ObamaCare must go

ObamaCare Must Go from the Warning Signs by Alan Caruba at Facts-not-Fantasy

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Can anyone remember how awful the U.S. healthcare free market system was that it needed to be replaced by the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as ObamaCare? Can’t remember? That’s because it was ranked one of the best of the world and represented 17.9% of the nation’s economy in 2014. That’s down from the 20% it represented in 2009 when ObamaCare was foisted on Americans.

One of the best ways to follow the ObamaCare story is via Health Care News, a monthly newspaper published by The Heartland Institute. The January issue begins with an article by Sean Parnell, the managing editor, reporting that ObamaCare enrollment is overstated by 400,000.

“The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) once again lowered its estimate of the number of Americans enrolled in health plans through government exchanges in 2014. The 6.7 million enrollees who remain are far lower than the eight million touted in May at the end of the last open-enrollment period.”

ObamaCare has been a lie from the moment it was introduced for a vote, all 2,700 pages of it, to the present day. Everything President Obama said about it was a lie. As to its present enrollments, they keep dropping because some 900,000 who did sign up did not make the first premium payment or later stopped paying.

Michael Cannon, director of health policy studies as the Cato Institute, said the dropout rate is a troubling trend. “It means that potentially hundreds of thousands of Exchange enrollees are realizing they are better off waiting until they get sick to purchase coverage. If enough people come to that conclusion, the exchanges collapse.”

Elsewhere in this month’s edition, there is an article, “States Struggle to Fund Exchanges”, that reports on the difficulties that “states are experiencing difficulty in paying the ongoing costs of the exchanges, especially small states."

'The feds are asking us to do their jobs for them. We get saddled with the operating costs,’ said Edmund Haislmaier, senior research fellow for health care policy studies at The Heritage Foundation.” Some are imposing a two percent tax on the insurance companies which, of course, gets passed along to the consumer. Even so, the exchanges are not generating enough income to be maintained.

Why would anyone want ObamaCare insurance when its rates keep rising dramatically? In Nebraska the rates have nearly doubled and another article notes that “A 2014 study finds large numbers of doctors are declining to participate in health plans offered through exchanges under the Affordable Care Act, raising questions about whether people buying insurance through exchanges will be able to access health care in a timely manner.”

One reason physicians gave was that they would have to hire additional staff “just to manage the insurance verification process.”

Dr. Kris Held, a Texas eye surgeon, said ObamaCare “fails to provide affordable health insurance and fails to provide access to actual medical care to more people, but succeeds in compounding existing health care costs and accessibility problems and creating new ones.”

Health Care News reports what few other news outlets have noted. “In Section 227 of the recently enacted ‘Cromnibus’ spending measure, Congress added critical but little-noticed language that prohibits the use of funds appropriated to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to pay for insurance company bailouts.”

William Todd, an Ohio attorney, further noted that “Congress did not appropriate any separate funding for ‘bailouts.’” Todd predicted that “some insurers are likely to raise premiums to avoid losses, or they will simply stop offering policies on the exchanges altogether.”

The picture of ObamaCare failure emerging from these excerpts is a very true one. Its momentum, in fact, is gaining.

In mid-December, the Wall Street Journal opined that “With the Supreme Court due to rule on a major ObamaCare legal challenge by next summer, thoughts in Washington are turning to the practical and political response.

If the Court does strike down insurance subsidies, the question for Republicans running Congress is whether they will try to fix the problems Democrats created, or merely allow ObamaCare damage to grow.”

“King v. Burwell will be heard in March with a ruling likely in June. “Of the 5.4 million consumers on federal exchanges, some 87% drew subsidies in 2014, according to a Rand Corporation analysis.”

The Wall Street Journal recommended that “The immediate Republican goal should be to make insurance cheaper so people need less of a subsidy to obtain insurance. This means deregulating the exchanges, plank by plank. Devolve to states their traditional insurance oversight role, and allow them to enter into cross-border compacts to increase choice and competition.

Allow insurers to sell any configuration of benefits to anyone, anywhere, and the private market will gradually heal.”

Or, to put it another way, eliminate ObamaCare entirely and return to the healthcare insurance system that had served Americans well until the White House decided that socialism was superior to capitalism.

The problem with the Affordable Care Act is that the cost of the insurance sold under the Act is not affordable and ObamaCare is actually causing hospitals and clinics to close their doors, thus reducing healthcare services for those who need them.

