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Politics: The administration stages a photo-op with handpicked doctors who support its health care reform. Fortunately, most doctors still believe that the first rule of medicine is to do no harm. It would seem some doctors still make house calls. Some 150 of them made one at the White House Monday in an attempt to give a booster shot to the administration's chaotic and stalled health care reform drive. Rather than a grass-roots uprising of physicians, this was a classic case of AstroTurfing. Attendance was by invitation only, and 40 of the 150 were said to be members of Doctors...

Health Care Systems: A return to private health care is rising from the grass roots north of the border. While we rush headlong toward socialized medicine, Canadians are saying, "No, thanks — been there, done that." We recently told the story of Ava Isabella Stinson, born 13 weeks premature at St. Joseph's hospital in Hamilton, Ontario. She weighed all of two pounds and had no time to be put on a waiting list. But there were no open neonatal intensive care beds for her at St. Joseph's or anywhere else in the entire province of Ontario it seems. Canada's perfectly...

Litigation: The Founding Fathers envisioned the states as laboratories for ideas and choices. If the administration needs a demonstration project for successful tort reform, it need look no further than Mississippi. When President Obama said during his health care speech to Congress that he would "look into" malpractice reform and support "demonstration projects" at the state level, Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi, a Republican, responded: "If they want a demonstration project, come down to Mississippi. I'll show you a demonstration project." Mississippi enacted tort reform in 2004, including caps on medical malpractice awards. As a result, the number of medical...

September 18, 2009, 4:00 a.m. Dr. Barack and Mr. ObamaThe backlash is sharp as voters learn that Obama is not the man they thought he was. By Victor Davis Hanson No one imagined that Barack Obama, during his first nine months in office, would be falling in the polls even faster than George W. Bush did prior to 9/11. We all knew what Obama’s weaknesses were as he came into office — a lack of experience in foreign affairs, little knowledge of how private business works, and poor judgment concerning the extremist company he had kept in the past. But...

The chairman of the Senate Finance Committee wants levies on insurers to pay for Obamacare and fines for families who don't sign up. To keep Obamacare alive, Baucus has proposed a Rube Goldberg scheme of fees and fines on insurers and the uninsured designed to forcibly bring everyone into the loving and protective arms of the nanny state...

Reform: The chairman of the Senate Finance Committee wants levies on insurers to pay for ObamaCare and fines for families who don't sign up. We can cut costs and expand coverage without sacrificing freedom.To keep ObamaCare alive, Montana Democrat Max Baucus has proposed a Rube Goldberg scheme of fees and fines on insurers and the uninsured designed to forcibly bring everyone into the loving and protective arms of the nanny state. To help finance his Plan B, Baucus would impose annual fees of $6 billion on health insurers, $4 billion on medical-device makers, $2.3 billion on drug manufacturers and $750...

From a reader: Jonah, The following quote from your column was spot on: "This suggests that the White House still thinks it has a communication problem, and if only it dispels the cloud of “lies” belched up by the opposition, there will be nothing but blue skies ahead. Funny how the people who run the most sophisticated communication operation in the history of the presidency keep concluding that their difficulties stem from their inability to get their message out and never from what their message actually is." Marketers make this mistake all the time, which ensures that marketing consultants like...

Health Care Reform: A study by the British Patients Association tells the true story about socialized medicine in Britain. It's one of willful and woeful neglect of millions, missed diagnoses, and elderly patients left in pain.BD Exclusive Series: Government-Run Healthcare: A Prescription For FailureWhile reading this disturbing analysis of the pitiful state of medical care in Britain in the Daily Telegraph, the Vincent Price horror classic "The Abominable Dr. Phibes" came to mind. Price portrayed a man who used bizarre methods to dispatch his victims. The abominable British National Health Service, based on this report, is only slightly better. The...

