Tag: health care

Waste Of The Day: Veterans’ Hospital Equipment Is Missing

Topline: The Veterans Health Administration has lost an estimated 5% of its reusable medical equipment worth at least $211 million — including exam tables, computers and microscopes — and “will continue to do so if processes are not improved,” according to a new audit from the Veterans Affairs inspector general.

Key facts: VA hospitals own over 2 million pieces of nonexpendable equipment that is meant to be used for two years or more, valued at $12 billion. Federal auditors recently visited hospitals to see if the VA was properly tracking the equipment and found that thousands of items had disappeared.

The auditors estimated that a third of the equipment — 537,000 items — is in a different location than inventory records claim, and an additional 75,500 items are missing entirely.

It’s possible there is even more missing equipment, because the VA is only required to keep track of inventory worth more than $5,000.

Some of the nonexpendable equipment is tracked using electronic tags, but some of the tags have dead batteries or only show what building the item is in and not what room.

The VA also uses an “inventory by exception” system in which items that have their location recorded during routine maintenance do not need to be included in annual inventory reports for up to 24 months, even though most items are required to be logged every 12 months. Auditors wrote that “a lot can go wrong, including losing equipment,” because of the inventory-by-exception system.

There are also staffing issues contributing to the missing equipment. Some VA employees working on inventory could not search for items because they did not have the keys to all the rooms in the hospital. Some hospitals have staffing levels below 40%, which employees said made it harder to fill out inventory reports on time.

Search all federal, state and local salaries and vendor spending with the world’s largest government spending database at OpenTheBooks.com. 

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Budget Office Estimates Tens Of Billions Lost To Obamacare Exchange Fraud

his space has previously reported on the fraud associated with Obamacare, particularly the enhanced Exchange subsidies passed in 2021 that Democrats want to extend. In recent weeks, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has now admitted that the law’s subsidy structure encourages enrollees to lie about their income.

These reports come on top of the fact that passing a subsidy extension could expand funding for abortion-related travel, in ways that undermine state pro-life protections. It’s all enough to make one wonder why Republican “leaders” are making noises about extending the enhanced subsidies before their expiration on December 31.

Impact of Skewed Incentives

Prior studies by the Paragon Health Institute have examined the incentives created by the Exchange subsidy regime to falsify income estimates. (Disclosure: While I have done work for Paragon, I had no involvement with this particular report, and am writing this article on my own behalf.)

Those incentives work in two ways: On the one hand, enrollees with income below the poverty level have an incentive to inflate their income up to the poverty level, because otherwise they will not qualify for subsidies at all. (This dynamic largely applies in the 10 red states that have not expanded Medicaid, because enrollees with below-poverty income levels in expansion states would qualify for Medicaid expansion.) On the other hand, enrollees with higher incomes — say, between two and four times the poverty level — have an incentive to understate their income, to qualify for the richest subsidies.

Paragon concluded that, in 2025, there are approximately 6.4 million people with incomes just above the poverty level with potentially fraudulent enrollment, either for over- or under-stating their income. In its estimation, these enrollees led to approximately $27.1 billion in estimated taxpayer losses due to Exchange fraud.

Budget Office Estimates

As part of its responses to questions from congressional Republicans, CBO recently revealed for the first time that it, too, believes enrollees are lying about their income to qualify for Obamacare subsidies:

Estimating the number of people who have improperly received subsidies for marketplace [i.e., Exchange] coverage is difficult. The agency has, however, specifically estimated that 1.3 million marketplace enrollees improperly claimed the premium tax credit [i.e., subsidies] via intentional overstatement of income for 2023; 2.3 million enrollees did so for 2025.

The budget agency went on to explain that it could calculate this improper enrollment “because it appears in enrollment data as an unusual concentration of enrollees reporting income just above” the poverty level.

For instance, CBO noted that the number of people reporting income between 100 percent and 105 percent of the poverty level in non-expansion states was 2.6 times the number of people reporting income between 105 percent and 110 percent of the poverty level. CBO also cited tax reporting data indicating that, in 2023, a large number (39 percent) of enrollees claiming the richest subsidies — which are calculated based on expected income — ultimately reported actual income below the poverty level.

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What’s Driving the Childhood Health Crisis

Nearly half of all American children are living with at least one chronic health condition—whether it’s eczema, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, anxiety, asthma, obesity, or something more complex. That’s not normal.

Yet we’ve somehow come to accept this situation as the baseline for childhood health.

We’re told it’s genetic. We’re told it’s random. We’re told it’s normal.

It is not normal. Fortunately—as a pediatrician who works with families every day—I can tell you, we’re not doomed.

