Free Republic

On the eve of Memorial Day, and against the backdrop of the rapidly growing Veterans Affairs hospital scandal, do illegal aliens get better treatment than US military veterans? Sarah Palin seems to think so. On Wednesday, President Obama broke his silence on the Veterans Affairs scandal, vowing to hold the military hospitals that falsified records accountable but also claiming that VA problems are anomalies. The president’s remarks come as revelations have emerged in the media about long wait times for veterans seeking medical treatment, and vets who have died while waiting for doctor’s appointments at the military facilities. Originally the...

The spiraling scandal at the Department of Veterans Affairs over deadly treatment delays and falsified waiting lists is setting itself apart from the other controversies that have plagued the Obama administration, Republicans and political observers tell Newsmax. "The VA scandal is different because it is one that every American can relate to," said Democratic pollster and analyst Doug Schoen. "Everyone has a relative who has been a veteran who've put themselves in harm's way to protect this country. "Every American can relate to the horrific nature of the abuses that are alleged to have gone on at VA hospitals —...

Nearly 1,500 Californians have complained to state regulators in the last four months about their Obamacare coverage purchased through California's insurance exchange. Many consumers have also encountered difficulty finding a doctor who accepts their new coverage...

The VA problem is not Shinseki; it's socialism. The Veterans Affairs health care system is completely government run. It is a pure single-payer program. National Review Editor Rich Lowry calls it "an island of socialism in American health care." He is right. I've been arguing this all week. For years, President Obama has been talking about fixing the VA. But he never stayed with it. And now he says he's angry and wants accountability. But he will never understand that the single-payer government-run system is the real problem. This VA scandal is a reminder that government-run single-payer health care does...

... In 2010 -- four years ago! -- the deputy undersecretary of the VA wrote a nine-page memo saying that in order to cover up their continued delays, various parts of the VA system were engaged in "gaming strategies" -- in effect, lying. The General Accounting Office and VA inspector generals wrote reports saying the practice was widespread. One would have thought that would have set off alarm bells at both the VA and the White House. Where was the anger then? There were some internal investigations, but they never went anywhere and there was little apparent sense of urgency....

A family who was forced to buy healthcare is distraught after their daughter was denied medication because of an Obamacare error. Shelby Higdon needs her medication, but has been repeatedly denied it because the information in her BlueCross BlueShield health insurance account lists her as a male, not a female. “When it was time to get my medicine, they told that they couldn’t give it to me because on my insurance I was registered as a man,” Shelby told WLOS. Her mother, Kris Hitt Hidgon, shares her daughter’s frustration. She has called healthcare.gov “probably about eight times.” Each time Kris...

Veterans with serious heart conditions, gangrene, and even brain tumors waited months for care at the Albuquerque VA hospital, a whistleblowing doctor tells The Daily Beast. Add Albuquerque, New Mexico’s to the growing list of VA hospitals accused of keeping secret waiting lists to hide delays for veterans seeking medical care. And it may already be too late to get to the truth and find out what harm, if any, was done to veterans there—VA officials are already destroying records to cover their tracks, a whistleblower inside the hospital tells The Daily Beast. Last month, word broke that the Department...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)Grande Prairie RCMP are investigating after a 12-year-old boy was assaulted over the weekend – and the boy’s family is speaking out against the provincial health system, as the boy’s most serious injuries went untreated for several days. The victim, Thomas Seidel, was allegedly attacked by a group of teens late last week. He suffered a broken jaw and underwent surgery on Wednesday. The boy’s family told CTV News the boy was put on a list for surgery Monday. His grandmother has issued a letter to Alberta's Health Minister Fred Horne, expressing her concerns over how long it took for...

Rationing: Government-run VA health clinics have been caught falsifying records to hide obscenely long and sometimes deadly delays in treating veterans. Welcome to the future of health care under ObamaCare. The VA recently decided to investigate one of its Colorado outpatient clinics to see how it handled patient delays. What it found was shocking, but not surprising. While delays for many of the 6,300 veterans treated at the clinic stretched out for months, clerks there were told to falsify dates so it appeared that everyone was being seen in a timely fashion. Those who didn't play along ended up on...

House Republicans issued a report Wednesday saying that one-third of people who signed up for health insurance through new federal exchanges hadn’t paid their first month’s premium as of mid-April, which could undermine the Obama administration’s claims of robust enrollment under the new health law. […] The report by House Energy and Commerce Committee Republicans said 67 percent of people who had signed up for health insurance through federal marketplaces had paid their first month’s premiums as of April 15. That was far lower than the numbers emerging from individual insurance companies, which have been reporting payment numbers in the...