Health Systems: Health care in France is often held up as a model the U.S. might follow. Yet the French have their own problems that show there's no such thing as a free lunch — or a free doctor's visit.Call it the grass-is-greener syndrome. Advocates of national health care, acknowledging the flaws in ObamaCare yet despising the current U.S. system that has the best medicines, the best medical equipment and the shortest waiting lists, have turned their eyes lovingly to places like France. As City Journal contributing editor Guy Sorman notes, the French would also love to have the low-cost,...

Forget the recession and the "uninsured." Obama has bigger fish to fry.If we believe that Obama is trying to end the recession or fix the health-care system, we’ll miss his real agenda. The first seven months of the Obama administration seemingly make no sense. Why squander public approval by running up astronomical deficits in a time of pre-existing staggering national debt? Why polarize opponents after promising bipartisan transcendence? Why create vast new programs when the efficacy of big government is already seen as dubious? But that is exactly the wrong way to look at these first seven months of...

Reform: If Massachusetts is any guide, the passage of ObamaCare is almost certain to increase demand and worsen the shortage of doctors. Access to health care doesn't mean much if there's no doctor to provide it.Suppose health care reform passes and all are insured, by force or otherwise. The U.S. will be short 124,400 front-line physicians by 2025, according to the Association of Medical Colleges. That does not include the 15,585 new primary-care providers the administration plan is estimated to require. The Massachusetts reforms enacted in 2006, designed to provide universal coverage, provide an insight into what we might expect...

Medical Care: A leaked report shows that Vancouver's health authority is considering cutting thousands of surgeries to balance the budget. However organized, government-run health care inevitably leads to rationing.Defenders of ObamaCare continually point out that their plan is not like Canada's, that holding that country's system up as an example of impending medical doom is invalid. Canada's system is different. Instead of having a single national plan, Canada's national health insurance, a kind of public option, is composed of 13 interlocking provincial and territorial plans, all framed under the Canada Health Act. But based on a report leaked to the...

Health Care: The administration uses the "46 million uninsured" as a reason to nationalize health care. But the Census Bureau says about a fifth of those aren't U.S. citizens. In fact, a goodly number are illegal aliens.At a town hall meeting in Green Bay, Wis., last week, President Obama spoke of the need to cover the "46 million people who don't have health insurance." At another point he simply referred to the "46 million uninsured." At neither point did he refer to them as "Americans." That was wise, because not all them are, the Census Bureau says.According to "Income, Poverty,...

Reform: If the world's most famous physicist, Stephen Hawking, is a shining example of British health care, how is it that others in the U.K. are repeatedly denied critical care and medicine?In commenting on efforts to overhaul American's health care system, we have tried to pull back the curtain and pay attention to those trying to clone the systems of Canada and Britain. But supporters of government-run health care frequently ignore some of the less-pleasant facts. Much has been made of this statement in one of our Aug. 3 editorials: "People such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn't have a chance...

President Obama for a third time has misstated the number of Americans who lack health insurance, this time doing it in an op-ed piece published Saturday by the New York Times. “I don’t have to explain to the nearly 46 million Americans who don’t have health insurance how important this is,” Obama said in the op-ed about his efforts to reform the American health care industry. In a July 22 primetime press conference, Obama falsely said there were “47 million Americans who have no health insurance.” At an August 11 town hall meeting in Portsmouth, N.H., he falsely said “nearly...

The debate over health care reform — what constitutes it and what public opinion of such reform really is — has become more polarizing as the summer has gone on. Below are five key liberal talking points about health care “reform” and an accompanying dose of truth their peddlers so desperately need to hear.1. Republicans, who either believe the health care status quo is perfectly acceptable or are in the pockets of lobbyists who pay them to say so, are opposed to the very idea of reform and want to block any effort to fix our health care system. This...

