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Oh yes .. this is going to be so wonderful. What a thrill. But ... the people demand that the government take care of them, and the politicians are only thrilled to respond if it means they can keep their precious positions of power. Three stores came our way in just the last two days. The first was of a woman in Britain who was diagnosed with a small melanoma – skin cancer. Just a small spot. Problem was, it took her a few months to see a specialist to get it removed. By then it had spread and now...

Gov. Jon Corzine enacted the first phase of New Jersey's universal health care plan yesterday by mandating coverage for all children within three years and offering affordable, subsidized policies to needy parents. The goal is to cover 1.3 million uninsured state residents by 2011 through a state program administered by private insurers at a lower cost. "For those who are cynical about government and say we don't move and we don't change, I assure you when you look back 10 years from today, you will say we made a great stride forward," Cor zine said before signing the legislation at...

Barack Obama unveiled a $6 billion-a-year plan to provide tax credits for small businesses offering health insurance to employees, adopting an idea proposed by onetime rival Hillary Clinton and targeted at one of the most persistent challenges in achieving universal coverage. The tax credit offers an incentive for small businesses, which helped sink former President Bill Clinton's 1993 plan, which would have required all businesses to contribute toward health costs. Obama's proposed tax credit is an effort to bring this powerful constituency to the Democratic camp by offering carrots, not sticks, toward health coverage. Sen. Clinton concluded the same and...

I am back from travels in Old Europe and have survived in the pink. Readers of this column will recall that over the last three weeks I have been traveling through France and England. Add Scotland to the pilgrimage. In Edinburgh last weekend I participated in the unveiling of an Adam Smith statue, prominently placed near the top of this famous city's Royal Mile. Smith now overlooks much of this city in which he with other members of the Scottish Enlightenment thrived. He is often referred to as the founder of Economics. He certainly is the first advocate of free...

TORONTO — My country promises everyone quality health care coverage that is free at the point of service and financed through taxes. But unfortunately for me and millions of Canadians, the actions of our government all too often belie that generous pledge.Canada's cost-conscious, government-run system wasn't there for me when I needed it most. Even worse, it continues to overlook the most fundamental rule of health care — that patients ought to come first. As America considers ways to reform its health care system, I hope that my experience reminds decision makers that more government intrusion in health care is...

Democrats are launching an aggressive push for universal health care, fourteen years after a failed attempt on the issue resulted in political disaster. A coalition of liberal groups that includes major labor unions such as the Service Employees International Union and the activist group MoveOn.org announced today it will spend $40 million to make health insurance a major issue in the campaign, with Elizabeth Edwards, the wife of former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, as the one of the group's main spokespersons. The group, which has dubbed itself "Health Care for America Now!" plans to spend its money running ads...

July 3, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A British "end of life" care protocol approved for use by the National Health Service (NHS), has created a systematic, and legal, method of euthanising elderly and disabled patients, even while "mercy killing" remains officially illegal, says a prominent expert in elder care. The "Liverpool Care Pathway" will be used to eliminate patients deemed to be "blocking beds" in the increasingly financially strapped public health system. For years, Dr. Adrian Treloar, a psycho-geriatrician and senior lecturer at the Greenwich Hospital and Guys', King's and St. Thomas's Hospitals in London, has been sounding the warning...

BIRMINGHAM, UK, July 2, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - "Ellen Westwood was due to die in February but her family's Catholic and for them, life is sacred." So begins the television coverage by the BBC of a battle by a Birmingham family to prevent the NHS from dehydrating their mother to death. According to the BBC's report, doctors decided on a Friday in February that Mrs. Westwood was "due to die" by the following Monday, but the family, with the intervention of their priest, fought the order to remove the woman's hydration. Mrs. Ellen Westwood, 88, was in Birmingham's Selly Oak Hospital...

