Free Republic

One of the most curious political phenomena of the western world is the indestructible affection in which the British hold their National Health Service. No argument, no criticism, no evidence can diminish, let alone destroy, it. The only permissible criticism of it is that the government does not spend enough on it, a ‘meanness’ (with other people’s money) to which all the service’s shortcomings are attributable. In effect, the NHS is the national religion. Yet again, however, the NHS is in ‘crisis.’ The British Red Cross has called the present situation an incipient humanitarian crisis, as if the country were...

A health insurance company has said that Germans are going to the doctor twice as much as they actually need to. But doctors disagree. “We don’t have too few doctors, but actually too much contact with doctors,” KKH CEO Ingo Kailuweit told Bild on Tuesday. “Half of all doctor visits are unnecessary.” The OECD’s Health Statistics report for this year showed that Germans went to the doctor on average more than 18 times in 2008, while another OECD report showed that Germans visited the doctor about ten times each in 2013. This made Germans one of the top ten countries...

Obese people will be routinely refused operations across the NHS, health service bosses have warned, after one authority said it would limit procedures on an unprecedented scale. Hospital leaders in North Yorkshire said that patients with a body mass index (BMI) of 30 or above – as well as smokers – will be barred from most surgery for up to a year amid increasingly desperate measures to plug a funding black hole. The restrictions will apply to standard hip and knee operations.

An elderly Canadian couple who have been married for 62 years have been forced to live in separate care homes... The couple, who have lived apart for eight months, cry every time they are able to see each other, she added. "We want everyone's focus to be on fixing the system rather than raising money and putting a band-aid on the issue."

Hospitals are to cancel thousands of operations and appointments in a desperate bid to stop the NHS "buckling" this winter, under Government plans. Health officials are drawing up contingency measures to attempt to safeguard emergency care by diverting senior doctors from operating theatres into wards and Accident & Emergency departments as winter sets in. The national plan, detailed in evidence to the Commons health select committee, comes amid concern that the NHS is already in the grip of the worst bed-blocking crisis on record. Last night, Britain’s most senior A&E doctor said hospitals were under such strain that a bad...

Elderly patients are being told by opticians to buy darker sunglasses as the NHS will not pay for life-changing cataract surgery Others have been informed they are not ‘entitled’ just because they had laser treatment on their eyes 16 years ago.

President Obama joined the chorus of Democrats calling for the creation of a government run health insurance program as Obamacare is facing growing problems. In an article published Monday in the Journal of the American Medical Association, the president called for Congress to revisit the "public option" for Obamacare in areas where few insurers offer coverage. "Some parts of the country have struggled with limited insurance market competition for many years, which is one reason that, in the original debate over health reform, Congress considered and I supported including a Medicare-like public plan," Obama wrote in the piece. A public...

DENVER — A Colorado state representative and candidate for the state Senate recently revealed to The Denver Post that she and her colleagues are under strict orders not to take a public stance on the increasingly contentious debate on Amendment 69, the socialized medicine ballot measure that would double the state’s budget and drastically increase taxes. Rep. Lois Court, D-Denver, a candidate for Senate District 31, recently participated in The Denver Post’s Voter Guide, a biannual question-and-answer platform that the newspaper offers to all candidates running for state and federal offices in Colorado. In her answers, Court revealed a stunning...

"We can tell you about the growing problem of medical debt and how hospitals are suing thousands of patients for having the gall to be both sick and poor, or how debt collectors screw-up and use illegal tactics to get paid for debts they often can’t even prove that anyone owes. But that’s nothing compared to the site of a goofy English guy forgiving $15 million in medical debt he bought for pennies on the dollar. On Sunday’s Last Week Tonight, host John Oliver took a long, multifaceted look at the messy, shady world of debt collection and debt buying."...

Reader WC Varones emailed an article he wrote on Obamacare and the Disincentive to Work. At the heart of the matter is a redistribution scheme that punishes the middle class the most, and the wealthy the least, for the benefit of the poor. “As awful as Obamacare has been at its purported goal of making health care affordable, it has been unquestionably successful at one of Obama’s other primary goals: the redistribution of wealth. Unfortunately, the poor design of the redistribution function is one of the reasons Obamacare is failing. As the Economist points out in “Healthy Dose of Redistribution“,...

