Articles of Interest

November 13, 2009

America's Affordable Health Choices Act Implementation Timeline
Prepared by the Committees on Ways & Means, Energy & Commerce, and Education & Labor

Healthcare-NOW Statement on HR 3962
Healthcare-NOW!
On Saturday, November 7, 2009, the House passed H.R. 3962, the Affordable Health Care for America Act, to much celebration by the Democratic party. Healthcare-NOW!'s view, however, is that the House bill is a gift to the insurance industry at the further expense of the people of this nation.

November 12, 2009

Lack of health care killed 2,266 US veterans last year: study
Agence France Presse (AFP) News
The number of US veterans who died in 2008 because they lacked health insurance was 14 times higher than the US military death toll in Afghanistan that year, according to a new study.

Simple, Fair, and Affordable
John A. Day, Jr., M.D. | American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine
With the election of Barack Obama as our 44th President and the installation of a new United States Congress has come renewed attention to health care reform. Appropriately, there is a sense of urgency regarding the 47 million Americans without health insurance and the millions more underinsured, and to make matters worse, it is inevitable that both numbers will increase due to rising unemployment. In response to this crisis, most health care reform proposals attempt to guarantee at least some health coverage for all Americans. Yet nearly all proposals achieve this aim in large part through the current private insurance system. It is well worth asking: exactly what value does the insurance industry bring to health care in this country? And if it contributes little of consequence, is there another way?

Study: Over 2,200 US Veterans Died in 2008 Due to Lack of Health Insurance
Amy Goodman | Democracy Now
On Veterans Day, a new study estimates four times as many US Army veterans died last year because they lacked health insurance than the total number of US soldiers who were killed in Iraq and Afghanistan in the same period. A research team at Harvard Medical School says 2,266 veterans under the age of 65 died in 2008 because they were uninsured. We speak to the report's co-author, Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, professor of medicine at Harvard University and co-founder of Physicians for a National Health Program.

New Evidence of Pharma's Sweetheart Deal
By Jonathan Cohn | The New Republic
Critics have complained that a drug industry got a sweetheart deal when it struck a bargain with the White House and Senate Finance Committee over health care reform. There’s new reason to think those critics were right.

Drug Deal
By Jonathan Cohn | The New Republic
It was September 2008, at a town hall in Virginia, where Obama was offering a preview of how he intended to conduct his presidency. He would change the way Washington works, make it transparent, and, in so doing, deliver what the American public needed--starting with affordable health insurance. But, just a few months later, Obama's team was doing exactly what he said his administration wouldn't do: negotiating behind closed doors. The subject, sure enough, was health reform. The partner was the drug industry. By June, they had a deal.

November 11, 2009

2,266 Veterans Died In 2008 Because They Were Uninsured
By Elyse Siegel | The Huffington Post
According to a study released by the Harvard Medical School, 2,266 veterans under the age of 65 died last year as a result of not having health insurance. Researchers emphasize that "that figure is more than 14 times the number of deaths (155) suffered by U.S. troops in Afghanistan in 2008, and more than twice as many as have died (911 as of Oct. 31) since the war began in 2001."

Three Frequently Asked Questions about the House Bill HR 3962 and Reform
By Mass-Care

November 10, 2009

Statement by CNA/NNOC Executive Director Rose Ann DeMoro on the House bill on healthcare
Of all the torrent of words that followed House passage of its version of healthcare reform legislation in early November, perhaps the most misleading were those comparing it to enactment of Social Security and Medicare.

Over 2,200 Vets Died for Lack of Health Insurance in 2008
By Viji Sundaram | New America Media
Lack of health insurance claimed the lives of more than 2,266 veterans under the age of 65 last year, says a Harvard Medical School study out today. That number is more than 14 times the number of deaths (155) suffered by U.S. troops in Afghanistan in 2008, and twice as many (911 as of Oct. 31) as have died since the war began in 2003.

November 09, 2009

How Much Lying Will It Take To Break Your Confidence?
By Donna Smith
So, I wake this morning to see that Speaker Pelosi lied again about why she just could not allow a single-payer amendment to survive the legislative effort in the House on healthcare reform.

Squandered a golden opportunity regarding U.S. health care
Dr. Carol A. Paris | Letter to the Editor | South Maryland Newspapers
In the spirit of full disclosure, I support a single-payer national health program. That said, my comments are focused on HR 3962, the Affordable Health Care for America Act. I agree with Wendell Potter, the former head of public relations for CIGNA, that this legislation could more accurately be titled "The Private Health Insurance Profit Protection and Enhancement Act."

