Free Republic

There are politicians, media figures, and pop-culture influencers, too, jumping on the coronavirus scare, warning of its dangers, and perhaps, using it to demonstrate their bona fides as caring individuals, dedicated to the protection of human life. Largely due to the western world’s foolish dependence on mainland China as a source for both finished goods and components for manufacturing elsewhere, the coronavirus is currently causing a global short-term economic downturn. There should be no reason for this trouble to be lasting - if we keep our heads -but it is almost certain to be destructive if an economic panic gains...

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...

Ventilators in short supply. Intensive care beds already overflowing. Some health workers buying their own face masks or hoods. And if cases of the deadly coronavirus surge in anything like the numbers some experts have predicted, doctors say they would have to consider denying lifesaving care to the frailest patients to prioritize those with better chances of surviving. “If we haven’t got ventilatory support to offer them, it’s going to end in death,” said Dr. George Priestley, an intensive care doctor and anesthesiologist in Yorkshire in northern England. “I don’t want to be alarmist. I just want someone to pay...

NATIONAL HARBOR, MD — Congressman Steve Scalise introduced a panel discussion called “Prescription for Failure: The Ills of Socialized Medicine" at CPAC on Thursday. He established what was at stake in 2020: “2020 will be a contrast election,” he said, between Trump’s freedom agenda or socialism. “You don’t want socialism, you surely don’t want socialized medicine,” he said. “Tens of thousands of Canadians come to America for life-saving treatment. Do you see Americans going to Canada for life-saving treatment?” he asked rhetorically. “Healthcare is only one example of what’s at stake in this election,” he said, before concluding that individual...

CORONAVIRUS patients in Britain could be turned away from hospitals if medics cannot cope with the amount of cases they have on their hands, a doctor has warned The NHS woud adopt a so-called “three wise men” system if the number of infected Britons reached catastrophic levels. Three senior consultants in each hospital would be forced to ration care such as beds and ventilators if hospitals were unable to cope with the sheer scale of the crisis. The protocol would mean weaker patients who stand less of a chance of fighting off the sickness would be pushed down the pecking...

Americans want health care to be less expensive. We also want our health care to be the most innovative in the world. The key to simultaneously achieving both of these goals is good public policy. Back in September, House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) introduced H.R. 3, also known as the Lower Drug Costs Now Act of 2019, into the House of Representatives with 105 co-sponsors, all Democrats. The House is set to vote on the bill this week. H.R. 3 would adopt international reference pricing for the Medicare program in an effort to lower drug costs....

So much for the Spring Showdown. Two weeks ago, the Supreme Court appeared ready to jump into the middle of a 2020 election debate over ObamaCare, telling both sides of an appear to submit briefs over the possibility of an expedited review of a case where the law was ruled unconstitutional. There was just enough time to add this to the calendar for this session — if the court wanted to stick their fingers into a political and electoral maelstrom.To quote Emily Litella … never mind: The Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected Democrats’ plea to consider a high-stakes legal...

The best thing about Bernie -- need I explain, in the year of grace 2020, which Bernie? -- is how a frosty-haired old coot, old enough to have been a high school classmate of mine, fires up kids who never heard of our era's icons: Leo Durocher, say, or Robert Q. Lewis. This happens, coincidentally, to be the worst thing about Bernie. A youthful constituency for socialist measures and methods in the Bernie manner is a scary thing to behold. In a less mixed-up political environment than ours, candidate Sanders might rise, with some exertion, to the level of Marianne...

What Soviet Medicine Teaches Us 08/21/2009 Yuri N. Maltsev In 1918, the Soviet Union became the first country to promise universal "cradle-to-grave" healthcare coverage, to be accomplished through the complete socialization of medicine. The "right to health" became a "constitutional right" of Soviet citizens. The proclaimed advantages of this system were that it would "reduce costs" and eliminate the "waste" that stemmed from "unnecessary duplication and parallelism" — i.e., competition. These goals were similar to the ones declared by Mr. Obama and Ms. Pelosi — attractive and humane goals of universal coverage and low costs. What's not to like? The...

What could possibly go wrong? A National Health Service (NHS) trust in the UK has announced that it will deny treatment to patients it deems are ‘racists’ or ‘sexists’. No, this is not the Onion. The North Bristol NHS Trust said that “threatening and offensive language,” as well as “racist or sexist language, gestures or behaviour” and “malicious allegations” would all be punishable offenses. Patients who commit such an infraction will be subject to a “sports-style disciplinary yellow card and then final red card in which treatment would be withdrawn as soon as is safe.” “We have staff from many...