ObamaCare must go. If the Republicans in Congress did nothing more than repeal ObamaCare, the outcome of the 2016 election would be a predictable win no matter who their candidate will be. If not repeal, some separate actions must be taken such as eliminating the tax on medical instruments.

If the Republican Congress fails to take swift and deliberate action on ObamaCare between now and the 2016 elections, they will have defeated themselves.

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Buy your health insurance out of state

Buy your health insurance out of state from the files of Jeff Jacoby at the Boston Globe

Read the Jacoby Files at the Boston Globe

The second open enrollment period for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act is underway, and the law is more unpopular than ever. According to Gallup, a record-high 56 percent of Americans now disapprove of the 2010 law.

Reasons to dislike ObamaCare have abounded from the outset, and on Friday the administration unveiled a new one: In large swaths of the country, the price of insurance sold on the federal health exchange is going up.

That will force many of those who bought coverage last year to scramble to find a new policy or fork over as much as 20 percent in higher premiums. How's that "affordable" health care working out for you?

Republicans in Congress — less inclined than some deep thinkers to sneer at "the stupidity of the American people" — unanimously opposed the Affordable Care Act when it was enacted, and were rewarded in the 2010 midterms for their steadfastness.

In the ensuing four years, Republicans repeatedly called for replacing ObamaCare with alternatives expanding choice, competition, and market reforms — and the voters just rewarded them again.

Of course, even with their new majorities in Congress Republicans will have to contend with President Obama's veto pen. So a bill "repealing every last vestige of ObamaCare," as Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky exuberantly proposed on Election Night, isn't in the cards anytime soon.

But that doesn't mean there is nothing to be done, particularly since the Supreme Court has agreed to hear a new challenge to the law, one that could potentially cause ObamaCare to topple under its own weight.

One way or another, changes in the law are coming. Not all of them have to be bitterly controversial, or provoke cries of Republican overreaching. Here's a suggestion: Allow individuals to buy health insurance from out of state.

In an age when consumers can purchase almost anything from vendors almost anywhere, government policies protecting insurance companies from interstate competition are indefensible. Lawmakers would be laughed out of office, rightly, if they insisted that the only CDs, cellphones, or ceramics their constituents could buy were those manufactured in the state where they lived.

All sorts of financial products are routinely acquired without to state borders proving an impenetrable barrier: life insurance, service warranties, stocks and bonds, bank accounts, credit cards. Why should a medical plan be any different?

How America Views the Patient Protection Affordable Care Act

There is no good reason to deny freedom of choice to Americans when it comes to buying health insurance. Yet licensing rules in virtually every state effectively prevent individual residents from shopping for health plans in any other state.

Consequently, there is no national market for health insurance. There are only autonomous state markets, many dominated by near-monopolies that can get away with offering lower quality insurance at ever-higher premiums.

As Michael Cannon of the Cato Institute points out, it isn't only insurance companies that are sheltered from the rigors of competition. Insurance regulators are insulated too. State governments, inveigled by special interests, can burden health insurance policies with more and more mandatory benefits, driving up premiums to cover services that many consumers would never willingly choose.

In Massachusetts, for instance, health insurance policies must cover at least 49 specified treatments and types of providers, among them midwives, infertility treatments, hair prostheses, and chiropractors.

But what if all you want is a plain-vanilla health plan akin to those sold by insurers in New Hampshire (only 38 state-required health-care mandates) or, better yet, in Michigan (24) or Idaho (13)? Tough luck. That's what it means when interstate commerce in health insurance is blocked.

Polls show broad public support for the idea — as high as 77 percent in a recent Rasmussen poll. Legislation to overhaul the Affordable Care Act, currently being drafted by Florida Senator Marco Rubio and Wisconsin Representative Paul Ryan, will reportedly include interstate choice.

"We want … every American to be able to buy the kind of health insurance they want at a price that they are willing to buy and from any company in America that will sell it to you," Rubio said in a recent radio interview.

Which isn't to say change can only come from above. One can envision a moderate, pro-reform governor championing such market choice at the state level — a just-elected Republican, say, with a deep knowledge of the health insurance industry.

How about it, Charlie Baker? Why not use that new bully pulpit to advocate for legislation freeing Massachusetts residents to buy a health policy from any properly licensed insurance company in America willing to sell it to them?

It's a fix long overdue. With the distortions imposed first by RomneyCare and then ObamaCare, Massachusetts could use it more than ever. The rest of the country could too.

