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Health Care Tag

When President Obama said he would fundamentally transform America, who could have guessed it meant that exotic diseases and once-vanquished illnesses would break out across the county? The Zika virus, which we have been following closely, is increasing its footprint within our country. Florida Governor Rick Scott just announced that the Zika virus transmission zone in Miami Beach has tripled in size.
The new zone was set after the Department of Health identified five people, two males and three females, in the area who all experienced Zika symptoms within one month of one another. The virus poses a particular threat to pregnant woman due to its link with neurological disorders in unborn children. It brings the total of nontravel-related Zika cases in Miami Beach to 35.
When was the last time you heard about leprosy, also known as Hansen's disease, which is a devastating bacterial infection that mostly occurs in poverty-sticken regions of the world? Now, a California school has reported two as yet unconfirmed cases among its student body.

Few sciences have been as settled as dietary science.... until recently. I chronicled the substantial revisions issued regarding the scientific "consensus" about cholesterol last year. The "War on Cholesterol" has officially ended, though there is evidence that it adversely impacted American health and the nation's egg farmers while reaping absolutely no benefit. Now a new analysis of correspondence during the 1960's between a sugar trade group and researchers at Harvard University indicate there was an apparent collusion that ultimately cast doubt on sugar's role in heart disease and directed all the blame at fat.

Although we haven't heard much about it recently, the VA scandal is very much alive and well. The National Review published an article about the wide-ranging problems with the VA in April of this year.  Here's a quick reminder, neatly encapsulated in NR's review of VA-related stories:
The Veterans Affairs–scandal headlines speak for themselves. The Daily Beast: “Veteran Burned Himself Alive outside VA Clinic”; azfamily.com: “Dead veterans canceling their own appointments?”; New York Times: “Report Finds Sharp Increase in Veterans Denied V.A. Benefits,” “More than 125,000 U.S. veterans are being denied crucial mental health services,” and “Rubio, Miller ask committee to back VA accountability bills.” Two years ago this week [April, 2016]— thanks to courageous whistleblowers in Phoenix and a fed-up House Veterans Affairs Committee chairman — the world was finally exposed to rampant VA dysfunction and corruption. Dozens of veterans had died while waiting for care at the Phoenix VA — which was, unfortunately, just the tip of the iceberg. Across the country, VA officials had manipulated lists to hide real health-care wait times. In total, thousands — and possibly far more — met the same fate: waiting, and dying, at the hands of a calcified and soulless bureaucracy. Investigations were launched, and VA Secretary Eric Shinseki eventually resigned.
Rather than attempting to correct a wide array of serious problems--ranging from incompetence to corruption, the VA has instead and in defiance of a 2014 law  "quietly" stopped sending performance data to a national database for consumers.

I noted that Senate Democrats protected the sacred cow of Planned Parenthood when they blocked a bill to fight the spread of the Zika virus in this country. That decision now has consequences, as the coffers for the War against Zika are now running low.
Another government agency fighting Zika has run out of cash to do it, as Congress fights over whether and how to come up with more. The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases has spent all the money it has for work on Zika, says the agency's director, Dr. Anthony Fauci. That includes money for further work on a Zika vaccine.

The prof's post entitled "ObamaCare is the Gateway Drug to Single-payer" couldn't be more apt.  There are serious flaws with ObamaCare, and in the terms by which it was presented to the American people, it has been a colossal failure from its foundation to its implementation . . . at least those "good" and popular parts that Obama has allowed to take effect (he's kicked the not-so-good, deeply unpopular parts down the road). Hillary has a plan to address the problem that she sees as central to ObamaCare's continued unpopularity, and that plan (surprise, surprise) involves the federal government's involvement with / setting of prescription drug pricing.  Her plan is so threatening to free market principles that Pfizer's CEO says that if implemented this plan will lead directly to single-payer.

While he was running for Senate in the 2012, Ted Cruz spoke extensively on the virtues of portable health insurance -- insurance not associated with any particular employer, but insurance that works more like vehicle insurance or homeowner's insurance. Though the idea is not unique to Senator Cruz, in a world where Obamacare is causing premiums to sky rocket, coverage to lessen, and government-sponsored co-ops to flop, portable health insurance is becoming a frequent visitor in health insurance reform circles. "More insurance plans will move with the person, not the job. That's real health security," said Speaker Ryan recently, explaining his new health care proposal. "This is not the twentieth century where you have the same job for your entire career, your entire life. You move around, you bounce around. We want to have a twenty-first century system that's portable with the person."