Massa says he can't support health care bill
By Patti Singer | Rochester (N.Y.) Democrat And Chronicle
The day before the much-anticipated vote on health care reform in the House of Representatives, Eric Massa, D-Corning, said that the Affordable Health Care for America Act gives too much to the insurance industry, doesn’t do enough to control costs, and he can’t support it.

CNA/NNOC Statement On The Withdrawal Of The House Single Payer Amendment
Medical News Today
On the eve of what would have been the first national vote on single-payer legislation Rep. Anthony Weiner's single-payer/Medicare for all amendment was withdrawn Friday, November 6.

Is the House Health Care Bill Better than Nothing?
By Marcia Angell, M.D. | The Huffington Post
Well, the House health reform bill -- known to Republicans as the Government Takeover -- finally passed after one of Congress's longer, less enlightening debates. Two stalwarts of the single-payer movement split their votes; John Conyers voted for it; Dennis Kucinich against. Kucinich was right.

November 06, 2009

Another doctor chimes in on the single-payer option
Dr. Ellen Kaczmarek | Letter to the Editor | Asheville (N.C.) Citizen-Times
A heartfelt public “thank you” to Dr. Michael Rey for his guest commentary, “ER doctor analyzes health reform debate,” (AC-T, Oct. 23). He echoed my sentiments exactly, and as a practicing primary care physician, I strongly second his desire for a universal single-payer health care system.

ER doctor analyzes health reform debate
By Dr. Michael T. Rey | Asheville (N.C.) Citizen-Times
This country needs radical reform to fix a health care system that currently encourages poor-quality medical care and costs too much. A universal single-payer system would put the focus back on patient care, where it belongs, and reduce costs.

Democrat Gives Up Single-Payer Measure to Back Party Leaders
By David M. Herszenhorn | New York Times | Prescriptions Blog
Representative Anthony D. Weiner, Democrat of New York, a fierce champion in Congress of a single-payer health system that would be fully run by the government, said Friday that he had agreed not to insist on a vote on that issue, in an effort to help Democratic leaders pass their plan.

The reform that's missing
By Rhonda Swan | Palm Beach Post
Perhaps "death panels" weren't such a bad idea. For private health insurance companies. If ever there was a useless entity, it's a business that earns profits for doing nothing.

November 05, 2009

Unhealthy America
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF | Op-Ed Columnist | New York Times

November 04, 2009

Lack of health insurance played a role in thousands of child deaths, researchers say
By Shari Roan | Los Angeles Times Blog
An analysis of 23 million hospital records from 37 states shows that a lack of health insurance likely played a role in the deaths of nearly 17,000 U.S. children over a 17-year period.

A doctor's view: escaping the maelstrom
By Samuel Metz | The Oregonian
Our health insurance industry succeeds as well in this century as the tobacco industry did in the last. Witness the congressional "reforms" -- all variants on a theme: Make every citizen buy our insurance. And if our price is too high, make our government buy it for them. All hail this great victory for free enterprise. But what about our health?

November 03, 2009

Health Care Abroad: Taiwan
By Anne Underwood | New York Times | Prescriptions blog
William Hsiao is a professor of economics at the Harvard School of Public Health and co-author of the 2004 book “Getting Health Reform Right.” He served as a health care adviser to the Taiwan government in the 1990s, when officials decided to reform that country’s health care system and to introduce universal coverage. He spoke with Anne Underwood, a freelance writer.

My Kind of Medicine: Real Lives of Practicing Internists: Andy Coates, MD
By Catherine Nessa | American College of Physicians Medical Student Newsletter
On any given weekend during the fall of 2004, Andy Coates was never where you might expect--he wasn’t at home with his children or outside working in the yard. He wasn’t at a restaurant having dinner with his wife or at the ballgame with his buddies. He wasn’t at a party thrown by neighbors or friends, or even on a beach chair on vacation. Instead, Andy Coates spent his weekends at Columbia Memorial Hospital in Hudson, NY, with the barest of accommodations: meals were brought in by cooler, his bed was a cot in a room in a recently-closed nursing home across the street from the hospital, and for entertainment, he had his work. For many physicians such an arrangement might be unappealing, but it was perfect for Dr. Coates, who has found satisfaction and fulfillment in unexpected places by taking roads less traveled.

Remember Medicare for All in the healthcare reform debate
By Kay Tillow | The Hill
We are in danger of losing the opportunity to bring Improved Medicare for All, a single payer plan, before the Congress. Last July Congressman Anthony Weiner and six of his colleagues on the Energy and Commerce Committee attempted to substitute the real public option--HR 676, a single payer plan--for the healthcare reform in the House. Speaker Nancy Pelosi assured them that if they withdrew the amendment in committee they would have an opportunity to bring it to the House floor for a debate and vote. Now Pelosi is threatening to keep the Weiner Single Payer Amendment from seeing the light of day.