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Dr. Emanuel's death wish

Dr. Emanuel's Death Wish from the files of Jeff Jacoby at the Boston Globe

Emanuel's essay appears in the October 2014
issue of The Atlantic.

THE ELDERLY are such a pain, aren't they? Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel thinks so. Half of those older than 80 have "functional limitations," the prominent health policy analyst and key ObamaCare architect writes in the October issue of The Atlantic.

One in three Americans 85 and up has Alzheimer's. Old people are more likely to be disabled, or at least "faltering and declining." They lose their creative mojo. They don't "contribute to work, society, the world." Instead of being regarded as "vibrant and engaged," they grow "feeble, ineffectual, even pathetic."

Especially disagreeable are old parents, who can be so irritating: "They set expectations, render judgments, impose their opinions, interfere, and are generally a looming presence for even adult children," Emanuel complains. By living too long, parents blow their chance to impart "the right memories" to their kids.

Nothing could be worse, he insists, than being remembered not as we were in our prime, but as old and decrepit — "stooped and sluggish, forgetful and repetitive, constantly asking, 'What did she say?'" To leave behind memories of our frailty "is the ultimate tragedy."

And that, declares Emanuel, is "Why I Hope to Die at 75."

In his 5,000-word Atlantic essay, Emanuel — who heads the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy at the University of Pennsylvania, and has an appointment at National Institutes of Health— announces that once he reaches 75, he will decline nearly all medical treatment. No more flu shots, no colonoscopies or other screenings, no pacemakers or surgery.

"If I develop cancer, I will refuse treatment," he writes. He won't even take antibiotics to cure pneumonia or an infection, preferring instead to be carried off by the "quick and relatively painless" death untreated infection usually leads to.

Or so he says.

Debate over the health resources consumed by America's elderly have been ongoing for decades. As a candidate for Massachusetts governor in 1990, Boston University's John Silber famously generated sparks when he replied to a question about the surging costs of medical care for the elderly by asserting:

"When you've had a long life and you're ripe, then it's time to go." President Obama has suggested the same thing, albeit far more tactfully. In 2009 he cited his grandmother's hip-replacement surgery during her final illness, publicly questioning whether such costly procedures for the terminally ill are a "sustainable model" for health care.

Over the years Emanuel has energetically weighed in on these issues, but that's not the focus of his Atlantic essay. His argument is not about dollars and cents, it's about quality of life. Death is a loss, but "living too long is also a loss" — loss of vigor, of autonomy, of productivity, of smarts, of ambition. If we're to take him at his word, he cannot bear the thought of slowing down as he ages.

He recoils from the way the old gradually learn to "accommodate [their] physical and mental limitations" — retiring from a profession, taking up hobbies, doing and daring less.

"As walking becomes harder and the pain of arthritis limits the fingers' mobility, life comes to center around sitting in the den reading or listening to books on tape and doing crossword puzzles." 

Emanuel, whose essay is accompanied by a picture of himself and two nephews on Mount Kilimanjaro, would rather die of pneumonia than live like that. He maintains he is "certainly not scorning or dismissing people who want to live on" despite the debilities of old age. But it's hard to take that disclaimer seriously, when the whole point of his essay is that a diminished life isn't worth prolonging.

Once he reaches his 75th birthday, says Emanuel, a key
architect of the Affordable Care Act, he will refuse virtually
all routine medical care, including flu shots and antibiotics.

He mocks Americans who exercise, do mental puzzles, and consume "various juice and protein concoctions" in their quest to live longer. "Manic desperation," he calls it. "Misguided." "Potentially destructive." That's not scorn?

Maybe Emanuel is merely being provocative. He acknowledges that 75 is an arbitrary age to designate as the boundary between a vibrant life and a feeble one. He admits there are "myriad people I know who are over 75 and doing quite well."

At the start of his essay, he claims "I am sure of my position" — yet reserves the right, at the very end, to change his mind once he reaches his 75th birthday.

Emanuel is 57 now, which gives him 18 years to reconsider his death wish, and to learn, perhaps, that the declines of advanced age can be a blessing as well as a curse. To be able to accept the pains and impediments of mortality requires a measure of courage and dignity that few of us are blessed with — or can even imagine — in our prime. Emanuel's own father, now 87, has slowed down considerably. His career is over. His son describes him as "sluggish." And yet the old man describes himself as happy.

