Free Republic

Even an occasional glass of wine or beer increases the risk of health problems and dying, according to a major study on drinking in 195 nations that attributes 2.8 million premature deaths worldwide each year to booze. "There is no safe level of alcohol," said Max Griswold, a researcher at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation in Seattle, Washington and lead author for a consortium of more than 500 experts. Despite recent research showing that light-to-moderate drinking reduces heart disease, the new study found that alcohol use is more likely than not to do harm. "The protective effect of...

Faced with the high cost of caring for smokers and overeaters, experts say society must grapple with a blunt question: Instead of trying to penalize them and change their ways, why not just let these health sinners die? Annual health care costs are roughly $96 billion for smokers and $147 billion for the obese, the government says. These costs accompany sometimes heroic attempts to prolong lives, including surgery, chemotherapy and other measures. But despite these rescue attempts, smokers tend to die 10 years earlier on average, and the obese die five to 12 years prematurely, according to various researchers’ estimates....

The House voted Thursday to dethrone nine White House “czars.” Republicans successfully added an amendment to the continuing resolution that would leave President Barack Obama’s senior advisers on policy issues including health care, energy and others out of a job.

...omit procedures such as abortions and positive HIV tests from the electronic health records (EHR) that every American is supposed to have by 2014 under the terms of the economic stimulus law that President Barack Obama signed last year.

Nancy-Ann Min DeParle, who President Obama appointed as director of the White House Office of Health Care Reform on Monday, took home at least $2.4 million in 2006 and 2007 from serving on the corporate boards of health-care companies whose businesses she would be in a position to affect in her new position. Since leaving the Clinton administration in 2001, DeParle has made a fortune by serving on 10 boards in the health-care industry in addition to her lucrative career as a managing director at private equity firm CCMP Capital and a senior adviser at JP Morgan Partners. Her journey...

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- On the heels of naming pro-abortion Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius as his next Health Secretary, Obama has turned to another abortion advocate to head the White House Office of Health Care Reform. Nancy-Ann DeParle, a former Clinton administration official, was tapped for the post. DeParle oversaw budget issues related to the Clinton health care plan, which pro-life advocates panned for promoting abortion and rationing of lifesaving medical care. But DeParle is no stranger to controversy related to abortion and refused to allow a state to limit taxpayer funding of abortions under its own health plan. In...

TUESDAY, Aug. 29 (HealthDay News) -- Adult obesity rates increased in 31 states during the past year, leaving an estimated two-thirds of Americans vulnerable to fatal diseases such as diabetes, stroke and cancer.This, despite federal and state government efforts to curb the overweight epidemic, according to a new report from the Trust for America's Health.The report, titled F as in Fat: How Obesity Policies Are Failing America, 2006, was released Tuesday and is the third in a series of annual reports by the trust detailing state obesity rates as well as the effectiveness of government policies to fight the problem.According...