Commentary: Medicine Now Diagnoses the Non-White ‘Oppressed’ with an Oppressive Case of ‘Weathering’

Doctor Patient

In 1986, an upstart public health researcher named Arline Geronimus challenged the conventional wisdom that condemned the alarming rise of inner-city teen pregnancies. While activist minister Jesse Jackson and health care leaders were decrying the crisis of “babies having babies” as a ghetto pathology, Geronimus contended that teenage pregnancy was a rational response to urban poverty where low-income black people have fewer healthy years before the onset of heart problems, diabetes, and other chronic conditions.

Although Geronimus’ claims gained little traction at the time, the concept she pioneered – “weathering” – eventually became a foundation for the social justice ideology that is now upending medicine and social policy. She has stated in interviews and in her writings that the term “weathering” was intended to evoke the idea of erosion and resilience.

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Commentary: Battles We Can Win Are on Family, Morality, and Education

Family

In “Burke on Our Crisis of Character,” which appeared in the December 2023 issue of Chronicles, Bruce Frohnen notes, “The American Way was real, rooted in families whose rights trumped the demands of the state because families were more natural and fundamental than the state.” The following month in the same magazine, Stephen Baskerville reviews a collection of essays, Up from Conservatism, in which he briefly addresses the pernicious effects of government welfare on family life and fatherhood.

As is the case in nearly everything that the federal government touches, be it education, health care, or anything else, its policies in the last 50 years have severely damaged the American family. Given the additional harms done by government in the first quarter of the 21st century—trillions of dollars in wasted expenses, woefully ignorant public school graduates, divisions along the lines of race, politics, and gender, a diminished pride in our past, the attacks on our liberties—some people I know despair about the future. Others of us want to restore the good that has been lost but feel frustrated and even defeated by the immensity of the task. We vote, we grouse (as I am doing here), yet each day brings some new assault on the culture, some new governmental dictate or intrusion, and we just want to hunker down in the trenches hoping that this bombardment will end of its own accord.

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Commentary: COVID Redux

Masks People

Life is hard if you do not learn from your mistakes. With Covid, political leaders and public health authorities engaged in a series of missteps, miscalculations, and manias that amounted to an extreme overreaction to the disease.

First, statistical models overstated the risk of the disease by an order of magnitude. Then, even after these miscalculations became apparent, other extreme measures like lockdowns, mandatory masking, coercive vaccine mandates, and a million other indignities ensued. In the end, almost everyone got Covid, almost everyone survived, and, while the economic countermeasures increased our national debt by 30%, the economy soon recovered too.

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Commentary: Limiting Short-Term Health Care Plans Will Hurt Americans

Mike Pirner had emergency gall bladder surgery shortly after buying short-term medical insurance plan (STM), for $150/month. The costs associated with the procedure were $100,000 — Mike only had to pay his $2,500 deductible, which was also his out-of-pocket maximum. President Biden has proposed rules released Friday of the July 4th week that would limit these plans to three months, with one additional month possible. Currently, these plans can last up to three years. 

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Skrmetti and 15 Other AGs Back Florida Transgender Medicaid Rule

Sixteen state attorneys general weighed in on Florida’s rule blocking Medicaid funds from transgender medical interventions on the grounds that they are experimental.

“From the Founding, states have exercised their authority to enact health and safety measures—regulating the medical profession, restricting access to potentially dangerous medicines, banning unsafe or unproven treatments,” the 16 Republican attorneys general write in the brief, a copy of which was provided exclusively to The Daily Signal.

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The Wellness Company Pledges Free Medical Care for Victims of East Palestine Train Derailment

A new virtual healthcare system that embraces both medical freedom and affordable services has announced its pledge to provide free medical care for the victims of the East Palestine, Ohio train derailment.

“It is clear at this point that the government is absolutely unwilling or unable to assist the men, women, and children of East Palestine, Ohio” said Foster Coulson, founder and chairman of The Wellness Company (TWC), in a press statement Monday.

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The Wellness Company Pledges Free Medical Care for Victims of East Palestine Train Derailment

A new virtual healthcare system that embraces both medical freedom and affordable services has announced its pledge to provide free medical care for the victims of the East Palestine, Ohio, train derailment. “It is clear at this point that the government is absolutely unwilling or unable to assist the men, women, and children of East Palestine, Ohio” said Foster Coulson, founder and chairman of The Wellness Company (TWC), in a press statement Monday.

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Biden Signs $740 Billion Climate, Tax and Health Care Bill into Law

President Joe Biden signed a $740 billion spending package into law Tuesday, the final step for the green energy, health care and tax hike bill after months of wrangling and controversy, in particular over the legislation’s hiring of 87,000 new IRS agents to audit Americans.

Democrats at the White House Tuesday touted the bill’s deficit reduction of $300 billion over the next decade. The bill includes several measures, including a $35 per month cap on insulin copays, an extension of Affordable Care Act subsidies, and authorization for Medicare to negotiate certain drug prices.

