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I woke up very early this morning with the tortured picture of an infant running through my mind. Charlie Gard has a tube through his nose into his lungs, connected to a machine that breathes for him. He has all the latest electronics monitoring his status. But he is unable to provide any indication of his pleasure or pain at the process. He is dying from a horrendous genetic disease that robs his body of the ability to move, breathe, or respond. Next I saw his parents. Their expression conveyed the pain that Charlie cannot. But their pain is not...

Republicans are finally getting smart on Obamacare. It took one of the savviest Republican senators -- Ted Cruz of Texas, with an assist from Mike Lee of Utah -- to get the GOP to figure out how to replace Obamacare, reduce premiums and save money for the government, all without alienating millions of voters. He's pulled the Republicans' fannies out of the fire, flipping a losing strategy into a big-time winner. The Cruz amendment -- which has been inserted into the GOP Senate health plan -- is smart, because it doesn't take anything away from anyone. If you want Obamacare,...

[Cruz's] Provision would allow insurers to sell plans that aren’t compliant with Affordable Care Act

Republicans have never been closer to actually repealing large chunks of what they dismiss as “Obamacare.” Within two short weeks, the GOP will likely either be reveling in their unexpected victory or mired in deep infighting over the party’s failure to live up to a pledge it has made over the last seven years. Some Republicans remain optimistic — and Democrats fearful — that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) can pull off the negotiating tricks necessary, but he still faces an uphill fight in winning the votes to pass the Better Care Reconciliation Act by his tentative deadline of...

The parents of Charlie Gard are back in court this week, continuing the struggle to free their baby from captivity and bring him to the U.S. for treatment. As you hopefully are aware by now, Connie Yates and Chris Gard have been fighting with courts and hospitals in the U.K. for the right to seek medical care for their sick baby. So far, European death panels have determined that Charlie must die, because, in their estimation, his life is no longer worth living. His parents are not allowed to bring him elsewhere for treatment, nor are they even permitted to...

With the Charlie Gard Case, Culture of Death Tightens Its Grip in England Michael Egnor July 3, 2017, 2:06 AM There is a controversy going on in England over a child with a fatal disease. The child, Charlie Gard, was born with a mitochondrial disorder that causes brain damage and eventually death. He is currently on a respirator and his parents want to bring him to the U.S. for experimental treatment. The British health service (the NHS) has insisted that CharlieÂ’s respirator be removed and that he be allowed to die, and they have denied his parents permission to take...

Hillary Clinton had a plan for health care before one of her other plans went awry. The former Secretary of State responded to Republicans' defense of their plan to repeal Obamacare by saying they could use her blueprint if they can’t find a way to bring Americans affordable care. “‘We’ve got to fix what’s broken.’ Where's your plan, @HillaryClinton?” the GOP’s main Twitter accounted posted on Wednesday afternoon.

"Back in the 1960s, (Claude) Castonguay chaired a Canadian government committee studying health reform and recommended that his home province of Quebec — then the largest and most affluent in the country — adopt government-administered health care, covering all citizens through tax levies "We thought we could resolve the system's problems by rationing services or injecting massive amounts of new money into it," says Castonguay. But now he prescribes a radical overhaul: "We are proposing to give a greater role to the private sector so that people can exercise freedom of choice."

Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) told Breitbart News in an exclusive interview that he thinks the Senate healthcare bill “looks too much like Obamacare.” Senator Rand Paul joined Sens. Mike Lee (R-UT), Ron Johnson (R-WI), and Ted Cruz (R-TX) in opposition to the Senate bill. The coalition of conservative senators argue that the legislation does not do enough to repeal Obamacare. Senator Paul explained his opposition to the newly released Senate healthcare bill: I think the bill looks too much like Obamacare. It really doesn’t look like a repeal bill. It looks like we’re keeping Obamacare, it keeps probably 100 percent...

A cyclist died after a good Samaritan rushed into a hospital to get help and was told to call 999 because there were no doctors. Marc Banting witnessed Nick Wilsdon, 44, lose control of his bicycle and swerve sideways into a van outside Bristol Royal Infirmary (BRI) and rushed into the hospital to ask for help. But Mr Banting claims he was told to phone 999 as the hospital could not spare any doctors. Mr Wilsdon, a musician and therapist who was described as a "wonderful, talented, much-loved man" by his family, died of his injuries a few days later....

From the 3-minute video: "If the Republican Party does not repeal Obamacare, what the hell is the Republican Party for?"

