Tag: health care

HHS Tells Doctors To Stop Mutilating Children

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. sent a letter to health care providers and medical boards on Wednesday afternoon urging them to stop the chemical castration and genital mutilation of children with gender dysphoria.

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recently published a review of medical evidence showing that there is zero evidence that the irreversible medical interventions help children confused about their gender. Kennedy told health care providers that they should no longer rely on debunked studies claiming to show benefits.

“The Review documents the ‘weak evidence and growing international retreat’ from the use of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries to treat gender dysphoria in minors and the ‘risk of significant harm.’ The Review explains that ‘many treatments (e.g., surgery, hormone therapy) can lead to the relatively common and potentially serious long-term adverse effects,’” Kennedy wrote. “Given your ‘obligation to avoid serious harm’ and the findings of the Review, HHS expects you promptly to make the necessary updates to your treatment protocols and training for care for children and adolescents with gender dysphoria to protect them from these harmful interventions.”

“Providers should no longer rely on discredited guidelines that promote these dangerous interventions for children and adolescents based on ideology, not evidence,” HHS said on social media.

As The Federalist reported, the review found that doctors who pursued the interventions “lacked sufficient scientific and ethical justification” and that any rationalization of the destruction of children through these interventions “lack[s] … robust evidence.”

Kennedy’s letter notes that health care providers should stop basing decisions on the standards of care created by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), the world’s foremost promulgator of child mutilation and chemical castration advocacy, because it was “fraudulent and marked ‘a clear departure from the principles of unbiased, evidence-driven clinical guideline development.’”

“In the context of developing its recommendations, WPATH suppressed systematic reviews of evidence, failed to manage conflicts of interest, and relied on legal and political considerations rather than clinical ones,” the letter continued. “Health care risk managers should take note that a recent systematic review of international guideline quality did not recommend either the WPATH or the Endocrine Society guidelines for clinical use after determining they ‘lack development rigour and transparency.’ These and other guidelines based on the so-called ‘gender-affirming’ model of care should not be relied upon to harm children any further.”

Predator doctors, school teachers, counselors, corporate media members, and many others on the left have been pushing the idea that children need to be mutilated and castrated in order to keep them from committing suicide at purportedly high rates due to their gender confusion.

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US and Argentina announce plan to create an alternative global health system after withdrawing from WHO

The US Health and Human Services Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and his Argentine counterpart, Minister of Health Mario Lugones, have signed a joint declaration reaffirming their countries’ withdrawals from the World Health Organisation (“WHO”) and announcing plans to create an alternative international health system.

The new system aims to be grounded in scientific integrity, transparency, sovereignty and accountability, with Kennedy and Lugones stating that their withdrawal from WHO marks the beginning of a new path towards building a modern global health cooperation model.

During his visit to Buenos Aires, Argentina, Kennedy met with Lugones and Argentine President Javier Milei to discuss key health priorities – including healthcare reform, addressing chronic disease and their new global health collaboration – to define a joint work agenda that will strengthen transparency and trust in the health system.

Lugones expressed his shared vision with Kennedy, stating that they believe in the future of collaboration in global health and have similar visions about the path forward, with the declaration expressing a shared vision of the challenges facing the region’s health systems and the measures needed to transform them.

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The CFPB wanted medical debt to be left off credit reports. That’s changed under Trump

David Deeds is in financial trouble, and he’s hoping a federal court in Texas can help get him out of it.

Deeds, who is 62 and owes tens of thousands of dollars in medical debt from cancer treatment, is involved in a complicated lawsuit filed by credit industry groups over the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s medical debt rule.

The rule, finalized in January just weeks before the end of the Biden administration, would have banned the reporting of medical debt from credit reports. At the time, the agency reported 15 million Americans would benefit from the change, removing $49 billion in medical debt from records. It was set to go into effect in March.

But new leadership appointed by President Trump now runs the CFPB. And the agency hasn’t just reversed its position on the consumer protection rule — last month, it joined forces with the plaintiffs who filed the suit trying to block it. The agency has not returned a request for comment from NPR.

Over the last few months, Judge Sean Jordan from Texas’ Eastern District has twice ordered a stay, delaying the rule’s start date to July 28. He is likely to make a ruling on whether or not to vacate it by mid-June.

The outcome of the suit, filed on the same day the rule was issued, has important financial implications for Deeds, as well as the millions more whose medical debt has negatively impacted their credit scores.

