Free Republic

....Algorithmic tools like the one Arkansas instituted in 2016 are everywhere from health care to law enforcement, altering lives in ways the people affected can usually only glimpse, if they know they’re being used at all. Even if the details of the algorithms are accessible, which isn’t always the case, they’re often beyond the understanding even of the people using them, raising questions about what transparency means in an automated age, and concerns about people’s ability to contest decisions made by machines. {snip} ...Arkansas has said the previous, human-based system was ripe for favoritism and arbitrary decisions. “We knew there...

Washington (AFP) - One in four American adults over 60 being treated for high blood pressure could go off their medication under recent guidelines issued in the United States, a study said Saturday. The changes, which stirred controversy in the medical community, could mean nearly six million may no longer need drugs to control their blood pressure, Duke University researchers said in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The findings are the first to analyze the impact of 2014 guidelines that raised blood pressure targets to 150/90, instead of the previous goal of 140/90, in adults age 60 and...

In an address to the House on Wednesday, Alabama Representative Mo Brooks read aloud a letter sent to him by Dr. Marlin Gill of Decatur. The letter holds nothing back while detailing the excessive costs and regulations that Dr. Gill calls Obamacare’s “war against doctors.” Here is the full text of the letter, courtesy of Rep. Brooks’ office: Dear Congressman Brooks, As a practicing family physician, I plead for help against what I can best characterize as Washington’s war against doctors. The medical profession has never before remotely approached today’s stress, work hours, wasted costs, decreased efficiency, and declining ability...

Obamacare architect Zeke Emanuel claims in his new book that the health care reform law will result in “the end of employer-sponsored insurance.” Despite President Barack Obama’s claim that “if you like your plan, you can keep it” — a talking point developed in his first 100 days in office by a tiny but influential left-wing messaging group called the Herndon Alliance — his administration has long planned to disassemble the current U.S. insurance industry as well as alter health care reform. The Daily Caller reported last June that the Obama administration was making moves to squash self-funded insurance plans,...

The Obama administration is requiring health plans in Obamacare insurance marketplaces to include a more robust offering of care providers in 2015 after some early backlash over limited networks in the health care law's first year. Health plans selling on the federal marketplaces in 2015 must include 30 percent of area "essential community providers," which are usually health centers and other hospitals serving mostly low-income patients. That's up from a 20 percent requirement in 2014, the first year of expanded overage under the health care law. The federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which oversees the marketplaces, will also...

It is funny–in both the ha-ha and ironical senses–that those who often scream most loudly against the “death panel” meme often follow, sotto voce, ”But we need death panels.” The fact is that most of those in the technocratic classes want to medically discriminate against those who are seen as health care “takers” or perceived to have a lower quality of life. They’re just not sure how to get from “here” to “there,” and retain popular support. (Hint: They can’t.) billgatesNow in a Rolling Stone interview, Bill Gates joins the chorus. He says–like bioethicist Daniel Callahan–that we have to be...

The possibility of being called a liar by Harry Reid isn't stopping this group of senior citizens from speaking out.

A new report by the Robert Powell Center for Medical Ethics at National Right to Life warns that one of the Obamacare provisions that ex-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Americans would discover if Congress passed the bill is that some seniors will not be allowed to spend as much as they wish on their health care. The extreme position was revealed in a special report by the NRLC titled “The Affordable Care Act and Health Care Access in the United States,” which analyzes four fundamental policy areas of Obamacare. It finds several ways that the federal health care law “will...

(CNSNews.com) – In a final regulation issued Wednesday, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) assumed that under Obamacare the cheapest health insurance plan available in 2016 for a family will cost $20,000 for the year. Under Obamacare, Americans will be required to buy health insurance or pay a penalty to the IRS. The IRS's assumption that the cheapest plan for a family will cost $20,000 per year is found in examples the IRS gives to help people understand how to calculate the penalty they will need to pay the government if they do not buy a mandated health plan. The examples...

A northern-Michigan hospital is cutting 43 positions in part because of costs related to the Affordable Care Act, its CEO says. David Zechman of McLaren Northern Michigan told a local television station the layoffs were “something that we had no choice in doing.” Zechman cited the changes to Medicaid and Medicare under the health-care law that cut reimbursement rates for the hospital’s services. “We still have the same costs of taking care of patients, but it’s hard to keep doing the same things you’re doing if you’re paid less for the same amount of costs and services you provide —...

