Health Care News Podcast

Poverty is no longer a requirement to qualify for long-term care under Medicaid. An entire industry has cropped up over the years instructing families on how to maximize Medicaid’s loose financial guidelines.  While families save a bundle of money by having the government now pay for this care, the system has had a negative impact on the long-term care market. Reimbursement rates under Medicaid do...

President Biden told 60 Minutes in October that COVID-19 was essentially over. If that's true, why is he still lobbying Congress for billions of dollars in more COVID-19 relief? Biden also extended the emergency declaration another 90 days, further going against his stated position. Dr. Chad Savage, founder, Your Choice Direct Care, thinks the spending is not only unhealthy for the American econom...

Late this summer, CVS fired a nurse practitioner for refusing to prescribe ‘Plan B’ ‘Morning After’ pills at the “Minute Clinic” where she had worked for 2 ½ years. CVS had been aware of Paige Casey’s religious objections to prescribing the abortifacients, exempted her from doing so, and even gave her favorable job reviews. In August, CVS changed its mind and told Casey she would no longer be give...

Increasingly, the private component of Medicare, Medicare Advantage (MA), is coming under attack. The latest salvo was a front-page article on October 8, 2022 in the New York Times , titled “The Cash Monster Was Insatiable – How Insurers Exploited Medicare for Billions.” The article claims “most large insurers in the program have been accused in court of fraud.” Today’s guest, John C. Goodman, poi...

Can we trust doctors today to act in our best interest? Joel Hirschhorn, editor of the Pandemic Blunder Newsletter and author of Pandemic Blunder , returns to the podcast to discuss how the corporate takeover of healthcare is impacting patient care. This reached a pinnacle during the pandemic when doctors pushed investigational vaccines, discredited alternative therapies, and supported measures su...

On September 14, Sen. Rand Paul grilled Dr. Anthony Fauci on royalty payments government scientists receive from private third-party entities. The non-profit watchdog,  Open the Books has been relentlessly investigating these private royalty payments because the public has been drastically impacted by public health guidance.  Adam Andrezejewski, CEO and founder of Open the Books, says it is import...

SB 107 would allow California to become a “sanctuary state” for a parent and minor to pursue gender altering surgery and care against the wishes of another parent.  AB 2098 redefines the meaning of “unprofessional conduct” to now included the dissemination of COVID-19 misinformation or disinformation.  Physicians and Surgeons could potentially lose their license if found to be in violation. Single...

Americans have a right to complain that some prescription drugs are unaffordable. But the answer is not to have the government (taxpayers) pick up more of the tab. A better solution is to get costly regulatory obstacles out of the way.  Gregg Girvan, a scholar at The Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity (FREOPP), says it is a myth that brand name drugs have to be excessively priced to guar...

On August 17, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, recently stated that the CDC needs a complete overhaul. How serious is her call? As director, can she fix all that is wrong with the agency? Or, is this something Congress needs to address? Our guest for today’s episode of Health Care News is Dr. Marilyn Singleton. Dr. Singleton previously served as pr...

Attorney Doug Seaton joins Health Care News managing editor Anne Schieber to discuss a $10.3 million settlement involving hospital employees who were forced to take Covid vaccines against their wishes.  

Congressional Democrats are pushing through a plan that shift $288 billion away from Medicare drug spending and into Obamacare plans and Green New Deal ventures. Extended Obamacare plans from the pandemic expire around the midterm elections. Premiums will likely skyrocket at a critical time: the midterm elections. The plan will authorize the federal government, through Medicare Part D and B spendi...

Medicare Advantage (MA) is under attack after a report by the Health and Human Services’ Office of Inspector General.  John Goodman, a health care economist, president of the Goodman Institute for Public Policy Research, and co-publisher of Health Care News , is a champion of MA plans. Goodman says the report looks at a tiny fraction of enrollees and fails to consider the overall popularity of MA....

Obamacare was supposed to be affordable, but on April 11, the White House announced new actions to “lessen the burden of medical debt and increase consumer protection.”  Why are consumers being flanked with extra medical bills if the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was doing its job?  Devon Herrick, a health care economist, discusses Obamacare’s narrow networks and high deductibles as being a big part o...

Telehealth soared in popularity soon after Medicare started covering telehealth claims during the pandemic. There is a five-month time limit on reimbursing claims after the pandemic emergency declaration ends, which is now expected after the mid-term election. Before making reimbursements permanent, Josh Gordon, Ph. D., Director of the Health Policy Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, reco...

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved emergency use authorization of the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 shots for infants and toddlers six months and older. Should parents get them for their young children? The shots have been in use among the general population for 1.5 years. There have been 60,442 adverse events related to the shots on the FDA’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System....

In a recent article , a physician used the terms “assigned male at birth (AMAB)” and “assigned female at birth (AFAB)” instead of male and female. The article was published by The Cleveland Clinic.   Dr. Marilyn Singleton, a board-certified anesthesiologist in California and former president of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, discusses why use of such language in health care s...

Hugh McTavish, gubernatorial candidate in Minnesota of the Independence Alliance Party, is an outspoken critic of COVID-19 lockdown measures. These lockdowns prompted him to make a bid to be Minnesota’s next governor, unseating Gov. Tim Walz (D). McTavish, a Ph. D. immunologist, biochemist, patent attorney, entrepreneur, and author, is proposing an innovative “jury democracy” system. Before McTavi...

Telehealth was allowed in the early days of COVID-19 under the emergency declaration. Josh Umbehr, M.D, a pioneer in free market health care delivery and founder of Atlas MD, believes telehealth is here to stay. He discusses some of the tough questions that may arise as the gates close on telehealth beyond the emergency declaration for the pandemic.  How do we protect patient privacy? How do we st...

The big hospital healthcare systems have left the rural town of Newaygo, Michigan in the dust. Residents in this small, rural community have had to travel sometimes an hour to get basic primary health care service. In comes Christian Health Care Centers to the rescue. Newaygo community leaders ask the direct primary care practice (DPC) if it would consider opening a second facility in their town....

We’ve heard the saying that treatment can be worse than the disease. Sometimes too many choices and treatment options make health outcomes, worse, not better. Every treatment presents a risk. This includes over the counter, self-help measures. It is hard to measure the benefit of doing nothing versus seeking some sort of treatment. Sometimes, conditions resolve more quickly with no intervention. G...

Throughout the pandemic, the Centers for Disease Control, the Department of Education, and school districts claimed ordering children to wear masks would keep schools open.  Phil Kerpen, president of American Commitment, along with Emily Burns and Josh Stevenson, looked back to see if that was actually the case. The researchers examined school closure in 500 of the nation’s largest school district...

In wake of the opioid epidemic ( overdose deaths in 2020, 91,799 ), doctors and patients are turning to a FDA cleared, non-drug approach to treating pain called photobiomodulation (PBM). PBM uses red and near-infrared light to stimulate cell growth and reduce inflammation. It is increasingly being used at cancer centers, on veterans, and on individuals who want non-drug alternatives. Scot Faulkner...