Emanuel may dread the prospect of ending up like his father. But he's still young, and not yet wise.

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The Obamacare Disaster

The Obamacare Disaster from the Warning Signs of Alan Caruba at Facts-not-Fantasy

Know Caruba's Warning Signs

By far the worst law passed by Congress in 2010 was the Affordable Care Act (ACA) otherwise known as Obamacare.

It was passed without a single Republican vote and as more Americans experience the higher costs and other aspects of it realize how it has negatively affected their lives, it should eventually be dismembered and ended.

Obamacare is progressivism written large and is an example of earlier examples. Obamacare is a massive drain on government funding, particularly with regard to Medicaid. Medicare and Medicaid were established in 1965 and after 47 years they are broke. Their unfunded liabilities are enormous.

Likewise, Social Security, established in 1935 is broke. Fannie Mae came into being in 1938 to encourage home ownership and contributed to the 2008 financial crash along with the banks that were pressured to make “sub-prime” loans to people who lacked the means to pay their mortgages. It had to be bailed out to the tune of millions. The same is true of Freddie Mac, established in 1970.

Time and time again, the programs established out of progressive ideals and purposes have proven to be failures, largely in terms of the unfunded liabilities, now in the trillions, that they have created.

Obamacare is famous for the lies that President Obama told. Thousands lost the medical insurance they had. Thousands lost access to their personal physicians. The Obama administration has continued to lie about it, inflating and including the numbers of “uninsured” it covers by including those who lost their insurance and had to sign up for it.

Stephen T. Parente, the associate dean of Carlson School of Management and director of the Medical Industry Leadership Institute at the University of Minnesota, in a June Wall Street opinion, warned that “Industry experts and consumers should once again brace for significantly higher premiums.”

“Since premium growth has averaged at least 5% over the past five years, it is unlikely the law’s federal subsidies will increase enough to make up the difference in out-of-pocket premium costs,” predicting that “lower-and-middle income consumers will be forced out of the private insurance market.” He noted that “the steepest increases will not occur until 2017” and, of course, by then Obama will be out of office.

The Detroit Press reported on Sept. 21 that “A significant benefit of the Affordable Care Act is the opportunity to receive money-saving tax credits up front to cut the overall cost of health insurance, but now hundreds of thousands of consumers could owe back some of that money next April.”

“The law’s ‘reinsurance’ program will also expire in 2017. Health insurers will no longer be able to bill the government for 80% of a patient’s healthcare costs when they make more than $45,000 in annual claims.”

The impact of Obamacare on the ability of people to have full-time jobs is already being felt as employers, especially small business operations, have been forced to either fire full-time employees to stay below the limit of fifty or reduce some to a part-time status. This is affecting the ability of smaller businesses to grow and expand. Those unable to afford Obamacare will be forced to sign up for Medicaid, already a financial burden on states. Others will stay uninsured and face a penalty.

Parente called Obamacare’s promise to deliver universal health care “a fatal conceit” that will die of unaffordability,

In September, Casey B. Mulligan, a professor of economics at the University of Chicago, in a Wall Street Journal opinion wrote that “Although the ACA helps specific populations by giving them a bigger slice of the economic pie, the law diminishes the pie itself. It reduces the amount that Americans work and it makes their work less productive. This slows growth in both personal income and gross domestic product. In further expanding the frontiers of redistribution, the ACA reduces the benefits of employment for both employers and employees” as the “result of penalizing businesses for hiring and expanding” resulting in less hiring and expanding.”

That’s a formula for reducing the nation’s economic growth.

Holman W. Jenkins, in a September opinion, described Obamacare as “just another subsidy program, throwing money at health care. In economics, you can’t subsidize everybody but we’re trying: 50 million Americans get help from Medicare, 65 million from Medicaid, nine million from the Department of Veterans Affairs, seven million (and counting) from Obamacare, and a whopping 149 million from the giant tax handout for employer-provided health insurance.”

“Much of this money,” noted Jenkins, which will total about $1.3 trillion in 2014, is shoveled out regardless of need, driving up prices, and spurring production of services of dubious value.” Holman is a member of the Wall Street Journal editorial board.

Meanwhile, the U.S. continues to suffer economically as, due to high corporate taxes, more corporations take flight to other nations, establishing their headquarters outside of our nation.

In every respect, Obamacare has been a disaster since it was enacted. Its website turned out to be a multi-million dollar failure and this was the case of several state sites as well. In mid-September the government reported that tens of thousands of people are likely to lose their health insurance at the end of the month because they missed a deadline to confirm they are legally residing in the U.S.