Several weeks ago the World Affairs Council of Philadelphia sponsored a debate–more a discussion–between me and Thaddeus Mason Pope about end of life care under the Affordable Care Act. He supports medical futility. I oppose it. We went from there. I began my presentation with the quote in the headline above–asserting that Palin’s term “death panels” may have put a spear through the heart of Obamacare. I then said: People are afraid of centralized bureaucrats dictating whether Craig’s [the moderator’s terminally ill babies) children can have medical care, whether my 96-year-old mother can have medical care, whether people with disabilities...

Jeb Bush and Bobby Jindal appear in a commercial that will air Sunday to promote NewRepublican.org, a project focused on outlining a positive GOP agenda for the future. The former Florida governor and the current Louisiana governor, both potential 2016 presidential candidates, support a super PAC that is the brainchild of Republican strategist Alex Castellanos. “If you believe that every parent ought to be able to choose their child’s school, and that the economy should be driven from the bottom up, not the top down from Washington, then you’re thinking like a New Republican,” Bush says to the camera at...

The problems with the implementation of the Affordable Care Act may be masking another major change in the way health care is delivered to U.S. consumers, experts believe. At a conference in Washington on Thursday, health care and business professionals said that there’s an increasing trend in the industry toward cutting insurance companies out of the process entirely, as large, regional hospital systems move into the insurance business. Dr. Kenneth L. Davis, CEO and president of Mount Sinai Health System, the largest health care provider in the state of New York, said that starting next year, Mt. Sinai will begin...

Obamacare will reduce the earnings of its 300,000 members by up to $5 an hour by requiring them to buy health insurance, according to a report by Unite Here, a union which represents chiefly lower-wage workers in service industries. The union said it “threatens the middle class with higher premiums, loss of hours and a shift to part-time work and less comprehensive coverage.” Americans who says they’ve been hurt by Obamacare outnumber those who say they’ve benefited from it by more than 2 to 1, according to recent polls by both Rasmussen and Gallup.

"....As more people enter the A.C.A.’s new insurance exchanges, they will get to choose between a bronze plan with a narrow network and lower premiums and a platinum plan with a broader network and higher premiums. Inevitably,some insurance plans will offer narrow networks with poor-quality providers.However,there are four ways that we could reassure Americans that they are getting high-quality care despite choosing a narrow network.First,the exchanges should require that networks meet a minimum level of adequacy—meaning there are sufficient numbers of each type of practitioner in every geographic area. The National Committee for Quality Assurance, a nonprofit group, has already...

He who holds the data makes the rules. If you haven't figured this out, it's almost too late. Obama knows it. In 2009, his team mandated electronic medical records and $27 billion to make it happen as a "foundation" for health care reform. If you wonder whether medical privacy is important, check out Minnesota, where the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) and the Democrat-controlled legislature plan to eliminate all medical privacy rights. Bills being fast-tracked include: GENETIC GRAB: Repeal of hard-won parent consent requirements for government storage, use, and sharing of Baby DNA and newborn (genetic) screening test results for...

CBS affiliates bring us two updates on the ongoing disaster of Covered California, the ObamaCare exchange in the Golden State that has begun to look a lot more like Uncovered Californians. In Sacramento, Nick Janes reports on the plight of Katherine Cadman, who eagerly signed up for an insurance policy through the state’s exchange — and then tried to use it to see a doctor. Doctors, however, are not anxious to see customers from ObamaCare plans, thanks to the lousy reimbursement rates:(VIDEO-AT-LINK) One viewer said she did months of research before picking the plan that Blue Cross recommended. But it’s...

Along with Barack Obama’s promise of “if you like your healthcare plan, you can keep your healthcare plan,” was his declaration that “people with pre-existing conditions shouldn’t be penalized.” Yeah, well, that was then and this is now. People with serious pre-existing diseases, precisely those Obama said the “Affordable Care Act” would help, could find themselves paying for expensive drug treatments with no help from the healthcare exchanges. Those with expensive diseases such as lupus or multiple sclerosis face something called a “closed drug formulary.” Dr. Scott Gottlieb of the American Enterprise Institute explains: “If the medicine that you need...

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...

Unable to guarantee adequate medical care for its citizens, the Quebec Government is turning to euthanasia. The law would allow 14 year olds to refuse treatment without the consent of their parents. Also in the French version, other witnesses including Luc describe the potential abuses by politicians, hospital administrators, the medical profession and families in a money driven society where certain lives would be deemed less worthy to live because of financial pressures.