Free Republic

It's no surprise that someone who went out of his way to avoid paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in Medicare taxes would agree to jeopardize the Medicare coverage of 27 million beneficiaries.Twelve months after Joe Biden claimed at the final presidential debate that “not one single person, private insurance, would lose their insurance under my [health] plan,” Democrats stand on the precipice of turning Biden’s statement into a reprise of Barack Obama’s “If you like your plan, you can keep it” Lie of The Year. The effort could cost millions of seniors their private Medicare plans, as Democrats raid...

The Supreme Court will consider whether setting Obamacare’s individual mandate tax to $0 renders the mandate unconstitutional, and if any other parts of Obamacare should fall with it.In a few weeks, health care will once again take center stage at the Supreme Court. In what has become a semi-regular occurrence, the justices will soon rule on a case focused on two central questions: Whether Congress’ 2017 decision to set Obamacare’s individual mandate tax to $0 renders the mandate unconstitutional, and if so, what if any other parts of Obamacare should fall with it.In advance of the impending ruling, John McDonough...

Xavier Becerra has had one health-care cause near and dear to his heart during his three decades in public life: making taxpayers pay for health coverage to illegally present foreign workers.At his confirmation hearings this week before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions and Senate Finance Committees, Secretary of Health and Human Services-designee Xavier Becerra will talk about many subjects. Press reports prior to the hearings indicate he will highlight his claimed efforts as a member of Congress “to strengthen and modernize Medicare and how we finance it”—ironic claims from someone who voted for an Obamacare law that raided...

Prior studies have suggested a weak connection between the intrusive government measures to slow the spread of COVID-19 and the progression of the virus. Texas is in the news, and not in a good way, over an increase in COVID-19 cases over the past four weeks. There’s quite a bit of speculation over why the virus, which largely bypassed the Lone Star State until the end of May, suddenly seemed to become more pernicious.Some point to a lack of enforcement for social distancing measures and masks. Yet California, a state of similar size and demographics, where Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom...

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...

The U.S. government is taking wise measures to reduce the spread of the coronavirus. But, as the saying goes, we should pray like it all depends on God and prepare like it all depends on us. When I was in school studying infectious disease epidemiology, none of the cool kids worked on flu. We all wanted to chase Ebola, HIV/AIDS, drug-resistant tuberculosis, malaria, and other exotic killer bugs.Everyday, ho-hum killers like influenza, pneumonia, and other respiratory illnesses were just too mundane for globetrotting adventurers like us. Who wants to spend her life hand-sanitizing and finger-wagging about vaccines when you could...

The National Bureau of Economic Research has come up with a great new idea: let’s tax calories to make people thinner! “Raising the price of a calorie for home consumption by 10 percent may lower the percentage of body fat in youths about 8 or 9 percent, according to new research from the National Bureau of Economic Research,” writes Peter Whoriskey for the Washington Post. This is just another example of how liberals, in an effort to make a better society, abhor, and often actively confute, market forces to promote their own social agendas. “The new research, which focused on...

TMA, AMA, and state medical societies across the country support the Obama administration's plan to rescind a federal rule that prohibits recipients of federal funds from forcing physicians and other health care professionals to participate in actions they find religiously or morally objectionable. In a letter to Acting Health and Human Services (HHS) Administrator Charles E. Johnson, the groups said the Conscience Rights of Health Care Providers regulation, adopted by the Bush administration in December, is unnecessary and could have far-reaching implications. They said it "could undermine patients' access to vital medical care and information, impede advances in biomedical research,...

Since 1970, the health care industry has undergone a revolutionary change. Before that time people were overwhelmingly (about 70%) in traditional indemnity plans where patients pay a certain percentage of health care costs. With the passage of the Health Maintenance Organization Act written by Ted Kennedy (D-Mass), very quickly over 70% of Americans were covered by HMOs. The structure of HMOs was also largely different than traditional indemnity plans. HMOs require primary care physicians to act as gatekeepers of advanced care and it empowered insurance companies to challenge the medical judgment of doctors. It restricted choice to those doctors and...