Most dramatically, Obamacare has required the President to do what he is not empowered by the Constitution to do. Only Congress can change a law, but Obama has unilaterally made changes, mostly out of political considerations leading up to the November midterm elections.

The following Democrats are running for re-election in November. They are Mark Begich (AL), Dick Durbin (IL), Al Franken (MN), Kay Hagan, (NC), Mary Landriu (LA), Jeff Merkley (OR), Mark Pryor (AR), Jack Reed (RI), Jeanne Shaheen (NH), Mark Udall (CO), Tom Udall (NM), and Mark Warner (VA). All voted for Obamacare. All should be defeated and replaced by Republicans.

I will leave whether Obamacare can be repealed to a future Congress, but the House, controlled by Republicans has repeatedly passed laws to do so.

Obamacare is the ultimate progressive legislation. One can only hope that it will convince Americans it is time to turn from its long history of passing such legislation and endorse steps to reduce the enormous unfunded debt they represent.

Instead of bleeding Americans of their earnings, Congress needs to empower them to retain what they have worked for and to make individual decisions about healthcare insurance purchased from a free and competitive market.

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Prayers: Asked and answered for a half-century

Prayers: Asked and answered for a half-century from the files of Armstrong Williams at the Washington Times


When Thelma Williams first discovered that her son Gerald had been born with autism, she began praying and never stopped. Five decades later my mother, now 88, still gets up each morning at 5 a.m. and recites the Lord’s Prayer over my brother.

Meet Armstrong Washington

She prays for his protection, for she must send him out each day to face an uncertain world. Though Gerald cannot speak a word of English, he emits a series of grunts, “gah … gah … gah,” in reverent acknowledgement.

Gerald is now a 55-year-old man who is beloved in his community. Though he cannot speak, he attends church every Sunday. He is a big fan of gospel music and becomes truly excited whenever it comes on the radio. He spends almost all of his free time watching televised sermons and gospel performances.

By all accounts he is not merely mimicking the words and actions but truly feels the presence of God. It shows in his actions and how he treats people. He is exceedingly kind and almost always in high spirits. He is a balm to those who know and love him.

Gerald attends a special school every day, as he has done for the past 25 years. The school is dedicated to people with autism and teaches techniques that help with socialization and communications skills.

It teaches them to use their limited skills to communicate a broad range of emotions and needs, because often people with the disability can experience pain or discomfort and not show the usual signs that those without the condition might exhibit.

Despite these limitations in cognition and communication, a wonderful spirit has evolved. My mother’s prayers are answered in the way only God could answer them; in perfect time, and perfect in manner.

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Armstrong Williams is executive editor of American CurrentSee and station group owner of NBC-25, WEYI in Flint, Michigan and CW-21, WWMB in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.

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Obama encourages emergency room freeloaders

Obamacare Encourages Emergency Room Freeloaders from the Newsmax files of Michael Shannon

A rational healthcare system would discourage emergency room frequent flyers from abusing the system to make room for serious cases and those who pay their way.

But we live in 21st Century America, the Obama-nation where dependency and irresponsibility are nothing of which to be ashamed.

Read Shannon's detailed report at the Newsmax Link.

You Too Can Beat Cancer

You Can Beat Cancer from the Radio Show files of Mary Jane Popp at KAHI

Click Here - You Too Can Beat Cancer

Dr. Carl Helvie is the longest known survivor of lung cancer. He is an experienced Nurse Practitioner and Nationally acclaimed author of “You Can Beat Cancer” using Alternative/Integrative Interventions.

He hosts “The Holistic Health Show.” According to the good Doctor, a new study has presented data that “Taking small amounts of aspirin over long periods of time reduces the risk of colon cancer and certain other cancers in people 50-65.

It has been found that taking aspirin for at least five years also limits mortality, along with reducing the risk of cancer.

He shared his insightful journey through the terror of cancer diagnosis and how he persevered to conquer it on my POPPOFF Radio Show.

So I asked him if he could give me his top ten tips to prevent/treat cancer.

USE THE HOLISTIC APPROACH. This involves a combination of physical, spiritual, and social support activities.

BUILD YOUR IMMUNE SYSTEM. He prefers host defense made of 17 types of organic mushrooms, but other possibilities are colostrums or Beta 1.3d Glucan.

