TAYLORSVILLE, Ky. — Dr. Sven Jonsson, a primary care physician in this rural community, is seeing a steady tide of new patients under President Obama’s health care law, the Affordable Care Act. And so far, it is working out for him. His employer, a big hospital system, provides expensive equipment, takes care of bureaucratic chores and has buffered him from the turmoil of his rapidly changing business.

“This is just a much saner place for me right now,” said Dr. Jonsson, 52, who left private practice to work for the system, Baptist Health, in 2012. “I’m probably going to live another five years.” Continue reading →

As the Obamacare debate rages, we hear much about insurance companies, costs and people’s ability to pay. We hear the policy defended as proponents tell us it will provide healthcare to those who never had it. Of course, these proponents never seem to explain how those who couldn’t afford healthcare when it was a choice can now afford an even more expensive cost now that government mandates it.

However, these debates about the pros and cons of Obamacare basically focus on money. What about the real issue – healthcare? What will Obamacare do to our medical system? How will it affect the quality of our care? How will it affect doctor’s decisions as they attempt to take care of our health needs? And, ultimately, in a system controlled by government bureaucrats and government-written manuals – who will really be making the decisions that determine our quality of life? These are the real questions that need to be the center of the debate. And the answers are terrifying. Continue reading →

If one cannot search for and see the light of truth, one is either dumber than a box of rocks, ignorant and fearful of the truth, indoctrinated to the max unwilling to accept facts, or a willing participant in the destruction of America. Regardless of which it is, you, your family, and your future descendants will pay the highest price  – servitude to evil or death. Continue reading →

Infections, bladder problems, even cancer – those aches and twinges in your back could be trying to tell you something

• Sometimes organs send pain signals to other body parts – notably the back

• For instance, kidney and bladder problems are easily mistaken as back pain

• GPs can’t fully explain why this happens, though they have some theories

Frighteningly common: Back pain often masks the symptoms of other potentially serious health conditions

Here, we examine some of the other causes of back pain

Michelle Law’s childhood was blighted by back pain. Her mother took her to the GP many times, only to be told that the constant gnawing ache in Michelle’s back was growing pains or a pulled muscle.

She’d be sent home with painkillers or muscle relaxants – none of which helped.

The pain between her lowest rib and pelvic bone on the right-hand side of her back dogged Michelle into adulthood.

When she was 35, a new GP referred her for investigations on her kidneys because of the site of the pain.

‘I had dozens of scans and tests over four years, but they couldn’t find anything wrong,’ says Michelle, who lives in Hastings, East Sussex, with her four children and is studying to be a veterinary nurse. ‘By that time I was relying on morphine for pain relief and had become house-bound.’ Continue reading →

A new animal study has documented a precise mechanism by which disturbances to the ear’s hearing and balance systems cause hyperactive behavior. Since such damage can occur in humans from infections, especially recurring ear infections, the study sheds light on the importance of helping children not get too many ear infections as well as fully recovering from them.

The correlation between ear infections and subsequent behavioral issues such as ADHD has been noted in the literature for some time. A 1990 study of 138 children found that ear infections and consequent middle ear disease was associated with hyperactivity and inattention. Continue reading →

Schopenhauer would have enjoyed the spectacle of grand rounds in academic hospitals: his theory that people argue for victory more than for truth would have found confirmation there.

In grand rounds a physician presents a complex or enigmatic case to the other physicians of the hospital, who then discuss it in detail. The ostensible purpose is to teach, learn and sometimes to enquire; but such human desires as to show off, to appear more-learned-than-thou, and to appear brilliant are often much in evidence. Continue reading →

When you can’t sleep, you know it. But what about when you can, yet you wake up feeling tired and achy or you’re groggy again a few hours later? What’s that about? All too often, it turns out, the problem is one that doesn’t keep you awake but does sabotage your sleep in more subtle ways, so the hours you spend in bed don’t refresh and revitalize you the way they should. Here are seven signs that you have a sleep problem that’s secretly stealing your rest. Continue reading →

Angelina Jolie’s announcement of undergoing a double mastectomy (surgically removing both breasts) even though she had no breast cancer is not the innocent, spontaneous, “heroic choice” that has been portrayed in the mainstream media. Natural News has learned it all coincides with a well-timed for-profit corporate P.R. campaign that has been planned for months and just happens to coincide with the upcoming U.S. Supreme Court decision on the viability of the BRCA1 patent.

This is the investigation the mainstream media refuses to touch. Here, I explain the corporate financial ties, investors, mergers, human gene patents, lawsuits, medical fear mongering and the trillions of dollars that are at stake here. If you pull back the curtain on this one, you find far more than an innocent looking woman exercising a “choice.” This is about protecting trillions in profits through the deployment of carefully-crafted public relations campaigns designed to manipulate the public opinion of women.

The signs were all there from the beginning of the scheme: Angelina Jolie’s highly polished and obviously corporate-written op-ed piece at the New York Times, the carefully-crafted talking points invoking “choice” as a politically-charged keyword, and the obvious coaching of even her husband Brad Pitt who carefully describes the entire experience using words like “stronger” and “pride” and “family.”

But the smoking gun is the fact that Angelina Jolie’s seemingly spontaneous announcement magically appeared on the cover of People Magazine this week — a magazine that is usually finalized for publication three weeks before it appears on newsstands. That cover, not surprisingly, uses the same language found in the NYT op-ed piece: “HER BRAVE CHOICE” and “This was the right thing to do.” The flowery, pro-choice language is not a coincidence.

What this proves is that Angelina’s Jolie’s announcement was a well-planned corporate P.R. campaign with carefully-crafted messages designed to influence public opinion. But what could Jolie be seeking to influence?

…how about trillions of dollars in corporate profits?

EDITOR’S NOTE: There is far more to this column than meets the eye, or that we have posted her. We STRONGLY urge our readers to follow THIS LINK and read more – MUCH MORE. (Ed.) Continue reading →

Obama won, Obamacare is the law, and, as my wife says, I will just have to learn to dance to a new song.

Now, don’t get me wrong, Obamacare is awful. Forget all the “free stuff” it provides. Children covered on their parents’ plan until 26 years of age? A scam, making young adults — excuse me, children — pay for complete, comprehensive health insurance when all they need and should pay for is major catastrophe insurance. Then there is the “annual ” or “preventative” exam, which according to Obamacare is “free.”

You gotta love this stuff. I wish I had the chutzpah of the people who wrote Obamacare. What they did not tell you, and I am, is that it covers absolutely nothing more than the bare minimum. Continue reading →

The implosion of the NHS–caused by sclerotic centralized control–continues. Perhaps the biggest scandal in the history of the service has shaken the UK, with thousands allegedly dead due to poor hospital care. From the Telegraph story:

More than 3,000 people may have died unnecessarily at five NHS trusts in a crisis that could dwarf the horrors at Mid Staffordshire, which were detailed in a devastating report on Wednesday. An investigation began on Wednesday night into excessive mortality rates at the five trusts – the same warning sign that exposed the needless deaths of up to 1,200 patients at Mid Staffs.

The trusts in Lancashire, Essex and Greater Manchester have been “outliers” on an index of expected death rates for two successive years to 2012. Within hours of the publication of a report which described the “disaster” at Mid Staffs as the worst scandal in the history of the NHS, the Department of Health released figures which raise the possibility that the “appalling” lack of care may still be going on at hospitals around the country.

Increased power of the healthcare bureaucracy, I believe, leads to lower levels of professionalism, a concern that is validated by the story: Continue reading →