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FOR decades, scientific research has shown that annual physical exams - and many of the screening tests that routinely accompany them - are in many ways pointless or (worse) dangerous, because they can lead to unneeded procedures... So why do Americans, nearly alone on the planet, remain so devoted to the ritual physical exam and to all of these tests, and why do so many doctors continue to provide them?Indeed, the last decade has seen a boom in what hospitals and health care companies call "executive physicals" - batteries of screening exams for apparently healthy people, purporting to ferret out...

If you never watch another 6 MINUTE VIDEO - WATCH THIS ONE! DR. DAVID JANDA from Ann Arbor , a nationally known health care expert spoke on on behalf of candidate Rob Steele on Sunday Oct 10 2011 in Saline, WI. His comments here are repeats of his testimony before congress - the one you never heard about in Obama's media. THIS WILL SEND CHILLS DOWN YOUR SPINE - GUARANTEED.

The Medical Intelligentsia is bound and determined to devolve medicine into a technocracy. A professional practices medicine, providing optimal care to each patient as individuals. A technocrat is a service provider who provides consumers with medical care according to check lists and rules created by bureaucrats and “experts”–and does so in the context of perceived or imposed duties to general society. The New England Journal of Medicine leads the technocratic pack. To illustrate from where the publication is coming, it has supported rationing, helped push the assisted suicide movement, respectfully published the Dutch infanticide checklist known as the Groningen Protocol, and pushed hard against medical...

For weeks now, the nation has been riveted by arguments in the U.S. Supreme Court over one provision of the Affordable Care Act. Does the law's requirement that every adult buy health insurance violate the U.S. Constitution? We think it does not. Yet even if the court ultimately shares that view, the federal health care reform law will face monumental hurdles to be successfully implemented. The biggest of these is its cost. Can the nation afford to insure all its citizens? If we don't get a handle on rising health care costs the answer to that more important question is...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - In a move that threatens to further inflame concerns about the rationing of medical care, the nation's leading association of cancer physicians issued a list on Wednesday of five common tests and treatments that doctors should stop offering to cancer patients. The list emerged from a two-year effort, similar to a project other medical specialties are undertaking, to identify procedures that do not help patients live longer or better or that may even be harmful, yet are routinely prescribed

Even the most sentimental champions of the NHS recognise its dark side. Given that its Chief Executive Sir David Nicholson has demanded a £20 billion efficiency saving if the NHS is to survive, and that demographic changes mean millions more elderly people will rely on its services (and space), the NHS can only do one thing: ration. As the Telegraph reports today, elderly patients are being denied the best cancer care. The figures are alarming: lack of treatment is contributing to 14,000 deaths a year among the over-75s. Men and women are dying prematurely each year because their diseases are...

March 21, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Concerns over the new health care law’s system for rationing health care - famously dubbed the “death panels” by Sarah Palin - have been reinforced by a former head of the American Medical Association, who said the advisory panels “will essentially mean rationed care” for the elderly. Former AMA President Donald Palmisano wrote in a Daily Caller column Monday that the Independent Payment Advisory Boards (IPAB), tasked with keeping Medicare expenses under control, would have little oversight as they deal with the disproportionate cost burden from seniors with greater medical needs. “The 15 officials who...

The annual Pap smear, a cornerstone of women’s health for at least 60 years, is now officially a thing of the past, as new national guidelines recommend cervical cancer screening no more often than every three years. In recent years, some doctors and medical groups, including the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists in 2009, began urging less frequent screening for cervical cancer. Even so, annual Pap smear testing is still common because many women are reluctant to give up frequent screening for cervical cancer. The new guidelines, issued on Wednesday by the United States Preventive Services Task Force, replace...

A leading group of U.S. doctors is trying to tackle the costly problem of excessive medical testing, hoping to avoid more government intervention in how they practice. The American College of Physicians (ACP), the largest U.S. medical specialty group, is rolling out guidelines to help doctors better identify when patients should screen for specific diseases and when they can be spared the cost, and potentially invasive procedures that follow. Many individual U.S. medical centers have launched their own efforts to build a protocol of patient care in fields such as diabetes or obstetrics, but the ACP effort has the potential...

We discussed the new computer model that supposedly can predict how much longer one has to live in the context of whether a patient should be told they have less than ten years.  But the NYT’s take on the same story raises another issue we only tangentially touched before; whether a computer program predicting how long a patient has to live could be put to pernicious heatlhcare rationing effect, similar to the “quality adjusted life year” (QALY) that was used by NICE to ration medicine in the UK.  From “Using Interactive Tools to Assess the Likelihood of Death:” Now, researchers at...

renton, NJ --(Ammoland.com)- Last Tuesday, the first day of the 215th session of the New Jersey Legislature, Assembly Bill 857 was introduced. Introduced by Assemblywoman Alison Littell McHose (R-24), A 857 would repeal New Jersey’s law which allows residents to purchase only one handgun per month. Current law states, “A dealer shall not knowingly deliver more than one handgun to any person within any 30-day period.” Supporters of gun rationing claim that this law is needed to prevent criminals from buying large quantities of handguns for illegal resale. The following are three reasons why gun rationing should be repealed: 1....

