Free Republic

Americans with evangelical beliefs are more likely to care politically about healthcare and economic issues than they are about issues typically associated with evangelical political engagement such as religious liberty and abortion, a new survey found.“Our respondents surprised us by how little they appeared to care about stereotypically evangelical causes,” Georgetown University professor Paul Miller wrote in a white paper analyzing the survey’s findings published by the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission.LifeWay Research released a new poll this month sponsored by the ERLC exploring the views of American evangelicals on politics, social civility, media consumption and their...

Department of Justice Office of Public Affairs FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Thursday, September 26, 2019   Three Plead Guilty to One of Largest Health Care Fraud Schemes Prosecuted Involving Fraudulent Telemedicine Networks Targeting Elderly Patients Nationwide The Justice Department today announced a coordinated health care fraud enforcement action across seven federal districts in the Northeastern United States, involving more than $800 million in loss and the distribution of over 3.25 million pills of opioids in “pill mill” clinics.  The takedown includes new charges against 48 defendants for their roles in submitting over $160 million in fraudulent claims, including charges against...

Sen. Liz “Fauxcohontas” Warren, another of the many Democrats running for the Garbage Party’s 2020 nomination, isn’t having a good week. Earlier, when she was asked on the campaign trail if she would allow her Vice President to have a son go to work for a foreign company and make killer money for doing jack, a la Joe and Hunter Biden, she first said “no,” but then snaked out of it by claiming that she’d have to actually consult her own Ethics plan before answering.

Assistant Attorney General Brian A. Benczkowski of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division announced today an expansive health care fraud enforcement operation across the Gulf Coast, involving charges against a total of 11 individuals across four federal districts for their alleged involvement in various schemes to defraud Medicare, Medicaid and TRICARE and to obtain oxycodone and other controlled substances by fraud. The conduct allegedly resulted in more than $515 million in fraudulent billings. Those charged included physicians, licensed social workers, as well as other medical and business professionals. In addition, in the state of Louisiana, 22 defendants, including 19 certified mental...

The Justice Department announced today a significant health care fraud enforcement operation across Florida and Georgia, involving charges against a total of 67 individuals across four federal districts for their alleged involvement in various schemes to defraud Medicare and Medicaid. The conduct allegedly resulted in more than $160 million in fraudulent billings. Those charged included physicians as well as other medical and business professionals. In addition, in the state of Florida, 16 defendants, including one licensed mental health professionals, have been charged with defrauding the Medicaid program out of over $1.2 million. Florida’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit (MFCU) investigated these...

Department of Justice Office of Public Affairs FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Monday, September 16, 2019 Texas Hospital Administrator Sentenced to 10 Years in Prison for Role in $16 Million Health Care Fraud Scheme A Houston, Texas-area hospital administrator was sentenced today for his role in a $16 million Medicare fraud scheme involving partial hospitalization programs.Assistant Attorney General Brian A. Benczkowski of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, U.S. Attorney Ryan Patrick of the Southern District of Texas, Special Agent in Charge Perrye K. Turner of the FBI’s Houston Field Office, Special Agent in Charge C.J. Porter of the U.S. Department of...

Illinois clearly is the pioneer in the not yet existent deceased rights movement, which I have heard is having trouble with turnout for its rallies.  But if the dead ever do rise from their graves in a zombie apocalypse, as so often dramatized on cable television, they will no doubt demand that other states follow the lead of  Illinois. They're not dead, they're a constituency: Illinois Policy reveals that the state has spent $4.6 million on Medicaid for dead people: An audit by the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services' Office of Inspector General, or OIG, found Illinois spent $4.6 million on Medicaid...

In July, the U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly voted 419-6 to repeal the health care “Cadillac Tax.” As the Senate returns to work, it is now time for the bipartisan group of more than 60 Senators to repeal the Cadillac Tax and end the threat that will destroy the health care of 181 million hard-working Americans and their families. Hard-working Americans and their families have already been negatively impacted by the looming “Cadillac Tax” on the health care plans that the job creating employers of America provide to their workers. This tax was part of the Affordable Care Act and...

Joe Scarborough still occasionally describes himself as a "conservative," but at least when it comes to health care it sure sounds like Joe is all-in with the liberals. On today's Morning Joe, a palpably PO-d Scarborough furiously criticized the way the candidates in last night's Democrat debate focused on the details that divided them on health care. Instead, insisted, Scarborough, they should focus on the big picture. An angry Scarborough ranted: JOE SCARBOROUGH: I am astounded, just politically. I am astounded. This is the third Democratic debate where they spent at least the first third of that debate pounding each...

Nine years after Barack Obama signed the Affordable Care Act, we learn this about the uninsured in Texas:Despite a booming Texas economy, more Texans lost or dropped their insurance coverage from 2017 to 2018, according to a new report from the U.S. Census Bureau. That marks the second consecutive year-to-year increase of Texas' uninsured rate.p>And with about 5 million uninsured people — about 17.7% of the total population — Texas remains the state with the highest uninsured rate out of all 50 states, the census data released Tuesday shows. Okay — so Texas is #1 again, but on the wrong list. Wasn't...

