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Problems at a Massachusetts veterans home -- where 76 deaths were linked to a coronavirus outbreak -- began when patients from two dementia units were combined into one, a 174-page state report says. “This decision was catastrophic,” the report on the Holyoke Soldier’s Home says, according to FOX station WFXT-TV in Boston. “Staff described the move as ‘total pandemonium,’ ‘when hell broke loose,’ and ‘a nightmare.’’’ “This [is] the most insane thing I ever saw in my entire life,” one staff member said, according to the report, the release of which was followed by the firing of the home's superintendent.

As new cases appear on the West Coast, some — including the president — see comparisons to the seasonal flu. Here’s a close look at the differences. Which virus is deadlier? The coronavirus seems to be more deadly than the flu — so far. On average, seasonal flu strains kill about 0.1 percent of people who become infected. The 1918 flu had an unusually high fatality rate, around 2 percent. Because it was so contagious, that flu killed tens of millions of people. You have 1 free article remaining. Subscribe to the Times Early estimates of the coronavirus death rate...

London, England, Jun 21, 2019 / 11:15 am (CNA).- A British judge has authorized doctors to perform an abortion on a pregnant Catholic woman with developmental disabilities and a mood disorder, despite the objections of the woman’s mother and the woman herself. The woman is 22 weeks pregnant. “I am acutely conscious of the fact that for the State to order a woman to have a termination where it appears that she doesn't want it is an immense intrusion,” said Justice Nathalie Lieven in her ruling in the Court of Protection, June 21. “I have to operate in [her] best...

When British Prime Minister Theresa May gave her traditional New Year's speech on December 31, one line -- actually, just one word -- jumped out at me. May spoke of the importance of “taking a balanced approach to government spending, so we get our debt falling but can also invest in the things that matter -- our schools, our police and our precious NHS.” Yes, “precious.” She actually described the National Health Service as precious! Now, one might easily forgive her for describing, say, Britain's finest doctors and nurses as -- oh, I don't know -- how about “treasured”? Or...

Pope Francis on Thursday urged lawmakers to ensure that health care laws protect the “common good,” decrying the fact that in many places only the privileged can afford sophisticated medical treatments. The comments came as U.S. lawmakers in Washington, D.C., have been debating how to overhaul the nation’s health insurance laws. In a message to a medical association meeting at the Vatican, Francis expressed dismay at what he called a tendency toward growing inequality in health care. He said in wealthier countries, health care access risks being more dependent on people’s money than on their need for treatment. […] Without...

Some hospitals narrowly avoid “catastrophe” every weekend, research by the Royal College of Physicians has found, because doctors’ shifts are limited by the European Working Time Directive and they do not want to work anti-social hours [night shift]. Some are “struggling to cope” with the volume of older patients.Many are discharged in the middle of the night or shunted around “like parcels” to free beds for new arrivals. If the problem is not tackled there will be more tragedies like the Mid Staffs scandal,in which up to 1,200 mainly elderly patients died from substandard care. A radical reorganisation of the...

AKELAND - Two and half months is a long time to be stuck in the hospital, especially if you don't really have to be there. Yvonne Gallimore has been living at Lakeland Regional Medical Center because she had no place else to go. Now, she finally does. Gallimore just moved into a duplex provided by the Lakeland Housing Authority. It's a big improvement, but not easy living yet. It has big, French doors, so she can get out quickly in case of an emergency. "I was glad to get out of there," she said on Monday. When emergency workers took...

Gordon Duffy was a freshman assemblyman from the San Joaquin Valley in 1966 when then-Gov. Pat Brown and the Legislature fashioned a health care program for the poor named "Medi-Cal." Medi-Cal would take advantage of a newly minted, obscure provision of the federal Medicare program for the elderly, leveraging the promise of federal money to extend care to poor Californians who hitherto had been dependent on medical charity. Duffy, an optometrist who later chaired the Assembly Health Committee, recalls that the Medi-Cal program was launched on assurances from Brown that it was affordable and workable. "No one in the world...

Medicine: The administration's nominee to run Medicare and Medicaid is a fan of Britain's National Health Service and rationing services. He believes in less discretion for your doctor, more power for your government. 'The decision is not whether or not we will ration care — the decision is whether we will ration with our eyes open" is what Dr. Donald Berwick, President Obama's nominee to head the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services, said in an interview published in Biotechnology Healthcare in June 2009. The question is whether the Senate will confirm Berwick with open eyes. Berwick says: "NICE is...

Greece was told that if it wanted a bailout, it needed to consider privatizing its government health care system. So tell us again why the U.S. is following Europe's welfare state model. The requirement, part of a deal arranged by the IMF, the European Union and the European Central bank, is a tacit admission that national health care programs are unsustainable. Along with transportation and energy, the bailout group, according to the New York Times, wants the Greek government to remove "the state from the marketplace in crucial sectors." This is not some cranky or politically motivated demand. It is...

