Free Republic

IT HAS BEEN the hallmark of socialism in Venezuela: free, high-quality medical care. Late President Hugo Chávez changed the constitution to guarantee such right to all Venezuelans. But that same health care system is now crumbling under the weight of an economic crisis, causing a severe shortage of normal medical care and many avoidable deaths. Venezuela has grown increasingly alienated from the United States and its Central American neighbors, but its political estrangement doesn’t justify the lack of urgency from the international community. Although many places call out for medical intervention, Venezuela’s growing medical collapse deserves a significant dose of...

Documents obtained by The Daily Caller and interviews with American veterans reveal a shocking government program: The Department of Veterans Affairs is disarming America’s veterans by getting them placed on the FBI’s criminal background-check list. The VA sends veterans’ personal medical and financial information directly to the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, which can seize their guns in home raids. Veterans deemed mentally incompetent or financially incapable are finally speaking out about the errors in the system and the fearful harassment they and their families face from the federal government. And it all starts when vets...

Doctors believe that a terminally-ill teenager who has a brain tumour will die within weeks after a judge gave them permission to withhold treatment. The 18-year-old man’s parents wanted chemotherapy to continue and his mother had launched a “passionate” fight “for his life” at a fraught late-night hearing at the Court of Protection in London. She said her son was “absolutely adored” and a “miracle child” and urged judge Mrs Justice Hogg not to rule that he “has to die”.

Obese People Could Have Benefits Taken Away If They Refuse Treatment David Cameron says taxpayers should no longer “fund the benefits” of obese people or drug and alcohol addicts who refuse to accept the treatment that could help them get back into employment By Peter Dominiczak, 13 Feb 2015 Obese people could have their benefits stripped if they refuse treatment in a bid to ensure they can lead a “fulfilling life”, David Cameron has said. A Conservative government will attempt to ensure that tens of thousands of people who claim welfare on the grounds of obesity, drug or alcohol addiction...

More than 50 patients have died after an NHS trust introduced a secret policy to downgrade 999 calls and not to send ambulances to terminally ill patients. Managers at East of England ambulance trust were accused of “the most cruel form of rationing imaginable” after admitting that 8,000 patients had been affected by the changes. An internal NHS report discloses that 57 patients died after their calls were downgraded following a decision not to send ambulances to the terminally ill and to those who had given instructions not to resuscitate. It meant that, instead of receiving a response from paramedics...

The NHS is ‘not fit for the future’ and unless it undergoes radical change it may be forced to abandon free healthcare for all, in the future, the service's top doctor has warned. Medical director of NHS England Professor Sir Bruce Keogh said the NHS must become far less reliant on hospitals and needed a ‘complete transformation’ of the way it operates. Sir Bruce told the Guardian: ‘If the NHS continues to function as it does now, it’s going to really struggle to cope because the model of delivery and service that we have at the moment is not fit...

Britain’s most senior doctor has said the under-pressure NHS may be forced to abandon the concept of free healthcare for all. Prof. Sir Bruce Keogh, medical director of the NHS in England, said there were doubts over whether the taxpayer-funded model was “sustainable in the longer term”. He added that huge changes were needed—including less reliance on hospitals—if free treatment was to be preserved. He told the Guardian: “If the NHS continues to function as it does now, it’s going to really struggle to cope because the model of delivery and service that we have at the moment is not...

Ambulances will be allowed to take longer to reach seriously ill patients, under controversial plans announced by the Health Secretary. Jeremy Hunt yesterday unveiled a pilot scheme that will give operators an extra two minutes to assess 999 calls before dispatching paramedics. He said the added time will enable staff to establish if an ambulance is really needed, over concerns they are being sent out too readily to patients who are not seriously ill. But unions warned that the move would cost lives and dismissed the scheme as a ploy to meet targets ahead of the election. The ambulance service...

Playing God to save a buck. More than 50 patients have died after an NHS trust introduced a secret policy to downgrade 999 calls and not to send ambulances to terminally ill patients. Managers at East of England ambulance trust were accused of “the most cruel form of rationing imaginable” after admitting that 8,000 patients had been affected by the changes.An internal NHS report discloses that 57 patients died after their calls were downgraded following a decision not to send ambulances to the terminally ill and to those who had given instructions not to resuscitate.It meant that, instead of...

GPs will be asked to identify patients who are putting on weight under a new national programme to help fight obesity. Simon Stevens, the head of the NHS, said it was time for Britain to "get back in shape" in order to protect millions of people from a host of obesity-related diseases. Under the scheme, family doctors will be asked to identify anyone who has gained weight and is at risk of diabetes – particularly those aged below 40. They will then be offered tests for pre-diabetes, followed by healthy lifestyle advice and close monitoring to ensure they are eating...

Demands on the NHS tend to increase during the colder months because of illnesses like flu and norovirus. But with winter just getting under way, pressures are already reaching record levels. Extra money is being invested in each nation, but the four-hour A&E waiting time target is still being missed everywhere. The mounting problems come as the BBC launches its NHS Winter project, which tracks how the health service is performing down to individual hospital trust level. In England weekly figures are released. The latest, for the first week of December, show 91.8% of patients were seen in four hours...

The 2013 Netherlands euthanasia report was released yesterday indicating a 15% increase of reported euthanasia deaths. There were also 42 euthanasia deaths for people with psychiatric problems and 97 euthanasia deaths for people with dementia.The 2013 report indicated that there were 4829 reported euthanasia deaths which was up from 4188 in 2012. As bad as it is, the reported euthanasia deaths do not include the unreported euthanasia deaths.The five year Netherlands euthanasia Lancet study indicated that in 2010, 23% of all euthanasia deaths went unreported in the Netherlands, which was up from 20% in 2005. The under-reporting of euthanasia in...

Euthanasia. Rationing. Assisted Suicide. These are the kinds of concerns the pro-life community brought up when Congress pushed through Obamacare and government-run health care. These concerns are already becoming real in the Untied States, but a new story out of the United Kingdom should give Americans a hint as to what’s next.Nurses who are a part of in-home health care programs for the sick, elderly and disabled are coming forward to say they’ve been told to ask such patients not if they need medical help but if they need assistance in killing themselves.The nurses say patients are asked via a...

Dr. James Beattie, a cardiologist who works at the East of England NHS Foundation Trust in Birmingham, believes hospitals should let more elderly patients die and “quality of life” should be given more consideration.According to an article in the Daily Mail, Beattie said that society no longer accepts mortality and is much less familiar with death. ‘If a person is in hospital, particularly an elderly person with multiple co-morbidities, if they have a cardiac arrest it’s a sign they are in decline,’ he told Radio 4.‘It’s their act of dying and they should not be resuscitated, they should be allowed...

The National Health Service has been praised as the world’s best health-care system by an international panel of experts who said it was superior to those found in countries which spend far more on health. The study, entitled “Mirror, Mirror on the Wall,” also described US healthcare provision as the worst globally. Despite investing the most money in health, the US refuses care to many patients without health insurance and is also the worst at saving the lives of people who fall ill, it found. The Commonwealth Fund, a Washington-based foundation produced the report. The fund is respected around the...

Tens of thousands of veterans are stuck in backlogs awaiting care at VA facilities, the department said Monday in a report that confirms employees regularly cooked the books, often under pressure from supervisors, to try to hide long wait times. The audit found that 70 percent of Veterans Affairs facilities surveyed placed patients on alternate wait lists, meaning many of those veterans probably weren’t recorded in the official reports back to headquarters and were used to dole out bonuses to VA executives.

LONDON, U.K., June 5, 2014 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A British aristocrat and legislator has gone to bat for the nation’s disabled, arguing that a proposed law allowing doctor-assisted suicide would target the ill and infirm for euthanasia. Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson, a paraplegic athlete who has won 11 gold medals at the Paralympics and is now a member of the House of Lords, co-signed a scathing letter to the UK’s Daily Telegraph newspaper in which she and other disability-rights advocates accused lawmakers of having double standards when it comes to whether a person should be allowed to commit suicide. “Why is it...

On Thursday’s “Hannity” on the Fox News Channel, former Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) discussed a number of issues related to the news of the day with host Sean Hannity including President Barack Obama and his perceived weaknesses, the friction between the GOP establishment and the Tea Party and her role in the political process. But she also took on the scandal surrounding the Veterans Administration hospitals that has resulted in a number of deaths for American military veterans. (Video at Breitbart.com)

VA Cover-up This week the House Veteran’s Affairs Committee unanimously voted to subpoena all emails and documents from Department of Veteran’s Affairs (VA) Secretary Eric Shinseki and VA senior leadership. The Committee, headed by Florida Congressmen Jeff Miller (R), has been requesting all documentation pertaining to any “waiting list” abnormalities which are said to have resulted in the deaths of up to 40 Veterans from the Phoenix, AZ Veteran’s Affairs Medical Center. Background Committee subpoenas were issued in response to a revelation by Dr. Sam Foote, a retired Department of Veteran’s Affairs doctor, that patients had been placed on an...

For the left, the Department of Veterans Affairs is how health care is ideally supposed to work. No insurance companies, no private doctors, no competition — just the government and the patient. Paul Krugman, The New York Times columnist, has held up the VA as a model for the entire country. The Washington Monthly ran a famous article in 2005 arguing that the VA was leading the way for U.S. health care. The socialist senator from Vermont, Bernie Sanders, is such a reflexive defender that in an instantly notorious interview on CNN he pooh-poohed the burgeoning scandal that may involve...