If you like your president, you can keep him. Period. But what if you don’t? Stephen Blackwood, the president of the fledging Ralston College in Savannah, Georgia, has a sad, infuriating piece about his mother’s experience with Obamacare this morning in the Wall Street Journal. […] In some ways Stephen Blackwood’s case is typical. His mother, who had been diagnosed with a particularly nasty form of cancer in 2005 when she was only 49, had been receiving treatment through her insurer. She had had the Blue Cross/Blue Shield plan for nearly 20 years. […] Then came November. She, like millions...

[SNIP] And then in November, along with millions of other Americans, she lost her health insurance. She'd had a Blue Cross/Blue Shield plan for nearly 20 years. It was expensive, but given that it covered her very expensive treatment, it was a terrific plan. It gave her access to any specialist or surgeon, and to the Sandostatin and other medications that were keeping her alive. And then, because our lawmakers and president thought they could do better, she had nothing. Her old plan, now considered illegal under the new health law, had been canceled. Because the exchange website in her...

People who worry about death panels are missing the forests for the trees. Yes, people with expensive-to-treat conditions may someday be denied life-saving treatment because of ObamaCare. But there is a far greater danger for ordinary mortals: government and its health insurance proxies telling doctors how to practice medicine. In treating patients with various symptoms, doctors are increasingly pressured to follow guidelines or protocols. This "cookbook" approach to medicine is the opposite of personalized medicine — an approach which aims to tailor the therapy to the characteristics of the patient, including her genetic makeup. Before criticizing it, let me say...

The fourth Georgia hospital in two years is closing its doors due to severe financial difficulties caused by Obamacare’s payment cuts for emergency services. The Lower Oconee Community Hospital is, for now, a critical access hospital in southeastern Georgia that holds 25 beds. The hospital is suffering from serious cash-flow problems, largely due to the area’s 23 percent uninsured population, and hopes to reopen as “some kind of urgent care center

“My guiding principle is, and always has been, that consumers do better when there is choice and competition. That’s how the market works. Unfortunately, in 34 states, 75 percent of the insurance market is controlled by five or fewer companies. In Alabama, almost 90 percent is controlled by just one company. And without competition, the price of insurance goes up and quality goes down.” So sayeth President Obama, but so far, his crowning legislative achievement has directly resulted in a whole lotta’ restrictions on consumer choice, while his brand of top-down government-led “competition,” well… isn’t, really. On top of the...

Congratulations! You have successfully signed up for a truly excellent plan on the Covered California website! It's a really, really great plan. Really. Now, good look finding a doctor who will treat you. Los Angeles Times: After overcoming website glitches and long waits to get Obamacare, some patients are now running into frustrating new roadblocks at the doctor's office.A month into the most sweeping changes to healthcare in half a century, people are having trouble finding doctors at all, getting faulty information on which ones are covered and receiving little help from insurers swamped by new business.Experts have warned...

Many consumers faced hurdles signing up for Covered California health plans. Now they're having trouble finding in-network doctors. After overcoming website glitches and long waits to get Obamacare, some patients are now running into frustrating new roadblocks at the doctor's office. A month into the most sweeping changes to healthcare in half a century, people are having trouble finding doctors at all, getting faulty information on which ones are covered and receiving little help from insurers swamped by new business. Experts have warned for months that the logjam was inevitable. But the extent of the problems is taking by surprise...

The Los Angeles Times reports that once Obamacare customers navigate the confusing websites and pay the (often higher) premiums, they face a new problem: many doctors do not accept Obamacare insurance policies. It tells the story of a cancer patient who was turned away at the oncologist's office, and was only seen by a doctor once state regulators came to her rescue. Her story is not alone: millions will face the same problem. There are two reasons patients will be turned away: one that President Barack Obama hid, and one that he lied about. The first is that there is...

On Oct. 1, 2012 the Obama administration started awarding bonus points to hospitals that spend the least on elderly patients. It will result in fewer knee replacements, hip replacements, angioplasty, bypass surgery and cataract operations. These are the five procedures that have transformed aging for older Americans. They used to languish in wheelchairs and nursing homes due to arthritis, cataracts and heart disease. Now they lead active lives. But the Obama administration is undoing that progress. By cutting $716 billion from future Medicare funding over the next decade and rewarding the hospitals that spend the least on seniors, the Obama...

Hundreds in Ohio are losing their doctor due to Obamacare, a local news outlet finds: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3OBWpMdeln8"With the passage of the Affordable Care Act, some area medical facilities saying, they're no longer able to use some insurance companies," says the anchor. The local reporter adds, "Hundreds of people in the Mahoning Valley can no longer go to their trusted doctors, and local officials say the Affordable Care Act is to blame. Doctors from the Mahoning county medical society sat down with U.S. representative Bill Johnson today, discussing their concerns with United Health Care's decision to drop local doctors, including the Eye...