EXCLUSIVE: Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren’s long-awaited "Medicare-for-all" funding plan projects the government-run health care system would cost a staggering sum of "just under $52 trillion" over the next decade, with the campaign proposing a host of new tax increases to pay for it while still claiming the middle class would not face any additional burden. “We don’t need to raise taxes on the middle class by one penny to finance Medicare for All,” Sen. Warren, D-Mass., said in her plan — a copy of which was obtained by Fox News. FUNDING MEDICARE-FOR-ALL WITH TAXES ONLY ON RICH IS 'IMPOSSIBLE,'...

Sen. Joe Manchin (D., W.Va.) rejected presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders's claim that he could pressure the West Virginia senator and other moderate Democrats to vote in favor of Medicare for All. "Bernie is damn wrong on that one," Manchin said Wednesday when asked by NBC News about Sanders saying his health care plan would have support from moderate Democratic senators. Sanders said in a CNBC interview that moderate senators, including Manchin and Sen. Jon Tester (D., Mont.), would rally behind his agenda and deliver the votes to implement a government-run healthcare system. "Damn right they will," Sanders said when asked...

On Stephen Colbert's CBS late night show, the host challenged Elizabeth Warren on the issue of single-payer healthcare, which she unequivocally supports. He attempted to nail the leftist Senator down on the question of whether or not middle class Americans' taxes would have to go up (they would, a lot) in order to fund the program she and Bernie Sanders have proposed. She ducked, he drilled down further, then she ducked again -- prompting the comedian to call her out on it, seemingly to her surprise: “You keep being asked in the debates, how are you going to pay...

This morning at 7:30 AM (Phoenix time) former FBI Agent Steve Hooper joined radio host Mike Broomhead on the Mike Broomhead Show on KFYI 550 AM 6-10AM). Steve Hooper is a 30 year veteran of the FBI. Hooper said the El Paso shooter, during interviews, says he was triggered after watching the DNC debate where all the candidates raised their hands to provide “health insurance” to illegal immigrants. It was the insanity at the Democrat Presidential debates that triggered the shooter, not Trump’s language. Here is the audio from the Mike Broomhead Show this morning. Steve Hooper: When the most...

Trump is working on a proposal that would allow the U.S. to import drugs from Canada, HHS Secretary Alex Azar says.“Working on a plan on how we can import drugs safely and effectively from Canada so the American people get the benefit of the deals that pharma themselves are striking with other countries,” he says.

By 2016, two years into the expansion of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), 17.6 million previously uninsured people around the U.S. had gained health insurance coverage. But with the expansion, researchers at the University of Colorado Denver and the University of Kentucky found that ambulance dispatches for minor injuries like abrasions, minor burns and muscle sprains rose by a staggering 37% in New York City. The authors analyzed data from all of the 911 ambulance dispatches in New York City between January 1, 2013, and July 31, 2016. In New York City, 911 calls are routed through a central dispatch...

Officials with the Mid Essex National Health Service Department issued a warning this month after 32 cases of invasive Group A streptococcus (IGAS) were reported in the Braintree and Maldon District as well as in Chelmsford City. Of those reported cases, 12 people have died. Public health officials say each case involved elderly patients who were treated for wounds in either “care homes” or house calls. Rachel Hearn, director of Nursing and Quality, Mid Essex Clinical Commissioning Group offered her condolences in a statement. “Our thoughts are with the families of those patients who have died," she said. “The NHS...

The “by a show of hands” challenge has a controversial past in American presidential debates. Republicans chafed and objected in 2007. Trump stood alone in 2016. And on Wednesday at the NBC Democratic Debate, the first primary debate of the 2020 season, the show of hands-on health care got big applause from the crowd, but only two hands up on stage. **SNIP** “Who here would abolish their private health insurance in favor of a government-run plan, just a show of hands,” said Holt. Only Warren and Mayor Bill de Blasio raised their hands, as the crowd timidly at first and...

When Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) announced the launch of H.R.1384, “Medicare for All,” on the Capitol steps on Feb. 27, 2019, it was a major step toward a socialist America. Jayapal was surrounded by more than 100 supporters, many from groups such as National Nurses United, the Center for Popular Democracy, Our Revolution, Coalition of Labor Union Women, and the Labor Campaign for Single Payer. Appropriately, all of the organizations represented are controlled, or at least heavily influenced, by America’s largest Marxist organization, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), which can quite rightly claim credit for the socialist single-payer movement...

Rising support for socialism in the United States comes at a time when politicians like Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., promise a great many “free” services, to be provided or guaranteed by the government. Supporters often point to nations with large social programs, such as Canada, the United Kingdom, and the Scandinavian states, particularly when it comes to health care. Never mind that these are not true socialist countries, but highly taxed market economies with large welfare states. That aside, they do offer a government-guaranteed health service that many in America wish to emulate. The problem for their argument is that,...