By Margaret Flowers, M.D. Today we celebrate the 45th anniversary of the enactment of Medicare. Events are happening across the nation to mark this significant occasion, and yesterday I and about 10 other single-payer health reform advocates walked the halls of Congress and distributed literature to underscore its importance. Medicare is a true American legacy [...]

Our last four posts have examined the PPACA from the perspectives of the four main goals of health care reform — cost containment, affordability, improved access and quality of care. Here we draw these goals together in asking whether this legislation delivers enough to be worth the $1 trillion investment over the next 10 years, [...]

In our last three posts, we examined how the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (PPACA) stacks up against the goals of reform for cost containment, affordability and access to care. Here we consider what its likely impact will be on the quality of care, the fourth major goal of the reform effort. [...]

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (PPACA) is being touted by its proponents as moving the country to near-universal coverage and a great step ahead in U.S. health care. But what does this really mean? Are the many barriers to care almost a thing of the past?

In our last post, we looked at some of the uncontrolled drivers of rapidly rising health care costs despite all the assurances of our politicians supporting the new health care law, the Patient Protection and Affordability Care Act of 2010 (PPACA). During the long run-up to this bill, President Obama told us that it would [...]

The passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (PPACA), our new health care legislation, in March was hailed by its supporters as an historic event of the magnitude of Social Security and Medicare. But four months later, it remains controversial, with repeated polls showing three large groups of divisive opinion, including [...]

By Claudia Chaufan MD In a recent issue in the New England Journal of Medicine, economist Jonathan Gruber praises the Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act (PPACA) as a “step in the right direction,” even as he expresses a healthy skepticism about PPACA’s capacity to control escalating health care costs, which he recognizes as [...]

The following text is the testimony that Dr. Margaret Flowers presented to the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform at its June 30 hearing in Washington. Dr. Flowers is congressional fellow for Physicians for a National Health Program. I am Dr. Margaret Flowers and I am here today on behalf of Physicians for a [...]

By Chris Gray Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., a staunch opponent of single-payer national health insurance who waffled on his support of even a meager government-run public option in this past year’s health care debate, has about a third of his stock invested in just one company: Indianapolis-based WellPoint, Inc., perhaps the most notorious of health [...]

Yesterday, AmericaSpeaks, a nominally nonpartisan group (but funded in part by billionaire Peter G. Peterson, a notorious advocate of cuts in the Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid programs), conducted a town hall meeting on the U.S. budget deficit in 19 cities across the country. This 6.5-hour marathon consisted of about 3,500 people who were meant to be representative of America.