Free Republic

A doctor at Stanford University said the spike in hospital patients in Texas has "nothing to do with COVID-19.” Dr. Scott Atlas, a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and the former chief of neuroradiology at the university’s medical center, joined Fox News’s The Story on Monday and said the public should not panic about the spike in hospitalizations. When I looked at every single hospital area in Texas today, 15-20% of people in the hospital as inpatients are COVID-positive patients. That means 80-85% have nothing to do with COVID-19. And the same thing goes with some of these...

California, New Jersey and New York have made nursing homes accept Covid-19 patients from hospitals. Residents and workers fear the policy is risking lives.Neal Nibur has lived in a nursing home for about a year, ever since he had a bad bout of pneumonia. Now, the 80-year-old man has not only his own health to worry about but that of his neighbors at the Poughkeepsie, N.Y., residence. Four new patients recently arrived from the hospital with Covid-19.They were admitted for one reason, according to staff members: A state guideline says nursing homes cannot refuse to take patients from hospitals solely...

In “Here is New York,” a 1949 love letter to his adopted home, author E.B. White declared it a miracle that the city managed to exist at all. “The whole thing is implausible,” he wrote. “Every time the residents brush their teeth, millions of gallons of water must be drawn from the Catskills and the hills of Westchester.”

Nearly half of all deaths from the coronavirus in the United States have occurred at nursing homes and other long-term care facilities, according to new reports. The rate of cases to deaths from such facilities has been disproportionate: while only 11 percent of positive cases – around 282,000 – have occurred at nursing homes and long-term care facilities, about 43 percent of deaths – or 54,000 deaths – have come from the same, the New York Times reported. The Times cited its database for the numbers, arguing that some states and the federal government have not provided comprehensive data. The...

Nursing home residents account for nearly 1 in 10 of all the coronavirus cases in the United States and more than a quarter of the deaths, according to an Associated Press analysis of government data released Thursday. As federal data collection becomes more robust, a clearer picture is emerging of the ravages of COVID-19 in nursing homes. About 1.4 million older and medically frail people live in such facilities, a tiny share of the American population that has borne a crushing burden from the pandemic. Most residents have been in lockdown since early March, isolated from families and friends, even...

New to medicare, just turned 65 in April. This is likely more a Florida issue, than elsewhere in the country. Florida has more HMO and Medicare Advantage providers due to more seniors down here. History: Two years ago I had multiple image vision in my right eye. Was 63, found eye surgeon that said cataracts, agreed to do surgery for me at no more than the price medicare allowed. Done it. A month later he wanted to do the other eye. I put it off til recently so medicare would cover it. Unfortunately this Dr doesn't not subscribe with the...

WASHINGTON - The financial conditions of the government’s two biggest benefits programs remain shaky, with Medicare projected to become insolvent in six years and Social Security on track to no longer be able to pay full benefits starting in 2035. And that’s without accounting for the impact of the coronavirus, which is sure to impose further pressure on the two programs. For Social Security, the projected 2035 date for exhausting the trust fund reserves means that it would be able to pay only 79% of benefits at that time. The projected timetables, which remained unchanged from last year’s estimates, were...

The Summit County Coroner’s Office has determined that COVID-19 was not the primary cause of death for the Silverthorne man who died last weekend and later tested positive for the disease. On April 11, Summit County announced the death of a Silverthorne man in his 60s, who tested positive for the novel coronavirus after his death. On Friday, Summit County Coroner Regan Wood said the man had undiagnosed diabetes and suffered a diabetic ketoacidosis event that resulted in his death. The man also had coronary artery disease, which is related to the diabetes. While the new coronavirus was not the...

The types of financial shocks hospitals currently face illustrate the problems inherent in Democrats’ proposed expansions of government-run health care. The coronavirus pandemic has inflicted such vast damage on the American economy that one damaged sector has gone relatively unnoticed. Despite incurring a massive influx of new patients, the hospital industry faces what one executive called a “seismic financial shock” from the virus. The types of shocks hospitals currently face also illustrate the problems inherent in Democrats’ proposed expansions of government-run health care. Likewise, the pay and benefit cuts and furloughs that some hospitals have enacted in response to these...