Earlier this week, Cam Edwards interviewed Dave Adams of the Virginia Shooting Sports Association about the potential repeal of Virginia's one-a-month handgun rationing law. As Dave notes, when he pointed out to an anti that when South Carolina repealed a similar law to Virginia's and it hadn't increased crime in South Carolina, she couldn't answer his question as to why Virginia even needed the law. That says it all.

The most common problem was "too much care," followed by the sense that other patients would have benefited more from intensive care, according to Dr. Ruth Piers of Ghent University Hospital in Belgium and colleagues. The researchers note in the Journal of the American Medical Association that other studies have found ICU physicians often feel they are treating patients whose chances of survival are slim to nothing. While it's unclear if the new findings apply in the U.S., one recent survey showed nearly half of American primary care physicians believe their patients are getting too much medical care (see Reuters...

Donald Berwick, the rationing advocate President Barack Obama nominated to head the U.S. Medicare and Medicaid programs in the face of opposition from pro-life advocates, has quite his post in the Obama administration. Because he is unable to get enough votes in the Senate to approve his nomination, his recess appointment will end and Berwick has decided to stop down from his position as the chief implementor of Obamacare, the health care law pro-life groups opposed because its prompts concerns about abortion funding, rationing, and fails to protect the conscience rights of medical workers.

When pro-life advocates list their reasons for opposing abortion-on-demand, they often cite their conviction that it is merely the first step toward even more grisly social engineering projects, including euthanasia for the old and infirm... [Snip] But such concerns will seem eminently reasonable to any open-minded reader who peruses the writings of Henry J. Aaron, the President's nominee for Chair of the Social Security Advisory Board. Like Obama's recess-appointed Medicare czar, Aaron is an unapologetic admirer of Great Britain's notorious socialized medical system, the National Health Service (NHS). Why? Because NHS administrators unabashedly practice the dark art of health care...

The Obama administration Friday revoked the approval of the best-selling drug Avastin for treating advanced breast cancer in the United States, despite appeals from distraught women, some patients advocates and the company that makes the drug. FDA Administrator Margaret Hamburg issued a 69-page decision outlining her decision, which was based on the recommendation of a six-member FDA advisory committee that unanimously concluded in June that the drug was harming women more than it was helping them. [Snip] ... Genentech spokesman Charlotte Arnold. “We are disappointed with this outcome. We remain committed to the many women with this incurable disease and...

Barack Obama’s appointment of Donald Berwick as the head of Medicare and Medicaid became so unpopular — even among moderate Senate Democrats — that Obama ended up making Berwick a recess appointment even before Berwick had submitted a full questionnaire to the Senate. That might happen once again with Obama’s latest entitlement program appointment, Henry J. Aaron, picked to serve on the Social Security Advisory Board. The Brookings Institution economist shares a lot in common with Berwick, including a love of the British system of rationing health care, reports the Weekly Standard, which finds this from Aaron in the 1980s:...

The 87-year-old mother did not have long to live. Her arthritic body had withered to 80 pounds. The actual exam, mother struggled to open her legs wide enough for the procedure and then lay there, quietly crying. Mother died two months later. It was totally unnecessary. Unnecessary, perhaps, but surprisingly common. Patients (ARE) inundated by medical advertising clamor for extra tests.

The British medical journal Lancet reported last month that 32% of elderly American patients undergo surgery in the year before they die, a statistic culled from Medicare data. In an accompanying editorial, Dr. Amy Kelley of Mount Sinai School of Medicine labeled the 32% figure a "call to action"—to reduce costly surgeries, intensive-care stays and other high-intensity care for the elderly. Her call was parroted in hundreds of media outlets nationwide. But advocates for limiting health-care spending on the elderly are distorting science to make their argument. Don't be bamboozled: The Lancet investigators looked only at patients who died...

In fact, the AMA now only counts about 17% of doctors as members. According to a new survey, the majority of doctors do not believe that the AMA represents their views and interests. Much of that dissatisfaction stems from the organization's support for President Obama’s contentious health care reform package. That shouldn't be surprising. The AMA declares that its core mission is to "help doctors help patients." But ObamaCare undermines that pursuit by making life harder for physicians and driving down the quality of care available to patients. The survey - conducted by physician recruitment firm Jackson & Coker -...