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Central NJ- My significant other bashed her hand this morning, it swelled bad and lots of pain. Went to work and it got worse, so went to the urgent care facility for an x-ray. She works for J&J and has very good insurance. When she arrived, she asked if they were able to x-ray on site, and was told yes. After filling out many pages of forms and handing over a $20 co-pay, she was taken to a room where a 'nurse' incorrectly attempted to take her blood pressure several times, tried taking her pulse with her thumb instead of...

Does a shadowy group of obscenely wealthy elitists control the world? Do men and women with enormous amounts of money really run the world from behind the scenes? The answer might surprise you. Most of us tend to think of money as a convenient way to conduct transactions, but the truth is that it also represents power and control. And today we live in a neo-fuedalist system in which the super rich pull all the strings. When I am talking about the ultra-wealthy, I am not just talking about people that have a few million dollars. As you will see...

Starting in April, the practice will ask patients to pay doctors directly for their care and no longer will accept payments from insurance companies except for Medicare. "We believe that insurance companies are making it increasingly difficult to practice patient-centered medicine," the doctors in the practice wrote to patients this month. The doctors are joining the small but growing number of physicians who since the late 1990s have tried going the "direct pay" or "concierge" route, where doctors typically care for a smaller group of patients who are willing to pay for easier access to their physician. It's a trend...

In pro-gun-regulation Illinois — where politicians would rather play gun control politics than fight the murderous street gangs — a young man was admitted to the hospital. Sam Insley, 16, of Oak Lawn, wasn't admitted with a gun problem. Sam had a tonsil problem. "It was an infected tonsil," Mary Rita Insley told me of her son Sam, a strapping, 6-foot-2-inch, 195-pound lacrosse player at St. Rita High School on the Southwest Side. "Yes, he's a big kid, but regardless of his age and stature, my husband and I were with him the entire time he was there." Sam was...

Sixteen Democratic senators who voted for the Affordable Care Act are asking that one of its fundraising mechanisms, a 2.3 percent tax on medical devices scheduled to take effect January 1, be delayed.  Echoing arguments made by Republicans against Obamacare, the Democratic senators say the levy will cost jobs — in a statement Monday, Sen. Al Franken called it a “job-killing tax” — and also impair American competitiveness in the medical device field. The senators, who made the request in a letter(PDF) to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, are Franken, Richard Durbin, Charles Schumer, Patty Murray, John Kerry, Kirsten Gillibrand,...

According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, the recent recession ended in June 2009. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (aka, the fiscal stimulus bill) was passed by Congress and signed into law on February 17, 2009, by President Barack Obama for $831 billion. We know that unemployment is currently higher than the Administration’s prediction of unemployment WITHOUT the stimulus. Given over a year for the fiscal stimulus to kick-in, we see that the employment situation remains bleak. We know that more people have gone on disability than dropped off unemployment rolls since May 2010, the beginning...

Little Canada-based St. Jude Medical is eliminating 80 jobs in Minnesota as part of a restructuring plan the company announced Thursday, Aug. 30. The medical device manufacturer, which employs about 3,000 in Minnesota, said it is providing support to about 300 workers across the company whose jobs have been eliminated. St. Jude Medical competes in the market for heart devices against Fridley-based Medtronic and Natick, Mass.-based Boston Scientific, which makes pacemakers and implantable defibrillators at a division based in Arden Hills. On Wednesday, a Boston Scientific official said his company is moving forward with previously announced plans to eliminate jobs....

Palo Alto resident Ed Lee routinely negotiates for his own health care services, everything from the cost of a scan to an urgent-care visit - often securing discounts of 30 to 50 percent off the original charges. Lee,61, a self-employed public relations expert in the semiconductor industry, started bypassing his health insurance and paying out of pocket last year when he realized that premiums and deductibles were costing him more than $12,000 before his insurer paid a dime. ....Lee became part of a new breed of health care consumer - people who pay such a large portion of their health...

"Unexpected Swallowing of a Knife" -- that's a grabbier title than most ones you see in medical journals. The short item, a clinical image in this week's New England Journal of Medicine, explains that a 30-year-old woman with a history of bulimia had been bragging to friends that she no longer had a gag reflex. She put the knife into her mouth and then laughed -- at which point she swallowed the knife.