CBO: Few Americans Would Sign Up For Public Health Insurance Plan
Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report
Coverage numbers regarding the Democrats' legislative push "for a government insurance plan to compete with private carriers are finally in: Two percent. That's the estimated share of Americans younger than 65 who'd sign up for the public option plan.

Medical Students Urge Speaker Pelosi To Keep Her Promise
Medical News Today
The American Medical Student Association (AMSA) urges Speaker Nancy Pelosi to keep her promise and allow a vote on a single payer substitution amendment to the House health care reform bill, to be introduced by Representative Anthony Weiner [D-NY].

October 30, 2009

UPDATE: Groundswell of sit-ins and civil disobedience at insurance company offices to demand real health care reform
From Mobilization for Health Care for All
The Mobilization for Health Care for All continues to see a growing number of doctors participating in these actions. Yesterday Dr. Margaret Flowers, a pediatrician who has testified before Congress on the need for meaningful health care reform, was arrested in Baltimore and joined by Dr. Eric Naumberg, also a physician.

The Doctor Will See You
By Henry S. Kahn, MD
No knock. Needed
Perhaps a chance to talk
With the doctor
Would be nice.

Four Arrested at Baltimore Health Insurance Protest
By SHARMINA MANANDHAR | Southern Maryland Online
Four protesters, including two doctors, were arrested at a "single-payer health care plan" sit-in at the CareFirst insurance company office in Baltimore Thursday.

October 29, 2009

Doctors risking arrest for single-payer health care for all
By Kevin Gosztola | OpEd News
At least three doctors will be risking arrest in civil disobedience actions during Mobilization for Health care for All's third wave of actions this week, which are being held to demand an end to insurance abuse and to demand real health care reform for all.

Sanders to push for single-payer
By DANIEL BARLOW | Times-Argus (Vt.)
U.S. Sen. Bernard Sanders will likely make history this year when -- for the first time ever -- he brings a bill creating a national single-payer health care system to the floor of the Senate for a vote.

Health Care Choices and Decisions in the United States and Canada
Joseph S. Ross, MD, MHS; Allan S. Detsky, MD, PhD | JAMA
...Government-sponsored plans like Canada's are frequently publicly portrayed as limiting choice. However, there is clear evidence that for Canada's health care system, less choice in insurance coverage (although guaranteed) has not resulted in less choice of hospitals, physicians, and diagnostic testing and treatments compared with the United States. In fact, there is arguably more choice.

October 27, 2009

OECD Bias in Evaluating U.S. Health Care Reform
By Don R. McCanne | International Journal of Health Services | Volume 39, Number 4 / 2009
Among OECD nations, the United States is an outlier in having the highest per capita health care costs in a system that unnecessarily exposes many individuals to financial hardship, physical suffering, and even death. President Obama and Congress are currently involved in a process to reform the flawed health care system. The OECD has contributed to that process by releasing a paper, "Health Care Reform in the United States," which describes some of the problems that must be addressed, but then provides proposed solutions that omit consideration of a more equitable and efficient universal public insurance program. The same omission is taking place in Washington, DC. By reinforcing proposals that support the private insurance industry, the source of much of [he waste and inequities in health care, the authors of the OECD paper have failed in their responsibility to inform on policies rather than politics.

Meet the New Health Care Reform, Same as the Old Health Care Reform
By Aaron E. Carroll | Associate Professor of Pediatrics, Indiana University School of Medicine | The Huffington Post
We’re so close to health care reform! Even Paul Krugman is starting to talk about what comes next. Me? I’ve been thinking about what comes next for a long time. I think this bill will pass. We will get the incremental reforms we were promised. Things will likely get better in the short term. Then, since we didn’t contain costs, we’ll need to enact real reform. Or, things will go right back to the status quo.

Health Reform: Where Obama Went Wrong
by Leonard Rodberg | Tikkun Magazine
President Obama's health reform plan is in trouble. Public support for it is only lukewarm; both Left and Right oppose it. Pundits and editorial writers complain that Obama has turned the issue over to Congress, or that he hasn't explained the plan well enough. He and his staff have been working closely with many members of Congress from the very beginning, and he has described his plan repeatedly and in many forums -- and no one questions that he is a superb communicator. And yet disquiet and confusion persist. What has gone wrong?

Unlikely friends - Donna Smith, American SiCKO and Wendell Potter, former CIGNA executive
Donna Smith, American SiCKO, and Wendell Potter, former CIGNA executive turned whistleblower, at rally in Harrisburg, PA, on October 20, 2009. The rally was organized in support of Pennsylvania’s single-payer healthcare legislation and was co-sponsored by many state and national...

