Free Republic

Liberal New Republic editor Jonathan Cohn admits that under Obamacare, the California networks have become exceedingly restrictive regarding doctors and hospitals. He even points out that one of Los Angeles’ finest hospitals, Cedars-Sinai, isn’t in the new Obamacare networks. But don’t be upset, Cohn coos; Cedars-Sinai isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. And people just wanted to go there for the snob appeal, anyway, in order to hobnob with the rich and famous. […] Cohn ignores the entire topic of liberty and choice, as though it is of no importance whatsoever. And to Cohn, perhaps it isn’t—at least, for...

New drugs would only be licensed for the NHS if they help those judged to be a benefit to wider society under proposals from the health watchdog. Pharmaceutical firms on Thursday night warned that the move could lead to new medicines being denied to the elderly. A senior professor also said that the plans could threaten the well-being of older people and were “deeply suspect”, while charities questioned the ethics of the policy.

In 2013, the American people learned what whoppers the key promises of ObamaCare turned out to be. But the biggest whopper about the Affordable Care Act is yet to be exposed: the tightening grip the federal government will have over your doctor — even if you’re paying with private insurance. Section 1311(h)(1)(B) of the health law gives the secretary of Health and Human Services blanket authority to dictate how doctors treat patients. Not just patients in government programs like Medicare and Medicaid, but patients with private plans they pay for themselves. On Dec. 2, 2013, we learned from the Federal...

Some Top Hospitals and Experts Are Left Out of 2014 Plans Under Health Law Thousands of people are cramming in tests, elective procedures and specialist visits before year's end, seeking out top research hospitals and physician groups that will be left out of some 2014 insurance plans under the new health law, health-care providers say. Many insurers offering plans under the law are slimming down their networks of doctors and hospitals in a bid to lower the cost of policies, which begin coverage Wednesday. Health insurers are especially focused on paring academic teaching and research hospitals from their networks because...

Purchase certain Anthem health insurance plans outside Colorado's new health care exchange, and health care provider choices abound.Buy one through the exchange? Not so much.Across the nation, an increasing number of insurance carriers are narrowing their physician networks, hospitals and other health care facilities. The trend is particularly evident in health insurance marketplaces, including Connect for Health Colorado.Narrowing health care options is uncharted territoryThe marketplaces were established as one-stop shops for insurance plans after passage of the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare.In Colorado, at least three health insurance companies on the exchange, including Anthem, are offering narrowed networks, and insurance...

Just recently, the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center was announced as one of an elite group of six cancer research and treatment centers throughout the world who will participate in an ongoing collaborative effort to fast-track the advancement of cancer treatment development as part of a new GlaxoSmithKline initiative. It is just one in a series of many examples of how MD Anderson is the preeminent cancer research and treatment center in the United States, if not the world. According to a new report in the Financial Times, new healthcare plans are being nudged by the statutes of...

At this point we have no idea how many people will become newly insured under ObamaCare. For the first year out, the number of people with insurance may actually go down! But the administration's goal is to insure an additional 30 million people and eventually a lot of those people will acquire health plans. When they do, the economic studies predict that they will try to double their use of the health care system. Adding to this increased demand will be new mandated benefits. The administration never seems to tire of reminding seniors that they are entitled to a...

Starting Jan. 1, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) will begin slashing 14 percent of their Home Health Care Prospective Payment Program budget, driving small home health-care providers out of business and potentially affecting millions of poor, elderly citizens in need of physical rehabilitation. The cuts — which are being made to fund Obamacare — will slash the homecare budget 3.5 percent every year for the next four. “By CMS’s own calculation, 40 percent or nearly 5,000 home health companies — mainly small businesses — will experience a “net loss” in revenue due to the cuts and go...

Time Magazine recently listed the fifty worst cars of all time. The communist East German Trabant made the list with this description: "This is the car that gave Communism a bad name. Powered by a two-stroke pollution generator that maxed out at an ear-splitting 18 hp, the Trabant was a hollow lie of a car constructed of recycled worthlessness… A virtual antique when it was designed in the 1950s, the Trabant was East Germany's answer to the VW Beetle — a "people's car," as if the people didn't have enough to worry about."Fast forward a half century and the description...