Surgeon 'cut off patient's testicle by mistake' A patient lost a testicle during an operation after the surgeon accidentally cut it off, the medical watchdog was told today. Dr Sulieman Al Hourani was only supposed to cut out a cyst on the patient's right testis, but instead he 'mistakenly' removed the whole testicle, the General Medical Council (GMC) heard. Dr Al Hourani, who worked as a locum surgeon at Fairfield General Hospital in Bury, Greater Manchester, is accused of misconduct over the error and faces further charges of injecting himself with a drug meant for a patient and stealing tablets....

If at first you don't succeed, try, try, try, try again. With Plans A, B and C hav ing failed miserably, President Obama yesterday unveiled his latest "new and improved" version of health-care reform. He says that this incarnation "incorporates the best ideas from Democrats and Republicans -- including some of the ideas that Republicans offered during the health-care summit." Unfortunately, its fundamental premise remains exactly the same -- a government takeover of the health-care system. Start with those "Republican ideas": Though mostly not bad, they're hardly game changing. * Increase the financial incentives for states to experiment with malpractice...

WASHINGTON -- Only two things are infinite -- the expanding universe and Democrats' hostility to the District of Columbia's school choice program. Killing this small program, which currently benefits 1,300 mostly poor and minority children, is odious and indicative. It is a small piece of something large -- the Democrats' dependency agenda, which aims to multiply the ways Americans are dependent on government. Democrats, in their canine devotion to teachers unions, oppose empowering poor children to escape dependency on even terrible government schools. Unions and their poodles say school choice siphons money from public schools. But federal money funds D.C.'s...

Here is video of Karl Rove talking with Greta van Susteren talking about President Obama going back on his word to hold a debate on Health Care in public with "C-Span" cameras there. Greta played multiple clips of Obama making that promise as a candidate, which he has never done in the entire course of the Health Care Debate. The deals the Democrats have made in both the House and Senate have been done behind closed doors with secrecy a papal selection would be proud of. . . . (VIDEO)

To achieve the goal of a universal, single-payer health system, the White House must secure the power it needs by amending the Social Security Act to transfer pivotal controls from Congress to the executive branch. This transfer of power would ultimately give the President and the majority party, in this case the radical left Obama White House and Pelosi-Reid led progressive Democrats, the authority to frame and manipulate new policy, coverage options, and reimbursements, ultimately reshaping the future US health care system into a something unrecognizable in this country. The deliberate setup for the White House power grab is built...

When President Barack Obama entered office in January, the greatest problem America faced was neither the war in Afghanistan nor the recession. It was the imminent crisis of the welfare state. Not only has Obama failed to deal with this crisis, he is pursuing policies that will bankrupt America. In March, the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, led by former U.S. Comptroller General David Walker, calculated the total value of the federal government's "unfunded liabilities" as they stood at the end of fiscal 2008. These liabilities include the publicly held portion of the national debt plus the amount the government must...

Congressman Earl Blumenauer says he's just a regular fellow "trying to get things accomplished." As a result, the Oregon Democrat tells me, he spends much of his time "looking for ideas that can bring people together -- simple, straightforward ideas that would help people and their families." And so he proposed the infamous "death panels." Really. Before they were Palinized -- and turned into those nasty death panels ready to pounce on Grandma (that "goofy stuff," as he now calls it), Blumenauer had a good idea: help people prepare for the end of life. As he wrote in The New...

RENO, Nev. -- A fight broke out Thursday at a Reno, Nev., clinic giving shots for swine flu when someone reportedly tried to cut in line. Washoe County Health District spokeswoman Judy Davis says she didn't have any details of the incident, but it involved people in high-risk groups waiting for a chance to get the shot. A witness told the Reno Gazette-Journal that a man took a swing at a woman, then jumped on her and they fell to the ground. They left after a security guard stepped in and broke up the fight. Davis says 1,200 vaccines were...

In President Obama’s Washington, medical specialists are slightly more popular than the H1N1 virus. Compared to bread-and-butter primary care doctors, specialists cost more to train and make more use of expensive procedures and technology—and therefore cost the government more money. Even so, the quiet war Democrats are waging on specialists is astonishing.

Two cases of “public option” administrators rejecting patient requests for lifesaving or life-extending drugs (and instead offering to fund those patients’ assisted suicides) reached the mainstream media in the last two weeks. This has caused critics of President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul proposal to look to Oregon for clues about what a national health system would bring. The picture is not pretty. Oregon, the only state to allow assisted suicide (via the 1997 “Death With Dignity Law”), has used its public health care “option” as a pretext for enacting an official policy of trading lives that bureaucrats determine to...