Managing Disease Without Insurance
By Roni Caryn Rabin | New York Times | Prescriptions Blog
Americans without health insurance are less likely to know if they have diabetes or high cholesterol than those with coverage, and they’re less likely to keep their high blood pressure under control than the insured, a new study reports.

Why Isn't 122 Dead Americans Every Day a National Health Emergency?
By Donna Smith | CommonDreams.org
Why does H1N1 call for a Presidential designation as a national emergency while the preventable deaths of 45,000 Americans every year (122 every day) is not?

Single-payer proponents say state health care system 'broken'
By Kyle Chene | Belmont (Mass.) Citizen-Herald
Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, a Harvard University professor and advocate with Physicians for a National Health Program, questioned a 97.4 percent health insurance rate in Massachusetts, a figure highly touted by the Patrick administration.

Why the Health Insurance Excise Tax Is a Bad Idea
By Steve Early & Rand Wilson | The Nation
In every other advanced industrial nation, the contentious issue of who pays for medical care was taken off the bargaining table long ago. And no worker would ever lose his or her life defending job-based private health insurance.

October 21, 2009

Doctor panel advocates Medicare-for-all legislation
By Patricia C. McCarter | Huntsville Times
Asked how many people knew someone who had died because they couldn't afford medical care, five of the 70 people at the Health Care is a Human Right physicians panel discussion stood up.

Lack Of Insurance Compounds Chronic Disease Burden
By Joseph Shapiro | NPR
It's dangerous enough to deal with a chronic illness like diabetes or cholesterol. But Americans who don't have health insurance often have these conditions and don't even know it.

October 20, 2009

Chronic illnesses more often undiscovered, undertreated in uninsured
By Elizabeth Cooney | Boston Globe
Uninsured people are also more likely to have undiagnosed and undertreated medical conditions, according to a new study comparing chronic illnesses among Americans with and without health coverage. The results offer possible clues to a recently reported higher death rate among people who lack insurance.

October 19, 2009

A Government Takeover of Health Care, with Higher Costs, and even Worse Care??
By Clyde Winter | Hearts and Minds Blog
All of the grassroots efforts for the substantive, effective health care reform that is so needed by American families, have been attacked -- for months, for years, and for decades -- by insurance corporations, their corporate allies, and now the crass strategists within both major political parties. A health care crisis has thus materialized and been getting worse fast.

October 13, 2009

Crush of cancer, medical bills snares family
By Stephanie Smith | CNN
"I don't think I could bear to listen to those words again. ... 'You have cancer,' " Elder said. "I've said to my husband, if I start to get sick, just set me up with a nice pill cocktail on a beach, because nobody cares. That's the message you hear every day from insurance companies."

Health care: The uncivil rights movement
By Tim Louis Macaluso | City Newspaper
But wild-eyed fights over health care are nothing new in American politics. The struggle for universal coverage has been going on for more than 100 years, says Theodore Brown, a history professor at the University of Rochester. Brown has chronicled the history of health care in the US. He describes it as a long series of charge-and-retreat scuffles between liberals and conservatives that have led us to where we are now - with a costly, broken system.

Is there any way out for Obama on health reform?
By Leonard Rodberg
Progressives worry that, if President Obama's health reform plan (the "Plan") fails to pass, a latter-day right-wing Gingrich movement will take over the Congress in 2010 and the White House in 2012. What I have not heard, but what I am increasingly coming to believe, is that if the Plan passes in any of its current forms, things will go just as badly for him. Why is that?

Alabama doctors' Rx: an improved Medicare for All
By Pippa Abston, MD, PhD and Huntsville-area physicians. | Huntsville Times
We are your doctors, and we are frustrated. Frustrated over endless insurance paperwork and denials of coverage. Frustrated that our patients can't choose their own doctors because of insurance restrictions; frustrated when our patients lose their insurance coverage and can't afford medical care.

Corporate Welfare Is Health System Waste
By Joe Jarvis, MD | Deseret News
I first heard the term lemon socialism articulated by Simon Johnson, who is the former Chief Economist at the International Monetary Fund, now at M.I.T.'s Sloan School of Management. He defines lemon socialism as a system wherein financial successes are credited to the private sector, while their failures are transferred to the taxpayers through bailouts. Anyone who has paid attention to our nation’s financial woes recognizes how lemon socialism is a most apt description of the American economy.