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Commentary: What Happens in New York Doesn’t Stay in New York

It seems like every day America is becoming more anti-American than the day before. The Biden administration just keeps shooting for the “how can we out-do ourselves in pushing our Marxist policies” prize, and blue states are in lockstep. The American people keep getting whacked day in and day out, and the media is complicit. No one is safe these days in Biden’s America.

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More Job Resignations Than Ever as Openings Sit Near Record Highs

A record number of American workers quit their jobs in November 2021 as the gap between available jobs and potential workers continues to increase, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported.

Over 4.5 million workers quit their jobs in November 2021, a jump from October’s 4.1 million, the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced Tuesday.

Quits in accommodation and food services saw the greatest increase, 159,000, while other low-wage sectors like health care, social assistance, transportation, warehousing and utilities also saw spikes as workers looked for jobs with higher pay.

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Commentary: Medicine’s Getting Major Injections of Woke Ideology

The national racial reckoning over reparations and Critical Race Theory is taking over the world of medicine and health care. Prestigious medical journals, top medical schools and elite medical centers are adopting the language of social justice activism and vowing to confront “systemic racism,” dismantle “structural violence” and disrupt “white supremacy” in their institutional cultures.

Some activist physicians describe the present-day health care system with such ominous terms as a “medical caste system” or “medical apartheid,” the latter locution taken from the title of a 2007 book about America’s history of medical experimentation on enslaved blacks and freedmen.

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Commentary: A Tribute to Mothers with Inspiration from Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou speaking

You wouldn’t think any possible controversy could append itself to that day, except that we are living in preternaturally contentious times. Two days ago, Rep. Cori Bush, a freshman Democrat from St. Louis, was testifying about racial disparities in health care, focusing specifically on childbirth. While describing her own medical experiences, Bush used the unwieldy phrase “birthing people” instead of “mothers.” Apparently, this was an awkward attempt to use inclusive language.

Predictably, this rhetorical gambit earned her a fair amount of ridicule on social media. I’m sure Rep. Bush has many virtues, but neither self-awareness nor self-deprecating humor are at the top of that list. Just as predictably, Bush lashed out at those who mocked her wording for their “racism and transphobia.” She also accused her critics of trivializing an important subject, which was a more substantive rejoinder. Bush was discussing racial disparities in America’s medical system, which is no laughing matter, and invoking her own harrowing experiences in hospital delivery rooms to do it.

Yet breezily trying to replace the word “mothers” as a sign of wokeness a few days before Mother’s Day wasn’t likely to go down well. It was Cori Bush’s own peculiar choice of words that distracted listeners from her story.

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Surveys: 46 Million People Can’t Afford Health Care, Majority of Hospitals Not Providing Pricing Transparency

Assorted color syringes.

An estimated 46 million people — or 18% of the country — would be unable to pay for health care if they needed it today, a recent poll conducted by Gallup and West Health found.

In another survey by the Texas Public Policy Foundation, the majority of hospitals in the U.S. have yet to comply with a transparency ruling implemented this year that would help patients shop around for the most affordable prices.

Gallup’s findings are based on a poll conducted between February 15 and 21 among 3,753 adults with a margin of error of 2%.

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Ohio Health Care Workers Free from COVID-19 Civil Liability

Health care centers and medical professionals are free from liability related to the COVID-19 pandemic under a new Ohio law signed by Gov. Mike DeWine.

Among other things, the new law temporarily grants qualified civil immunity to health care isolation centers to protect medical professionals from liability claims throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. It also expands the authority of emergency medical technicians to provide medical services in hospitals, if needed.

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COVID Death Rates Are Falling as Treatment Improves, Experts Say

Death rates from the coronavirus are falling in the United States showing that treatments for the coronavirus are advancing, infectious-disease experts told the Wall Street Journal.

Data from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington (IHME) shows that the virus is only killing about 0.6% of those infected, the WSJ reported. This death rate has improved since April when the COVID death rate was at about 0.9%, the publication reported. 

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White House Wins Ruling on Health Care Price Disclosure

The Trump administration won a court ruling Tuesday upholding its plan to require hospitals and insurers to disclose the actual prices for common tests and procedures in a bid to promote competition and push down costs.

Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar called the decision in federal court in Washington, D.C., “a resounding victory” for President Donald Trump’s efforts to open up the convoluted world of health care pricing so patients and families can make better-informed decisions about their care.

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Health Care Group: It Would Cost $440 Million to Provide 3 Million Tests for All Nursing Home Residents and Workers

Testing every nursing home resident and care facility worker in the U.S. for COVID-19 would cost $440 million in federal and state funding, a health care group found. 

Doing so would require almost 3 million tests, according to the American Health Care Association’s National Center for Assisted Living, an industry group representing nursing homes and assisted living centers that calculated how much it would cost for states to receive adequate funding so all resident and care facility workers could be tested.

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Buckeye Institute Calls for Ending Regulations So Nurses Can Use Their Skills to Treat COVID-19 Patients

The Buckeye Institute says Ohio should end the collaborative supervision requirements that prevent advanced practice registered nurses (APRN) from offering the medical care they have been trained and licensed to provide.

