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If you had to go to a hospital emergency room through the holidays, chances are you had a long wait to see a doctor. CityNews has brought you many stories of overcrowding over the past few years and the latest numbers show it’s getting worse – with more patients coming for treatment, and waiting longer than ever to be treated by a doctor. Shellann Wallace saw that first-hand when she took her 18-year-old daughter to Humber River Hospital on the Friday evening before Christmas. “I couldn’t believe it,” she said. “I thought we were in a third-world country.” Her daughter...

The City Council on Thursday put its political clout behind a proposal in Albany to overhaul state health care by creating a “Medicare for all” program that would raise taxes by $139 billion a year. The single-payer plan would extend coverage to the roughly 1 million uninsured New Yorkers — including undocumented immigrants — and eliminate all co-pays and deductibles.

On the two-year anniversary of Election 2016, Mary Steenburgen recalls the poignant solace she tried to offer her longtime friend Hillary Clinton after she lost that year’s bruising presidential race. “As long as we’re privileged to draw breath, life is a grace and none of us know what’s around the bend,” Steenburgen, 65, told Clinton, according to an essay the Book Club actress wrote for #StillWithHer by former White House photographer Barbara Kinney. (The book, out Nov. 1, was produced in collaboration with PEOPLE’s Sandra Sobieraj Westfall.) Steenburgen, a close personal friend of Hillary and Bill Clinton dating back to...

A newly released video from The Canadian Down Syndrome Society (CDSS) has just released a video pointing out how worldwide, people with Down syndrome are in danger of becoming extinct. Their lives are endangered because of abortion. So people with the condition are speaking out, demanding better treatment and an end to the eugenics that has left their numbers dwindling. The CDSS notes on its campaign website that “[b]y the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s own criteria, the Down syndrome community qualifies as endangered in many parts of the world.” The CDSS has applied “for the inclusion of...

The 2018 midterms could be remembered as a turning point for America’s health care system.Until recently, only the far left of the Democratic Party openly called for the United States to completely abandon capitalism in our health care system in favor of socialized medicine. Few remember that when the Democrats last had control of the House of Representatives, in 2010, most Democrats chose to reject pushing for a single-payer health care model, despite the fact they had control of both houses of Congress and the White House. Even then-President Barack Obama, a longtime supporter of enacting a single-payer scheme, told...

Venezuela’s government says there is no humanitarian crisis in the country. But the stories of worried families navigating its crumbling health system suggest otherwise. **SNIP** Her images, taken at a hospital and a clinic in the eastern city of Cumana, show a debilitated health system: shortages or a complete dearth of antibiotics and other medicine, run-down equipment, dirty facilities, and often no running water. Amid the shortages, tiny medical organisations are taking on the responsibilities of the state. Fundación Jesed is one of them. Vanessa Ramos and her husband run the charity out of their living room in Cumana. Desperate...

No excerpt from Bloomberg allowed, story here

... In anticipation of Mr. Sanders’ arrival this week in another Midwestern battleground state, Mark Sommerhauser of the Wisconsin State Journal noted on Thursday that “the policy views Sanders champions have become touchstones for many Democrats here and nationally.” Mr. Sommerhauser adds: Examples include Sanders’ “Medicare For All” health care plan and his call to raise the minimum wage to $15. Peter Rickman - a Milwaukee labor activist who led Sanders’ Wisconsin delegation to the 2016 Democratic National Convention - said Sanders “created the political space” to tout those issues, as well as free college tuition, within the Democratic mainstream....

The average wait time for children to see an audiologist in the Northwest Territories is 70 weeks, a number Frame Lake MLA Kevin O'Reilly says is unacceptable. "A wait time over 70 weeks? That's over a year," he said. "Kids, they could be in school over a year, miss a grade, without their proper hearing or being assessed, and that doesn't seem right." O'Reilly first started looking for this information for a constituent and raised the issue in the N.W.T. Legislative Assembly Tuesday, asking questions about government data he'd been provided by the territory's health department.

"...Sarah’s boyfriend rang and said he was concerned about her.” “He said she was slurring words, really confused and she had numbness down the right side of her...." Cullen’s death triggered a serious “untoward incident investigation” at the hospital. It concluded that “although there are lessons to be learned surrounding the patient’s care, it is unlikely a change in care plan would have an impact on the patient’s outcome.” Senior nurse Jacqueline Baseley, who saw Cullen on the 28, told her inquest: “I discussed with both Sarah and her boyfriend that I felt it was more of a panic attack.”...