The number of people without health insurance jumped by 2 million from 2017 to a total of 27.5 million in 2018, according to census data release Tuesday. It’s the first time the census survey reported an increase in the number of people without insurance since 2009, before ObamaCare took effect and vastly expanded coverage. The total uninsured rate increased to 8.5 percent in 2018 from 7.9 percent in 2017. Census officials said the increase was mostly driven by a drop in the number of people, including kids, covered by public programs like Medicaid. The number of children without insurance also...

Maisy was having a severe reaction to her allergies this season and was having difficulty breathing. We called her doctor and he recommended we bring her in to the office. After the examination and a shot that gave her some relief, we went to the front desk, where the doctor wrote a prescription that was immediately filled by his staff at that moment. We paid for the prescription and went home to start her course of medication. Maisy is a 5 year old boxer that lives in Texas, and her veterinarian is allowed by Texas law to dispense prescription drugs...

Heather Waldron and John Hawley are losing their four-bedroom house in the hills above Blacksburg, Va. A teenage daughter, one of their five children, sold her clothes for spending money. They worried about paying the electric bill. Financial disaster, they say, contributed to their divorce, finalized in April. Their money problems began when the University of Virginia Health System pursued the couple with a lawsuit and a lien on their home to recoup $164,000 in charges for Waldron’s emergency surgery in 2017. The family has lots of company: Over six years ending in June 2018, the health system and its...

A transgender woman from El Salvador, she moved to Washington, D.C., in the late 1980s to escape the country's civil war. It was a time when AIDS was already devastating an entire generation of gay men and transgender women in the United States. Homophobia and transphobia were part of everyday life, from finding housing or landing a job to facing all-too-real threats of violence.Corado quickly got involved in community activism — while also navigating both her transition and learning she was HIV-positive.Because of complications from her HIV medication, she developed a condition that affects how the body stores and distributes...

Healthcare is the single biggest issue affecting voters this election cycle. Understandably, the crown jewel of political debate during the campaigns is the aspect of the ACA that protects consumers from limitations associated with pre-existing conditions. The ACA, or Obamacare, provided for those in the individual markets to have the same benefits of those participating in group insurance without fear of their past medical history preventing them from participating. The multiple attempts to repeal or change this hotly debated law has caused the issue of pre-existing condition repeal to come to the forefront of the discussions related to healthcare. https://www.houstoncourant.com/houston-voices/2018/10/29/pre-existing-conditions-fix-them-or-eliminate-them-altogether

“Middlemen" are causing a crisis in health care that's hitting everyday Americans in the wallet and preventing them from getting the care they need. They have contributed to soaring health care costs and medicine shortages. On May 11th of this year, the President held a press conference and stated "We’re very much eliminating the middlemen. The middlemen became very, very rich. Whoever those middlemen were — and a lot of people never even figured it out — they’re rich. They won’t be so rich anymore." https://www.houstoncourant.com/houston-voices/2019/7/28/middlemen-in-healthcare-creating-high-costs

This is the great mystery of human vision: Vivid pictures of the world appear before our mind’s eye, yet the brain’s visual system receives very little information from the world itself. Much of what we “see” we conjure in our heads. “A lot of the things you think you see you’re actually making up,” said Lai-Sang Young, a mathematician at New York University. “You don’t actually see them.” New research suggests mathematics is the key. The visual cortex has a mind of its own. “You may think of the brain as taking a photograph of what you see in your...

The uninsured rate is rising for the first time since ObamaCare passed, two recent studies show, alarming advocates who fear the problem could get worse. Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released in July show there were 2.1 million more uninsured people between 2016 and 2018. And a study from the Urban Institute this month, using Census Bureau data, found 700,000 more uninsured people just between 2016 and 2017. The increase is especially noteworthy given the strong economy, signaling the uninsured rate will rise even higher if the economy worsens and people start losing the coverage they...

Joe Biden was on the campaign trail in New Hampshire Friday, which means that the potential for a new gaffe to add to his growing repertoire was high.While speaking at a health care town hall at Dartmouth College in Hanover, the Democratic front-runner did not disappoint.Biden, who is considered the Democrats' most electable candidate, hit his first snag while trying to describe his healthcare plan: “For folks in the working class that are below 400,  they will, in fact, increase their premiums,” he stammered, adding quickly,  "excuse me, will increase the generosity of the premium tax cut that they now...

President Trump recently promised that "America will never be a socialist country" -- at least not while he's in office. But some members of his administration didn't get the memo. The Department of Health and Human Services still plans to impose socialist, European-style price controls on advanced drugs administered through Medicare. The proposal would tie Medicare's drug reimbursement rates to the average prices paid by governments that impose price controls on medicines. HHS officials hope their scheme will reduce pharmaceutical spending here in America -- and force other developed nations to foot more of the bill for drug research and...