Most of the field of candidates running for the Democratic presidential nomination at one point signed on to the idea of Medicare for All, a compromise proposal by Bernie Sanders for universal health care coverage. In a pandemic, people panic, and seek security. Many may think that this event proves the need for universal, government-run coverage. What would that look like in reality? How would Medicare for All handle the coronavirus pandemic?Luckily, we have a real world example that is dealing with coronavirus today: Great Britain's National Health Service (NHS). NHS has long been known for its tradeoff between...

Rahm Emanuel infamously said, “Never let a serious crisis go to waste.” It seems some members of Congress have taken his advice. In a rush to help states that are financially struggling—or preparing for financial turmoil—as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, Congress passed the Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA) last month. Despite their best intentions, the fallout from this piece of legislation could be objectively catastrophic for states. Indeed, the bill worsens many of the problems it purports to solve, and Congress must act swiftly to fix it. The FFCRA offers states increased federal Medicaid dollars to help...

Former Vice President Joe Biden said Monday that he was not reconsidering his opposition to single-payer health care despite the strain that the coronavirus pandemic has put on the existing health-care system. “Single-payer will not solve that at all,” Biden said during an interview on MSNBC. **SNIP** “The thing that is needed is, for example, we have a whole number of hospitals that are being stretched, including rural hospitals, they are going to need more financing. That doesn’t come from a single-payer system,” Biden said. “That comes from the federal government stepping up and dealing with concerns that they have,”...

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) on March 17 lifted all restrictions on telehealth services for Americans covered by Medicare to address the threat of the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic. President Donald Trump announced the lifting of the limits during a press conference at the White House, calling it a “historic breakthrough.” “This has not been done before either,” the president said. Previously Medicare only covered telehealth services for those living in rural areas and brief visits for established patients. With the restrictions lifted, all 62 million Medicare beneficiaries can call a doctor’s office and request to have their...

Hillary Clinton Appeals Federal Court Order to Go Under Oath Where are Hillary Clinton’s Text Messages? FBI Cleared Extremists Who Carried Out Deadliest U.S. Attacks Since 9/11 U.S. Makes $175 Billion in Payments “That Should Not Have Been Made” Hillary Clinton Appeals Federal Court Order to Go Under Oath In another desperate attempt by the Clinton machine to delay truth and accountability for her email conduct and how it impacted the people’s “right to know” under FOIA, lawyers for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her former Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills have asked the Court of Appeals...

I will be addressing the Nation this evening at 9:00 P.M. (Eastern) from the Oval Office. https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1237841878889840642

The Trump administration plans to delay the April 15 tax deadline for most individual taxpayers as well as small businesses as part of an effort to mitigate the effects of the spread of the novel coronavirus, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Wednesday. Mr. Mnuchin said the delay would apply “to virtually all Americans, other than the super rich,” and said officials would likely announce a decision quickly...

President Donald Trump proposed eliminating federal payroll taxes altogether for the rest of the year, according to a report from CNBC Tuesday. The proposal would include eliminating both the employer and employee payroll taxes on Social Security and Medicare, according to the report. “There was also discussion of making the payroll tax rollback permanent,” CNBC reported.

It may seem counterintuitive, but single-payer health care proposals like Medicare for All could very well destroy Medicare as we know it and jeopardize medical care for seniors. It’s not just because single-payer systems like those in Britain and Canada hold down costs by limiting the availability of doctors and treatments, even for the most serious life-threatening diseases like cancer, brain tumors and heart disease. And it’s not just because single-payer systems restrict access to the newest drugs for cancer and other serious diseases, sometimes for years, compared with the United States system. Or that single-payer systems have shown to...

The Trump administration is considering using a national disaster program to pay hospitals and doctors for their care of uninsured people infected with the new coronavirus as concerns rise over costs of treating some of the 27 million Americans without health coverage, a person familiar with the conversations said. In natural disasters such as hurricanes, hospitals and medical facilities can be reimbursed under a federal program that pays them about 110% of Medicare rates for treating patients such as those evacuated from hard-hit areas. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has been in discussions about using that program to...

Has any question taken up more airtime at the Democratic debates than how to pay for Medicare for All? The question keeps being asked partly because multiple estimates have found that the single-payer plan, which would eliminate virtually all private health insurance, would require more than $30 trillion in additional government spending over a decade, a historically unprecedented sum. But it has also been a fixture because of the way it has caused candidates to stumble in revealing ways. No primary candidate is more closely associated with Medicare for All than the current front-runner and likely nominee Sen. Bernie Sanders...