When President Trump declared in a USA Today op-ed that the Democrats' "Medicare for all" proposal would "outlaw" private health insurance, CNN's Jim Acosta indignantly tweeted that this was "false." But reading the text of the leading proposal by Sen. Bernie Sanders makes clear that Trump's op-ed was correct. "It is right there in their proposed legislation: Democrats outlaw private health plans that offer the same benefits as the government plan." This is, in fact, 100 percent accurate. The plan would require, in four years time, for individuals to be enrolled in the new government plan at birth. At that...

Chuck Schumer declared this week that health care is the issue that will define the November elections, and the Senate Minority Leader may be right for the wrong reason. Democrats could end up paying a big political price for signing up en masse for Bernie Sanders’s government-run health-care agenda. Republicans are running ads slamming Democrats on single-payer health care, and President Trump framed the issue this week in a USA Today op-ed that said “Democrats would gut Medicare with their planned government takeover of American health care.” Democrats claim this is unfair because not every candidate has endorsed single payer,...

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...

A vast majority — 70 percent — of Americans in a new poll supports "Medicare for all," also known as a single-payer health-care system. The Reuters–Ipsos survey found 85 percent of Democrats said they support the policy along with 52 percent of Republicans. Medicare for all has been in the headlines after a study by the libertarian-leaning Mercatus Center at George Mason University found it would lead to $32.6 trillion increase in federal spending over a 10-year period. The study’s author, Charles Blahous, wrote in The Wall Street Journal earlier this month that even doubling taxes would not cover the...

A patient waited 62 hours for an ambulance, while four trusts took more than 24 hours to respond to 999 calls, new figures have shown. The longest delays in the UK were recorded by Welsh Ambulance Service, which kept four patients waiting for more than 50 hours. A spokesman said the figures were "not typical" and "represent the extreme end of the waiting time spectrum". The Patients Association said they were "extremely concerning". Between June 2017 and June 2018, ambulances from four services took 24 hours to reach patients, including some with breathing and mental health problems. -snip Caroline Hardaker's...

https://khn.org/news/once-its-greatest-foes-doctors-are-embracing-single-payer/ By Shefali Luthra 08/07/2018 When the American Medical Association — one of the nation’s most powerful health care groups — met in Chicago this June, its medical student caucus seized an opportunity for change. Though they had tried for years to advance a resolution calling on the organization to drop its decades-long opposition to single-payer health care, this was the first time it got a full hearing. The debate grew heated — older physicians warned their pay would decrease, calling younger advocates naïve to single-payer’s consequences. But this time, by the meeting’s end, the AMA’s older members had agreed...

Medicare will run out of money sooner than expected, and Social Security’s financial problems can’t be ignored either, the government said Tuesday in a sobering checkup on programs vital to the middle class. The report from program trustees says Medicare will become insolvent in 2026 — three years earlier than previously forecast. Its giant trust fund for inpatient care won’t be able to fully cover projected medical bills starting at that point. The report says Social Security will become insolvent in 2034 — no change from the projection last year. The warning serves as a reminder of major issues left...

A six-year-old girl has written to Theresa May asking if she and her sister can have a new drug that could potentially prolong their lives. Both Imogen Fare, 6, and her two-year-old sister Annabelle suffer from cystic fibrosis (CF). Imogen, who lives with her family in Conwy, Wales, has written to Theresa May asking for access to the drug Orkambi. She wrote: ‘Dear Mrs May, I have C.F. so does my little sister Annabelle. We would really like Orkambi to keep us well and help us live a long and happy life.’ ‘We both like swimming and playing outside love...

Health Care Denial: Bernie Sanders and many of his fellow Democrats pushing single payer endlessly claim that health care is a "basic human right." What they never mention is that gaining that one means sacrificing many other rights. Just ask the parents of Alfie Evans. Alfie died this week in a British hospital after a series of events that, if they'd happened here, would be a serious breakdown in our nation's health care system and of parental rights. Back in December 2016, British doctors diagnosed Alfie Evans as having a degenerative neurological condition that they couldn't identify. As Alfie's conditioned...

Parents of boy with rare degenerative brain disease say they are heartbroken after his death in hospital A 23-month-old boy with a rare degenerative brain disease, who was at the centre of a protracted legal battle, has died, his parents have said. Alfie Evans died at Alder Hey children’s hospital in Liverpool in the early hours of Saturday morning. Announcing the news on Facebook on Saturday, his parents, Kate James and Thomas Evans, said: “Our baby boy grew his wings tonight at 2:30am. We are heart broken. Thank you everyone for all your support.” [...] This is a breaking news...