Patients will be able to escape NHS queues by demanding treatment anywhere in the European Union without the prior approval of a doctor, under proposals to guarantee health rights unveiled today in Brussels. The NHS would then be duty bound to refund the British cost of the procedure under the new rules for cross-border healthcare. Today’s proposed EU directive will give patients in all 27 member states the same rights to treatment on the NHS as British patients. It also guarantees that the full cost of treatment abroad will be refunded when an NHS professional has agreed that it...

Changes in the way dentists are paid mean they effectively have no financial incentive to give appropriate treatment, the Commons Health Select Committee said. Under the new contract, dentists receive an agreed annual sum rather than being paid for each individual treatment. The committee found the number of dentists extracting a decaying tooth rather than carrying out a more complicated procedure had increased. As a result, the volume of more complex work like crowns, bridges and dentures has fallen by 57%. Evidence presented to the committee also suggested that patients were being pushed unnecessarily into the hospital system. A survey...

One year ago today, San Francisco became the first city in the nation to attempt to provide universal health care to its residents. Twelve months later, some city residents wonder why the program is billed as universal when they're still getting turned away. When the Healthy San Francisco program began at two Chinatown clinics July 2, 2007, public health officials said they would swing open the doors to all of the city's 73,000 uninsured residents on Jan. 1, 2008. They anticipated that people would enroll gradually at a pace of about 600 a week, and full coverage would be attained...

Senator Edward M. Kennedy's office has begun convening a series of meetings involving a wide array of healthcare specialists to begin laying the groundwork for a new attempt to provide universal healthcare, according to participants. The discussions signal that Kennedy, who instructed aides to begin holding the meetings while he is in Massachusetts undergoing treatment for brain cancer, intends to work vigorously to build bipartisan support for a major healthcare initiative when he returns to Washington in the fall. Those involved in the discussions said Kennedy believes it is extremely important to move as quickly as possible on overhauling the...

They callously ignored her. Esmin Green is seen in these infuriating images collapsing on the psychiatric emergency-room floor at Kings County Hospital - stared at by one worker, ignored by a security guard, and finally nudged by a health-care staffer on June 19. She lay there for an hour before doctors and nurses snapped to attention and tried to revive the 49-year-old Jamaica native. It was too late. The shocking video was released by lawyers suing KCH in federal court on an unrelated matter. "I heard about it and it's horrible how she died like that," said Green's landlady, Beatrice...

Labour is no longer the party trusted to bring in the health reforms that are need to safeguard the NHS for future generations... Barely one in five people believe the Labour party will deliver a better health service over the next ten years... It comes on the day Gordon Brown is to publish Lord Darzi's package of reforms to overhaul the way the NHS is run. The Prime Minister hopes the comprehensive review will transform Labour's fortunes and restore the party's reputation as guardians of the NHS on its 60th anniversary. After years of above-inflation increases in health spending, most...

One in four child deaths is 'avoidable' says report exposing wrong diagnoses and treatments Last updated at 23:29pm on 28.06.08   Failures in care by medical professionals, social workers and parents are responsible for one in four child deaths, according to a Government-backed report.A panel of experts reviewed 126 deaths in one year and found 'avoidable factors', such as doctors misdiagnosing a serious illness or giving the wrong treatment, in 26 per cent of cases.A further 43 per cent were due to 'potentially avoidable factors' – including missing important immunisations or delays in treatment.  Tragedy: Nine-month-old Liam Eaves died...

As this presidential campaign continues, the candidates' comments about health care will continue to include stories of their own experiences and anecdotes of people across the country: the uninsured woman in Ohio, the diabetic in Detroit, the overworked doctor in Orlando, to name a few. But no one will mention Claude Castonguay — perhaps not surprising because this statesman isn't an American and hasn't held office in over three decades.

Barack Obama on Thursday used Pittsburgh as his stage to ask Americans for a mandate to implement a national health care plan if he's elected president. "If we can't control skyrocketing health care costs, we'll confront a mounting moral crisis and a major anchor on the ability of American business to compete," Obama said the health care system's shortfalls hold back the nation and concern Americans more than any issue except soaring fuel prices. "The key is that the American people have to provide a mandate for change in this area," Obama said. "We have to insist ... we're going...

