Dr. Government

To Lower Healthcare Costs, End The “Certificates Of Need” Racket

"Everybody needs food, but the government does not require entrepreneurs to obtain a certificate of need before opening or expanding a grocery store. Everybody needs healthcare at one time or another, but the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development and 35 states require hospitals to obtain certificates of need (called CONs) before they open their doors or expand. Certificates of need tend to favor large non-profit operations, which are now blocking competition while scamming patients and taxpayers alike."

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US Experimented on Hundreds of Poor Pregnant Women With Radiation

"Somewhere between 750 and 850 women were given trace amounts of radioactive iron in a 'cocktail' drink during their pregnancies by health officials they trusted. Dr. Paul Hahn, the lead researcher behind the experiments, claimed that the study was intended to record the absorption of iron during pregnancy. Vanderbilt spokesman Wayne Wood told the Washington Post that all of the files were destroyed by the research team in the 1970s."

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Jeff Sessions Should Ask Cancer Patients about Cannabis

"Attorney General Jeff Sessions is actively lobbying Congress to overturn existing law prohibiting federal interference in state medical-marijuana policy. As someone who believes in strong constitutional limits on federal power and the rights of patients to choose, I am deeply disappointed. And as a cancer survivor who wanted the choice for myself, I wonder: does Sessions have any idea what it’s like?"

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Montana Prosecutor Declares War On Pregnant Mothers Who Drink

"County Attorney Harris announced the crackdown, saying he will seek protection orders restraining pregnant women from any non-medically prescribed use of illicit drugs or alcohol, and those who violate the orders will be jailed to 'incapacitate' them."

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Nine charged for giving food to homeless in California

"Nine people in California have been charged after they handed out food to the homeless, violating a rule about sharing food in public places. The group were protesting against an emergency ordinance in the city of El Cajon which was introduced in response to California's hepatitis A outbreak. They handed out food, clothes and toiletries on Sunday before police arrived and issued citations."

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Both Sides of the Aisle Fire Back At Jeff Sessions’ New War on Weed

"With legal marijuana enjoying consistent majority support in opinion polls—a Pew poll released Friday at support at 61%--the blowback has been immediate, fierce, and across the board. Feeling particularly vulnerable, legal pot state Republicans howled especially loudly."

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DC Mandates College Degrees For Daycare Workers

"'Outrageous and tone deaf.' 'Madness.' 'Completely counterproductive and wrong-headed.' And that's just within the first few of more than 400 pages of comments submitted by residents of Washington, D.C., a city where child care costs are already some of the highest in the country, in response to an onerous new licensing requirement for daycare workers. The Office of the State Superintendent for Education (OSSE), which regulates daycares and early childhood education programs in the nation's capital, last year passed a rule requiring all daycare workers to have a college degree by 2020."

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Trump bans CDC from using words like “transgender” and “fetus”

"The Trump administration’s foray into linguistic decrees is not a new phenomenon among the American Right. One recent comparable instance of state-decreed censorship: John Ashcroft, a Christian fundamentalist and the first attorney general under George W. Bush, insisted on covering the breasts of a marble statue of the 'Spirit of Justice' that stood in the main Justice building. This act of modesty reportedly cost $8,000 of taxpayer money."

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