Free Republic

"Yesterday, at the hospital, we had a meeting about how the situation here and at the other Munich hospitals is unsustainable. Clinics cannot handle the number of migrant medical emergencies, so they are starting to send everything to the main hospitals. Many Muslims are refusing treatment by female staff, and we women are now refusing to go among those migrants! Relations between the staff and migrants are going from bad to worse. Since last weekend, migrants going to the hospitals must be accompanied by police with K-9 units. Many migrants have AIDS, syphilis, open TB and many exotic diseases that...

Hospitals across the nation are being swept up in the biggest wave of mergers since the 1990s, a development that is creating giant hospital systems that could one day dominate American health care and drive up costs. The consolidations are being driven by a confluence of powerful forces, not least of which is President Obama’s signature health care law, the Affordable Care Act. That law, many experts say, is transforming the economics of health care and pushing a growing number of hospitals into the arms of suitors. The changes are unfolding with remarkable speed. Two big for-profit hospital chains, Community...

Sergio Hidalgo was in line with his wife and two teenage daughters. All four needed to see a dentist. One daughter had a hole in one of her teeth, his wife had inflamed gums and all of them had pain. "We don't have the money to pay for this," said Hidalgo, 36, who lost his job a year and a half ago. Hidalgo and his wife are undocumented immigrants, as are a number of others waiting in line.

COLUMBUS, N.M. – Talking with officials in this high-desert town, it doesn't take long to understand just how concerned they are over the widespread violence south of the border, which they can't control. From the American side of the U.S. Port of Entry in Columbus you can actually look down the streets of Palomas, Mexico – the town is that close. The problem is that Palomas, along with other Mexican cities, has fallen victim to a vicious turf war between rival Mexican drug cartels that has claimed about 4,000 lives since the start of last year. Among those assassinated are...

The issue of illegal immigration has been a red-hot topic in my hometown community of Newport Beach/Costa Mesa, Orange County, Southern California. Sincere and heart-felt arguments have been made on both sides of the issue. However, many of those who write letters to the local paper in support of illegal immigration make it sound like Costa Mesa is the only place in the nation whose people favor the enforcement of our immigration laws. They suggest that those elected officials supporting these laws are just a small local band guilty of meanness, bigotry, and racism. Nothing could be further from the...

President Fidel Castro called the U.S. airstrike that killed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi a "barbarity," saying he should have been put on trial. The United States acted as "judge and jury" against the leader of the al-Qaida in Iraq, Castro said late Friday. "They bragged, they were practically drunk with happiness." "The accused cannot just be eliminated," he told a literacy conference. "This barbarity cannot be done." The U.S. military has said al-Zarqawi initially survived the dropping of two 500-pound bombs on his hide-out Wednesday, but died a short time later. Castro said if Cuba used the same logic, it could...

(LOS ANGELES) If Los Angeles County's struggling public health care system goes under it will overwhelm private hospitals, a doctor said Friday. "If the public hospitals go broke and go belly up, there's gonna be an avalanche on the private sector and I can tell you, we can't handle it," Dr. Brian Johnston said. "We will go down." Private hospitals already are near capacity after a decade's worth of trauma center and emergency room closures, he said. "I have patients waiting in my waiting room for five, six, seven and eight hours," Johnston, director of the emergency department at White...