To prevent the NHS from turning septic politically, the health secretary, Alan Johnson, moved on June 17th towards dropping an increasingly untenable piece of dogma. The issue is whether patients who doctors think might benefit from expensive new drugs that are not provided by the NHS must be denied all state-financed treatment if they choose to buy those drugs privately. The NHS has always rationed care but, in an era of medical paternalism and no internet, patients were ignorant of what they were missing. That allowed the fiction to flourish that the highest-quality care was being provided for all, according...

As this presidential campaign continues, the candidates' comments about health care will continue to include stories of their own experiences and anecdotes of people across the country: the uninsured woman in Ohio, the diabetic in Detroit, the overworked doctor in Orlando, to name a few.But no one will mention Claude Castonguay — perhaps not surprising because this statesman isn't an American and hasn't held office in over three decades. Castonguay's evolving view of Canadian health care, however, should weigh heavily on how the candidates think about the issue in this country. Back in the 1960s, Castonguay chaired a Canadian government...

A NSW man has pulled out his own rotten tooth after waiting years for public dental treatment. Jeff Miners said he extracted his own molar tooth about four weeks ago, after he had languished on a series of public dental waiting lists since 2001. Despite having a mouthful of rotten teeth, the 58-year-old from Bega in southern NSW has gone without treatment except for a single filling in 2005. "Through inaction, I had to start taking action myself,'' Mr Miners said. "I kept working on it to loosen it, the cavity was so big I could fit my forefinger into...

Editor's Note: In Part I of Annie's Story (http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/jun/08061911.html), Bugos told the story of Annie Farlow, a girl who was born with Trisomy 13, and who died at only 80 days of age, devastating her parents and siblings. In Part II Bugos relates the Farlow's experiences, after Annie's passing, with the health-care staff who had cared for their daughter, and the disturbing discoveries they made about the circumstances surrounding their daughter's death. TORONTO, ON, June 20, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The Farlows tried to focus on funeral arrangements."Within days, I sensed that something wasn't right," relates Annie's mother, Barbara Farlow. "I...

Ottawa, Canada (AHN) - Four million Canadians do not have a regular physician, indicating the acute lack of doctors in the country. The Canada Community Health Survey of Statistics Canada released Wednesday said 86 percent of those born in Canada or have been in the country for at least 5 years have a regular doctor who oversees their medical needs, while only 65 percent of recent immigrants have one. The numbers, however, must not alarm Canadians, said Dr. Raisa Deber, professor of health policy at the University of Toronto. "What you really worry about is not having someone able to...

BOISE, Idaho (Legal Newsline) - The Idaho Supreme Court on Monday ruled that an illegal immigrant who was injured is entitled to medical assistance. In their ruling, the high court sided with Saint Alphonsus Regional Medical Center, which sued Ada County Commissioners after they denied an application for medical indigency assistance.

With privately bought drugs proving to be up to five times as effective as NHS treatments, The Sunday Times reports on the suffering the co-payments ban is inflicting on patients... The National Health Service is providing dying cancer patients with drugs that are five times less effective than those available privately and is refusing to treat them if they try to buy medicines themselves. One drug for kidney cancer, routinely available through public health systems in most European countries but not to British patients, can reduce the size of tumours in 31% of patients, compared with just 6% of those...

LAST MONTH, Ted Kennedy was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor. All the major news outlets provided daily updates on Kennedy's medical treatment and prognosis. The media failed to point out an important fact: Unlike average Americans, the senator from Massachusetts didn't have to worry for one minute that he wouldn't get the care he needed for his life-threatening cancer. The president, vice president and members of Congress all enjoy government-financed health care, with few restrictions or prohibitive out-of-pocket co-pays. They are never turned away for pre-existing conditions or denied care for what insurance companies label "experimental treatments" (like the...