“My credit was and is very important to me, because it is necessary to secure housing, transportation, and employment, and make sure that I’m never homeless again,” Deeds said in an affidavit filed on Feb. 24, by a consumer advocacy group intervening in the lawsuit.

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China’s Groundbreaking Diabetes Breakthrough—And the Global Backlash

In a revelation that could transform global healthcare, Chinese scientists have reportedly developed a stem cell therapy that reverses both Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes. While this scientific leap offers new hope for over 500 million people worldwide living with the chronic disease, it also threatens to shake up the multi-billion-dollar pharmaceutical industry that thrives on treating—not curing—diabetes.

At the core of this innovation is a technique that uses a patient’s own fat cells to generate insulin-producing islet cells. These engineered cells are then transplanted into the body, where they naturally regulate blood sugar levels. Since the cells are autologous (derived from the same person), there’s no risk of immune rejection, and patients don’t require immunosuppressants.

Initial trials have produced jaw-dropping results:

  • A 25-year-old woman with Type 1 diabetes went off insulin completely within 75 days.
  • A 59-year-old man with Type 2 diabetes was insulin-free in just 11 weeks. One year later, he remains off all medication.

This therapy takes advantage of induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) technology, a method of reprogramming adult cells to behave like embryonic stem cells. Scientists then coax these cells into becoming islet cells, which the pancreas uses to produce insulin.

The process essentially rebuilds a diabetic pancreas from the inside out—without the need for donor organs, immune-suppressing drugs, or lifelong insulin therapy.

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DOGE Has Found $14 Billion in Medicaid Fraud, Waste, and Abuse, Dr. Mehmet Oz Says

Dr. Mehmet Oz, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) administrator, said his agency and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have identified at least $14 billion in fraud, waste, and abuse.

“There’s about $14 billion we’ve identified with DOGE, of folks who are duly enrolled wrongly in multiple states for Medicaid,” Oz told Fox News’s “Sunday Morning Futures.”

As an example, Oz said: “You live in New Jersey, but you move to Pennsylvania, and which state gets your Medicaid? Turns out both states collect money from the federal government.”

There are other areas, he said, that constitute abuse of the federal health care system. He said some people who are eligible to get a job or seek education are receiving Medicaid. Oz echoed statements made by GOP lawmakers, including House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.)., who in recent days said that able-bodied individuals and illegal immigrants have received Medicaid benefits.

Oz urged that Medicaid be cleaned up so that it can provide services to individuals such as people with disabilities and others, suggesting that Republicans keep a work requirement to be eligible for the program.

“I think there’s a moral hazard if we don’t, because you’ve got people who are not working who could work, who should work, and it’s better for them and better for the country if they do,” he said, referring to Republicans’ having added work requirements to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that passed in the House of Representatives on May 22.

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$67 In France And $798 In US – Why Prescription Drug Prices Are So High In America

Prescription drugs cost more in the United States than anywhere else in the world. President Donald Trump and some bipartisan senators want to change that.

Trump has so far issued several actions related to prescription drug prices. The latest, announced May 12, is a Most Favored Nation Prescription Drug policy, requiring pharmaceutical companies to offer their lowest price to U.S. customers.

An earlier order aimed to ensure that the middlemen in the drug supply chain can’t hold on to rebates provided by pharmaceutical companies and instead must pass savings on to Medicare beneficiaries.

In all, the president has taken at least a dozen actions to reduce prescription drug costs, while no less than nine Senate bills aim for the same results.

Some of these ideas have been introduced before.

Trump’s Most Favored Nation pricing plan was introduced near the end of his first term.

The plan was stalled by court challenges, and President Joe Biden dropped it shortly after taking office.

A plan to make vendors pass manufacturer discounts on to Medicare beneficiaries was proposed in 2020. Biden rescinded it before it took effect.

There have been modest successes, including a pilot program begun by Trump in 2020 to cap insulin costs for Medicare Part B beneficiaries at $35 per month. At the time, a single vial of insulin cost about $100 in the United States.

That program was a success, and the idea was later broadened to include all Medicare beneficiaries through the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. By 2024, most major drug companies had voluntarily limited out-of-pocket expenses for insulin for all U.S. customers to $35.

Yet Americans still pay nearly three times as much for prescription medication as any peer nation, often even more.

Trulicity, a medication for Type 2 diabetics, was listed for $67 in France, according to a 2021 Government Accountability Report. In the United States, it cost $798.

