making medical providers more accountable for the quality of care. Right now, providers are mainly paid for the number of services they perform, from office visits to tests and procedures. Changes are also in the works for private insurance plans that serve seniors on Medicare, as well as nursing homes, home health agencies...

Earlier this year, Harold and Freda Mitchell of Como, Miss., both came down with a serious stomach bug. At first, doctors did not know what was wrong, but the gastrointestinal symptoms became so severe that Mrs. Mitchell, 66, was hospitalized for two weeks. Her husband, a manufacturing supervisor, missed 20 days of work. A local doctor who had worked in a Veterans Affairs hospital recognized the signs of Clostridium difficile, a contagious and potentially deadly bacterium. Although the illness is difficult to track, health officials estimate that in the United States the bacteria cause 350,000 infections each year in hospitals...

The problems facing Spokane's Shriners Hospital for Children are daunting: too few patients, high costs, falling donations. It's a troublesome scenario that has put the hospital on the short list for closure as its parent organization staggers from massive investment losses that threaten to wipe out one of the best-known philanthropic organizations of the past century. "Either we close six hospitals now, or we might have to close all 22 in a matter of five to six years," national Shriners board Chairman Ralph Semb said last week. "Our entire system is at stake. There's no easy fix," he said. The...

Facing hard times, Shriners may close 6 hospitals Buzz Up Send By KATRINA A. GOGGINS, Associated Press Writer Katrina A. Goggins, Associated Press Writer – Thu Apr 9, 7:03 pm ET GREENVILLE, S.C. – Shriners hospitals, which have provided free care since before the Great Depression, are considering closing a quarter of their facilities as donations stagnate, costs increase and the charity's endowment shrivels. The group's director says it's the only viable option. Officials at the Florida-based organization say it is siphoning $1 million a day from its endowment to balance the budget for 22 hospitals in the U.S., Canada...

A group representing Catholic hospitals and health care facilities in California, noting that “pressure has been especially acute” in the state to force Catholic institutions to violate their moral values, has called on the Obama Administration to give up its attempt to repeal federal “conscience clause protection for hospitals and health care workers.” "The conscience protections contained in federal law are a civil right for all hospitals and health care workers," said William J. Cox, president of the Sacramento-based Alliance of Catholic Health Care in a statement issued yesterday. “The regulation that the Administration seeks to repeal is necessary for...

We hear a lot about the need for universal healthcare these days. To listen to the media, Americans aren't able to access even basic healthcare at a reasonable price. Apparently, illegal aliens aren't having any problems at all getting care - in this clip one Florida administrator explains just how much illegal aliens are costing only one hospital in her testimony before some kind of state panel. So either illegal aliens have a better deal than the rest of us... or this whole "healthcare crisis" is just being made up. What gives?

This has probably been posted on FR...take your BP meds before you watch this.

Many plan to cut services and staff as investment returns worsen and paying admissions decline, research shows.The economic decline is continuing to ravage the nation's hospitals, with half of them operating in the red and many planning service and staffing cuts, two new reports show. Hospitals are ailing because of a number of problems hitting in close succession. First, hospitals' investment incomes plummeted -- like everybody's -- eliminating a cushion for operating budgets and curtailing capital spending. Then, the mix of patients began to shift: Paying admissions declined as people put off elective procedures and insurers tightened their grip on...

Doctors are forecasting the closure of hospitals and clinics across America and a mass migration of physicians and their assistances to other careers should the Obama administration succeed in its attempt to overrule their rights of conscience. "Thousands of conscientious and compassionate physicians, nurses, hospitals and clinics currently serve poor women and those who live in medically underserved areas," said David Stevens, CEO of the Christian Medical Association today. "Many of these professionals and institutions are motivated and guided by longstanding Hippocratic ethics and biblical principles that preclude participation in abortion and other controversial procedures. Infringing on their right to...

