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Since China's so-called Peace Ark arrived last week, more than 2,000 South Africans have been treated on board - ranging from maternity check-ups and cataract surgeries to cupping therapy.
China enjoys a strong political partnership with South Africa, and this is Beijing's latest show of soft power. //
The African National Congress (ANC) says its National Health Insurance (NHI) scheme will be a huge improvement as all services at both public and private facilities will be free at the point of care – paid out of a central fund.
Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi has insisted it will still be implemented despite the party losing its parliamentary majority in May, and going into coalition with parties like the Democratic Alliance (DA) that oppose some aspects of the scheme.
It will cause a massive shake-up of the health sector, but critics fear it could prompt an exodus of health professionals to find employment abroad.
The scheme is being vociferously opposed by private health companies as it bars people from taking out private health insurance for treatment. //
The floating hospital leaves Cape Town on Thursday for Angola before moving on to several other countries. It has already visited the Seychelles, Tanzania, Madagascar and Mozambique - on this its 10th excursion since being commissioned in 2008.
The initiative is seen as a further step in China’s efforts to increase its influence on the African continent.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. appeared on "Fox News Sunday" to talk about his plans to partner with Donald Trump to "Make America Healthy Again," and dropped some big truth bombs about the corruption and perverse incentives within the United States' public health agencies. //
"I wouldn't dismantle them. I would change the focus, and I would end the corruption. Right now, 75 percent of FDA’s budget is coming from pharmaceutical companies. That is a perverse incentive.
"In NIH, the - scientists and officials at NIH who work on drug development, incubate drugs for the pharmaceutical company, get to collect lifetime royalties from those products. These are regulators. They’re supposed to be looking for problems in those products.
"We have these agencies that have become sock puppets for the industries they’re supposed to regulate, so they're not really interested in public health.
"The most profitable thing today in America is a sick child. Everybody’s making money - the hospitals are making money, the pharmaceutical companies are making money; even the insurance companies make money.
"We need to end those perverse incentives, we need to get the corruption out of the FDA, out of NIH, out of the CDC, and make them function as they're supposed to function, which is to protect public health and to protect childrens' health.”
Activists with Reform Pharma, an initiative of the nonprofit Children's Health Defense, descended onto ComicCon in San Diego on Friday and Saturday. The group was adorned in pop culture costumes and distributed free copies of a full-color comic book based on the true events of the discovery of an illegal biolab last year, a story extensively reported by RedState. Over two days, activists held signs and handed out 10,000 copies of the new comic outside of the convention center.
The Reedley incident unfolded in this small Central Valley town near Fresno, where city code enforcement Officer Jesalyn Harper uncovered a clandestine bio-lab. Harper, a central figure in the comic book adaptation titled "The Known Unknown," along with other officers, discovered violations and suspicious activities in what was supposed to be a vacant warehouse. The illegal operation was linked to a group of Chinese nationals, including a fugitive.
Inside the lab, authorities found nearly 1,000 lab mice and a range of biohazardous materials, including unlabeled vials containing potentially infectious agents such as COVID-19. //
Additionally, the nonprofit has made the 16-page comic book available online to view, download, and share. https://reformpharmanow.org/comic/
The woman realized how serious her infection was once she was in custody.
Nearly 60 years after tobacco companies were first required to print warning labels on cigarettes to reduce smoking, statists salivate at the opportunity to pull the lever for labels on any other behavior they wish to deter, such as eating meat.
Last fall, a coalition of scientists proposed cigarette-style caution labels be placed on meat products for alleged hazards to the climate and human health. A study examining 1,000 meat-eating adults found labels espousing hazards to climate, health, and pandemics were enough to convince participants to opt for a non-meat meal. Given the success of warning labels at reducing cigarette use, researchers expressed optimism at the potential for similar warnings for deter meat consumption.
A dramatic drop in meat at the center of the American diet, however, offers far worse implications for public health than appreciated by the statist class of academics determined to manipulate behavior. The federal government’s recommendations to embrace a low-fat diet, for example, planted the roots for the twin epidemics of obesity and chronic disease overwhelming the health care system today after three generations dutifully followed the dietary guidelines. Americans increased consumption of grains and processed oils at the behest of the “experts” and now live in a nation where nearly 42 percent of adults 20 and older are obese and 6 in 10 suffer from at least one chronic illness.
By turning most of health care into what amounts to regulated utilities, Obamacare forced mergers and acquisitions within the sector.
A recent Wall Street Journal story highlighting a new antitrust investigation against the nation’s largest health insurer represents a variation on a long-standing theme. In this instance, as in prior occurrences, the Justice Department and federal officials are trying to undo the harmful effects of a law — Obamacare — that has led industry giants throughout the health sector to consolidate.
Recall that, four election cycles ago, then-candidate Obama promised in 2008 that his health care plan would lower premiums by an average of $2,500 per family. That premiums continue to rise unabated shows the failure of Obamacare by Obama’s own standards — and the anti-competitive behavior the law has engendered explains why. //
But Warren gave away the plot by citing the title of a blog post in her letter: “How Obamacare Created Big Medicine.” It’s the perfect summation of why, as Donald Trump said in social media posts around the time of Warren’s letter, “Obamacare sucks.” And the Justice Department’s investigation into UnitedHealth provides an implicit admission that even President Biden and his administration agree.
A presidential candidate is finally talking about exercise in the context of reforming the broken American “health” care system.
At the Republican debate in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy called on the health insurance industry to prioritize preventative medicine over high-dollar procedures that are only sought after disease has already taken hold.
“They’ll pay for anything like feeding tubes, doctors to be pill pushers,” Ramaswamy said, but not for “the procedures that can actually make these patients better.”
“Here’s the answer,” Ramaswamy added. “We need to start having diverse insurance options in a competitive marketplace that cover actual health, preventative medicine, diet, exercise, lifestyle, and otherwise.”
“We don’t have a health care system in this country. We have a sick care system,” Ramaswamy explained. //
Dr. Peter Attia wrote about the broken nature of our current health care system in his book, Outlive: The Science & Art of Longevity, in March.
Health insurance companies won’t pay a doctor very much to tell a patient to change the way he eats, or to monitor the blood glucose levels in order to prevent him from developing type 2 diabetes. Yet insurance will pay for this same patient’s (very expensive) insulin after he has been diagnosed. Similarly, there’s no billing code for putting a patient on a comprehensive exercise program designed to maintain her muscle mass and sense of balance while building her resistance to injury. But if she falls and breaks her hip, then her surgery and physical therapy will be covered.
The U.S. spends roughly $3.6 trillion on health care every year but just 3 percent or less of that spending is targeted at prevention. U.S. health care spending, meanwhile, reached more than 18 percent of GDP in 2021, up from 5 percent in 1960.