A brilliant must see video - 9min - by Bill Whittle    More:Afterburner with Bill Whittle Beyond the Angry Mobs: Only You Can Bring Congress Back From the Abyss of Corruption Aug 10 / Afterburner with Bill Whittle   9min BizarroBurner: Where Black is White and Racists Don't Get a Pass Aug 3 / Afterburner with Bill Whittle   8min The Media, The Left and GOP Elitists vs. Sarah Palin: A Lesson on How to Destroy a Leader Jul 27 / Afterburner with Bill Whittle   13min LunarPalooza Part 1: The Future of Space Exploration Is In Your Hands...

Suddenly, a RevolutionWhy public disagreement with the Obama administration rapidly became fury. The approval ratings on nearly every one of the President’s key policy initiatives—cap-and-trade, health care overhaul, government take over of industry and finance, deficit spending, stimulus—are already less than half of polled voters. Obama’s own popularity has fallen dramatically and hovers near fifty percent. A number of well-publicized town meetings have erupted in shouting, as administration and congressional representatives try, often in condescending fashion, to explain the Obama agenda. The Republicans—written off just a few weeks ago as an obsolete party headed for oblivion—are now often polling...

Rationing: In the recesses of the House health care "reform" bill is a provision for end-of-life counseling for seniors. Don't worry, granny, they're from the government and they're here to help.At a town hall meeting at AARP headquarters in Washington, D.C., President Obama was asked by a woman from North Carolina if it was true "that everyone that's Medicare age will be visited and told they have to decide how they wish to die." At first, the president joked that not enough government workers existed to ask the elderly how they wanted to die. The idea, he said, was to...

1. President Barack Obama repeatedly tells us that one reason national health care is needed is that we can no longer afford to pay for Medicare and Medicaid. But if Medicare and Medicaid are fiscally insolvent and gradually bankrupting our society, why is a government takeover of medical care for the rest of society a good idea? What large-scale government program has not eventually spiraled out of control, let alone stayed within its projected budget? Why should anyone believe that nationalizing health care would create the first major government program to "pay for itself," let alone get smaller rather than...

Health Reform: If Democrats in Washington think their health care reform with a public option is a good thing, why have they exempted themselves from it? Why isn't what's good for their constituents good for them?During ABC's June 24 infomercial for government-run health care broadcast from the White House, President Obama was asked if he and his family would abide by the restrictions and limitations that came with his proposed reforms. In what Ed Morrissey at HotAir.com called "Obama's Michael Dukakis moment," President Obama refused to make such a pledge and confessed that if "it's my family member, if it's...

July 23, 2009, 0:00 a.m. Big-Government MedicineEven after the financial meltdown, history is still running against collectivism. By Victor Davis Hanson Big new taxes. Big new spending. Big new government. This seems to be the proposed cure for the Wall Street–inspired recession. The government now runs major banks and companies, and plans to take control of the American health-care system. And it aims to tax energy use in the United States to reduce production of carbon dioxide. But wait! Recent financial rescue and stimulus plans, together with other new government initiatives, have already led to the largest dollar deficits...

It's crazy for a group of mere mortals to try to design 15 percent of the U.S. economy. It's even crazier to do it by August. Yet that is what some members of Congress presume to do. They intend, as the New York Times puts it, "to reinvent the nation's health care system".Let that sink in. A handful of people who probably never even ran a small business actually think they can reinvent the health care system. Politicians and bureaucrats clearly have no idea how complicated markets are. Every day people make countless tradeoffs, in all areas of life, based...

Health Reform: A Senate health care bill will force Americans to buy health insurance whether they want it or not. Where the extra doctors to treat them will come from is anybody's guess...Debby Smith, the uninsured cancer patient hugged by President Obama, is also a Democratic operative. She is a member of Organizing For America, a group that is a project of the Democratic National Committee, and Smith was invited to the event by the White House itself...Acknowledging that many are uninsured because they choose to be, a Senate version of medical reform imposes fines of $1,000 for uninsured people...