There is another disturbing report related to the spread of the Zika virus; however, this one doesn't involve birth defects or neurological problems. Millions of honey bees were killed after areas of South Carolina were sprayed to kill the mosquitoes that transmit the pathogen.
"On Saturday, it was total energy, millions of bees foraging, pollinating, making honey for winter," beekeeper Juanita Stanley said. "Today, it stinks of death. Maggots and other insects are feeding on the honey and the baby bees who are still in the hives. It's heartbreaking." Stanley, co-owner of Flowertown Bee Farm and Supply in Summerville, South Carolina, said she lost 46 beehives -- more than 3 million bees -- in mere minutes after the spraying began Sunday morning. "Those that didn't die immediately were poisoned trying to drag out the dead," Stanley said. "Now, I'm going to have to destroy my hives, the honey, all my equipment. It's all contaminated."
Truly, the images of the bee-keepers assessing the loss of both their bees and their livelihoods are heartbreaking:

About a week ago, I noted that new Food and Drug Administration regulations were snuffing out e-cigarette firms. Now the FDA is going to save us from our hand soaps:
The Food and Drug Administration has issued a final rule that throws water on claims that antibacterial soaps and washes are more effective than regular soap. The new rule bans antibacterial soaps and body washes containing certain ingredients from being marketed, because the ingredients were not proved to be safe and effective for long-term daily use, the FDA said Friday.

Mylan received massive backlash after it hiked the price of their EpiPen, a life saving allergy shot. At first the company said it would offer the medicine at a discount price, but now it has taken it a step further by offering a generic version. But is it enough? The name brand costs $600, but Mylan only cut the price of the generic to $300, which is still a lot for a two pack.

In the last Zika update I filed for Legal Insurrection, I noted 4 Floridians were determined to have been infected with Zika locally (most probably by mosquito bites). Now it anticipated that there will be up to 400 non-travel Zika cases in Florida by mid-September.
Locally transmitted Zika cases in Florida could reach 400 by summer’s end, projections released Tuesday by a team of American biostatisticians suggests. Researchers project the virus will also spread to other Southern states, including Texas, South Carolina and Oklahoma. “It wasn’t clear at first whether mosquito densities were high enough to sustain an outbreak in the U.S.,” Dr. Ira Longini, a biostatistics professor at the University of Florida and a senior researcher at UF’s Emerging Pathogen Institute, said in a news release. That all changed when Zika began being transmitted in Miami, where officials had reported 37 non-travel-related Zika cases as of Monday. On Tuesday, that number rose to 41, consisting of four new cases in South Florida and one in the Tampa, Florida, area.
The rate of spread of Zika through the Sunshine State could be increased by storms projected to hit its shores through hurricane season.

Single-payer healthcare is the Democrats' holy grail, because it put the government completely in charge of one-fifth of the economy and every single person's healthcare. It's total control, but at least as of 2008, it wasn't a platform on which Obama could run. But as this early video shows, single-payer was always the goal. Similarly, failed 2014 NY-23 Democratic challenger Martha Robertson was a big single-payer supporter. But in NY-23, a Republican +4 district that has a hardcore liberal Ithaca-area contingent from which Robertson hailed, single payer won't fly. So Robertson didn't run on single payer, she ran on Obamacare. But in moments of candor uncovered by Legal Insurrection, Robertson admitted that Obamacare was just the stepping stone to single payer.

Mylan came under fire after it recently hiked the price of their EpiPen, a life saving allergy shot. They have now decided to offer the medicine at a discount price for some patients. In a statement, the company said it will use a savings card "which will cover up to $300" for the medicine. Mylen claims that those who "were previously paying the full amount of the company's list price for EpiPen®, this effectively reduces their out-of-pocket cost exposure by 50%."

Not only has Venezuelan President Nicolas Madura's socialist policies starved people to death, but he has also brought back malaria. The New York Times has reported that desperate times have forced people to seek out gold in watery mines infested with mosquitos, which has led to the malaria resurgence because socialism ruined the economy and the country lacks medicine.

The progressive left is apparently intent on confusing and traumatizing children when it comes to "gender identity."  The latest example of this mission is a unicorn coloring exercise in which children are asked to color their unicorn to match the gender they "feel" is their own. The Washington Free Beacon reports:
“Gender Unicorns” that kids can color in to express their “gender identity” are now being distributed in schools across the country. A transgender advocacy group is providing schools with the cartoon of a purple unicorn who appears to be thinking about the LGBT rainbow, causing outrage from parents. . . . The group, Trans Student Educational Resources, says the Gender Unicorn is an upgrade from the “Genderbread Person,” another cartoon graphic about gender identity targeting children.
The gender unicorn coloring page:

Alzheimer's disease is a scourge that's so common that most of us know at least one person who has had it, and often considerably more than one. It's a tragedy and an ordeal both for the afflicted and for those who love them and care for them. I probably don't have to describe the details of the terrible and progressive dementia it causes in many elderly people and a few not-so-elderly; you all almost certainly know quite a bit about it from bitter personal experience, or from reading articles or watching documentaries and movies. That's why this is very heartening news. There have been reports of effective treatments before that haven't panned out, but this one seems a bit more promising: