Free Republic

Wanting to be cured of illness is “depraved” —if your life isn’t worth saving. “In a bygone era, doctors thought every life was important. Treatment was aggressive and persistent in intensive care units even when it might be futile.…” A UCLA “academic study” is providing the theoretical basis for denying ordinary care to those deemed “Life Unworthy of Life” (“Lebensunwertes Leben“).That idea, most prominently advanced by the Nazis, has been repackaged as “futile care theory”, disregarding the fact that all persons are in the process of moving towards death from their earliest moments. University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), Health...

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...

Scotland's second largest health board, NHS Lothian, will not be giving further treatment to smokers for non-urgent cases, with referrals from GPs being refused. Dr. Zahid Raza said: "In Edinburgh, we will not see patients at the clinic that are still smoking. Evidence shows that they would not do well with the treatment." He also went onto say: "We try to avoid intervention and, in around 80 percent of cases, a smoker’s condition will improve just simply by stopping smoking and smoking other lifestyle changes."Dr Jean Turner of the Scotland Patients Association said that she was "extremely disappointed", adding: "I'm...

But GOP candidates can't simply rely on attacking Democrats for having voted for ObamaCare or, in the case of nonincumbents, supporting it. They should draw attention to the law's pernicious effects on ordinary Americans. By humanizing ObamaCare's shortfalls through stories from ordinary people, Republicans will help explode the myth of liberal competence and compassion, keep this issue fresh through the fall and cause voters to hold Democrats accountable at the polls.

Obamacare’s emphasis on cost-benefit has apparently granted permission for the medical technocrats to conjure all kinds of healthcare rationing schemes.And the Medical Establishment is apparently playing along. From, “The Cancer Death-Panel App,” by Robert Goldberg in the NY Post: The latest innovation in cancer care isn’t a medical breakthrough but an app to ration new drugs. It’ll measure care in terms of what it costs health plans, instead of what it means for patients’ lives.That it’s being developed under the auspices of the American Society for Clinical Oncology, or ASCO, the world’s leading oncology association, is a grim warning about...

By now we know that every purchase a consumer makes is added to a list detailing one’s spending and life-style habit, which is used to target people for marketing campaigns and other services. But how would you feel if that information was used by your doctors to keep tabs on your health? A new report from Bloomberg details how hospitals are using our habits such as buying cigarettes or skipping the gym to create patient profiles in order to identify those who are most likely to get sick.

Comcast is testing data caps for its broadband internet customers that would limit them to 300 GB of data per month, according to The Times Leader. Comcast has started open trials of its home broadband data caps in several large markets around the country. Here are all the regions affected: Mobile, Alabama Huntsville, Alabama Tuscon, Arizona Atlanta, Georgia Augusta, Georgia Savannah, Georgia Jackson, Mississippi Charleston, South Carolina Knoxville, Tennessee Memphis, Tennessee All of central Kentucky The entire state of Maine

The deadly rationing scandal at several Veterans Administration hospitals has many politicians running for cover, suddenly suggesting we offer veterans more private-pay options to the single-payer plan of the Veterans Health Care system.But not Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Barack Obama. They’d prefer the entire nation be forced into a single-payer system where the government replaces private insurance, a system that has inevitably led to rationing where it’s been tried.On Monday, Pelosi was interviewed by Time magazine’s Ezra Klein about changes or improvements she’d like to see to Obamacare. Nancy Pelosi: “I have some of my own suggestions that I...

The Department of Health and Human Services is proposing a rule that would, if implemented, guarantee that even more Americans who like their health insurance plans cannot keep them. Fixed indemnity plans, which pay insured customers a set amount towards medical expenses and are often cost-effective relative to more comprehensive health insurance, are popular forms of coverage, and potentially becoming more popular in the wake of Obamacare. Health insurance industry representatives say that fixed indemnity plans have been attracting more interest as many Americans look for a way to mitigate against the high deductibles applicable to many insurance policies available...

What if you were forced to “register” in order to buy groceries? And what if, through that registration, the food you bought could be tracked and quantities could be limited? That’s exactly the plan in Venezuela right now. The AP reports that in an effort to crack down on “hoarding” that ID cards will be issued to families. These will have to be presented before foodstuffs can be purchased.

Patients who have had a ‘fair innings’ could be denied life-saving drugs under proposed health reforms. The plans would mean experts taking into account whether there is a ‘wider societal benefit’ to giving a patient crucial medicines. The NHS rationing body, Nice, fears the Department of Health proposals could see younger people deemed a higher priority for drug treatments because they have more years ahead of them – potentially contributing more to the economy – than the elderly. Doctors, MPs and campaigners last night condemned the plans as ‘barking mad’. The move will also fuel fears that the elderly are...

In 1999, newspaper columnist Molly Ivins was diagnosed with breast cancer and promptly exhorted her readers: "Go. Get. The. Damn. Mammogram. Done." She also quoted a friend, columnist Marlyn Schwartz, who lamented, "If you have ever wondered what it would feel like to sit in a doctor's office with a lump in your breast trying to remember when you last had a mammogram, I can tell you. You feel like a fool." Ivins' breast cancer killed her in 2007. She didn't say whether she had gotten regular mammograms before her diagnosis. If so, she was spared something many a dying...

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said on Tuesday it is working with the three manufacturers of intravenous saline solutions commonly used to hydrate hospital patients to address a shortage caused by a spike in demand. To cope with the shortage, healthcare providers are using substitute products such as oral hydration fluids or smaller IV saline bags with slower drip rates when appropriate, said Bona Benjamin, director of medication use quality improvement for the American Society of Health System Pharmacists. "We have heard from our members all over the country that the shortage is serious," Benjamin said. "People are able...

New drugs would only be licensed for the NHS if they help those judged to be a benefit to wider society under proposals from the health watchdog. Pharmaceutical firms on Thursday night warned that the move could lead to new medicines being denied to the elderly. A senior professor also said that the plans could threaten the well-being of older people and were “deeply suspect”, while charities questioned the ethics of the policy.

In 2013, the American people learned what whoppers the key promises of ObamaCare turned out to be. But the biggest whopper about the Affordable Care Act is yet to be exposed: the tightening grip the federal government will have over your doctor — even if you’re paying with private insurance. Section 1311(h)(1)(B) of the health law gives the secretary of Health and Human Services blanket authority to dictate how doctors treat patients. Not just patients in government programs like Medicare and Medicaid, but patients with private plans they pay for themselves. On Dec. 2, 2013, we learned from the Federal...

Friend -- On January 1st, our nation turns a corner on health care -- and we're never going back. From here on, no American should have to go broke just because they get sick. You can't be dropped from your plan when you need it most. Pre-existing conditions will never prevent someone from getting coverage, and women can't be charged more than men for their plans. And for millions of Americans, affordable, quality coverage is finally within reach. I am so proud of that. And I have people like you to thank, truly. Fundamental change like this doesn't happen just...

More cancelled health plans. Millions and perhaps tens of millions more Americans will lose their coverage, despite the White House's one-year suspension of the mandates that force insurers to liquidate their old products. The problem is backloaded. The exchanges don't offer what most people expect from normal commercial insurance and instead feature tighter administrative oversight of smaller groups of physicians akin to Medicaid. Clinton-era HMO-style plans are coming back, and doctor-patient relationships will be the next political casualty. In the 1990s Americans rebelled against cost containment pressure, such as the "drive through" rules that told women to leave hospitals a...

Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, health adviser to President Barack Obama, is under scrutiny. As a bioethicist, he has written extensively about who should get medical care, who should decide, and whose life is worth saving. Dr. Emanuel is part of a school of thought that redefines a physician’s duty, insisting that it includes working for the greater good of society instead of focusing only on a patient’s needs. Many physicians find that view dangerous, and most Americans are likely to agree.

Obamacare is intensifying the doctor shortage – though not in ways that were anticipated. Everybody seems to have expected that Obamacare would sign up some 30 million people who don’t have health insurance, and they would overwhelm doctors’ offices. But these people – especially the young and healthy whose sky-high Obamacare premiums were supposed to finance everybody else’s subsidies – have stayed away. They know a bad deal when they see one. Although the young and healthy aren’t going for Obamacare, the doctor shortage is intensifying, because government intervention generally is making it more expensive and difficult for doctors to...

I remember our daily food always coming from a long, long line at the end of which was a loaf of bread, a liter of milk, a stick of butter, a bottle of murky cooking oil, or a kilo of bones with traces of meat and fat on them. The interminable lines looked like this bread line pictured above. We never knew what was sold at the end of a line we happened to come upon, but we knew we needed whatever people lined up to buy, so we joined the line. If we wanted to eat, we learned at...