Free Republic

Health Reform: After years of singing the praises of universal health care, college professors are now shocked at how badly it has turned out — for them. Adjunct professors are steamed at the way their employers are interpreting the Affordable Care Act's employer mandate, which forces them to cover full-time but not part-time workers. Typical of liberals, they blame their employers instead of the job-killing law they supported. Starting Jan. 1, ObamaCare makes employers offer all full-time workers health insurance or pay a fine. In response, hundreds of colleges have simply cut instructors' course loads to dodge coverage. Others are...

Climate change is happening, and with that will come more deaths from heat-related illness and disease, according to a report released Tuesday. The report, spearheaded and funded by investor and philanthropist Thomas Steyer, former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, and former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, examines many of the effects of climate change for business and individuals. "One of the most striking findings in our analysis is that increasing heat and humidity in some parts of the country could lead to outside conditions that are literally unbearable to humans, who must maintain a skin temperature below 95°F in order to...

For ordinary consumers, the answer varies. A lot of Americans who never had insurance before have indeed been able to find health coverage AND health care, (they're two different things, after all). But a lot of Americas have lost their previous plans, and now they're having trouble finding actual doctors to treat them even under their more expensive coverage. Whether the ACA has actually helped more citizens than it's hurt has turned into a partisan war of statistics. That war will be waged for years to come. While I believe the new law will ultimately hurt more people than it...

Imagine how much better off America’s veterans would be if the federal government spent more time delivering actual care and less time compiling tyrannical lists. The death-inducing secret waiting lists for patients are just the tip of the iceberg. Did you know, for example, that the VA keeps a database on “disgruntled” and “disruptive” vets that results in arbitrarily restricted care?

Enrollment: ObamaCare loyalists are trumpeting a new Kaiser Family Foundation survey finding that more than half of those who enrolled had been uninsured. But the survey's findings are nothing to cheer about. First, nobody knows exactly how many ObamaCare enrollees were previously uninsured, because the administration didn't bother to ask for that information when people signed up. So it's been up to pollsters to figure out what happened, and previous surveys showed that only a small percentage of ObamaCare sign-ups came from the ranks of the uninsured. The new Kaiser survey, in contrast, found that 57% of those getting coverage...

While it is satisfying to watch Barack Hussein Obama’s presidency coming apart, it has made him a dangerous enemy who will strike without warning. He is being exposed as a fraud and the pressure of being found out is driving him to be increasingly reckless and dangerous. He’s quickly morphing into something resembling a wounded animal. His latest assault on us, his American enemies, involves erasing our Southern border to allow tens of thousands of unaccompanied illegal alien children and gang members to walk in, sit down and start demanding whatever they think they are entitled to get. We’re hearing...

This week the Associated Press reported that an audit of the Department of Veterans Affairs showed that more than 57,000 patients are still waiting for initial appointments more than 90 days after requesting them. An additional 64,000 are enrolled, but have never seen a doctor. The audit also found that 13 percent of VA schedulers said their supervisors told them to lie about wait times so they seemed shorter. One veteran told CBS News, "It's always poor service. I think I've gotten better service at the DMV." For anyone still doubting how seriously the situation at the VA has...

The Americans who qualify for tax credits through the new federal insurance exchange are paying an average of $82 a month in premiums for their coverage — about one-fourth the bill they would have faced without such financial help, according to a new government analysis. But the analysis shows wide variations among states in the premiums that people are paying for their new insurance, the amount the government is picking up and the proportion who qualify for the subsidies. The 28-page report, by the Department of Health and Human Services, is the government’s first effort to gauge the affordability and...

If you could pick any healthcare system in the world, it probably wouldn’t be the U.S.’s. According to a new report from The Commonwealth Fund, titled “Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, 2014 Update: How the U.S. Health Care System Compares Internationally,” the U.S healthcare system is the most costly in the world, but it ranks poorly compared to other countries on most measures of performance.Among the 11 nations assessed by The Commonwealth Fund — Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK and the U.S. — the U.S. ranks last, as it did in four...

The embattled Phoenix branch of the Department of Veterans Affairs apparently has paid out $10 million in bonuses during the past three years, far more than previously reported. The Arizona Republic obtained and published the bonus records after seeking them from the VA for months. The documents showed 4,188 bonuses were paid in that period to more than 2,150 employees.