The rise in chronic illness isn’t a mystery. Nor did it happen overnight. It’s the cumulative result of a culture that treats symptoms instead of asking questions, that medicates before investigating, and that feeds children food-like substances instead of real nourishment.

However, there is good news—if the problem is systemic, then so is the solution.

From Sick Care to Root Cause

If we zoom out from diagnoses and look upstream, five major disruptors stand out as root causes of most chronic conditions I see in practice:

  1. Inflammation: Chronic low-grade inflammation is at the root of everything from eczema to autoimmune disease. It’s often fueled by poor diet, lack of sleep, and environmental toxins.
  2. Nutrient deficiency: Our soil is depleted, our diets are processed, and our kids are being raised on food that fills but doesn’t fuel. Micronutrient gaps impair immunity, mood, and development.
  3. Toxic load: From plastics and pesticides to air pollution, today’s children are exposed to thousands of chemicals—many of which have never been tested for safety in children.
  4. Microbiome disruption: C-sections, antibiotics, processed food, and lack of outdoor time have altered the gut health of an entire generation. The microbiome is central to immune function, digestion, and even mental health.
  5. Nervous system dysregulation: Constant stimulation, screen exposure, and lack of restorative rhythms are leaving children in a chronic state of fight-or-flight. When the nervous system can’t settle, the body can’t heal.

These aren’t fringe theories. They are well-documented physiological truths backed by research in immunology, endocrinology, and neurobiology. However, they rarely make it into a 10-minute pediatric visit.

The Empowered Parent’s Roadmap

Making changes in your lifestyle may sound overwhelming—but it doesn’t have to be. Parents are not powerless—they are the most important health advocates their children will ever have.

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Basic biology has become blasphemy – a call for true Canadian physicians

“I would beg the wise and learned fathers [of the church] to consider with all diligence the difference which exists between matters of mere opinion and matters of demonstration.”

Galileo Galilei.

What has Canadian health care come to? We could be talking about how an estimated 28,000 Canadians died on waitlists last year for surgeries and diagnostic scans. Canada is the only developed country that imposes a government run monopoly on citizens to get health care.

We could talk about how Canadian medical school admissions to train doctors have become about woke bigotry instead of merit. Canadians just want the best doctors – whatever their background.

No. The latest debacle of health care amounts to radicals toppling the leadership of Canadian evidence-based medicine at McMaster University.

As a result, I will describe three main aspects to this story. First, it has become apparent that our institutions have been hi-jacked by the equivalent of a woke church that cannot be questioned. Second, I will describe how other countries have dealt with this affront to common sense – in particular gender ideology. Finally, I will describe a call to action for true Canadian physicians – to bring back empirical scientific method and to end compelled speech.

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Trump Should Take Down The American Medical Association’s Licensing Grift

n the labyrinthine world of American healthcare, few entities wield as much unchecked power as the American Medical Association (AMA). While the AMA positions itself as the voice of physicians, in reality it’s largely a government-sanctioned medical coding monopoly that extracts billions from the health care system and funnels it into leftist political advocacy supporting transgender pseudo-science, climate radicalism, and racial quotas in medical education and practice.

It’s an arrangement that is not only anti-competitive but profoundly unfair, compelling doctors and patients to subsidize agendas they may vehemently oppose. Now that the Department of Government Efficiency has taken a well-deserved axe to the leftist nonprofit network living off government largess and the Trump administration has brought corporate monopoly power into its focus, the government-generated monopoly providing AMA with its millions in advocacy dollars seems ripe for the picking.

AMA owns the rights to something called Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) codes — a standardized system of five-digit codes that describe every medical procedure from a routine check-up to complex surgeries. Developed and copyrighted by the AMA since the 1960s, these codes are mandatory for billing under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (more commonly known as HIPAA). No doctor, hospital, or insurer can process claims without them, creating a captive market where the AMA charges licensing fees to everyone in the chain — providers, software vendors, and payers.

Moreover, because the federal government mandates CPT use for Medicare and Medicaid, innovators and alternatives are effectively locked out. And being a government-granted monopoly is rich business. In 2023, the AMA raked in $308 million from CPT royalties — more than half its revenue — dwarfing membership dues, which now account for less than 10 percent of its income.

It would be one thing if the monopoly rents charged by the AMA added proportional value to the system. But it appears these revenues flow directly from America’s medical community into shameless left-wing advocacy. In 2023, the AMA passed resolutions denouncing state laws restricting the mutilation practices known as “gender affirming care” for children, framing such interventions as essential despite glaring evidence to the contrary. This is, of course, in keeping with its history of pushing a rabidly pro-abortion agenda.