Japan, Seeking Trim Waists, Measures Millions By NORIMITSU ONISHI Published: June 13, 2008 AMAGASAKI, Japan — Japan, a country not known for its overweight people, has undertaken one of the most ambitious campaigns ever by a nation to slim down its citizenry. Skip to next paragraph Enlarge This Image Ko Sasaki for The New York Times A poster at a public health clinic in Japan reads, "Goodbye, metabo," a word associated with being overweight. The Japanese government is mounting an ambitious weight-loss campaign. Summoned by the city of Amagasaki one recent morning, Minoru Nogiri, 45, a flower shop owner, found...

LAREDO -- State Sen. Judith Zaffirini, D-Laredo, has announced details for Operation Lone Star 2008. Each summer the project offers free medical care to the uninsured and the underinsured of South Texas, thanks to the combined efforts of Texas military forces, a multitude of state and local agencies, and private organizations. “It is my pleasure to welcome the outstanding partnership of state health service officials and Texas military service personnel that brings Operation Lone Star to South Texas annually,” Zaffirini said. “For the last nine years, Operation Lone Star has saved lives by providing free health services, including basic medical...

THE medical establishment is in revolt against Labour's policy of denying National Health Service treatment to patients who pay privately for cancer medicines. The outcry from eminent consultants and doctors' leaders came as news emerged of two more patients whose NHS care was removed while they were dying of cancer. Baroness Ilora Finlay, president of the Royal Society of Medicine, said the issue went to the heart of the purpose of the health service. Finlay's intervention, in an article for The Sunday Times, comes after it emerged that a man dying of kidney cancer had to battle for NHS care...

One of the weirder themes of this Democratic primary season was the loyalists' cry that if their candidate lost, they'd take revenge by voting for the very guy who opposes most of what their idol stands for. This scorched-earth approach was evident in both camps. Hillary Clinton supporters swore they'd vote for John McCain if their gal didn't win, and Barack Obama fans vowed to do likewise if their guy lost. Some of it could be chalked up to the heat of passion during a close, grueling race. But some of it was, excuse the expression, just plain bitterness. You...

Country's health care system will offer procedures free of charge HAVANA - Cuba, in the latest change since President Raul Castro took office in February, has allowed doctors to perform sex change operations, a specialist at the National Center for Sex Education said on Friday. Center director Mariela Castro, the president's daughter, has pushed for the operations and said that at least 28 people in the country of 11 million want the surgery. The specialist, who asked not to be named, said the Public Health Ministry approved the surgery this week. Cuba's health care system will perform it free of...

HAVANA — Cuba has authorized sex-change operations and will offer them free for qualifying citizens, an official said Friday. The move is the latest in a series of changes implemented by President Raul Castro since he succeeded his elder brother, Fidel, in February. Raul Castro's daughter, Mariela, heads Cuba's National Center for Sex Education, which strongly backs the new policy. Health Minister Jose Ramon Balaguer signed a resolution approving sex-change surgery, said an official at the center who spoke on condition of anonymity because the measure has not been formally published. The resolution will be posted on the Internet on...

By Rebecca Smith, Medical Editor The shake-up of NHS dentistry has been condemned as a failure after official figures showed fewer people are receiving health service treatment. More than 300,000 people lost their NHS dentist in three months alone Eight hundred thousand fewer people saw an NHS dentist in the two years up to December than in the last two years under the old dental contract. The shake-up was aimed at simplifying the payments system, encouraging more preventive work and reducing the 'drill and fill' culture in NHS dentistry. But the contract was so unpopular many dentists left the NHS...

http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/jun/08060402.html SALEM, Oregon, June 4, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Lung cancer patient, Barbara Wagner, was recently notified that her oncologist-prescribed medication that would slow the growth of cancer would not be covered by the Oregon Health Plan; the plan, however, she was informed, would cover doctor-assisted suicide should she wish to kill herself.