Nurses Blast Latest Price Gouging Threat by Insurance Giants, 'Massive Public Bailout Apparently Not Enough'
California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee
The nation's largest organization of registered nurses today condemned the latest campaign by the insurance industry, threatening massive increases in premium rates if it does not get its way on the healthcare bills currently before Congress.

Single-payer backers fight odds
By BRIAN NEARING | Times Union
Since being diagnosed with chronic kidney disease six years ago, Stephanie Agurkis has not been able to get health insurance. "I'm paying for treatments myself," said the 29-year-old nursing student and part-time farm stand worker from Ithaca. "And every year that goes by, I am more and more in debt."

October 09, 2009

Seven Arrested at Chicago Cigna Health Insurance Office Calling for End to Denial of Treatment, Real Health Care Reform
Mobilization for Health Care for All
Seven citizens and health care providers who are fed up with the state of our health care and the health care debate were arrest at the downtown offices of Cigna today. The sit-in is part of a national mobilization to end insurance abuse and build support for real reform - Medicare for All, a single-payer plan.

Harris offers wrong fix for health care
By Dr. Taro J. Adachi | Letters | The Baltimore Sun
The 2009 Kaiser Family Foundation's annual survey of health benefits notes that despite these hard economic times and the focus on health insurance costs, the average annual premiums for employer sponsored health insurance are $4,824 for single coverage and $13,375 for family coverage -- a 5 percent increase from last year alone. Workers contributions, annual deductibles and copays all went up.

October 08, 2009

A Death Every 12 Minutes: The Price of Not Having Medicare for All
By John Geyman | The Huffington Post
Americans are dying at a faster rate -- 1 every 12 minutes, 5 an hour, 120 a day, 45,000 a year -- not from war or natural disaster, but from lack of health insurance.

Tales of a Family Doc.....a year later
Bu Aaron Roland, M.D. | DailyKos
About three weeks ago a thirty year old patient whom I had not seen for many years came to my office. He had a large testicular mass, something he ignored until it became painful, not because of youthful imaginations of invulnerability but due to the absence of health insurance.

October 07, 2009

Price Differentials Are Not Evidence of Cost Shifting
by Austin Frakt | The Incidental Economist Blog
A recent Business Week article summarized an argument against a public option that is based on the unfounded claims of cost shifting made by insurers and hospitals.

October 06, 2009

Docs as Props
By SinglePayerAction.org
In the Rose Garden this morning, President Obama met with a group of doctors. From all fifty states. Banned from the meeting were doctors from Physicians for a National Health Program -- representing more than 17,000 docs who support a single payer health care system.

Life, Liberty, Health Care
By Billy Zou | The Dartmouth
For those who have been living outside the U.S. or in a cave, two health care reform bills have been proposed to universalize the American health care system. One, H.R. 3200, proposes a public health insurance plan or "public option," while the other, H.R. 676, would create a single-payer system that would cover all medically essential care.

October 05, 2009

Estimating the number of uninsured Americans by Congressional District using Census Bureau data
Because of more intensive surveys of coverage than ever before, the Census Bureau’s survey data can now be used to calculate the numbers of uninsured in every congressional district. Thanks to Len Rodberg, Ph.D. from the New York chapter of...

Doctor: Care for all is right thing to do
By Patricia C. McCarter | Huntsville Times
Everybody in. Nobody out. With these four words, Huntsville pediatrician Pippa Abston described what she believes is the best health care option for America. She also described it as "Medicare for all," a concept that concerns citizens who don't support the federal government getting bigger.

The lack of universal health care is a mass killer in this country
By Deb Richter | The Progressive Media Project
Nearly 45,000 deaths in the United States each year are attributable to the lack of health insurance, according to a Harvard University study released in September. That astonishing figure, which appears in the American Journal of Public Health, is a big uptick from the Institute of Medicine's finding seven years ago that 18,000 people die each year because they lack insurance and thus have less access to care.

The Single-Payer Alternative
by Ashley Smith | Dissident Voice
The politicians declared one plan for health care reform "off the table" from the beginning: a single-payer system that would cover all Americans and cut out private insurance. But as Dr. Andy Coates explains, it remains the only alternative that can solve the crisis of the health care non-system.

Uninsured people may have a higher risk of death than once thought, study finds
By Doug Trapp | AMNews
The uninsured might be about 40% more likely to die than the privately insured, according to a study published online Sept. 17 in the American Journal of Public Health. In contrast, a 1993 Institute of Medicine study concluded that those without health coverage were 25% more likely to die.

Imagine getting sick, getting bills you can't pay, then being sent to jail
By Janell Ross | The Tennessean
Kenneth Hoagland went to jail for what started as a cold. Hoagland had refinanced his Nashville home to pay off the $25,000 tab for his weeklong diabetes-related stay at Southern Hills Medical Center. The new mortgage left Hoagland out of medical debt but afraid to get sick again.