Health Reform: A Senate health care bill will force Americans to buy health insurance whether they want it or not. Where the extra doctors to treat them will come from is anybody's guess.When even the venerable Helen Thomas gets upset at an Obama show and tell, you know the sales job for health care reform and other goodies is not going well. "I'm amazed at you people who call for openness and transparency," said Thomas, a view we share. Thomas accused the White House of "controlling the press" and said just about all Obama events are "prepackaged." White House press...

Health Reform: A critically ill premature baby is moved to a U.S hospital to get the treatment she couldn't get in the system we're told we should emulate. Cost-effective care? In Canada, as elsewhere, you get what you pay for.Ava Isabella Stinson was born last Thursday at St. Joseph's hospital in Hamilton, Ontario. Weighing only two pounds, she was born 13 weeks premature and needed some very special care. Unfortunately, there were no open neonatal intensive care beds for her at St. Joseph's — or anywhere else in the entire province of Ontario, it seems.

As the Obama administration pushes for a national health care plan, studies show that most Americans are overwhelmingly happy with their own health care -- but they are dissatisfied with the country's overall system, because most Americans who have insurance believe that those who don't have it are not receiving care. Those same studies, however, show that a surprisingly large 70 percent of the estimated 46 million Americans who don't have insurance say they do, in fact, receive health care, and that a vast majority of them are satisfied with it. A survey conducted jointly by the Kaiser Family Foundation,...

A new report issued today by the Congressional Budget Office, which analyzed the Kennedy plan coming from the Senate, found that to move just 16 million of the people in this country who are claimed to be without health care coverage into some form of government-provided health insurance will cost the nation 1 trillion dollars over ten years. The CBO also estimates total costs to move all who aren’t currently being covered by some form of insurance into the government’s new plan to be over 3 trillion dollars. We ask the question again: Who out there believes this will be...

LOS ANGELES COUNTY - Figures from the Department of Public Social Services show that children of illegal aliens in Los Angeles County collected more than $21 million in welfare and more than $22 million in food stamps in March 2009 -- an increase of $1 million from the previous month, according to a news release from Los Angeles County Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich. Annually the cost of illegal immigration to Los Angeles County taxpayers exceeds one billion dollars, which includes $220 million for public safety, $400 million for healthcare, and $500 million in welfare and food stamps allocations, according to...

Much as I hate to be the bearer of bad news, I must report the shocking facts. Medical care is medical care. Nothing more and nothing less. This may not seem like a breakthrough on the frontiers of knowledge, but it completely contradicts what is being said by many who are urging universal health care because so many Americans lack health insurance. Insurance is not medical care. Indeed, health care is not the same as medical care. Countries with universal health care do not have more or better medical care. The bottom line is medical care - but the rhetoric...

Much as I hate to be the bearer of bad news, I must report the shocking facts: Medical care is medical care. Nothing more and nothing less. This may not seem like a breakthrough on the frontiers of knowledge. But it completely contradicts what is being said by many of those who are urging "universal health care" because so many Americans lack health insurance. Insurance is not medical care. Indeed, health care is not the same as medical care. Countries with universal health care do not have more or better medical care. The bottom line is medical care. But the...

Photo by Matthew RatajczakWEST PALM BEACH — Victor Leon is alone in the hospital most days. The 26-year-old was paralyzed nearly three years ago when he fell from the roof of a three-story building in Palm City while working for Jupiter-based Altec Roofing. Since then, Leon has been mired in a legal battle to get workers' compensation benefits or legal damages from Altec. Leon is an illegal immigrant. His status puts him at the crux of a legal debate over what rights, if any, illegal workers have after being injured on a job for which the American government says...

WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration is considering a plan to make veterans use private insurance to pay for treatment of combat and service-related injuries. The proposal would be an about-face on what veterans think is a longstanding pledge to pay for health-care costs that result from their military service. In a White House meeting Monday, veterans groups apparently failed to persuade President Barack Obama to take the plan off the table. “Veterans of all generations agree that this proposal is bad for the country and bad for veterans,” said Paul Rieckhoff, executive director of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America....