This week, Secretary of Veterans Affairs Robert McDonald rebuffed critics of the agency’s long queues for medical treatment of ailing veterans, comparing them to the long lines to get on rides at Disneyland. “No one is on the Disney Corporation’s case for the lengthy wait-times at their theme parks,” McDonald asserted. “Why should we get worked up over wait-times at VA hospitals?” “You know, if people can tolerate waiting an hour for something as frivolous as a roller coaster ride shouldn’t they be willing to wait a reasonable amount of time for something as crucial as medical care?” the Secretary...

A new Gallup survey seems to suggest that majority of Americans now back government-run health care. That, at least, is what Gallup’s headline about its poll says: “Majority in U.S. Support Idea of Fed-Funded Healthcare System.” The mainstream press eagerly ran with the story. The Washington Post, for example, headlined its piece: “Poll: Most Americans want to replace ObamaCare with single-payer — including many Republicans.” The ABC News headline blared “Poll Says Majority of Americans Prefer ‘Medicare For All’ Health Care,” and the story led by saying that “A growing number of Americans now support the idea of federally funded...

Regulations: Here’s a headline that should scare anyone who has been following ObamaCare: “As time runs out, the Obama administration races to reshape health care.” Hasn’t it done enough damage reshaping health care already?

Conservatives are rumbling around the talk show circuit bellowing about the socialist threat to the (literal) American body politic. And, as usual, Canada is once again getting dragged into the fracas, shoved around by both sides as either an exemplar or a warning — and, along the way, getting coated with the obfuscating dust of so many willful misconceptions that the actual facts about How Canada Does It are completely lost in the melee. I’m both a health-care-card-carrying Canadian resident and an uninsured American citizen who regularly sees doctors on both sides of the border. As such, I’m in a...

Health Care: In the summer of 2014, President Obama promised swift changes to resolve chronic delays and cover-ups at the Veterans Health Administration. Today, veterans are still waiting months to see doctors and the VHA is still doctoring wait times, an audit finds.

The doctor is disappearing in America. And by most projections, it’s only going to get worse — the U.S. could lose as many as 1 million doctors by 2025, according to a Association of American Medical Colleges report. Primary-care physicians will account for as much as one-third of that shortage, meaning the doctor you likely interact with most often is also becoming much more difficult to see.

China has vowed to clamp down on 'scalpers' selling tickets for hospital appointments at hugely inflated prices. Most hospitals in the country require patients to purchase registration tickets to see a doctor or receive treatment but the system is widely abused. Scalpers buy up tickets for around £30 and can resell them for as much as £450, with those most in need of hospital treatment the biggest victims of the scandal. They mainly operate in the largest cities, such as Beijing and Shanghai. ...

Either Donald Trump suffers from memory loss or he is completely lying about his healthcare plans. During Thursday night's debate Ted Cruz simply asked Trump, "True or false, you said the government should pay for everyone's healthcare?" Trump emphatically denied, claiming the accusation was completely false. To those watching who have been keeping up with this election cycle, the claim seemed dubious. After the debate, Cruz's campaign helped Trump and the rest of America understand the truth behind the spar: ...

Donald Trump attacked Republicans this morning for their opposition to government-provided health care. Appearing on Meet the Press, Trump told host Chuck Todd, "We're not going to let people die in squalor because we are Republicans, okay?" "That's part of the problem with the Republicans, somehow they got fed into this horrible position," Trump said. "We're going to take care of people." Trump also said he didn't mean to express support for Obamacare's individual mandate during Thursday night's CNN town hall when he told Anderson Cooper, "I like the mandate." "We had a situation where we were Anderson Cooper, who's...

Donald Trump: “I like the mandate.” Donald Trump has often promised to repeal the “disaster” that is Obamacare and he’s right, it is a disaster.But at Thursday night’s CNN Republican Presidential Town Hall in South Carolina, Donald Trump embraced what is easily the worst part of Obamacare, the anti-free market “individual mandate” which forces Americans to buy only government-approved health care insurance, whether they want to or not.To justify his support for the Obamacare mandate, Donald Trump uses leftist talking points of not wanting people to “die in the streets,” as if they has ever happened in America — before...