Single-payer national health care plan backed
By Dann Denny | Herald Times (Bloomington, Ind.)
Dr. Rob Stone, an emergency room physician at Bloomington Hospital and director of Hoosiers for a Commonsense Health Plan, said the U.S. stands alone among industrialized countries in the world. "We are the only country that does not provide health care to all its citizens," he said. "It's a bad situation and it's getting worse."

A Sit-in at Aetna:"Aetna Is the Real Death Panel"
by Private Health Insurance Must Go!
19 citizens and health care providers arrested, launching national mobilization for health care for all.

17 Held in Protest Outside Health Insurer's Offices
By Colin Moynihan | New York Times | City Room Blog
Right-wing and antigovernment activists -- a few of them wielding not only signs but even loaded firearms -- have organized some of the angry protests surrounding the health care debate. But in Midtown Manhattan on Tuesday morning, a different sort of health care protest took place, led by left-leaning groups who accused insurers of greed and called for nationwide, single-payer health insurance.

Locals gather at courthouse to discuss single-payer health care
By Sarah Bloom | Indiana Daily Student
The Mad as Hell Doctors, based in Oregon, made their case for a single-payer system at the Bloomington Farmer's Market on Sept. 19. The traveling doctors are making their way to Capitol Hill in an attempt to meet with Congress and President Barack Obama.

September 29, 2009

Why the Current Bills Don't Solve Our Health Care Crisis
By Michael Moore | Huffington Post
Now we know why they've stopped calling this health care reform, and started calling it insurance reform. The current bills advancing in Congress look more like rearranging the deck chairs on the insurance Titanic than actually ending our long health care nightmare.

Sit-in today at Aetna office in New York to demand an end to insurance company abuse
Citizens and health care providers today staged a sit-in at the offices of Aetna, one of the nation’s largest health insurance companies, in New York City (99 Park Ave @40th. The action is part of a national mobilization to end health insurance abuses such as the denial of coverage for lifesaving treatments, and win support for the only real public option -- Medicare for all, a single payer plan. The action was part of a Mobilization for Health Care for All campaign that includes actions in Chicago, Los Angeles, and other cities across the country.

The Single Payer Solution For Health Care Reform
Matthew Hine, M.D., M.P.H. | The Chattanoogan
I'm an advocate of the best of capitalism and a free market for most commodities. However, health care is not in the same category as a bushel of corn or an automobile. A health care delivery system that is designed to maximize profit will never deliver the ultimate objective: affordable, universal access to quality health care.

September 25, 2009

Op-Ed: Medicare for All: Yes We Can
By Holly Sklar | Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune News Service
More Americans die of lack of health insurance than terrorism, homicide, drunk driving and HIV combined. Grandma could be dead from lack of health insurance before she turns 65 and gets Medicare - 80 percent of first-time grandparents are in their 40s and 50s.

Waiting For The Health Reform We Really Need
By Arnold S. Relman, M.D. | Tikkun Magazine
There are two interrelated critical issues in health reform right now: how to extend and improve insurance coverage, and how to control the unsustainable rise in health care expenditures. Virtually all of the current legislative attention is focused on the first issue but, notwithstanding claims to the contrary, none of the proposals now on the table offers any credible solution for the control of rising costs. Without control of health cost inflation, the present system will not be viable much longer.

Wellpoint "really did" write the Baucus health plan
Three articles on the connection between Sen. Max Baucus and Liz Fowler, former executive and current lobbyist for Wellpoint.

Baucus Watch, Part XIV
By Trudy Lieberman | Columbia Journalism Review
Is Senator Baucus becoming more charitable? Last week the Montana senator--who has been, by virtue of his chairmanship of the Senate Finance Committee, in the midst of the health care storm for months--finally released the Chairman's Mark of the Senate health care bill. (That's Congress speak for the bill draft that already has the paw prints of the special-interest lobbyists all over it.) Before legislation reaches this stage, the deals have pretty much been cut, though not all of them. Working closely with the myriad lobbying groups that have swarmed all over his Committee, the senator managed to get consensus around some important elements.

September 24, 2009

45,000 American deaths associated with lack of insurance
By Madison Park | CNNhealth.com
A freelance cameraman's appendix ruptured and by the time he was admitted to surgery, it was too late. A self-employed mother of two is found dead in bed from undiagnosed heart disease. A 26-year-old aspiring fashion designer collapsed in her bathroom after feeling unusually fatigued for days. Paul Hannum's family members say he probably would've gone to the hospital earlier if he had had health insurance.