IRONICALLY enough, the dangers of the liberal health-care agenda are being made clear by the care that a liberal icon, Sen. Ted Kennedy, has received since his brain seizure last month. One day after an MRI detected a tumor, Kennedy was quickly diagnosed with a malignant glioma - a rare and often-fatal form of brain cancer. Less than two weeks later, his tumor was being removed by one of the world's experts in brain cancer at Duke University Medical Center. He'll follow up with chemo and radiation therapy tailored to the genetic makeup of his cancer to keep the cancer...

Private companies to take over failing NHS hospitals By Rebecca Smith and Andrew Porter Last Updated: 11:09PM BST 03/06/2008 Private companies are to be drafted in to run failing NHS hospitals for the first time, under plans to be announced. Poor managers are to be sacked without receiving large payouts and replaced by staff from profit-making companies who would be paid with public money. The NHS will retain ownership of hospital buildings and services but the private firm will "take over" the day to day running of the hospital. Ministers believe the proposals will drive up standards within the health...

Private companies are to be drafted in to run failing NHS hospitals for the first time, under plans to be announced. Poor managers are to be sacked without receiving large payouts and replaced by staff from profit-making companies who would be paid with public money. The NHS will retain ownership of hospital buildings and services but the private firm will "take over" the day to day running of the hospital. Ministers believe the proposals will drive up standards within the health service. The NHS has an annual budget exceeding £100 billion and is one of the world's largest employers with...

A Grandmother whose free NHS treatment was withdrawn because she paid privately for anti-cancer drugs has died. Yesterday Linda O'Boyle's husband condemned the policy behind the decision and said it had made his dying wife's last months even more stressful. Mrs O'Boyle, 64, had been receiving state-funded treatment - including chemotherapy - for colon cancer. But when she took cetuximab, a drug which promised to extend her life but is not available on the NHS, her health trust made her start paying for her care. Mrs O'Boyle, an NHS occupational therapist, is believed to be the first person to die...

MANY advocates of a universal healthcare system in the United States look to Canada for their model... Although the French system faces many challenges, the World Health Organization rated it the best in the world in 2001 because of its universal coverage, responsive healthcare providers, patient and provider freedoms, and the health and longevity of the country's population. The United States ranked 37. The French system is also not inexpensive. At $3,500 per capita it is one of the most costly in Europe, yet that is still far less than the $6,100 per person in the United States. [ ......

TOKYO: Johns Hopkins Hospital, taking advantage of Japan's dissatisfaction with public health care, has launched a clinic in Tokyo that will charge as much as ¥2 million, or $17,000, for a three-day medical checkup. The Tokyo Midtown Medical Center, which opened March 30 in the city's tallest office tower, is a venture involving the Baltimore-based Hopkins along with Mitsui Fudosan and Resorttrust. The clinic is the latest of seven overseas projects since 2006 for Hopkins, which has topped U.S. News & World Report's ranking of American hospitals the past 16 years. Medical care for an aging population is absorbing more...

Cody Hall was born with a hemangioma, a tumorous birthmark that distorted the shape of her face and grew larger as she got older. When she was 1-year-old, her doctors in England told her parents that nothing could be done about her condition, so her parents took her to see surgeons in the U.S. Fourteen years and 18 reconstructive surgeries later, most of them at St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital in New York, the girl who once had a hopelessly deformed face was flashing a beautiful smile at the prom.

In the debate about Hollywood pay scales, Hollywood actors argue they are being squeezed out of pay and health benefits. "Middle-class film and TV actors -- defined by SAG as those who earn enough to qualify for the union's health insurance but less than $100,000 a year -- are hardly representative: They account for less than 5% of the guild's 122,000 members. "Nonetheless, this sliver plays an outsize role within the union because the vast majority of members don't...earn a livelihood from acting. 'If we can't reverse the trends for working-class actors, we'll cease to exist,' said SAG President Alan...

The Securities and Exchange Commission, shifting its position, has told companies they must allow shareholders to vote on a proposal for universal health insurance coverage. The shareholder proposal asks companies to adopt "principles for comprehensive health care reform" like those devised by the Institute of Medicine, an arm of the National Academy of Sciences. The institute says health insurance should be universal, continuous, "affordable to individuals and families," and "affordable and sustainable for society." Under the commission's rules, a company does not have to allow shareholders to vote on a proposal if it "deals with a matter relating to the...