Springfield MO, 200+ people arrived in 35 degree weather to show their support to the nationwide "tea party" movement, and the disgust at the obscene expansion of wasteful government spending.

The nation's largest group of emergency doctors this afternoon is condemning a University of Chicago Medical Center initiative to divert patients from its emergency room saying it was "dangerously close" to violating federal laws. The American College of Emergency Physicians said the University of Chicago Medical Center is "failing in its obligation to treat emergency patients, citing drastic reductions in inpatient beds for emergency patients." The Washington-based organization cited Tribune coverage last week that included a story about a 12-year-old boy attacked by a "pit bull who was sent to another hospital for surgery." The emergency room doctors expressed "grave"...

Covertly slipped into GL Obama’s faux “stimulus bill” last weekend—by leftist Democrats—was the Socialist Universal Healthcare program. Contained within the bill is the provision that doctors will now be forced to report any and all of their patient treatments to the federal government for approval to treat. Also contained within this portion of Obama’s non-stimulus bill is the rationing of healthcare services to senior US citizens and the withholding of potentially life-saving measures. As Democrat Tom Daschle wrote in his book “Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis” senior citizens “should be more accepting of the conditions that...

Scores of Palestinian patients being treated in Israeli hospitals, a rare bright spot of coexistence here, are being sent home because the Palestinian Authority has stopped paying for their treatment, partly in anger over the war in Gaza. Hadassah Hospital says that for the past week no payments have come in and Palestinians whose children are being treated there have been instructed by Palestinian health officials to place them in facilities in the West Bank, Jordan or Egypt.

Many question how doctors and hospitals can ignore performing emergency medical care on people by turning them away from hospitals. Didn't they take an oath? The paramedics perform emergency medical care on their patients and the 69 year old man was stabilized. They just could not find a hospital willing to take the man in and give him emergency medical care.

The United States will need $1.6 trillion to repair damage to its infrastructure from a massive influx of immigrants, a new report reveals. In his report titled, "The Twin Crises: Immigration and Infrastructure," prominent researcher Edwin S. Rubenstein examines 15 categories of infrastructure: airports, border security, bridges, dams and levees, electricity (the power grids), hazardous waste removal , hospitals, mass transit, parks and recreation facilities, ports and navigable waterways, public schools, railroads, roads and highways, solid waste and trash, and water and sewer systems. Rubenstein, a financial analyst and former contributing editor of Forbes and economics editor of National Review,...

She hasn’t shown up for work very regularly over the last year or so, so when Michelle Obama’s $300,000 job was cut at the University of Chicago Hospitals, it may have been hard to notice the difference.

Aerobics and yoga classes, workout rooms and open-air courtyards were just a few of the amenities recommended for California's hospitalized felons in a draft report for the court-appointed receiver tasked with overhauling the state's prison health care system. The recommendations called on the cash-starved state to spend $8 billion on seven new hospitals - each roughly the size of 10 Wal-Mart stores - to replace a decrepit health care system that a federal judge says is killing an average of one inmate per week. Judge Thelton Henderson said state officials were incapable of fixing the system and handed the job...

Gainesville, Florida's first community hospital has been struggling since it was acquired by the Shands Healthcare system in northern Florida twelve years ago. But now the plug is being pulled from the 80-year-old, money-losing Shands AGH because of the recession. Its eight-hospital not-for-profit parent company will close the 220-bed hospital next fall. Patients and staff will be moved to a nearby newer, larger teaching hospital as part of an effort to conserve $65 million over three years throughout the healthcare system. Like many U.S. hospitals, Shands is being hit by higher borrowing costs, tight credit, investment losses and a spike...

(CNSNews.com) – Now that Barack Obama has been elected president, pro-life and pro-abortion groups are waiting to see if he will keep his campaign promise to sign the Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA) into law and if faith-based hospitals and health care facilities will be forced to perform abortions or risk losing federal funding – a loss that could result in some health care providers closing their doors. “Well, the first thing I’d do as president is sign the Freedom of Choice Act,” Obama said at a July 17, 2007 meeting of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund. “That’s the first...

