Free Republic

Three traditional midwives and an Amish family are suing several Pennsylvania state agencies, alleging that state officials effectively blocked traditional midwives from obtaining the certifications required to practice legally — and that lawmakers then repealed the nearly century-old law governing the profession after the lawsuit was filed. The midwives sued anonymously for fear of retaliation. The lawsuit centers on a striking sequence of events. The petitioners say Pennsylvania failed to comply with a 1929 law that required certification of traditional midwives. After they filed suit on July 2, 2026, ten days later the legislature passed the annual budget that included...

As candidates spend the coming months telling voters how they would transform American health care, they should not overlook reforms that could make care more accessible and affordable without requiring complex new government programs. Millions of Americans are already trying to make their health care dollars go further. They compare prices, explore alternatives to insurance, and choose lower-cost ways to obtain prescriptions and routine care. Yet federal policies often penalize them for doing exactly what policymakers say they want consumers to do: shop carefully and choose the best value option.A practical health care affordability agenda should begin with a simple...

At a conference I attended recently in DC, I had the chance to show a lot of my colleagues around the downtown monuments. For them, many from other countries, seeing the Lincoln, the Washington, the Capitol, was once in a lifetime – for me, it was Tuesday. At one point, a German in the group – fatigue in his voice – asked me, “Tell me… How can Americans keep voting for Trump?” The term Trump was shorthand for Americans’ embracing nationalism and rejecting globalism, which seems oh-so backwards to our European cousins. I think he expected me to dance around...

Luigi Mangione is expected to plead guilty Friday in his federal case tied to his alleged execution of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson — in an apparent bid to dodge a life sentence, sources confirmed to the Post. The 28-year-old accused killer — who is set to appear at a morning hearing in Manhattan federal court — is charged in the federal case with two counts of stalking resulting in death stemming from his alleged December 2024 cold-blooded murder of the powerful executive on a Manhattan sidewalk. Mangione would still likely face a potential life sentence if he were to plead...

Two years ago, California hit a milestone decades in the making: Nearly every person in the state qualified for health insurance, regardless of immigration status and income, pushing the state’s insured rate to a record 95%. Now that progress is unravelling.

Millions of Americans spend decades preparing for retirement, only to discover one of the biggest expenses isn’t housing, travel, or taxes. It’s healthcare.A new estimate from Fidelity suggests that a 65-year-old retiring today should expect to spend $185,500 on healthcare throughout retirement. That’s a 7.5% increase from last year and the steepest annual jump in more than a decade.Even more concerning, more than half of Americans approaching retirement don’t realize Medicare leaves them responsible for thousands of dollars in costs.Retirement Healthcare Costs Just Hit a New HighAccording to Fidelity’s 25th Annual Retiree Health Care Cost Estimate, a typical 65-year-old retiring...

Health care represents a major share of consumer spending in America, but the amount spent per resident varies considerably by location.New data from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis highlights the differences in per-capita health care spending across the country in 2024.The map below, via Visual Capitalist's Srijaa Chatterjee, ranks every state using the latest Personal Consumption Expenditures by State data from the BEA. Figures are reported in current dollars and allocated according to residents’ state of residence.Which States Spend the Most on Health Care?Below is a ranking of states based on per-person health care spending:RankStatePer-Capita Health Care Spending1Alaska$14,0442District of...

The U.S. government spends more than $900 billion annually on Medicaid. How much of that money is stolen by criminals? HHS Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. pegs the theft total at $100 billion. I am going to embed the entire quote in the tweet below: Tweet RFK JR: “We shut down 800 hospices. You know what a hospice is? Where you’re going to die. Typically, if you go to a hospice, you leave within 18 days because your dying is terminal.” “We started looking at these hospices in Los Angeles, and the people never died. Two or three years later they...

Middle-income Americans straining to pay for Affordable Care Act health insurance are unlikely to get relief next year, according to a new analysis that shows insurers in the marketplace are proposing a second straight year of double-digit premium hikes. Across the 77 insurers in the ACA program that have submitted rate filings that are publicly available, the median proposed premium increase for 2027 is 14%, according to Wednesday’s analysis from the healthcare research nonprofit KFF. The insurers cited mounting healthcare costs, federal regulatory changes and the recent expiration of pandemic-era enhanced subsidies as the biggest factors driving premiums higher. The...

Shankh Mitra, the Indian-origin CEO of Welltower, has been named the world’s second-highest paid chief executive. Mitra is behind only Elon Musk, the Tesla CEO with a staggering $158 billion pay package. Mitra’s compensation package from Welltower, a real estate investment trust specialising in senior housing and healthcare, places him among the highest-paid public company CEOs of the past decade, according to data from MyLogIQ quoted by The Wall Street Journal. How much does Shankh Mitra earn? In his role as CEO of Welltower, Shankh Mitra earned $821 million in 2025.