Budget crunch cuts illegal immigrants' health care By JULIANA BARBASSA Associated Press Writer SACRAMENTO, Calif.—Graciela Barrios, an undocumented immigrant with few resources, has long relied on the county health clinic for the advice, medication and tests that have kept her diabetes under control. But next month, Barrios and thousands like her will be on their own, and many more people across the nation face the same fate.

Washington bureaucrats hoped something wouldn't see the light of day until it was too late. Buried in the stimulus bill is the framework for rationing medical care to the elderly. The part Obama and his cohorts are talking about publicly -- electronic medical records -- sounds great: no more having to fill out annoying paperwork at the doctor's office or hospital when you are ailing. But according to the provision's author, former Health and Human Services director nominee (and tax cheat) Tom Daschle, there's much more, including the newly-created bureaucracy of the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology. What will...

January 30, 2009, 4:00 a.m. Daschle CareTo save money, House Democrats want the government to decide how to ration medical care. By Michael F. Cannon The $819 billion “stimulus bill� passed by the House includes $1.1 billion that has nothing to do with economic growth and everything to do with letting government control your medical decisions: House Democrats propose to spend taxpayer dollars researching which medical services work best. The need for such “comparative-effectiveness research� is tremendous, and this work could benefit the economy—but not if it’s done the way the Democrats propose. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that...

This is an emergency book review. Before you do anything else, make a note to read "The Top Ten Myths of American Health Care" by Sally C. Pipes. It might literally save your life, by checking the political stampede toward a government-controlled medical profession— usually presented politically as "universal health care." It is one of the painful signs of our times that millions of people are so easily swayed by rhetoric that they show virtually no interest at all in finding out the hard facts. Any number of other countries already have government-controlled medical professions. Yet few Americans show any...

The immigration debate isn't just on Capitol Hill; documentation woes are hitting home-and hospitals-as well. Recently, a North Carolina judge ordered the release of medical records for an investigation involving an undocumented immigrant. The woman allegedly used a deceased person's social security number to obtain medical care, a crime more commonly known as medical identity theft. But in addition to serving as evidence for criminal charges, the medical record also raises a red flag for deportation because the woman has no documented permission to reside in the country. While lawmakers have long been grappling over immigration issues, this case draws...

Attorney General Jerry Brown and Planned Parenthood spokeswoman Kathy Kneer are among those sounding the alarm over a regulation proposed by the Bush administration that, if adopted, could mean California could no longer compel Catholic Charities and medical centers to include certain kinds of contraception in health coverage for their employees. [[JBrown082708.jpg]]The proposed federal regulation, which would permit physicians and other medical professionals to refuse to participate in federally-funded abortions for reasons of conscience, was released for a 30-day public comment period on Aug. 21 by the Department of Health and Human Services. It was immediately applauded by the US...

WASHINGTON - Americans who go without health insurance for any part of 2008 will spend $30 billion out of pocket for health care and they will get $56 billion worth of free care, according to a report released on Monday. Government programs pay for about three-quarters, or roughly $43 billion, of the bills for these uninsured people, Jack Hadley of George Mason University in Virginia and a team at the Urban Institute reported. "Physicians' donated time and forgone profits amount to $7.8 billion. After government payments to hospitals are subtracted, private philanthropy and profit margins are responsible for at least...

The same California Supreme Court that created a "right" to homosexual "marriage" earlier this year has now ruled that the state may force healthcare professionals to provide services that support an immoral and physically dangerous lifestyle. California's highest court was unanimous in its decision on Monday that Christian doctors may not refuse to perform artificial insemination for homosexual patients. (See "California court says no religious exemption for doctors") Attorney Brad Dacus, president of the Pacific Justice Institute (PJI), reacts to the ruling. "This is a clear violation of the fundamental rights of individuals to live and practice their faith," he...

