Free Republic

Tragic Trip Newton Theresa Freed Video Included Saturday, Oct. 2, 2004 After a fall of more than 40-feet, Mexican medical teams refuse to help a Kansas man. It was a trip to discover his heritage but instead turns tragic. The 23-year-old was going to Mexico to meet his birth father for the first time. He had been living with his adopted parents his entire life in Newton. Many people take for granted the quality of emergency medical care in the United States. It’s one mistake a Newton family will never make again. It’s a lesson about health care that 21-year-old...

Health savings accounts are a clever way to let you control your own medical costs, choose your own doctors and save money, too. And they're coming soon to an employer near you. Much of the credit goes to Rick Santorum, Pennsylvania's junior U.S. senator. Santorum has been pushing HSAs and their older cousin, medical savings accounts, through Congress since 1991. Q: What exactly is a health savings account? A: It's similar to an IRA or an education savings account, which is a tax-free account. In other words, it's money you can divert from your paycheck, and your employer can put...

For years, health plans have sought to control medical costs by negotiating fees with a group of preferred doctors and requiring patients to pay extra for going outside the network. But some doctors and clinics - eager to help hard-pressed patients or calculating that it can benefit their business - have begun to foil the cost-control efforts by waiving those extra charges. The move by these providers to dispense with collecting what are known as coinsurance payments comes as employers and insurers try to discourage overuse of health care by making patients pay more costs from their own pockets. But...

WASHINGTON, Nov. 20 (UPI) -- Syphilis rates rose dramatically for the second straight year in the United States, particularly among gay and bisexual men, a finding that has health officials worried about an increase in HIV/AIDS cases in the coming years. Overall, the U.S. syphilis rate rose by 9 percent between 2001 and 2002, the second consecutive increase from an all-time low in 2000, according to figures released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. The bulk of the increase occurred among men, rising by about 27 percent overall, including a staggering increase of more than...

<p>With a top national ranking it could surely do without, San Francisco has surpassed Detroit as the city with the highest per-capita rate of syphilis in the United States.</p> <p>Driven by an increase in new cases among gay white men, the nation's syphilis rate rose 9.1 percent in 2002, the second consecutive increase after a decade of decline that had raised hopes the sexually transmitted disease could be eliminated in the country.</p>

Vice president's visit brings out protesters along East Beltline Tuesday, July 01, 2003By Joe SnapperThe Grand Rapids Press G.R. TOWNSHIP -- About 80 people sang, shouted, waved and threw insults at the Bush Administration on Monday outside Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park in protest of a fund-raising luncheon featuring Vice President Dick Cheney. Cheney's noon date at the Grand Rapids Township gardens fetched $1,000 per plate -- a pretty hefty lunch bill, if you ask Sister Barbara Hansen. "A $1,000-a-plate dinner? When people are hungry?" Hansen, spokeswoman for Women in Black, an otherwise non-vocal, international peace movement, asked with...

<p>When Dr. Albert Saloom, of Mt. Pleasant, began practicing medicine in 1961, he could purchase $100,000 in malpractice insurance for $30 a year.</p> <p>"In the '60s, we delivered babies and did surgery for $30," Saloom said.</p> <p>When the rate eventually increased to $104 a year, Saloom said he wrote a "tough letter" to the insurance company demanding to know why.</p>

Some ideas die hard. Among the most resilient is the utopian belief that health care could be cheap, free, and available to all, if only we’d let the government take care of it. It was in the spirit of reviving this tragically unwise socialist idea that former president Bill Clinton and Sen. John Breaux (D-La.) addressed separate audiences last week on the need for greater government control over medicine. Hoping to add greater impetus to the health-care issue for the 2004 presidential election, Clinton told the 2003 National Grassroots Meeting of Families USA, at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C.,...

Laid off from his job at a computer software company in Philadelphia, Andy Szamody wondered where he would find health coverage. His firm told him it would offer a temporary policy that would cost $212 a month. But "when you're not making any money, that seems like a lot of money," Szamody said. The local unemployment office informed him of other options, but jobless benefits disqualified Szamody for the cheapest, a basic plan that covered doctor visits but not prescriptions for $30 a month. In the end, he opted simply to do without. "I find the whole insurance thing totally...

Around the country this summer, at least half a dozen hospitals have closed obstetric wards, others have curtailed trauma services, and a string of rural clinics have been temporarily shuttered as a result of soaring costs for medical malpractice insurance. Mercy Hospital in West Philadelphia closed its maternity ward on Friday, and the Largo Medical Center, near Tampa, Fla., plans to do so in December. The roots of the crisis are complex. The insurance companies, President Bush and the American Medical Association largely fault the rising cost of awards in malpractice lawsuits. From 1995 to 2000, the average jury award...