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.

By Margaret Flowers, M.D. There is a lot of discussion about the Medicare buy-in. Since the federal legislation does not include a public option and the single-payer movement talks about expanding Medicare, people wonder if the bill introduced by Rep. Alan Grayson, D-Fla., is a step forward. The answer, however, is no. Unfortunately, the Grayson [...]

By Chris Gray If President Obama and the Democrats in Congress won’t get behind single payer, perhaps there’s a different, more Canadian-style approach to getting universal health care: get a system designed, passed, signed into law and set up in just one state, and the rest will follow. The health care savings for employers in [...]

Direct action, insurance company shareholder resolutions, divestment The following remarks were presented at a workshop at a PNHP meeting in Chicago on May 22. Comments and suggestions are invited. Rather than starting with a tired debate over whether the new health law – the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, or PPACA – is a [...]

Originally published in the Berkshire Eagle. The passage of the “health insurance” bill has been a huge political success for President Obama and the Democrats and has been compared to the historic passage of Medicare and Social Security. Unfortunately, this bill is not in the same league as those successful programs, which provide medical and [...]

This entry is from Dr. McCanne’s Quote of the Day, a daily health policy update on the single-payer health care reform movement. The QotD is archived on PNHP’s website. Documents reveal AT&T, Verizon, others, thought about dropping employer-sponsored benefits By Shawn Tully Fortune May 6, 2010 The great mystery surrounding the historic health care bill [...]

Wasichu is the Lakota (Sioux) word for “those who take the fat,” the greedy ones.  WellPoint/Anthem, the health insurance behemoth born of Blue Cross, is a wasichu corporation. As the Blue Cross movement grew in the 30’s, one of the foundational standards established in 1937 was “No private investors should provide money as stockholders or [...]