Free Republic

In the event that a group of U.S. senators cannot agree on committing enough money to a bipartisan infrastructure plan, Democrats are reportedly considering a $6 trillion plan of their own. It would probably be best described as a package full of progressive items wrapped in magical thinking paper. Most people would consider $6 trillion a lot of money to drop on infrastructure. That's because most of us still have an outdated notion of what infrastructure is. In fact, for most people, the word infrastructure conjures up images of roads, bridges, dams and waterways. However, as we've discovered during the...

Filling hospital beds and then rationing care is the approach of socialized medicine, which has been a disaster in Italy. A far better approach is to allow physicians and pharmacists to provide early treatment for patients at home to address the Wuhan virus known as COVID-19. If you are a television or Hollywood actor, then you receive the better treatment at home and no one will interfere with prescriptions by your physician. Daniel Dae Kim, an actor on “Lost” and “Hawaii Five-0,” credits receiving hydroxychloroquine for his recovery from COVID-19, while he avoided being hospitalized for it. But Democratic governors...

With the Democratic primary now a dead heat between Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders, the government-run healthcare system the candidates are proposing, to minimally varying degrees, deserves a hard look. Many modern Democrats view these policies as “free” healthcare; yet, what is being proposed is the most aggressive expansion of government—i.e. Medicare—in our nation’s history and is universes away from free. The first two parts of Medicare are Part A which is hospital insurance, and Part B which is Medical insurance. As a senior, you were forced over the years to pay into the system with only the hope that...

Sen. Bernie Sanders may mix his ideas with love but—in the words of the late, great Sammy Davis Jr.— his expansive plans for government certainly won’t “make the world taste good.” On the contrary, the presidential candidate’s sweeping promises to provide “free” healthcare, “free” college, “free daycare and solve the so-called climate crisis are illusions that, if enacted, would devastate our economy.As Betsy McCaughey, former lieutenant governor of New York, says, “When it comes to health care, Democrats are selling snake oil.”Indeed, flesh out the Vermont Democrat’s platform and one sees he’s definitely not peddling gum drops. He’s proposing a...

The "Medicare for All" legislation that Sen. Bernie Sanders introduced in Congress expressly prohibits discrimination based on "gender identity" but not religion. This may not be an accident. A reasonable reading of the bill -- which is neither succinctly nor precisely written -- raises the question of whether it would still be possible for Catholic (and other religious) hospitals to continue operating within its single-payer system. On April 10, 2019, Sanders introduced S. 1129, his "Medicare for All" bill. Title II of this bill enumerates the "comprehensive benefits" it would cover. Item No. 7 is: "Comprehensive reproductive, maternity, and newborn...

If Medicare for All (MFA) is the answer, then what is the question? It is obviously about how Americans can become more dependent on an exploding and careless federal bureaucracy. At the Democratic debate on Tuesday evening, Bernie Sanders pushed his tried if not true canard that MFA is the solution to America’s health care problems. In support of MFA, the Washington Post published a glowing story about this allegedly definitive research proving Sanders’ claims to be correct. Jeff Bezos’ left-wing paper cited a just-published article in the U.K. medical journal Lancet, by Galvani, Parpia, Foster, Singer and Fitzpatrick (three...

Twenty-three years ago, I was asked to give a talk to the New York City Bar Association as part of a symposium titled "Executioners, Jailers, Slave Trappers and the Law: What Role Should Morality Play in Judging?" I was charged with addressing what judges should do when faced with moral quandaries over issues like partial-birth abortion (also called "dilation and evacuation abortions," or "D&E abortions") and physician-assisted suicide. While I was discussing the present, the other panelists -- most of whom were judges -- were discussing the past (as in, "What should judges have done about slavery?" or "Should judges...

In an unprecedented move, The New York Times editorial board recently endorsed both Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar to win the 2020 Democratic presidential primary. In its endorsement of Warren, the Times described her as a “gifted storyteller,” and praised her for emerging as “a standard-bearer for the Democratic left.” If “gifted storyteller” is a euphemism for constantly lying to voters about the consequences of her policies, then Warren is a gifted storyteller indeed.For months, Warren has sold the Democrat base a false promise –– that her “Medicare for All” plan would cost taxpayers a little over $20 trillion, and that it...

Now that an appellate court has upheld a U.S. District judge’s finding that the individual mandate in the Affordable Care Act (ACA), otherwise known as Obamacare, is unconstitutional, expect the Democrats' hysteria machine to be fired up and working overtime. They’ll portray millions of Americans as instantly losing their health insurance and ply the airwaves with sob story after sob story decrying evil Republicans and their plot to deny Americans the medical care they need.  The problem is none of what they’re claiming is based in reality. There will be no immediate change to the law or to the insurance...

