These days, there's been a lot of discussion about conservative media's culpability in creating unrealistic expectations and warped priorities among Republican voters. It's a reasonable critique. My question: When are we going to have this conversation about the other side — you know, the one that enabled the passage of a massive partisan…

Once was a shock. Twice was an outrage. Thrice is a nightmare that won't end. Over the past three years, my family's private, individual health insurance plan — a high-deductible Preferred Provider Organization — has been canceled three times. Our first death notice, from Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield, arrived in the fall of…

When The New York Times tells you Obamacare is "ailing" and must change to survive, rest assured that the law is in serious trouble. Then again, people who read The New York Times might be under the impression the only way to fix a collapsing state-run program is to pass another, more intrusive state-run program — in this case…

On Inauguration Day, the next president of the United States should suspend the penalty for being uninsured under the Affordable Care Act. President Obama promised his law would provide an array of affordable health plans. In 2017, consumers will get neither choice nor affordability. In nearly one-third of the nation, only one insurer will offer coverage…

Health officials are bowing to political correctness instead of taking obvious steps to protect residents in most of the United States from the Zika virus. For example, New York has more Zika cases — some 579 — than any other state. Officials warn pregnant women and their sexual partners not to travel to Zika-infested regions,…

So a giant, rent-seeking insurance company is accused of having threatened to leave Obamacare's health insurance "marketplace" if the government didn't approve its giant merger. If true, this would be the least surprising development in the past six years of Obamacare fiascos. Any giant regulatory scheme bringing together big business and…

"You get what you pay for," the adage goes. Not with the Affordable Care Act. When open enrollment starts Nov. 1, the public will see they're going to be paying lots more for health insurance in 2017 and getting less. Across the country, state insurance departments are announcing double digit premium hikes, often as high as 20 percent and…

Hillary Clinton is taking a sledgehammer to Medicare. In a move calculated to fire up the extreme left wing of the Democratic Party, presidential candidate Hillary Clinton pledges to open Medicare to people 55 to 64, and make a "public option" insurance plan for all ages. The 65-and-overs are already having a hard time finding a doctor willing…

Medical bills are pushing more Americans into severe financial distress, even if they have insurance. That's the grim news from a top medical journal. These bills force hundreds of thousands into bankruptcy each year. What's so galling is that while Americans struggle to pay their bills, freeloaders from other countries get the same care at no cost…

Under the guise of "reform," President Obama is dismantling Medicare — dooming seniors to needless pain and disability and shortening their lives. The stakes are high, because Medicare and the access it allows to medical innovations have transformed aging. Before Medicare, older people languished in nursing homes or wheelchairs…

This week, mosquitoes capable of transmitting Zika start biting in Florida, the Gulf States, and Southern California. It's the "virus from hell," warns Peter Hotez, Dean of Baylor University's School of Tropical Medicine. He's urging women to delay getting pregnant. Hotez worries expectant mothers in these states are already being bitten,…

The Center for Science in the Public Interest, one of the few openly authoritarian organizations functioning in the United States, once sued the Food and Drug Administration for refusing to regulate Americans' salt intake. No worries. This week, the Obama administration finally embraced CSPI's junk science and allowed the FDA to set new "guidelines…

Federal officials are predicting doom because a Pennsylvania woman became infected with a germ that can't be stopped by most antibiotics. "The medicine cabinet is empty for some patients," warned Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Thomas Frieden last week. You'd think the CDC was finally ready to get serious about drug-resistant…

Federal officials are warning that mosquitoes carrying Zika virus will start biting and infecting U.S. residents in the next month. Key trouble spots are southern Florida, Louisiana, Texas and southern California, but the risk could extend north to New York and San Francisco. The virus inflicts horrific brain damage on unborn children as well as neurological…

President Obama's Medicare cuts are killing seniors. His health law changed Medicare, adding bonuses for hospitals that spend the least per senior. The result? Hundreds of hospitals are skimping on care to win bonuses. Seniors at these hospitals aren't getting the right antibiotic or other treatments they need. They're dying from pneumonia, heart attacks…