The cutbacks mean increasing numbers of hospitals are going on "black alert" – which involves closing their doors to new patients because they are full. Patients' groups described the loss of the beds, at a time when overcrowded wards have seen soaring rates of killer infections, as "a national scandal". The reduction contradicts a pledge from Tony Blair at the turn of the century that there would be 7,000 more NHS beds by 2010. New figures, seen by The Telegraph, show that the number of health service beds fell more than 8,000 last year, as the NHS began a reorganisation...

Imagine for a minute that Ted Kennedy lived in an America where the government ran health care, and he was what pundits and talking heads like to call a “working class” American. He’s sitting in his kitchen, reading the paper and eating his morning breakfast when he starts convulsing uncontrollably. His wife makes the call for an ambulance, only to be told that the ambulance would be there as soon as their government mandated break was complete. Unlike this British man, who died from a heart attack five minutes from an ambulance station while two ambulance crews took an EU-mandated...

One of the ways the Dems advertise their universal healthcare plan is by saying, "all Americans should have access to the same medical coverage our congressmen have." Well, Nancy Pelosi is taking this to another level: she used Senator Kennedy's tragic situation with brain cancer to advertise their healthcare plan like a used car salesman, "I have confidence, though, because Sen. Kennedy has been a fighter all his life. He is a fighter, a fighter for our children, a fighter for our seniors, HE IS A CHAMPION FOR HEALTHCARE FOR ALL AMERICANS." Does this woman have no shame?!?

Eye specialist Sarah Anderson works at York Hospital. Her father Ian has been refused Sutent, a new cancer drug, which could provide the only real chance of prolonging his life. Sarah, 40, lives in York with husband, Bill, a computer programmer and their twins, Douglas and Ryan, five. As an ophthalmologist, I have spent my working life in the NHS. And for all its perceived failings, I have been proud of its fundamental role in our society - to provide equality of care for all. Of course, I've heard the term postcode lottery but as a doctor I've only ever...

Why Do We Need You, Government Man? "You must pay Social Security," said the government man. "Why?" I replied. "I can walk to the bank and save my own money or get an annuity with an insurance company. I don't need you to steal money from my pay check every week, then hope I live to 67 to get some of my hard-earned money back." "You must use our Post Office." "Why?," I said, "UPS, DHL, and Fed Ex give me better service." "You must support Medicare." "Why?" I replied, "I can pay for my own health insurance that lets...

More than 100 Canadian women with high-risk pregnancies have been sent to United States hospitals over the past year... The problem has peaked, with British Columbia and Ontario each sending a record number of women to U.S. neonatal intensive care units... André Lalonde, executive vice-president of the Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada, said the problem is due to bed closings... and too few staff. "Neonatologists are very stretched right now," Dr. Lalonde said in a telephone interview from Ottawa. "We're so stretched, it's kind of dangerous." Aw, look at the cute little Canadian babies! It's all very sweet...

Sen. John McCain on Monday rejected a "big government" takeover of the health care system, saying he wants to empower families to make more medical decisions. "I've made it very clear that what I want is for families to make decisions about their health care, not government, and that's the fundamental difference between myself and Sen. Obama and Sen. Clinton," McCain told reporters in Miami, Florida, referring to the two remaining Democratic presidential candidates, Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. "They want the government to make the decisions, I want the families to make decisions," he said. During a speech...

Vitamin pills 'increase risk of early death' By Kate Devlin, Medical Correspondent Last Updated: 12:01am BST 16/04/2008 Popular vitamin supplements taken by millions of people in the hope of improving their health may do no good and could increase the risk of a premature death, researchers report today. They warn healthy people who take antioxidant supplements, including vitamins A and E, to try to keep diseases such as cancer at bay that they are interfering with their natural body defences and may be increasing their risk of an early death by up to 16 per cent. Antioxidants, including vitamins A,...