When amateurs outperform professionals, there is something wrong with that profession. If ordinary people, with no medical training, could perform surgery in their kitchens with steak knives, and get results that were better than those of surgeons in hospital operating rooms, the whole medical profession would be discredited. Yet it is common for ordinary parents, with no training in education, to homeschool their children and consistently produce better academic results than those of children educated by teachers with Master's degrees and in schools spending upwards of $10,000 a year per student— which is to say, more than a million dollars...

Yeah but the guy probably did a job no American would do. So sit down and stop your xenophobic, racist, hate-filled sputtering. It's a frickin' melting pot and sometimes you get a piece of gristle in your stew. Think that's bad? This hospital administrator in Florida was just getting warmed up.

WASHINGTON -- Government-run health care has been debated in the United States for years and has become a flashpoint during the 2008 presidential race with both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama advocating some type of nationalized plan like in both Europe and Canada. But there's also a growing movement in opposition to having those individual health decisions made by Washington bureaucrats, and Europeans and Canadians who lived with – or perhaps survived is a better word – their national health-care systems are helping that effort. A series of videos is being released telling horror stories that have emerged under a...

My lad is in America waiting for a visa to live there and marry a lovely American lass. He was taken ill and went to hospital where an appendectomy was performed. The bill is $28,000 minimum. We think he has medical cover but we don't know the datils ...is ths figure about right? Anyone out there with any advice?

Brotman Medical Center, a key healthcare provider serving Los Angeles' Westside, is expected to seek protection from creditors in Bankruptcy Court as early as next week, according to three executives familiar with the matter. Administrators at the 420-bed hospital in Culver City have tried for months to avoid filing a bankruptcy petition but have continued struggling to pay its growing debt. Brotman became the center of a firestorm last month when state health inspectors released a report finding that doctors and nurses failed to provide proper care to a mentally disabled woman, who died after a series of medical mistakes....

CHICAGO -- A Mexican immigrant filed a $30 million federal lawsuit against suburban Carpentersville, claiming paramedics denied her son care because of anti-immigrant sentiment in the village. Gloria Lopez, 28, said on Sept. 18, 2006, she left her son, Osbiel, then 4 months old, with a baby sitter who didn't speak English. The baby sitter, Esther Carrera, called 911 when the baby had trouble breathing. But fire department paramedics allegedly said the boy was having stomach problems and gave her a form to sign declining care, which Carrera didn't understand, according to the lawsuit filed Thursday in U.S. District Court...

If Canada's national health-care system is so dang wonderful, why are so many Canadians coming to America to pay for their own medical care? Why is the hip replacement center of Canada in Ohio -- at the Cleveland Clinic, where 10 percent of its international patients are Canadians? Why is the Brain and Spine Clinic in Buffalo serving about 10 border-crossing Canadians a week? Why did a Calgary woman recently have to drive several hundred miles to Great Falls, Mont., to give birth to her quadruplets? It's simple. As the market-oriented Fraser Institute in Vancouver, B.C., can tell you, Canada's...

In May, the Commonwealth Fund issued its latest comparison of the U.S. medical system with five other wealthy nations' systems: Australia, Canada, Germany, New Zealand and Great Britain. Predictably, the study begins: "Despite having the most costly health system in the world, the United States consistently underperforms." I was immediately suspicious, considering the loaded study by the World Health Organization seven years ago. (I wrote about it last week.) My suspicion was justified. It turns out the new study is almost as biased as the WHO's. The authors write, "The U.S. is the only country in the study without universal...

WALNUT CREEK, Calif. - When Al Swanson first heard about a program in which doctors make house calls to chronically ill seniors, he figured it must be a scam. He could sign up, he was told, and receive a doctor's cell phone number for round-the-clock access, with home visits as needed. Better yet, it would not cost him a dime beyond his standard fee-for-service Medicare. "It sounded too good to be true," said the 66-year-old Emeryville, Calif., resident. It wasn't. In a return to a bygone era, with a modern-day twist, Swanson is one of nearly 15,000 seniors in California,...