Meanwhile, Remlivid, an oral cancer medication, was listed for $4,723 in Australia. In the United States, it was listed at almost five times that price: $22,048.

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Texas doctor who falsely diagnosed healthy patients to fund lavish lifestyle in $118M scheme is sentenced to 10 years in prison

A Texas doctor who falsely diagnosed his healthy patients to fund his lavish lifestyle with private jets and luxury sports cars as part of a $118 million health care scheme was sentenced to a decade behind bars.

Rheumatologist Jorge Zamora-Quezada defrauded patients and insurance companies by purposefully diagnosing people with rheumatoid arthritis despite them not having the life-long and incurable condition.

Zamora-Quezada, 68, masterminded the scheme out of his Mission, Texas office with the help of staffers who were abused and threatened by his status, the Department of Justice said.

The disgraced health care provider led patients to believe they were suffering from chronic illnesses and they would pay unnecessary and costly treatments and testing that included a variety of injections, infusions, x-rays, MRIs, and other procedures

The regimens included the administration of toxic medications that had potentially harmful and even deadly side effects.

Zamora-Quezada also falsified medical records of his patients to secure insurance funds from providers by falsifying medical.

He defrauded $28 million from Medicare, Medicaid, TRICARE, and Blue Cross Blue Shield.

Other doctors in the Rio Grande Valley testified against Zamora-Quezada during the 25-day trial, revealing the surprising findings when they treated hundreds of patients, believing they had RA.

“For most (patients) it was obvious that they did not have rheumatoid arthritis,” one rheumatologist testified.

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Despite decades of Democrat health initiatives, Americans are sicker than ever

Heath and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had a viral and heated exchange with Senator Patty Murphy, D-Wash., during a Senate Appropriations hearing last week that was supposed to focus on budget priorities for his department.

The exchange between the two went off the rails when Murray accused Kennedy of “sprinting down the road to illegally impounding billions in funding through intentional action and incompetence.” She highlighted a number of programs which fall under his purview that Kennedy has considered altering or omitting.

Kennedy’s came back with a mic-drop response that tied decades of growing health problems in America to the policies of Murray’s party.

“Senator, you’ve presided here, I think for 32 years. You have presided over the destruction of the health of the American people. Our people are now the sickest people in the world, because you have not done your job,” Kennedy fired back.

Data and history back up his argument.

Most recently, the COVID-19 pandemic destroyed public trust in health authorities and agencies.

In April 2020, trust sat at a reasonable 71.5%. Four years later in April 2024 it plummeted to 40.1%, according to a 50-state survey of U.S. adults led by Northeastern University’s distinguished professor of political science and computer sciences.

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RFK Urges Other Countries to Join the U.S. in Leaving the WHO: «We Don’t Have to Suffer the Limitations of a Dying WHO»

In an unprecedented act of political courage, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., current U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, has openly challenged the World Health Organization (WHO), describing it as “dying” and accusing it of being riddled with corruption and influenced by political interests—particularly those of China.

In a recorded message delivered during the World Health Assembly in Geneva, Kennedy called on other countries to follow the United States’ lead and withdraw from the organization. According to Kennedy, the WHO mishandled the COVID-19 pandemic by concealing information about human transmission of the virus and promoting false theories about its origin.

He also criticized the new pandemic treaty adopted by the WHO, calling it a perpetuation of systemic dysfunction. In response, the Trump administration has begun forming a new global health alliance with countries such as Argentina, Italy, and Israel.

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Takeaways From the Make America Healthy Again Commission Report

The rise in chronic diseases such as obesity among children can be traced to health decisions influenced by distorted scientific literature that is funded or otherwise impacted by corporations, according to a May 22 report by the Make America Healthy Again Commission.

The commission, chaired by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., plans to issue policy proposals at a later date.

Here are five takeaways from the report.

Focus on Ultra-Processed Foods

Kennedy has for years decried how children are eating more ultra-processed foods, and the report attributes the increase in childhood chronic diseases in part to that dietary shift.

“Rising rates of childhood chronic disease are likely being driven by a combination of factors, including the food children are eating,” it states.

Officials pointed in part to a 2021 study, which found that nearly 70 percent of calories consumed by American children come from ultra-processed foods, up from zero a century prior.

Other research cited in the report noted that ultra-processed foods, or foods high in sugar, fat, and chemicals, often lack nutrients.

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