THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

HEALTH CARECOMMENTARY

‘Medicare for All’ Actually Isn’t Medicare at All

Kevin Pham  / Kevin Pham, a medical doctor, is a contributor to The Daily Signal and a former graduate fellow in health policy at The Heritage Foundation.   October 28, 2019  

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., was recently on comedian Jimmy Kimmel’s late night show to discuss, among other items on his agenda, his vision for health care in America.

In one interesting statement, Sanders described the rollout of his plan: “I want to expand Medicare to include dental care, hearing aids, and eyeglasses, and then what I want to do is lower the eligibility age the first year from 65 down to 55, then to 45, then to 35, then we cover everybody.”

There is a sleight of hand here.

What Sanders seems to be describing is the gradual expansion of the existing Medicare program, which currently covers Americans 65 and over, to include everyone eventually. In reality, Sanders’ signature bill, “Medicare for All,” is anything but Medicare.

The demand for socialism is on the rise from young Americans today. But is socialism even morally sound? Find out more now >>

Medicare comes in several forms, including Parts A and B, which pay for inpatient and outpatient visits along a fee schedule with premiums and deductibles, and Part C, also known as Medicare Advantage.

This is the system that covers 60 million Americans and enjoys high satisfaction ratings.

Medicare for All would scrap all of this.

One of the most misleading aspects of Medicare for All is that it is not Medicare at all.

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How Dare the GOP Pray for Texas

It is now deplorable to offer ‘thoughts and prayers’ for the First Baptist church families.

www.thepublicdiscourse.com/

Transgenderism: A Pathogenic Meme

by  Paul McHugh  

Paul McHugh, MD, is University Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins Medical School and the former psychiatrist in chief at Johns Hopkins Hospital. He is the author of The Mind Has Mountains: Reflections on Society and Psychiatry.

within Bioethics, Culture, Science, Sexuality

 

June 10th, 2015

 

 576K  7692  590K

The idea that one’s sex is a feeling, not a fact, has permeated our culture and is leaving casualties in its wake. Gender dysphoria should be treated with psychotherapy, not surgery.

For forty years as the University Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins Medical School—twenty-six of which were also spent as Psychiatrist in Chief of Johns Hopkins Hospital—I’ve been studying people who claim to be transgender. Over that time, I’ve watched the phenomenon change and expand in remarkable ways.

A rare issue of a few men—both homosexual and heterosexual men, including some who sought sex-change surgery because they were erotically aroused by the thought or image of themselves as women—has spread to include women as well as men. Even young boys and girls have begun to present themselves as of the opposite sex. Over the last ten or fifteen years, this phenomenon has increased in prevalence, seemingly exponentially. Now, almost everyone has heard of or met such a person.

Publicity, especially from early examples such as “Christine” Jorgenson, “Jan” Morris, and “Renee” Richards, has promoted the idea that one’s biological sex is a choice, leading to widespread cultural acceptance of the concept. And, that idea, quickly accepted in the 1980s, has since run through the American public like a revelation or “meme” affecting much of our thought about sex.

The champions of this meme, encouraged by their alliance with the broader LGBT movement, claim that whether you are a man or a woman, a boy or a girl, is more of a disposition or feeling about yourself than a fact of nature. And, much like any other feeling, it can change at any time, and for all sorts of reasons. Therefore, no one could predict who would swap this fact of their makeup, nor could one justifiably criticize such a decision.

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Mass Shootings and a Mental-Health Disgrace

The federal bureaucracy is anti-patient, anti-family and anti-medical care. Reform is essential

ByTim Murphy

EXCERPT FROM THIS ARTICLE: 

These past few months have brimmed with tragedy. Americans are struggling to make sense of horrific acts of mass violence like the August shooting on live television in Roanoke, Va., and last week’s college campus shooting in Roseburg, Ore.

We all know how this plays out in Congress: a moment of silence on the House floor and a fraternal feeling of melancholy when the flag over the Capitol is lowered to half-staff. But that moment of silence will not heal the hearts of those who lost a loved one, and it will not stop the next tragedy. Here and now we need action; we need real change.

That’s why I’ve authored the Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act. The bill focuses resources and reform where they are most needed: to foster evidence-based care, fix the shortage of psychiatric hospital beds, empower patients and caregivers under HIPAA privacy laws, and help patients get treatment well before their illness spirals into crisis.

As chairman of the House Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee, I led a congressional investigation into our failed mental-health system after the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. What we found was shocking and disgraceful: a wasteful federal bureaucracy that is anti-patient, anti-family and anti-medical care. The federal government has more than 112 programs that deal with mental health in one way or another, yet a person with serious mental illness is 10 times more likely to be in a prison cell than a psychiatric hospital bed.