"Sanofi's proprietary Apidra brand insulin has increased in price by 1,123% since 1996. So they've turned to the black market, trading the insulin that Corely's insurer will buy with other diabetic people they meet on the internet, who are covered on plans that buy the kind of insulin Corely needs to not slip into a coma and die before her tenth birthday." Continue reading →
"A new form of insurance that this law may create: A policy that would pay for health insurance premiums if the user ever got sick enough to need them. Such insurance would be very cheap, as the maximum exposure to the insurance company is only 130% of the premium for a standard health insurance policy. In the end, the only people buying health insurance would be those who can buy it for free using their tax credits and really sick people for whom insurance premiums are cheaper than their medical bills. But as insurance companies lose money on the latter group, they will be forced to raise their premiums on the former. This puts us right back in the box we are stuck in with Obamacare." Continue reading →
"The official goal of the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act was to make college more affordable. How? By making loans to students. The effect has been to lure millions of students into long-term debt for the purchase of liberal arts degrees that do not lead to high-income jobs. ObamaLoans took loan-making decisions away from banks and placed this into the hands of federal employees at the Department of Education — bureaucrats with job tenure. The amount of student debt owed to the U.S. government in 2009 was $120 billion. Today, it is $675 billion. In July 2010, ObamaCare was passed. That’s when the loans began to multiply." Continue reading →
"Last Friday, Health Canada used some creative rule-reading to approve a program that would provide prescription heroin to a small number of hard-core users, and the Conservative health minister isn't happy. But doctors, advocates, and the users themselves are quite pleased -- and once again, Canada stays on the cutting edge when it comes to dealing smartly with heroin use. Health Canada approved access to prescription heroin for at least 15 people who are completing their participation in Vancouver's Study to Assess Long-term Opioid Dependence (SALOME), which is testing whether prescribing heroin was more effective than prescribing methadone." Continue reading →
"A powerful report spanning 10 years from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has revealed that painkillers are actually responsible for a whopping four times as many deaths as both heroin and cocaine combined. While the previous report documented in 2011 found that 12 million were actually on prescription painkillers purely for the high it gives, the new CDC papers found that there was a massive 415% rise in the overall rate of fatal painkiller overdoses from 1999 to 2010. We’re talking about a higher fatality rate than those who are dosing up on heroin and cocaine." Continue reading →
"The 17-year-old, who suffers from an aggressive cancer, lost his case against Sydney Children’s Hospital in March in which he had argued that treating him with blood products or a transfusion would breach his relationship with God. 'There is no doubting (the applicant’s) devotion to his faith, but his life has been cocooned in that faith,' Justice Ian Gzell said at the time. 'The sanctity of life in the end is a more powerful reason for me to make the orders than is respect for the dignity of the individual.'" Continue reading →
"A vice principal at an Upper Kanawha Valley high school and a sheriff’s deputy assigned to it are accused of falsely imprisoning and arresting a special education student. Andrew Johnson, vice principal at Riverside High School, and Cpl. Richard Lane are named as co-defendants in civil rights suit filed by Betsy Frame. In her suit, filed Sept. 10 in Kanawha Circuit Court, Frame, 41 and a Belle resident, alleges Johnson and Lane illegally detained and arrested her daughter nearly two years ago when they mistook her reaction to waking up from a seizure-induced nap as an act of aggression." Continue reading →
"Many people roll their eyes at 'those idiots in Washington!' as if these obvious outcomes are somehow a surprise. No, the people in Washington have trained economists on their staffs. They understand incentives, even though their rhetoric suggests that they don’t. Over the coming years, as the delivery of US healthcare suffers and citizens become justifiably outraged, they will be led to demand greater and greater government involvement to thwart the 'greedy' insurance companies and 'overpriced' hospitals. This is part of the plan, as some glib proponents of ObamaCare have let slip." Continue reading →
"Home Depot Inc. (HD), the world’s largest home improvement retailer, plans to end medical coverage for about 20,000 part-time employees and direct them to government-sponsored exchanges scheduled to open next month as companies revamp benefits to fit the U.S. Affordable Care Act. Employees with fewer than 30 hours a week will no longer be offered limited liability medical coverage, Stephen Holmes, a spokesman, said today by telephone. About 5 percent of Atlanta-based Home Depot’s 340,000 employees are enrolled in that plan. United Parcel Service Inc. (UPS), Trader Joe’s Co. and other employers have been cutting benefits ahead of next month’s roll-out." Continue reading →