Author: Betsy McCaughey

With flu raging through 46 states, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is taking center stage, advising the public and physicians. How much can you believe? Until last year, polls showed the CDC was the most trusted federal agency. But then the CDC bungled its response to Ebola. That was a wake-up call, because […]

Next time you’re a patient, ask whether your “health care provider” is a doctor. On January 1, New York State changed the standard for who can practice medicine, putting patients at risk. New York is the latest state — now 19 in all — to capitulate to aggressive lobbying by nursing organizations to allow some […]

The U.S. Census Bureau announced last week that New York slipped to fourth place in population among the 50 states. Though babies still are born every day in my home state and immigrants still flock here, overall population growth lags because New Yorkers are abandoning the state. Don’t blame the weather. Blustery Montana and North […]

You need to know how much more coercive “health reform” could be if Hillary Clinton were to be elected president. A new ABC News/Washington Post poll shows that 61 percent of Democratic voters support Clinton for president in 2016, which is far more support than other possible contenders have. Obamacare’s future is uncertain, with the […]

If you want to know how your tax dollars will get spent next year, the answers are in Cromnibus — the 1,695-page bill that Congress hurriedly passed last weekend to fund the federal government through September 2015. Republicans won big with Cromnibus, along with farmers, political parties, incandescent bulb users, Blue Cross insurers, kids who […]

Today, Jonathan Gruber, the MIT economist caught repeatedly on video calling the American public “stupid” and saying deception was essential to pass Obamacare, was dragged before the House Oversight Committee for a grilling. But he was a stand-in for the real culprit: President Obama. Lying about the health law originated at the top. In 2008, […]

Sharon Helman, director of the Phoenix VA Health Care System in which vets needing medical care languished on secret lists, finally got sacked last week. She was the face of the VA scandal. Yet firing her took seven months. Unions have the Department of Veterans Affairs in a headlock, and nothing in the phony reform […]

On November 4, voters fired the Democratic majority in the U.S. Senate, replacing it with a GOP majority that campaigned against Obamacare and big spending. But the Democrats who lost are still running the show. These lame ducks lack the moral authority to govern. They shouldn’t be allowed to do any more than the bare […]

We have two major parties in the nation now: the Republican Party and the Banana Republic Party, otherwise known as Democrats. The difference between them is over the rule of law. When President Obama appointed judges without Senate approval, made environmental law without Congress and rewrote his health law two dozen times, Republicans protested that […]

President Barack Obama lied to sell Obamacare, and lately he’s using double talk to sell Ebolacare, his risky response to the virus sweeping West Africa. Sadly, he’s turning the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, once a trusted agency, into a public relations arm of the White House lie machine. On October 23, the CDC […]

On Monday, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention head Thomas Frieden announced a new policy on health care workers returning from Ebola-plagued West Africa. Parroting President Obama’s Saturday radio address, Frieden cautioned that Americans must be “guided by the science,” not fear. Sorry. The Obama administration’s halfway approach is based on political correctness, not science. […]

President Obama will be meeting with congressional leaders and military advisers on Tuesday to frame a strategy for battling ISIS overseas. Better late than never. But Obama still has said nothing about stopping jihadists from bringing their terror here. It’s up to Congress to act on this urgent issue. Congress should reverse Obama’s dangerous new […]

While President Obama dithers, Congress needs to act against ISIS. House and Senate leaders should reconvene Congress this week and take the unprecedented step of authorizing military action against ISIS for Obama’s signature. Customarily, a president takes the first step, presenting a draft Authorization for the Use of Military Force (similar to a declaration of […]

Most Americans want government off their back. A whopping 59 percent say they’d like to send a “leave me alone” message to Washington, whereas only 32 percent say their message is “lend me a hand.” People are fed up with government’s bossing them around. This, according to an Aug. 14 Fox News poll of registered […]

President Obama is golfing on Martha’s Vineyard, and Congress is adjourned for a five-week vacation. So who’s minding the nation’s capital? No one. Truth is, no one is ever minding that store. A string of disgraceful revelations in the weeks before politicians packed up for vacation shows that Washington is permanently mired in a culture […]