In 1968 when I enlisted, my enlistment contract guaranteed me that for the rest of my life I could be seen at any VA hospital or clinic for free for the rest of my life on a tier system. 1st. To be seen were service connected disabilities. 2nd to be seen were active duty personnel and their families. 3rd. And last to be seen were all other veterans. You could walk-in and wait and you may have to wait all day but you would be seen by a doctor. All medications were free at any veterans hospital or clinic, no...

If the ongoing scandal in the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) health care system provides evidence of anything — in addition to our ongoing failure to provide adequate care for our veterans — it’s that Washington’s response is sadly predictable. The first instinct in Washington is to look for scapegoats, or at least a sacrificial lamb. Accordingly, VA Secretary Eric Shinseki has resigned. No doubt he should have, since he was apparently clueless about the ongoing problems in his department. But the keyword here is “ongoing.” The problems within the VA health system go back decades, long before the current...

I saw the report that 65-year-old couples will need more than $200,000 for health care costs during retirement. Why is the amount so steep, and what can I do to lower these costs? Fidelity’s annual retiree health care cost estimate found that couples retiring this year at age 65 will need $220,000 for health care costs during retirement (the same figure as last year’s study). The cost assumes the couple has traditional Medicare and pays deductibles and coinsurance for Part A and Part B (plus the premiums for Part B, which are currently $104.90 per month for most people). It...

The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development was established by President John F. Kennedy, with the support of Congress, in 1962 to study the “complex process of human development from conception to old age.” In 2007, the NICHD was re-christened to include the name of Eunice Kennedy Shriver. Among NICHD’s many large projects was the so-called SUPPORT study (Surfactant, Positive Pressure, and Oxygenation Randomized Trial). The results of this study were published in May, 2010 in the New England Journal of Medicine, in an article entitled “Target Ranges of Oxygen Saturation in Extremely Preterm Infants.” According to the...

The founder and chair of a group dedicated to reducing hospital infection deaths told the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs Thursday that a bill backed by the Senate Wednesday to address the backlog of veterans awaiting medical care “is designed to protect union jobs, not ailing vets.” The bill drafted by Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), chairman of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, “will not save the lives of vets stuck on the wait list,” said Dr. Betsy McCaughey, chair of the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths. “This bill as currently written is designed to protect union...

A Fresno County judge has issued a tentative ruling denying a motion that would have prevented the county from ending health services to about 5,000 undocumented immigrants. A hearing is scheduled for 3:30 p.m. Thursday to hear arguments on the motion filed by Western Center on Law & Poverty and California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation on behalf of Clinica Sierra Vista, which operates health clinics in Fresno and Bakersfield. Judge Donald S. Black ruled in April that the county does not have to follow a 30-year-old court order requiring it to pay for medical services for undocumented immigrants, but the...

Colorado will begin charging an Obamacare tax next month on all health insurance policies — even those obtained through private employers — to help prop up the state’s struggling health care exchange. ... Republicans have called the Obamacare tax unconstitutional, given that the state’s constitution requires voters to approve any tax increases, but exchange managers insist it’s a fee, not a tax.

In February the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) recorded the lowest percentage of 16- to 19-year-olds working or actively looking for work (32.9%) since the bureau started tracking the data in 1948... Over the past two years, the BLS has recorded some of the worst labor participation rates for 20- to 24-year-olds since 1973... Looking at the seasonally unadjusted data—which is what the BLS makes publicly available—for 25- to 29-year-olds, the April 2014 labor-participation rate was the lowest the BLS has recorded since it started tracking the data in 1982 ... Nonetheless, various states and municipalities have increased their minimum...

Tens of thousands of veterans are stuck in backlogs awaiting care at VA facilities, the department said Monday in a report that confirms employees regularly cooked the books, often under pressure from supervisors, to try to hide long wait times. The audit found that 70 percent of Veterans Affairs facilities surveyed placed patients on alternate wait lists, meaning many of those veterans probably weren’t recorded in the official reports back to headquarters and were used to dole out bonuses to VA executives.

More than 100,000 veterans are experiencing waits of more than 90 days for appointments at medical centers run by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, according to an internal audit released by the troubled agency on Monday.