On Monday, House Republicans promised a plan to repeal and replace Obamacare within a month. It's not a moment too soon. Obamacare is collapsing. UnitedHealth will abandon most Obamacare markets, it said Tuesday. Giant insurers such as Aetna and the BlueCross Blue Shield Association are next. They warned last week that losses trying to sell Obamacare…

Every year, more than half a million patients in the U.S. are unknowingly put at risk of contracting a superbug infection during a common medical procedure. A doctor threads a tube-like scope down your throat and into your digestive system to treat cancer and other problems. You assume the tube is clean. Think again. The scope's defective design allows…

The Clinton campaign is finally owning up to what most Americans learned the hard way. The Affordable Care Act is anything but affordable. In fact, its costs are "crushing" people who have to buy health insurance. Hillary Clinton vows to fix the problem, but don't count on it. Clinton's remedies are bad medicine. Some are so preposterous…

"Where is my 1095-A? This is what it must be like dealing with a government agency in a third world country." That was the lament on Twitter of just one poor citizen this week trying to get his tax records in order. Nationwide, hard-working Americans are struggling to meet the April 18 IRS filing deadline. Standing in the way: the bumbling…

Consumer Reports is sounding the alarm about a vicious infection raging through hospitals, even prestigious academic medical centers such as Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City and Ohio's Cleveland Clinic. Clostridium difficile, or C. diff for short, sickens half a million people each year, and 29,000 of…

The Obama administration will tell any lie and break any law to prevent the president's signature health program from collapsing. Insurance companies, such as UnitedHealthcare and Aetna, are losing billions trying to sell Obamacare plans, and the risk is they'll drop out at the end of 2016. No insurance companies means no Obamacare. In 2014, the White…

If you're pregnant or planning to be, rethink your vacation plans. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is warning against travel to Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and 22 countries in Latin America where mosquitoes are carrying the Zika virus and infecting people they bite.  The biggest danger is to pregnant women, whose babies…

Hillary Clinton is attacking rival Bernie Sanders, calling his plan to replace Obamacare with socialist single payer healthcare a "risky deal" and unaffordable. She's telling Democrats the survival of the Affordable Care Act depends on her winning the presidency. "The stakes couldn't be higher," she warned Iowa voters. Sunday night…

Hey, who's up for a stiff dose of "See, I told you so?" For the past several years, medical professionals have warned that the federal electronic medical records mandate — buried in the trillion-dollar Obama stimulus of 2009 — would do more harm than good. Their diagnosis, unfortunately, is on the nose. The Quack-in-Chief peddled…

It's deja screwed all over again. In the fall of 2013, our family received notice from Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield of Colorado that we could no longer keep our private health insurance plan because of "changes from health care reform (also called the Affordable Care Act or ACA)." We liked our high-deductible preferred provider organization…

Price controls and caps are always a bad idea. So when a candidate for president of the United States starts talking about the government setting prices for prescription drugs, it’s always a good idea to cast a cold eye. When two candidates for political office advocate price caps on prescription drugs, that’s when real trouble starts.…

During the first two years under ObamaCare, health insurers remained unable to assess what rates they must charge to cover the costs imposed by the new law.  Now that such assessment is possible in its third year, insurers realize that the law has proven much costlier than anticipated, and they're desperately seeking premium increases accordingly…

If the Supreme Court were to decide not to allow retroactive legislating and uphold Obamacare as written, terrible things would happen to America. We might, for instance, find out what health insurance in fabricated, state-run "marketplaces" actually costs. The Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that the 37 states that have declined to set…

From financially dubious exchanges to subsidies that aren’t technically legal, ObamaCare is imploding under its own shoddy draftsmanship. ObamaCare’s state-run exchanges are a great idea – so long as federal taxpayers foot the bill. Since the law was passed in 2010, almost $5 billion in federal start-up grants have been doled out…

At a recent White House science fair celebrating inventors, a Girl Scout who helped design a Lego-powered page-turning device asked President Obama what he had ever thought up or prototyped. Stumbling for an answer, he replied: "I came up with things like, you know, health care." Ah, yes. "Health care." Remember when the president…