Ebola poses virtually no risk to most Americans, but hospital workers and their patients could face real danger if someone unknowingly infected with the deadly virus travels to the U.S. and visits an American emergency room for care. Many hospitals are poorly prepared to contain: any: pathogen. That’s why at least 75,000 people a year die from […]

On Monday, Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew urged Congress to provide more resources for the exploding number of people on permanent disability. It’s part of the Obama administration’s “give away the store” mentality, encouraging the masses to sign up for government programs at taxpayers’ expense. Even without Congress’ complicity, the administration is doing everything it can […]

The nation’s No. 2 court on Tuesday slapped down the Obama administration in a 2-1 decision that could kill the president’s signature health-care law. A less-prestigious federal appeals court issued a contradictory opinion the same day, but if the Supreme Court upholds the D.C. Circuit’s ruling, it will force Congress back to the drawing board […]

“Really, we should be afraid of this court,” said House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi in response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s June 30 Hobby Lobby ruling. Afraid of Hobby Lobby? Nonsense. Democratic politicians are lying about the Court’s ruling, scaremongering and trying to whip up a war over reproductive rights before the fall election. Here […]

On July 3, when Americans were preparing to celebrate freedom, the Obama administration reduced freedom by adding another 1,296 pages of regulations to Obamacare. The burdensome rules were published in the Federal Register on the eve of Independence Day, when few were likely to be watching. So much for transparency. Obamacare regulations compel doctors and […]

Yesterday, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. that if you like your God, you can keep your God, even if you run a business. The Obama administration tried to require that health plans provided at work cover contraception and morning after pills, no matter what an employer’s religious convictions. […]

Last Friday’s congressional hearing on outlandish bonuses at the VA is the latest proof that the nation needs to overhaul how federal workers in every department are paid and promoted. They’re on the gravy train, and taxpayers are being taken for a ride. Back in1883, Congress passed the Pendleton Act to replace patronage with a […]

Congress is rushing to pass a compromise drafted by Sens. John McCain, R-Arizona, and Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, which claims to rescue vets from deadly waitlists. House and Senate leaders are conferring on a final version, congratulating themselves for bipartisanship. But in truth, the bill won’t speed up health care for vets. The fine print sabotages […]

In the past week, Govs. Nikki Haley of South Carolina and Mary Fallin of Oklahoma evicted Common Core from public schools, even at the risk of losing hundreds of millions of federal dollars promised to states adopting it. Haley and Fallin initially supported Common Core, but public outrage is forcing them to reverse course, and […]

Richard Wilson, age 64, survived two tours in Vietnam, but he’s afraid he won’t survive the wait at his local Veterans Affairs hospital. Warned seven months ago that circulation blockages in his legs put him at imminent risk of a fatal heart attack or amputations, he called and emailed the VA daily. He’s in pain, […]

Encouraging vets on Medicare to use civilian care instead of Veterans Affairs’ could cut the patient backlog at the VA by as much as half, solving a national crisis. Almost half of vets are older than 65, and nearly all vets using the VA have Medicare coverage. Often, they’d be better off getting their bypass […]

On May 7, the Obama administration boasted that Obamacare was improving health care quality for seniors, pulling out a bag of statistical tricks to prove it. But a closer look shows that they’re not improving care. They’re skimping on it, socking seniors with unexpected bills for “observation care” and likely shortening their lives. President Barack […]

Leave it to President Barack Obama and Democrats in Congress to enact what they billed as “comprehensive” health reform and overlook the plight of 8.5 million veterans. That’s what they did in 2010 when they passed Obamacare. It provides coverage for convicts and even for newcomers to this country with no waiting period, but it […]

On Monday, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie dodged a political bullet when the United States Supreme Court declined to hear the National Rifle Association’s challenge to his state’s highly restrictive gun law. The justices’ decision not to hear the case Drake v. Jerejian leaves Second Amendment law in disarray. Federal appeals courts around the nation […]

The nation was shocked by charges that more than 1,400 vets lingered and 40 died on a secret waiting list at the Phoenix VA medical center. The list was concocted to conceal long waits for care. But what you haven’t heard is even worse. VA hospitals all over the country are manipulating the official electronic […]