Sen. Charles Grassley is weighing proposing legislation in early 2009 that would hold nonprofit hospitals more accountable for the billions of dollars in annual tax exemptions they enjoy, aides to the Iowa senator said. The legislation would require nonprofit hospitals to spend a minimum amount on free care for the poor, also known as charity care, and set curbs on executive compensation and conflicts of interest, according to staff members for Mr. Grassley, ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee.

New taxes, deep cuts to education and health care, and a restructuring of the state's economic development programs will be hallmarks of Gov. David Paterson's first budget plan to be released in two days, according to interviews of people briefed on components. The plan will come with a host of revenue raisers — increased taxes on hospitals and insurance policies, for instance — and at least one new assessment, a so-called obesity tax on non-diet soda to raise $404 million. The governor also is contemplating requiring new license plates to raise cash, reviving sales tax on clothing purchases, removing the...

U.S. cities are racing to fix security vulnerabilities revealed by the devastating terror attacks in Mumbai, and many hotels remain “sitting ducks,” experts tell Newsmax.

Ed Morissey at Hot Air tells us how serious the bishops are about not allowing Catholic Hospitals to be forced into performing abortions under FOCA: [The bishops will] shut them down and take the losses in order to prevent their use as abortion clinics. To do otherwise, the bishops stated, would be to cooperate in the evil of abortions. What kind of impact would that have? The Catholic Church is one of the nation’s biggest health-care providers. In 2007, they ran 557 hospitals that serviced over 83 million patients. The church also had 417 clinics that saw over seven...

October 29, 2008 Dear United States Senator Subject: Veterans impatient with pace of Veteran Administration (VA) medical facility project There is no back up plane to facilitate the growing number of the veteran population. Veterans have to go from one clinic to the next to receive all the health care that they need due to the fact that the Veteran Clinics do not provide all of the medical attention a veteran need. Veterans are put on several different types of medications given to them by each clinic, sometimes the clinics do not know the different medications that are administered to...

ORANGE – UCI Medical Center could lose Medicare funding after investigators found that anesthesiologists falsified surgical records, filling them out before patients were ever put under on the operating table. Inspectors found serious deficiencies that "substantially limit the hospital's capacity to render adequate care to patients," according to the certified letter and report sent Aug. 15 to the hospital's administrator. The Register obtained a copy of the public record from Medicare officials after UCI failed to respond to a Sept. 12 request for the report and accompanying information. UCI officials sent the Register an e-mail today – after learning of...

Two hospitals in Australia are serving vegetarian meals because of unpaid meat bills, a provincial legislator says. Kevin Humphries, a member of the New South Wales parliament, told the Melbourne Sun-Herald that the Greater Western Area Health Service, which operates the Gilgandra and Coonabarabran hospitals, owes money to a number of suppliers.

Just breaking on Fox. Not much info yet. People walking into are hospitals in St. Louis sick, skin turning blue and with breathing problems. Hospitals on Lock down. ??? They just mentioned it on Fox News....sounds very scary folks!

In a study of hospital discharge data for the State of Texas, whistleblowing Catholic medical researchers found that Catholic hospitals reported at least 9,684 cases of sterilizations and 39 legally induced abortions from 2000-2003. While sterilizations and abortions are legal in the United States, they are considered immoral by the Catholic Church and many Catholics.

WASHINGTON - Americans who go without health insurance for any part of 2008 will spend $30 billion out of pocket for health care and they will get $56 billion worth of free care, according to a report released on Monday. Government programs pay for about three-quarters, or roughly $43 billion, of the bills for these uninsured people, Jack Hadley of George Mason University in Virginia and a team at the Urban Institute reported. "Physicians' donated time and forgone profits amount to $7.8 billion. After government payments to hospitals are subtracted, private philanthropy and profit margins are responsible for at least...