The AMA — which holds enormous sway over medical school accreditation and curriculum — is also fully in favor of racial preferences in medical education and practice, coming out in “unequivocal opposition to legislation that would dissolve affirmative action or punish institutions for employing race-conscious admissions.” The organization has also labeled basic diagnostic tools like Body Mass Index to be tools of “racist exclusion.” In 2021 it issued a strategic plan to “embed racial justice and advance health equity” — rather than, say, address the opioid crisis killing all Americans at record levels, regardless of race — as a critical focus for American doctors.

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Hegseth Savagely Fires She/Her Navy Commander and Medical Director for “Transgender Healthcare” at Naval Center in California

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth savagely fired Janelle Marra, a she/her DEI Navy Commander and medical director for “transgender healthcare” at a naval center in California.

“Navy Cmdr. Janelle Marra, a native of Massachusetts, began her Naval Service by the Health Professions Scholarship program in 2004,” her bio read.

“She is currently serving as the Senior Medical Officer over the medical clinics on MCRD-SD, the Deputy Medical Director of Transgender Care for the Navy and Director of Medical Services for Expeditionary Medical Facility Bravo,” Marra’s bio said.

Social media users asked Hegseth to look into this DEI hire who was still serving at a naval center several months into the Trump Administration.

Yikes

This she/her Navy Commander is apparently a medical director for “transgender healthcare” at a Naval center in California

Can you please look into this? @PeteHegseth @DODResponse https://t.co/5im1ocJzSC pic.twitter.com/eFy93JsMca

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) September 4, 2025

Hegseth on Thursday evening announced Marra had been fired.

“Pronouns UPDATED: She/Her/Fired,” Hegseth said.

Pronouns UPDATED: She/Her/Fired https://t.co/j8nboQZO9Z

— Pete Hegseth (@PeteHegseth) September 5, 2025

The day after Pete Hegseth was confirmed, he announced that the Department of Defense will no longer tolerate Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion under his leadership.

“The President’s guidance (lawful orders) is clear: No more DEI at the Department of Defense. The Pentagon will comply, immediately. No exceptions, name-changes, or delays,” Hegseth said back in January.

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RFK Is over the Target

COVID pandemic tyrants mandated vaccination as a societal duty, lest we become disease-spreaders.  The vaccinated were supposedly protected from infection.  So how could the unvaccinated spread disease to them?

This highlights inherent deficiencies in the Germ Theory of Disease (GTOD), formulated as four postulates in the late 19th century by Robert Koch.  Koch’s postulates require the following:

  • The microorganism must be found in all individuals suffering from the disease, but not in healthy individuals.
  • The microorganism must be isolated from a diseased host and grown in pure culture.
  • The cultured microorganism should cause disease when introduced into a healthy organism.
  • The microorganism must be re-isolated from the experimentally infected host and identified as the same agent.

The third postulate doesn’t always hold.  Not everyone shows signs of disease during pandemics.  A person might be infected but asymptomatic.  This is simply a fact.  Those recognizing this are derided by the media/medical/pharmaceutical establishment as germ theory denialists.  Leftists believe that this is a sin second only to climate heresy.

COVID was a classic example of the GTOD’s deficits.  COVID was not an equal-opportunity killer of 1.2 million Americans and 7 million globally.  The young were mostly immune, whereas the elderly perished. 

Louis Pasteur helped develop the GTOD.  His nemesis, Antoine Béchamp, proposed the Microzymian theory: disease originates internally.  Béchamp asserted that disease is caused by changes in the body’s internal environment, not by external germs.  Microbes were a consequence, not a cause of disease.

A great deal of truth lies in his assertions.  Individuals’ nutritional status and immune function are key factors.  We saw evidence of this during COVID.  A direct relationship existed between Vitamin D levels and resistance to COVID’s intensity.  More nuanced efforts seek to bridge the divide between Béchamp’s concepts and the GTOD.

The medical industry envisioned dollar signs once the GTOD appeared.  An enemy had been identified.  The global war on microbes was on.  Children and pets are pumped with dozens of novel vaccines.  The childhood vaccine schedule is a tragic farce.  By age 18, children are scheduled to receive over 50 CDC-recommended injections.  Each provides profits to manufacturers and clinicians.  Seniors are urged to get nine vaccines.  According to RFK Jr., “50% of revenues to most pediatricians come from vaccines.”

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Woke Politicization of Medicine: The Logical Flaws in Gender Dysphoria Diagnosis and Care

The medical establishment now draws a distinction between gender identity disorder, which it classifies as a mental disorder, and being transgender, which it insists is not. Official diagnostic manuals such as the DSM-5 and ICD-11 separate the issue into two categories:

  1. Gender dysphoria – distress caused by the incongruence between one’s experienced gender and assigned sex.
  2. Gender incongruence – a mismatch between identity and sex that may not cause distress.