For weeks now, the nation has been riveted by arguments in the U.S. Supreme Court over one provision of the Affordable Care Act. Does the law's requirement that every adult buy health insurance violate the U.S. Constitution? We think it does not. Yet even if the court ultimately shares that view, the federal health care reform law will face monumental hurdles to be successfully implemented. The biggest of these is its cost. Can the nation afford to insure all its citizens? If we don't get a handle on rising health care costs the answer to that more important question is...

Medicine: After the recess appointment of a Medicare and Medicaid head, an FDA panel drops its endorsement of a widely used cancer drug. Another FDA-approved cancer therapy may not be paid for. It begins. It didn't take long for the health care philosophy of Dr. Donald Berwick, President Obama's choice to head the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services, and an appointee we have labeled a "one-man death panel," to have an effect. Berwick is an admirer of Britain's National Health Service and its National Institute for Clinical Excellence, with the Orwellian-acronym NICE. "NICE," Berwick has said, "is extremely effective...

Health Reform: The white coats showed up again at the White House, helping the administration ram health care reform down our throats. Can you have a bipartisan bill without a bipartisan vote?It didn't work the first time, when the White House last year assembled enough sympathetic medical professionals to stage a photo-op in the Rose Garden trying to persuade us that, as the commercial goes, three of four doctors really, really support the administration's attempt to nationalize health care. Rather than a grass-roots uprising of physicians, last year's event was a classic case of astroturfing. Attendance was by invitation only,...

Politics: Sen. Mary Landrieu was the new "Louisiana Purchase." Sen. Ben Nelson got the federal government to pick up his state's future Medicaid tab. Maybe we should just put Senate votes up on eBay. Nelson, the 60th vote in the middle-of-the-night Senate party line vote on health care reform, will go down in American political history as the inventor of the permanent earmark. His seemingly principled stand against including federal funding for abortion evaporated like the morning dew as he decided to take what was behind door No. 1. The deal for Nelson includes special Medicaid funding for Nebraska, along...

Condemned to an early death: Rationing body tells liver cancer victims that life-prolonging drug is 'too costly' http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1229090/Condemned-early-death-Rationing-body-tells-liver-cancer-victims-life-prolonging-drug-costly.html Liver cancer sufferers are being condemned to an early death by being denied a new drug on the Health Service, campaigners warn. They criticised draft guidance that will effectively ban the drug sorafenib - which is routinely used in every other country where it is licensed. Trials show the drug, which costs £36,000 a year, can increase survival by around six months for patients who have run out of options.

Health Care: A government task force has decided that women need fewer mammograms and later in life. Shouldn't that be between patient and physician? We have seen the future of health care, and it doesn't work. We have warned repeatedly that the net results of health care bills before Congress will be higher demand, fewer doctors, more cost control, all leading to rationing. New recommendations issued by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) regarding breast cancer and the necessity for early and frequent mammograms do not convince us otherwise. Just six months ago, the panel, which works under the...

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...

Free Speech: The Senate votes against transparency as the administration silences a private insurer for exposing the president's health care proposal. Meanwhile, AARP is allowed to tout reform as it awaits payday. We weren't surprised when the Senate Finance Committee on Wednesday voted 12 to 11 against allowing two weeks for the Congressional Budget Office to complete its cost analysis of the health care bill pushed by Montana Democrat Max Baucus and to put the bill online in its original wording. Instead, the Senate panel passed another amendment to require the committee to post the full bill online in "conceptual"...

He opened his mouth again... I told you that Obama would not tell you the truth, he would try to sell you a myth. His op-ed piece in the NY Times is just that; a car sales man approach to fooling you. So let's kick the tires and see what kind of junk he is selling you. He discusses the emotion wrenching stories of people with pre-existing conditions who can not get insurance. What our Pitchman in Chief fails to mention is that these people can not get insurance because the cause of treating their underlying conditions is too great....

Spending: The stimulus provides for the creation of a federal health care bureaucracy not unlike Hillarycare. Decisions that should be made by doctors and patients will belong to bureaucrats deciding cost-effectiveness.The stimulus bill commits $19 billion to accelerate adoption of Health Information Technology (HIT) systems by doctors and hospitals. It involves the creation of electronic medical records to be stored in a central database. This is said to be for reducing treatment errors and increasing efficiency in the delivery of medical care. It also authorizes the creation of the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology — and...

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...