Free Republic

TALLAHASSEE — The decades-old dream of high-speed rail in Florida died Friday when the state Supreme Court turned down a last-minute lawsuit to save the project and U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood announced he would send Florida's $2.4 billion to other states.

The nation's organ-transplant network is considering giving younger, healthier people preference over older, sicker patients for the best kidneys. Instead of giving priority primarily to patients who have been on the waiting list longest, the new rules would match recipients and organs to a greater extent based on factors such as age and health to try to maximize the number of years provided by each kidney - the most sought-after organ for transplants. "We're trying to best utilize the gift of the donated organ," said Kenneth Andreoni, an associate professor of surgery at Ohio State University who chairs the committee...

Influenced by the president’s mandate to “bend the health care cost curve,” the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is preparing to deny late-stage breast cancer patients access to the critical, but expensive, life-extending drug Avastin. The FDA wants to “de-label” the drug, a move that would force patients with insurance or Medicare coverage to pay for the drug out of their own pocket in order to survive. Now patients groups are speaking out. Led by the Susan B. Komen Foundation for a Cure, 15 patient advocacy groups have petitioned the FDA to reverse their effort to ration the drug. In...

For those of you who still think ObamaCare is a good idea, here’s how it’s affecting my family at the very moment I’m writing this… My 90 year-old mother has taken ill. High fever (103), throwing up, weakness, spasmodic cough and significant respiratory issues. Her neighbor took her to the ER. The doctor says that "due to the changes in Medicare under ObamaCare" (the doctor's own words) he could not admit her into the hospital, even though he thought she should be admitted. Kicked out of the hospital, even though she’s also a heart patient. Kicked out of the hospital,...