EAT ORGANIC. That includes a diet of fruit, vegetables, grains and nuts with no simple carbohydrates or protein (except AG/pro or other protein substitute) during treatment of cancer. Add minimal amounts of protein mainly from fish and poultry later in cancer treatment and after recovery.

MAINTAIN ALKALINITY IN BODY. He prefers using 2 organic lemons squeezed in water with some Stevia each morning, but other use X20 from Xooma in water to drink throughout the day, or add an alkalizing filter to your water tap.

USE SOMETHING TO KILL CANCER CELLS WHEN PRESENT.  He prefers laetrile and apricot kernels that require additional supplements such as pancreatic enzymes and zinc to facilitate the process. Others prefer high dose vitamin C, poly MVA, insulin Potentiation therapy, and other natural, alternative interventions.

USE SUPPLEMENTS DAILY. For example, vitamin D has been shown to assist in killing cancer cells and preventing cancerous cells from converting to cancer cells.

GET PHYSICAL. Exercise daily to prevent and assist in recovery from cancer.

USE SPIRITUAL INTERVENTIONS. Try prayer, meditation, serving others, and strengthening spiritual attributes of patience, forgiveness, and gratitude. Faith, optimism, and spirituality have been shown through research to have a powerful effect on recovery and longevity.

MENTAL INTERVENTIONS. Affirmation and visualization have been shown to facilitate recovery from cancer when used in conjunction with other modalities.

MAINTAIN A SUPPORT SYSTEM. Friends, family, and a higher source known to him as God to facilitate recovery from stress is a part of the cancer process, other diseases, and daily living.

Dr. Helvie has done research for some 60 years. He also served as a nursing consultant in Russia and taught at the University of Applied Sciences in Frankfurt, Germany. He is also the recipient of the 1999 Distinguished Career in Public Health Award from the American Public Health Association.

His best-selling book, “You Can Beat Cancer” is available at all the regular places and you can check out his website at www.beatcancer.net. Taking matters in your own hands gives you the power over your own life.

Stay well my friends!

Drink to your health

Drink to your health from the files of Jeff Jacoby at the Boston Globe

Read the Jacoby Files at the Boston Globe

IF YOUR drinking companions are French, you toast each other with "À votre santé !" With Russians, it's "Za zdorovje!" For Spanish-speakers, "Salud!" In Hebrew, "L'chaim!"

Perhaps it's just a coincidence that when drinkers almost anywhere clink glasses, they are apt to invoke good health or long life. More likely, it reflects a truth humankind discovered long ago: Drinking alcohol can be a source of not only short-term enjoyment, but of long-term health benefits too.

That may ring heretical at a time when headlines routinely sound alarms about the dangers of alcohol abuse. A search of the phrase "binge drinking" in Google News turns up nearly 7,000 recent articles. Many focus on the connection between drunkenness and campus sexual assault; others dwell on the serious consequences of drinking to excess, from alcohol poisoning to liver disease.

No question about it: Binge drinking is unsafe and unhealthy. But moderate drinking can be just what the doctor ordered.

A remarkable amount of research suggests that having one or two alcoholic drinks a day lowers most people's risk of being stricken with heart disease, ischemic stroke, and even dementia. One major study published in 2010 by the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, for example, concluded that "in nine nationally representative samples of US adults, light and moderate alcohol consumption were inversely associated with CVD [cardiovascular disease] mortality, even when compared with lifetime abstainers."

Harvard's School of Public Health notes on its nutrition website: "For most moderate drinkers, alcohol has overall health benefits." In more than 100 long-term studies, many of which monitored their subjects' health for 10 years or longer, researchers consistently documented a significant inverse association between moderate drinking and death from many forms of heart disease.

And not just heart disease. Numerous studies bear out the finding that moderate drinkers tend to live longer than both teetotalers and heavy drinkers. According to sociologist David Hanson of the State University of New York at Potsdam, even the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism — an organization plainly not inclined to downplay the potential dangers of liquor — has found that "the lowest death rate from all causes occurs at the level of one to two drinks each day."

Federal law has required a health-warning label on alcoholic beverages since 1988. Yet even the government's own dietary guidelines, regularly revised by the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Health and Human Services, acknowledge that adult beverages confer "beneficial effects when consumed in moderation."

Fewer heart attacks, better cholesterol levels, reduced hospitalization rates, less weight gain, lower risk of dementia and cognitive decline — all these life-saving or life-enhancing advantages, the data suggest, are likelier to be found among men and women who down a daily drink or two than among those who never drink at all.