SACRAMENTO — As a legislative deadline loomed, California senators Thursday — in some cases, reluctantly — voted to pass a $400 billion plan to create a government-run health care system without a way to pay for it. Senate Bill 562, by Sens. Ricardo Lara, D-Bell Gardens, and Toni Atkins, D-San Diego, passed 23-14 and will now advance to the Assembly, where it will likely be amended to include taxes. And that would mean the measure would require two-thirds votes in both chambers.

Standing at a bus stop in Paris recently, I noticed an advertisement for Médecins du Monde, Doctors of the World, a charity similar to the more famous Médecins Sans Frontières. “Liberty, equality, health,” it proclaimed: in other words, health replaced fraternity in the trio of French republican virtues (or aspirations). At the bottom of the ad were two additional slogans: HEALTH FOR ALL RIGHTS FOR EVERYONE But what could health for all possibly mean? Health even for the dying? Or immortality, perhaps?........ What goes for money, however, also goes for health. The healthy man and the paralyzed have equally the...

Single payor health care is coming, like it or not. Your hernia operation will have to wait a few months One way or another, we will have socialized medicine in this country. Politicians have raised and nurtured generations of people that expect something for nothing in exchange for votes. We have imported, legally and illegally, millions of uneducated, unskilled workers that can’t afford a band-aid. We have millions of students ‘graduating’ high school that can’t read, thus, unable to get a good job with health insurance. We have a health care system where the middle class is strapped with not...

GPs are being paid millions by the NHS to ration referrals for operations, scans and even cancer tests, an investigation reveals today. Family doctors are being offered the financial incentives in a bid to slash the number of patients they send to hospital for a variety of procedures. The incentives mostly cover non-urgent referrals for hip and knee replacements, cataract surgery, hearing tests and abdomen scans. But two health trusts have included urgent cancer scans in their schemes, and another two covered heart tests. Patient groups said the payments were ‘profoundly wrong’, while one MP likened them to ‘bribes’. Doctors’...

The Affordable Care Act was based on government coercion of individuals and redistribution of wealth. So, too, is the Republican plan to “replace” it. “An applicable individual shall for each month beginning after 2013 ensure that the individual, and any dependent of the individual who is an applicable individual, is covered under minimum essential coverage for such month,” said Obamacare. This section of the law was clinically entitled: “Requirement to Maintain Minimum Essential Coverage.” It was not a choice the government offered individuals. It was a command. It said the “individual shall.” If the “individual” did not comply with this...

Sometimes called direct pay, and closely related to concierge care, this sort of business model was once seen as the perquisite of rich folks and medical tourists from foreign lands. But nowadays many of the people seeking cash-based care are middle-class Americans with high-deductible insurance plans. For a patient with an $11,000 family deductible, for example, it might make more sense to seek out a cash-based center like the Premier Medical Imaging facility in Minneapolis, which offers a basic MRI for $499, than to cough up the several thousand dollars that the same procedure generally costs at a traditional hospital....

KTXL reports that a rally was held in Sacramento, California Wednesday by proponents of a bill that would create a one payer health care system. Participants included health care unions and patients. Dr. Paul Song told KTXL, “If we make the system more efficient by having one payer, we can save billions of billions of dollars a year. Plus, we don’t really need to put any more money in - the money is there.” Bill co-author Senator Toni Atkins of San Diego says Californians shouldn’t have Washington dictate how healthcare is provided to its citizens. She tells KTXL, now that Californians...

The number of cancer patients turning to crowdfunding to pay for treatments not available on the NHS has soared, online donation platform JustGiving said. Cancer patients and their loved ones launched 2,348 appeals on the website last year compared to 304 in 2015 - a seven-fold increase, the figures obtained by BBC Radio 5 live reveal. The fundraisers generated £4,670,143 to help pay for private medical treatment at clinics in the UK and abroad, a significant rise from the £530,519 raised in 2015. Consultant oncologist Dr Clive Peedell described the number of patients bypassing the NHS as "very worrying" and...

FULL TITLE: Don't call pregnant patients 'mothers': Doctors are banned from using the word over fears it will upset those who are transgender NHS doctors have been told not to call pregnant women ‘expectant mothers’ because it might offend transgender people, The Mail on Sunday can reveal. The astonishing warning comes in official guidelines issued by the British Medical Association to its 160,000 members, which says mothers-to-be should be referred to as ‘pregnant people’ instead. The controversial advice to doctors in hospitals and general practice comes just weeks after it emerged that a Briton who was born a girl but...