Fatal statistics
Editorial | Louisville Courier-Journal
Forty-five thousand a year. That's not a salary. That's a statistic. And behind every number in that statistic is the life of a human being that ended because the person was uninsured.

The Health Care Deceit
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS | Counterpunch
The current health care "debate" shows how far gone representative government is in the United States. Members of Congress represent the powerful interest groups that fill their campaign coffers, not the people who vote for them.

September 23, 2009

Doctors walk for health care
By Sean Rose | Courier Journal
A group of Oregon doctors stopped by Louisville and Jeffersonville, Ind., on Tuesday to voice their anger over what they see as a broken health care system.

The N.Y. Times' nasty swipe at Medicare for All
Comment by Ray Bellamy, MD | Prescriptions Blog | New York Times
Congress and America would benefit by a head-to-head comparison by an independent agency such as the CBO or other comparing Single Payer with any other proposal you want to offer. Single Payer would win hands down, as the rest of the developed world has already figured out.

September 22, 2009

NYT Slams Single-Payer
Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting | Action Alert
The New York Times devoted some rare space on September 20 to discussing single-payer (or Medicare-for-all) health reform. The result? A one-sided account of why such a system couldn't work.

An ex-insider speaks out
By Faye Flam | Philadelphia Inquirer
When politicians and pundits speak of "a slippery slope to socialism" and "government takeover of health care," they're using terms straight from the industry PR machine, said Wendell Potter.

Single Payer Activists Build Memorial on National Mall
By Russell Mokhiber | SinglePayerAction.org
Single payer activists have set up a memorial on the National Mall for the more than 44,000 Americans who die every year from lack of health insurance.

No Country for Sick Men
By T. R. Reid | NEWSWEEK
"Us Canadians, we're kind of understated by nature," Marcus Davies told me in his soft-spoken way. "We don't go around chanting 'We're No. 1!' But you know, there are two areas where we feel superior to the U.S.: hockey and health care."

September 21, 2009

Most would vote for single-payer
By Independent Record | Helena Independent Record
Last week's Question of the Week, "If there were a national referendum on single-payer health insurance for all, how would you vote? For, or against?" touched a nerve.

Medicare best for patients
Dr. Robert Golden | The Spokesman-Review
In recent health care debates people proclaim they don't want the government standing between them and their physician. Some have adamantly opposed a "single-payer" health plan while demanding, "Don't touch my Medicare." As a physician practicing in Spokane for the past 26 years, I would like to share my experiences.

Better Medicare can allay fears
Appleton Mason, M.D. | Times Union (Albany, NY) | Letter to the Editor
We want a system that is more efficient and cost-effective, and continues to value the doctor-patient relationship. I believe we do not need insurance companies and that some type of single-payer system would be much better. Decisions within this system would have to safeguard the freedom to choose care and the assurance that policy would be made by an autonomous organization within government.

Hundreds rally for single-payer health care
WKOW
Hundreds of people gathered on the capitol steps Thursday in support of a single payer health care plan.

Creating positive change: The case for single-payer healthcare
by Elizabeth Crane | The Brandeis Hoot
In a point that has gone unacknowledged throughout the current debate, Medicare has endured as one of the most effective components of our health care system. Now, instead of decrying the role of government in health care, Americans should embrace it and expand Medicare to all citizens in an inclusive single-payer system.

September 18, 2009

Lack of Insurance to Blame for Almost 45,000 Deaths: Study
HealthDay News | Atlanta Journal Constitution
If you doubt that lack of health insurance can have deadly consequences, consider these new findings: Americans without health insurance are 40 percent more likely to die than those with private insurance.

Study finds lack of insurance can be lethal
By Elizabeth Cooney | Boston Globe
As medical care has improved for people with health insurance, the consequences of being uninsured have worsened, according to a new study that says the lack of coverage translates into nearly 45,000 deaths each year among working-age Americans.

Study links 45,000 U.S. deaths to lack of insurance
By Susan Heavey | Reuters
Nearly 45,000 people die in the United States each year -- one every 12 minutes -- in large part because they lack health insurance and can not get good care, Harvard Medical School researchers found in an analysis released on Thursday.

September 17, 2009

Why we must vote on the public plan
By Rep. Anthony Weiner | Politico
It seems that big legislation isn't complete until it develops a collection of catchphrases. ("Shovel ready," everyone? "Cash for clunkers," perhaps?) The effort to tackle the long list of failings of our health care system and the way we pay for it has been no exception. This time, we are arguing over the so-called public option.