Snap Chief Executive Evan Spiegel and his wife, supermodel Miranda Kerr, have helped pay off $550 million in medical debt for more than 261,000 Californians. The couple made a multimillion-dollar donation to Undue Medical Debt, a nonprofit that provides debt relief to people in financial need. The organization acquires medical debt in bulk from hospitals, physician groups, collection agencies and other groups for a fraction of the cost. "When someone you love is sick. All you want to do is focus on helping them get better," said Kerr, who is also the founder of skincare company KORA Organics, in a...

Federal authorities on Tuesday charged 10 Southern California defendants in a series of healthcare fraud schemes, including one case involving nearly $270 million in fraudulent Medi-Cal claims and another that allegedly defrauded Medicare out of approximately $27 million. The charges were part of the Justice Department's broader "2026 National Health Care Fraud Takedown," which resulted in charges against 455 defendants nationwide in schemes involving more than $6.5 billion in alleged fraud. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche described the operation as "the greatest combined federal and state effort in combating healthcare fraud in history."

Today we are here to announce the results of the 2026 National Healthcare Fraud takedown. This announcement marks the greatest combined federal and state effort in combating healthcare fraud in history. When we talk about the team that's working on these cases, I want to give some context around that. There are nine healthcare fraud strike forces that have been part of this effort. 57 US attorney's offices, 41 state attorney general's offices—not red states, not blue states, but both—working together with the federal government, multiple law enforcement agencies, including inspector generals, some of the agencies that are here with...

California seems determined to prove out that old saying of President Reagan's, about government: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it. California has become a veritable tax-a-palooza, and they have already driven many of the productive residents out of the state—those being the people who work, who invest, who start and run businesses, and who create jobs. From the impeccably coiffed Governor Gavin Newsom, he of the questionable finances, on down, nobody in California's government seems to understand the notion of incentives, or how they work. Now, California is...

For years, a South Florida nursing school operator sold a simple proposition: Skip the schooling, buy the diploma, become a nurse. Nearly 3,000 people took her up on it. On Monday, the scheme caught up with her. Carleen Noreus, 52, of Plantation, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering following a two-week trial in Fort Lauderdale. She had taken her chances before a jury rather than accepting a plea deal, changing her mind mid-trial, a decision prosecutors say will factor in her favor at sentencing. Noreus served as president of Carleen Home Health...

Healthcare is one of the largest expenses for American families. It rivals housing and exceeds what many save for retirement each year. According to recent surveys from the Pew Research Center, many families rank healthcare affordability among their top economic worries. The high cost of insurance premiums, prescription drugs, deductibles, or unexpected medical bills places tremendous strain on household finances.I hope this article can help those who are caught in the strain of this right now.Why is healthcare so expensive?High costs are due to a combination of factors: advanced medical technology, rising prescription drug costs, administrative complexity, insurance overhead, provider...

...Republicans last week introduced legislation they say will improve the care that veterans receive from the federal government, though Democrats and federal employee unions warn the measure will actually degrade veterans’ benefits and employees’ rights. The Take Care of America’s Veterans Act (H.R. 9237 and S. 4744) is a package of more than 60 bills relating to the Veterans Affairs Department. Included is the Major Richard Star Act (H.R. 2102), a bill that would grant full military retirement pay to veterans who were forced to retire early due to a combat injury, as well as a provision to increase benefits...

Americans have been assured that we’re importing the “best and brightest” foreigners the world has to offer. So, when a story like this hits the internet, people are going to wonder what the hell is going on. Because the public has been sold a very specific story about these amazing standards, credentials, and competence from immigrants who come here to work and are placed in positions of tremendous trust. Apparently, that’s not entirely true. This case we’re about to share with you is a complete and total nightmare. According to a lawsuit filed in Oregon by the parents of a...

UnitedHealthcare is no stranger to controversies. Ever since the assassination of Brian Thompson, their former CEO, social media users shared their unpleasant experiences with the healthcare insurance company online. But more than a year after the incident, it seems that the company has not changed, as comedian Blake Wexler (@blakewexler) shared on TikTok. “So, my wife and I just got a letter from UnitedHealthcare telling us that they’re denying coverage for our twin’s stay in the NICU,” Wexler, who’s from New York City, said on TikTok. The babies are premature and need to be placed in the neonatal intensive care...

Roseanne Milburn, 61, of Winnipeg, had a routine procedure turn into an amputation — not because the surgery failed, but because Canada’s government-run system couldn’t find her a bed. A surgeon at Winnipeg’s Health Sciences Centre removed dead tissue from her knee, then sent her to Concordia Hospital with the plan to bring her back that same day so a specialist could stitch the wound (CBC News). She was never brought back. There was no bed at HSC. So she sat at Concordia with an 𝐨𝐩𝐞𝐧 𝐬𝐮𝐫𝐠𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥 𝐰𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐞𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐝𝐚𝐲𝐬, waiting for the system to make room. As the...