Free Republic

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., attempted to make a case for universal health care on Thursday after a tense confrontation over the HIV prevention drug known as PrEP. During a congressional hearing, Ocasio-Cortez pressed Gilead Sciences CEO Daniel O'Day on why his company's drug -- Truvada for PrEP -- cost so much more in the United States than in Australia. She later answered her own question on Twitter, saying that the U.S. health care system was to blame. "Spoiler: Because Australia has universal health care," she tweeted. During the hearing, O'Day responded to Ocasio-Cortez by noting how the drug was under...

The very short version: United HealthCare is the biggest health care insurance provider in the country (something like 70 million people, apparently). It is huge, it is influential, it is weighty. And UHC took a $425 million dollar haircut last year in the Obamacare exchanges, so now it’s thinking of stopping selling on the exchange by the end of next year. Note that UHC did not say that they would, merely that they might. They did this at a shareholders’ meeting, too; which suggests that a large part of that might have been due to UHC’s awareness that people were...

A terminally ill RAF hero who spent a year in a World War II prisoner-of-war camp has been denied NHS nursing care because he is 'not ill enough' - despite having just weeks to live with three cancers and dementia. Former RAF sergeant Bernard Warren, 86, was diagnosed with cancer of the stomach, liver and lungs two weeks ago and given two months to live. His wife Tricia, 69, has dutifully nursed him at home for six years as he fell victim to dementia but is now unable to cope with his failing health.   (edit)   Bernard's son...

DAMNING reports on the state of the National Health Service, suppressed by the government, reveal how patients’ needs have been neglected. They diagnose a blind pursuit of political and managerial targets as the root cause of a string of hospital scandals that have cost thousands of lives. The harsh verdict on the state of the NHS, after a spending splurge under Labour between 2000 and 2008, raises worrying questions about the future quality of the health service as budgets are squeezed. One report, based on the advice of almost 200 top managers and doctors, says hospitals ignored basic hygiene to...

I watch the debate over health care with amazement. A million words are spoken on the topic with every passing minute, and as far as I can tell no one has ever addressed the real issue that’s upsetting everyone. So, rather than wait in vain for someone else to finally speak the honest truth about the single-payer system, I’ll just have to do it myself.

A 69-year-old Japanese man injured in a traffic accident died after paramedics spent more than an hour negotiating with 14 hospitals before finding one to admit him, a fire department official said Wednesday. The man, whose bicycle collided with a motorcycle in the western city of Itami, waited at the scene in an ambulance because the hospitals said they could not accept him, citing a lack of specialists, equipment, beds and staff, according to Mitsuhisa Ikemoto. It was the latest in a string of recent cases in Japan in which patients were denied treatment, underscoring the country's health care woes...

Gov. Eliot Spitzer said the state will commission an independent research group to help New York develop a universal health coverage plan. The Department of Health and the Insurance Department will award the $470,000 contract to the Urban Institute, an independent, nonpartisan policy research group, to analyze proposals and develop a ‘‘strategic roadmap’’ to universal health insurance. Health Department officials said the Urban Institute would receive a two-year contract, but officials in the governor’s office expect the group to begin work by March 1 and to have a final recommendation to Spitzer by next summer. The contract must be approved...