The reasoning is that distress often comes not from the incongruence itself but from social rejection, discrimination, or lack of access to transition-related care. Advocates argue that once people transition and receive support, they may no longer feel distress.

This distinction, however, raises serious questions about consistency in medical diagnosis. In nearly every other psychiatric condition, the diagnosis is based on symptoms within the patient, not society’s response.

PTSD, for example, is defined by intrusive thoughts and hypervigilance, not by whether trauma survivors are stigmatized. Depression is diagnosed by changes in mood, sleep, or appetite.

Autism is based on communication and behavior, schizophrenia on delusions and hallucinations. In all these cases, the diagnosis is rooted in the individual, not in external acceptance or rejection.

Research shows that most people who seek gender-related medical care report distress and therefore meet the criteria for dysphoria.

The supposed separation between dysphoria and incongruence often creates confusion, barriers to care, and inconsistent diagnoses across different contexts.

By shifting the focus from internal symptoms to external social variables, psychiatry has departed from the standard medical model.

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Breakthrough: Israel to Lead World’s First Human Spinal Cord Implant Using Patient’s Own Cells

Tel Aviv University researchers are preparing for the world’s first spinal cord implant in humans using engineered tissue grown from the patient’s own cells, marking a breakthrough that could restore walking ability to paralyzed patients within the coming year.

The groundbreaking procedure, developed at Tel Aviv University’s Sagol Center for Regenerative Biotechnology, uses a fully personalized approach that transforms a patient’s blood and fat cells into functional spinal cord tissue. Professor Tal Dvir, head of the research team, explained that “more than 80% of the animals regained full walking ability” in preclinical trials using the engineered implants.

The innovative process begins by reprogramming blood cells from patients through genetic engineering to behave like embryonic stem cells capable of becoming any type of cell in the body. Meanwhile, fat tissue from the same patient is used to extract substances such as collagen and sugars to produce a unique hydrogel that serves as the foundation for the implant.

“We take the cells that we’ve reprogrammed into embryonic-like stem cells, place them inside the gel, and mimic the embryonic development of the spinal cord,” Professor Dvir said. The result is a complete three-dimensional spinal cord implant that contains neuronal networks capable of transmitting electrical signals.

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Legal Experts: ChatGPT and AI Models Should Face Medical Review for Human Testing, Weigh Serious Mental Health Risks to Users

When studies are done on human beings, they are required to have an “Institutional Review Board” or “IRB” review the study, and formally approve the research, this is not being done at present for federally-funded work with AI/LLM programs and may, experts warn, be significantly harming U.S. citizens.

This is done because studies are being conducted on human beings.
Critics say that ‘Large Language Models’ powered by Artificial Intelligence, platforms like “Claude” and “ChatGPT” are engaged in this kind of human research and should be subject to board review and approval.

And they point out that current HHS policies would appear to require IRB-review for all federally-funded research on human subjects, but that Big Tech companies have so far evaded such review.

IRB Rules (45 C.F.R. 46.109, “The Common Rule”), requires all federally funded human-subjects research to go through IRB approval, informed consent, and continuing oversight.

Some courts have recognized that failure to obtain IRB approval can be used as evidence in itself of negligence or misconduct.

Even low-impact and otherwise innocent research requires this kind of professional review to ensure that harmful effects are not inadvertently caused to the human participants. Most modern surveys are often required to have an IRB review prior to its start.

Already, scientists have raised alarm about the mental and psychological impact of LLM use among the population.

One legal expert who is investigating the potential for a class action against these Big Tech giants on this issue told the Gateway Pundit, “under these rules, if you read them closely, at a minimum, HHS should be terminating every single federal contract at a university that works on Artificial Intelligence.”

This issue came up in 2014, when Facebook was discovered to have been changing and manipulating their algorithms on 700,000 people to see how they responded. This testing on human subjects may have seemed benign to some, but there was a risk that long-term mental and emotional health was significantly impacted. In 2018, the same complaints were made about the Cambridge Analytica program where a private company harvested millions of Facebook user profiles in order to more accurately market to those individuals.
Studies, including this 2019 study in the Journal ‘Frontiers in Psychology’, have examined the many ethical issues about Facebook’s actions, including how it selected whom to test upon, the intentions of testing on these individuals, and the ethics of doing so on children.

The legal expert pointed out to the Gateway Pundit, “People are using these systems, like ChatGPT, to discuss their mental health. Their responses are being used in their training data. Companies like OpenAI and Anthropic admit user chats may be stored and used for “training.” Yet under IRB standards, that kind of data collection would usually require informed consent forms explaining risks, yet none are provided.”

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