The idea of price controls is an easy sell to people who don’t know any better. But history has repeatedly shown they not only don’t work, they’re a disaster. That they are a disaster might be why the idea is gaining so much traction among Democrats both running for president and currently running Congress – namely Nancy Pelosi – progressives have always left a trail of disaster in their wake. But in one industry in particular, a disaster will be exceptionally hard to recover from: health care. The story in health care that is getting all the attention is “Medicare...

The rush to the Left by Democratic presidential candidates in an attempt to win its nomination has resulted in a call for Medicare for All. Nearly every Democratic candidate has endorsed the inclusion of illegal aliens in this or similar government-run healthcare programs. Medicare for All would be a fiscal disaster, whether it includes illegal aliens or not. Elizabeth Warren first drove this train past her rivals in the polls, but it has become a train wreck as her liberal rivals question it. Warren rose to the status of the presumptive nominee in early October as she surged to a...

Whether on April 15 or any other day of the year, “tax” is a 4-letter word. Senator (and presidential hopeful) Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) seems to realize this, which is why she continues to insist that, “we don't need to raise taxes on the middle class by one penny to finance Medicare for All.” As Reason editor Peter Suderman points out, Warren has avoided talking about raising taxes when discussing her healthcare plan, preferring an “employer contribution” that would supposedly lower costs compared to current employer medical contributions. Getting wrapped up in the tax discussion, however, obscures the very-real consequences that government-run...

This year’s Politicon (the annual non-partisan political convention which aims to bring “Republicans, Democrats, and people of all stripes together...”) culminated with a debate between Charlie Kirk, the founder and president of Turning Point USA, and Kyle Kulinski, the co-founder of Justice Democrats and host of The Kyle Kulinski Show. Early in the debate, Kirk lauded the economy under President Trump by referencing the lowest unemployment rates in decades. Kulinski rejected this conclusion by claiming that Kirk was using the wrong metric, and argued instead in favor of analyzing the economy using the U6 unemployment rate, which includes workers who...

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) appeared on CNN's "State of the Union" with Jake Tapper to discuss an array of issues. One of the topics that came up was Medicare For All.Tapper played a clip of former Vice President Joe Biden in Michigan talking about how it's impossible to implement Medicare For All without raising the taxes on the middle class."Well, I find that people say they're for Medicare For All but they're not going to tax the middle class because we don't need to do that. Come on," Biden said. "What is this, a fantasy world here?"Sanders finally admitted what...

I should start by saying that the Washington Post’s Richard Cohen may wind up being one of the more dangerous people in the country, at least if you happen to be Donald Trump or a member of the Senate GOP majority. Why? Because he’s running around preaching common sense to the Democrats and if we’re not careful, they may start listening. In a column this week, he’s sounding the alarm over something I was just pointing out earlier today. The Democratic candidates for the 2020 nomination (along with many of their overly enthusiastic colleagues in Congress) are loudly and proudly...

Mother-of-two, 29, dies of cervical cancer after doctors 'took 10 MONTHS to diagnose her despite being told about her constant bleeding' (Full Title) [This IS Health Care run by the Government Bureaucracy.] Josephine Suffolk, ...died on May 18 less than a year after diagnosis.... 'I feel like I have been so let down by my doctors'. The NHS lists abnormal bleeding as the top symptom but hers was dismissed. [She] died after doctors took 10 months to diagnose her cervical cancer after dismissing bleeding as a hormonal problem. ~snip~ She had been trying to raise awareness about cervical cancer after...

Now that the Democrats got skunked on their plan to take down Trump with Russia they have pivoted along with their teammates on cable news to health care. The people who work on governmental health policy quite often have not experienced having the insurance they regulate. Recently single-payer insurance (i.e. government operated and controlled medical insurance) has been recast with the cutesy name “Medicare for All.” As someone who recently became a Medicare-covered individual along with the Beautiful Wife (BW), let’s talk about reality. As you know, Medicare is a program begun in 1966 to cover people 65 years of...

It seems like just yesterday that Democrats were telling us that under Obamacare, "If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan." That was a nice sales pitch to voters -- even though it turned out to be a lie. Millions of Americans lost affordable insurance plans that were abolished under the Affordable Care Act. Still, people liked the idea that poor people would get health coverage and everyone else could retain the medical care they had. No more. When Bernie Sanders, and half the...

In the style of Sen. Ben "Traitor" Nelson .... can other senators start offering, one after another, amendments to ObamaCare saying, "We want free Medicaid too -- just like in Nebraska!" No, of course I'm not in favor of that. I'm trying to think of ways to stop or slow down this abomination.