"The evidence that abstinence from alcohol is a cause of heart disease and early death is irrefutable," writes addiction and public-health specialist Stanton Peele, "yet this is almost unmentionable in the United States." Accompanying Peele's essay at Substance.com is a picture of a classic Guinness beer ad proclaiming: "Guinness Is Good For You." It turns out that having a beer — or a glass of wine, or a vodka tonic, or a bourbon on the rocks — really is good for most people.

So, numerous long-term studies suggest, is a
glass of wine, a vodka tonic, or a
bourbon on the rocks

Yet brewers, distillers, and other alcoholic beverage manufacturers aren't allowed to say so on their bottles. General Mills can tout the "heart-healthy" qualities of Cheerios on every cereal box; StarKist can do the same on cans of tuna.

But Americans apparently can't be trusted with accurate information about the gains associated with moderate imbibing. The public health establishment plays down the benefits of drinking in moderation, no doubt for fear of sending any kind of encouragement to those who'll be tempted to drink to excess.

Regulators can be obsessive about stamping out any hint that alcoholic beverages might be good for you. The Treasury Department bureaucrat charged with approving beer labels, reported The Daily Beast last month, rejected a King of Hearts beer, on the grounds that its logo depicting a playing card "implied that the beer would have a health benefit."

Similarly, "he rejected an Adnams Broadside beer, which touted itself as a 'heart-warming ale,' because this supposedly involved a medical claim."

And what if it were? Alcohol has been known for centuries as "aqua vitae." That's Latin for "water of life," and it could hardly be more aptly named.

It's coming to America

Coming to America from the files of Judson Phillips at the Tea Party Nation

Meet Judson Phillips

While this story is not big news in America, the story of Ashya King is a big story in Britain. There is a compelling lesson for Americans here.

Five year old Ashya King has a brain tumor.

His parents disagree with British socialist healthcare system’s determination of what is the best treatment so they fled with the child to Spain to get what they believe is the best treatment.

But you cannot defy the healthcare bureaucrats in Britain. They issued an Interpol arrest warrant for the child’s parents.

From AP:

Britain has become riveted by the case of little Ashya King, whose parents plucked him from a hospital in southern England and fled to Spain amid a dispute over treatment - with British justice close on the family's heels.

Brett and Naghemeh King signaled Monday they would fight extradition, defying doctors and the legal system as a British court considers a ruling on forcing the family to come home.

The Kings are seeking a new type of proton beam radiation therapy that typically costs at least $33,000. The Southampton General Hospital says that more conventional methods have a very high chance of succeeding. It said that while proton beam therapy is effective for some tumors, in other cases "there isn't evidence that this is a beneficial treatment."

The family fled to Spain in hopes of selling a property to obtain enough cash for treatment in the Czech Republic or the United States. Police pursued them. Prosecutors issued an arrest warrant for an offence of cruelty to a person under the age of 16 years, hours after the Southampton hospital realized their patient was gone.

The hospital's medical director, Dr. Michael Marsh, issued a statement late Monday saying that the treatment was discussed with the family.

He expressed sadness that communication with the family had broken down and that "for whatever reason they have lost confidence in us."

Ethicists say the case is unprecedented, and has raised questions of how much power authorities should have in interfering with the will of parents in questions of life and death. While there have been many previous legal tussles over terminal illness issues, there have been few regarding questions over which treatment should be followed.

These kinds of cases normally result from a communication breakdown, said Penney Lewis, professor of law and a medical ethics expert at King's College London. She said parents are typically only prosecuted when they fail to engage with the medical care entirely and the child dies as a result.

Yet Lewis said that when the hospital-family relationship does break down, it does not have to end like this. The parents or hospital could have sought mediation instead with a third party. "Not everything has to end up in court," she said.

Mediation?

This is what happens when the state controls healthcare. The bureaucrats decide healthcare decisions and mere parents are not allowed to question them. Given the appalling bad treatment that has been reported at Britain’s NHS hospitals, who blames those parents for fleeing?

As the left has pushed for single payer healthcare in America, they keep repeating the line that corporations should not make decisions over a person’s healthcare.

No, the left would rather have impersonal government bureaucrats make those decisions.

This is a warning for America. The more government gets its hands into healthcare, the less liberty and less control Americans will have over their own healthcare decisions.

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