When I was a young doctor working in poor countries, I made a casual observation that old people in them did not seem to suffer very often from dementia. It occurred to me that properly conducted surveys, of the kind that I was not suited to performing, might be valuable, because a difference in the incidence and prevalence of dementia in various countries might offer a clue to the cause of the disease. As populations throughout the world age, this is a matter of increasing importance.But was my initial casual observation true? And, if true, might the explanation not be...

Start this at the 1:30 mark! "State licensing and control of medicine and healing is a Satanic usurpation of the Church's ministry." POWERFUL stuff! We need to put medicine back where it belongs - IN THE HANDS OF ALMIGHTY GOD! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSQwS1Hf0yE

Start this at the 1:30 mark! "State licensing and control of medicine and healing is a Satanic usurpation of the Church's ministry." POWERFUL stuff! We need to put medicine back where it belongs - IN THE HANDS OF ALMIGHTY GOD!

I have a question about Health Savings Accounts. I have a HSA that is no longer being funded. I have treated it like an IRA and have not used it since inception. With all the talk about Obamacare and what is in it, I am seeking advice on what to do with the funds in the account. Any suggestion (almost) will be appreciated.

Led by feckless chief Justice John Roberts, the U.S. Supreme Court today upheld the ObamaCare law by a 5-to-4 decision, with Roberts voting with liberals Breyer, Ginsburg, Sotomayor and Kagan. While the decision means many harmful things for the American public, the Second Amendment community remains greatly affected, as the law requires Americans’ medical information to be culled and entered into a national database. Centralizing these medical records will allow the FBI to troll a list of Americans for ailments such as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) to deny them their gun rights, in the same way that the Veterans...

Despite his quick recovery from the seizure he suffered on Monday, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. faces a complex diagnosis and a difficult decision. Because the seizure was his second — he had a similar one in 1993 — he meets the criteria for epilepsy, and he and his doctors will have to decide whether he should take medication to prevent further seizures, said neurologists not involved in his care. (Neither the chief justice nor his doctors would comment yesterday.) The decision will involve weighing the risk of more seizures against the risk of side effects from the drugs....

CHICAGO—U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., who defeated a primary challenge this year despite being the target of a House ethics investigation, has been on a medical leave for two weeks and is being treated for exhaustion, his office announced Monday. In a three-sentence news release, Jackson's office disclosed that the Democrat went on leave June 10 but did not provide further details, including how long he would be away. In the release, he asked that his family's privacy be respected.

The Australian Medical Association has distanced itself from a statement made by a group of doctors who say heterosexual marriage is better for children. Around 150 medical practitioners from the group Doctors For The Family have signed a submission to the Senate inquiry into marriage equality opposing same-sex marriage. The group says it believes heterosexual marriage is healthier for children. Doctors for the Family's convener Lachlan Dunjey has told ABC News Radio the group is concerned about the health consequences for children of gay marriages. "It's well proven that children who grow up with a mother and a father in...

Poor Phineas Gage. In 1848, the supervisor for the Rutland and Burlington Railroad in Vermont was using a 13-pound, 3-foot-7-inch rod to pack blasting powder into a rock when he triggered an explosion that drove the rod through his left cheek and out of the top of his head. As reported at the time, the rod was later found, "smeared with blood and brains." Miraculously, Gage lived, becoming the most famous case in the history of neuroscience — not only because he survived a horrific accident that led to the destruction of much of his left frontal lobe but also...

A 15-year-old schoolgirl died of tuberculosis after her bungling GP claimed she was 'lovesick', an inquest heard. Alina Sarag was seen by more than five doctors at four different hospitals but medics failed to detect the curable disease. Her distraught parents even called her GP more than 50 times about their daughter's ailing condition over a four-and-a-half month period before her death on January 6 last year. An inquest heard that her GP, Dr Sharad Shripadrao Pandit, accused her parents of "mollycoddling" her. Shockingly, he even claimed her symptoms were brought on because she was 'lovesick'. Her distraught father, Sultan...

On an appearance on Sean Hannity’s radio show on Monday, “The Amateur” author Edward Klein revealed the name of a close ally of President Barack Obama that his book alleges offered a $150,000 bribe to Rev. Jeremiah Wright to be quiet until after the 2008 election. “Well, what happened is that after ABC’s Brian Ross broadcast the video tapes of the Rev. Wright ‘God damning America’ and slamming whites and slamming Jews and America, he was contacted by one of Obama’s closest personal friends — a guy who travels on Obama’s plane, who plays basketball with him, who goes on...