McCaughey: Supreme Court Will Strike Down Obama’s Healthcare Law
By Martin Gould The Supreme Court’s decision to consider whether President Barack Obama’s signature healthcare law is constitutional is good for a nation that has been in legal limbo for months on the issue, says healthcare expert Betsy McCaughey. The former New York lieutenant governor predicted a split court, with a 5-4 majority in favor
Read More
Ohio’s No Vote a Stinging Rejection of Obama Health Law
Betsy McCaughey This week’s decisive vote in Ohio is a bellwether of the 2012 presidential election. With few exceptions, no presidential candidate has won the nation without winning Ohio. Ohioans seem to speak for the nation. So their repudiation of the Obama health law — the president’s signature legislation — should serve as an ominous
Read More
Cooking the Books on Grandma’s Health Care
By Betsy McCaughey The British medical journal Lancet reported last month that 32% of elderly American patients undergo surgery in the year before they die, a statistic culled from Medicare data. In an accompanying editorial, Dr. Amy Kelley of Mount Sinai School of Medicine labeled the 32% figure a “call to action”-to reduce costly surgeries,
Read More
Healthcare Spending Pits Elderly Against Illegal Aliens
By Betsy McCaughey The culture war is moving from when life begins to how it should end. Like a drum beat, supporters of the Obama agenda are protesting that the elderly are consuming too many health resources, and their care needs to be cut back. The current target of this unrelenting campaign against the elderly
Read More
Slashing Doc Pay
By Scott Gottlieb A key government panel voted this month to whack what Medicare pays most doctors to treat patients. It’s an important step on the path to ObamaCare — because the only way to make European-style health entitlements work in America is to pay US doctors lower European wages. This is going to hurt
Read More
Likelihood That a Woman With Screen-Detected Breast Cancer Has Had Her ‘Life Saved’ by That Screening
Welch: “Thus the probability that a 50-year old woman with screen detected breast cancer avoids a breast cancer death because of mammography is 13% (250/1910)….This probability also rises with age. The effect is most dramatic for a 70-year old woman, because the proportion of screen-detected cancers in this age group is relatively low (52%).” McCaughey:
Read More
Outside Panel Backs Prostate Test Advisory
McCaughey: American men should disregard this dangerous change of guidance. The U.S. Preventative Services Task Force has no oncologists or urologists among its members. It is unqualified to make a recommendation. The American Urological Association immediately denounced the Task Force guideline. The United States has the highest survival rates for men diagnosed with prostate cancer,
Read More
Don’t Let America Become a Medicaid Nation
By Betsy McCaughey America is in danger of becoming a Medicaid nation. It will bankrupt our government, make private health plans unaffordable, and rob the elderly of the care they’ve been counting on. The Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction — the supercommittee — should repeal the vast expansion of Medicaid enacted just 18 months
Read More
Unfair to Rap Perry for Uninsured in Texas
By Betsy McCaughey In the presidential debates and in media profiles, Gov. Rick Perry is under fire for allegedly failing to meet the healthcare needs of Texans. Assailants claim that Texas has the highest rate of uninsured residents, a staggering 24.6 percent. But an honest look at the U.S. Census data released last week points
Read More
Cancer Care’s Rationers
WSJ Review and Outlook The Lancet last week published the findings of its international 37-expert commission on “Delivering Affordable Cancer Care in High-Income Countries.” The prestigious British medical journal’s broadside against oncology’s “culture of excess” is drawing notice in medical circles and especially fevered attention in the land of the National Health Service. But readers
Read More