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Think Tank Calls for Ohio Government to Take Common-Sense Measures to Fight Coronavirus and Aid in Economic Recovery

A new policy brief lays out actions that Ohio policymakers can immediately implement so Ohio can fight and yet recover from the coronavirus pandemic, and it doesn’t involve unilaterally moving primaries or shutting down businesses.

The Buckeye Institute released the brief on Monday.

The brief, Policy Solutions for the Pandemic: How Ohio Can Fight the Impact of Coronavirus, is available here.

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Coders Building Database Need Health Care Workers to Report Coronavirus Testing Sites So They Can Provide Data to Officials Battling Disease

A coalition of computer coders and medical experts is looking for volunteers — including from the Volunteer State — to help provide better information on COVID-19 coronavirus testing sites.

TechCrunch reported on the one-week-old Coders Against Covid project, which is building a database of testing sites. The team of about 15 developers includes Andrew Kemendo of KesselRun, an Air Force software developer, and Dr. Jorge A. Caballero, a clinical instructor of Anesthesia at Stanford University. The goal is to inform officials tracking the disease and to better distribute the tests where they are needed.

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U.S. Officials Battle Coronavirus on Multiple Health Care, Economic Fronts Even as Death Toll Reaches 9

The coronavirus death toll in the United States hit nine on Tuesday, even as more areas around the world report infections.

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Ohio Ranks Third in Nation in Ongoing Hepatitis A Outbreak

As of Jan. 21, the Buckeye State had experienced 3,468 cases of hepatitis A in a statewide community outbreak that officially began Jan. 1, 2018, according to data by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Sixty-two percent of patients were hospitalized, and 16 died.

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Ohio Gov DeWine’s Office Dodges Question on Resettlement of Refugees Australia Refused to Accept

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine’s decision on December 24 that would say yes to more refugees in Ohio would allow the federal government to resettle them from any country, including from an estimated 300 to 720 refugees from the Middle East that the government of Australia has refused to accept.

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Commentary: Kamikaze Schumer Wants to Repeal Private Health Insurance

While the Democrats continue their impeachment pantomime war dance in the mirror-clad corner in order to keep up their spirits, Senator Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) is ginning up a much more fateful danse macabre on health care. He has promised to force a vote this week on various Trump Administration directives that have injected flexibility into Obamacare. As The Hill reports, “Senate Democrats plan to force vulnerable Republicans to vote on legislation that would overturn a controversial Trump administration directive on ObamaCare.”

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Commentary: Illegal Immigration Hurts Patients

The Democrats often claim that they alone will protect people with pre-existing conditions. Well, unfortunately for us, this popular catchphrase delivered the greatest catch in the history of politics: under Obamacare, insurance companies couldn’t deny coverage to people with pre-existing conditions — but doctors could.

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California Governor Signs Illegal Immigrant Health Care Bill Into Law

by Jason Hopkins   California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom officially made his state the first in the U.S. to offer government health care benefits to adult-aged illegal immigrants. Newsom signed SB-104 into law Tuesday, cementing it into the state’s 2020 budget. The legislation extends taxpayer-funded health care to low-income adults…

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California Considers Spending Billions on Health Care for Illegal Immigrants

by Jason Hopkins   California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s plan for government-funded health care for illegal immigrants is frugal compared to proposals by other Democratic leaders in his state. Newsom, the progressive first-term governor of California and ardent opponent of the Trump administration, wants to offer free health care services to…

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Klobuchar Joins Fox News for Town Hall Event in Wisconsin

  Sen. Amy Klobuchar joined Fox News Wednesday night for a town hall in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, a state Hillary Clinton famously skipped during the 2016 election. According to Fox News, the network allows candidates to select the location for their town halls and Klobuchar picked Milwaukee, which will also host…

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Trump Reveals Timeline for Up-in-the-Air GOP Health Care Plan

by Evie Fordham   President Donald Trump put a timeline on his call for Republicans to develop a comprehensive alternative to the Affordable Care Act (ACA) on Twitter Monday night. “Everybody agrees that ObamaCare doesn’t work. Premiums [and] deductibles are far too high — Really bad HealthCare! Even the Dems…

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Trump Continues to Hammer Health Care Messaging, Ropes Four Senators Into His Fight

by Evie Fordham   President Donald Trump continued with criticism of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and touted four Republican senators he said will fix the ACA, colloquially known as Obamacare, in a tweet Monday. “The cost of ObamaCare is far too high for our great citizens. The deductibles, in…

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In-Depth Analysis of Trump’s Policy Proposals in State of the Union Address

by Daniel Davis   President Donald Trump delivered his State of the Union address Tuesday night, and Heritage Foundation experts weighed in with analysis of the president’s policy proposals. Here’s what they had to say. Immigration Economy Law Defense & Foreign Policy Life Energy & Infrastructure Health Care Education Immigration…

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Commentary: The Legal Gymnastics Behind Obamacare

Obamacare

by Gary Galles   On December 14, U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor ruled Obamacare unconstitutional because its individual mandate requiring people to have health insurance “can no longer be sustained as an exercise of Congress’s tax power,” since the tax that enforced it is now gone. Progressive leaning critics quickly…

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