Townhall | Maggie Gallagher | Apr. 8, 2008
Hillary Clinton had a great story to tell over and over again in her stump speech: An uninsured Ohio pregnant woman lost her baby and died because she could not afford a $100 up-front fee.
What a tale! What an indictment. What government bureaucracy could be worse than a health care system where stuff like that is permitted to happen? [Read more…]
Acton.org | Dr. Donald P. Condit | Jan. 9, 2008
Daniel interpreted the writing on the wall for the decadent King Belshazzar. “You have been weighed on the scales and found wanting” (Daniel 5:27). Socialized medicine deserves similar judgment. [Read more…]
Union-Tribune | Cheryl Clark & Leslie Berestein | Oct. 31, 2007
The fact that 11 of the 18 wildfire victims lying in UCSD Medical Center’s burn unit are illegal immigrants with no apparent health coverage highlights the daunting financial challenge hospitals face in providing long-term, intensive care for all those who need it.
“These are the most expensive kinds of cases, but we don’t look at these patients and say, oh, because they aren’t legal residents, we’ll stop providing care or stop changing their bandages,” said Dr. Thomas McAfee, UCSD’s physician-in-chief. “It’s part of our ethic to continue to provide this care no matter what.”
Capitalism and competition are helping reduce medical costs.
South Florida Sun-Sentinel | Jacob Langston | Aug. 6, 2007
CAPE CORAL – Publix supermarket chain said today it will make seven common prescription antibiotics available for free, joining other major retailers in trying to lure customers to their stores with cheap medications.
The oral antibiotics, representing the most commonly filled at the chain’s pharmacies, will be available at no cost to anyone with a prescription as often as they need them, Publix CEO Charlie Jenkins Jr. said. Fourteen-day supplies of the seven drugs will be available at all 684 of the chain’s pharmacies in five Southern states.
City Journal Magazine | David Gratzer | Summer, 2007
Socialized medicine has meant rationed care and lack of innovation. Small wonder Canadians are looking to the market.
Mountain-bike enthusiast Suzanne Aucoin had to fight more than her Stage IV colon cancer. Her doctor suggested Erbitux—a proven cancer drug that targets cancer cells exclusively, unlike conventional chemotherapies that more crudely kill all fast-growing cells in the body—and Aucoin went to a clinic to begin treatment. But if Erbitux offered hope, Aucoin’s insurance didn’t: she received one inscrutable form letter after another, rejecting her claim for reimbursement. Yet another example of the callous hand of managed care, depriving someone of needed medical help, right? Guess again. Erbitux is standard treatment, covered by insurance companies—in the United States. Aucoin lives in Ontario, Canada.
FrontPageMagazine.com | Jacob Laksin July 18, 2007
When Michael Moore recently premiered his new documentary Sicko, liberal Democrats and likeminded pundits were quick to applaud the big-budget paean to socialized medicine. Not among those clapping was filmmaker Stuart Browning.
Ed. This is what national health care advocates want the US system to become.
London Telegraph Nic Fleming April 11, 2006
Prostate cancer patients are being denied access to specialist care and approved treatments because of financial difficulties in the NHS, campaigners said yesterday.
SHAWN POGATCHNIK, Associated Press Writer July 31, 2006
Irish archaeologists Tuesday heralded the discovery of an ancient book of psalms by a construction worker who spotted something while driving the shovel of his backhoe into a bog.