A Real Win for Single-Payer Advocates
By John Nichols | The Nation
Canada did not establish its national health care program with a bold, immediate political move by the federal government. The initial progress came at the provincial level, led by the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation's Tommy Douglas when he served from 1941 to 1960 premier of Saskatchewan. The universal, publicly-funded "single-payer" health care system that Douglas and his socialist allies developed in Saskatchewan proved to be so successful and so popular that it was eventually adopted by other provinces and, ultimately, by Canada's federal government.

U.S. Census Bureau data on the medically uninsured simply can't be denied
By Michael Hiltzik | LA Times
Pity the medically uninsured in America. As if they don't already have enough to worry about, now they've become a political football.

AFL-CIO convention unanimously endorses single-payer system
AFL-CIO CONVENTION
One concrete plan that meets the test of comprehensive, universal health coverage would build on our nation’s successful universal health coverage plan for seniors: Medicare.

Testimony Of Wendell Potter and Dr. Linda Peeno
Testimony Of Wendell Potter
The title of today's hearing serves as an important antidote to some of the rhetoric about who or what stands between a patient and his or her doctor. I know there are many who fear the idea of a government bureaucrat in that space but the alternative has proved much more fearsome. The status quo for most Americans is that health insurance bureaucrats stand between them and their doctors right now, and maximizing profit is the mandate that has simply overtaken this industry. As my fellow panelists know firsthand, the bureaucracy of private health insurance is a labyrinth of deliberately misleading terms of art designed to help companies minimize the coverage provided and maximize profits to appease Wall Street and investors. Or, rather, it is a minefield that leaves every American at great risk of not just going bankrupt over uncovered medical expenses but of losing their lives and the lives of their loved ones.

September 16, 2009

AFL-CIO endorses single payer healthcare
by National Nurses Movement | DailyKos
The campaign for the most comprehensive healthcare reform of all, single payer, won a huge boost Tuesday as the AFL-CIO voted unanimously at its national convention in Pittsburgh to endorse the enactment of single-payer, universal healthcare.

Postcard From Canada: Why I Missed Obama's Speech
by Sara Marshall | Orcinius.com
True confessions: I missed the health care speech. While the whole lefty blogosphere was watching and blogging and tweeting, I was sacked out in my attic bedroom high on a mountainside in Vancouver, sleeping off a narcotic haze and the exhausting aftermath of a long night spent in the emergency room at Lions Gate Hospital.

September 15, 2009

Why Obama Needed Single Payer on the Table
By VICENTE NAVARRO | CounterPunch
I don't doubt that President Obama, a decent man, wants to provide universal health care to all citizens of this country. But his judgment in developing his strategy to reach that goal is profoundly flawed, and ... it may cost him the presidency -- an outcome that would be extremely negative for the country.

September 14, 2009

EXCLUSIVE: UnitedHealth Lobbyist Announces Pelosi Fundraiser As She Begins Backing Off Pub Option
By David Sirota | OpenLeft Blog
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for the first time yesterday suggested she may be backing off her support of the public option. According to CNN, Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid "said they would support any provision that increases competition and accessibility for health insurance - whether or not it is the public option favored by most Democrats." When "asked if inclusion of a public option was a non-negotiable demand - as her previous statements had indicated Pelosi ruled out any non-negotiable positions," according to CNN. This was also corroborated by the Associated Press, and by Pelosi's own words, as quoted in those stories.

Single-payer health reform: the feasible alternative
By Dr. Oliver Fein | The Progressive
President Obama sold single-payer health care short in his speech to Congress. It’s actually the only sensible solution to our health care crisis.

Public Option Fades From Debate Over Health Care
By ROBERT PEAR | New York Times
It was just one line in a campaign manifesto, and it hardly seemed the most significant or contentious. As a presidential candidate, Barack Obama said he would "establish a new public insurance program" alongside private health care plans.

Health Care Reform and 'American Values'
By PAULINE W. CHEN, M.D. | New York Times
I spoke to Dr. Brett recently and asked him about the notion of "American values," the assumptions made in the health care debate, and what system, if any, might come close to representing what is American.

Experience argues for "Medicare for All"
By Lara Wright, M.D. | Guest Commentary
I AM a family physician who has firsthand experience about the need for health insurance reform. In 1999, after completing a residency in family practice, I was diagnosed with a brain tumor. Fortunately, I had use COBRA to continue my health benefits for 18 months. When my diagnosis was made, I still had health insurance, as well as supportive family, friends and colleagues who worked in health care.

'Mad as Hell' caravan tours Montana, touts health care for all
By MIKE DENNISON | The Missoulian
Retired internist Robert Seward, a self-described "Mad as Hell" doctor who wants a publicly funded health system that covers all Americans, told a Helena crowd Thursday that he had a telling conversation with a Canadian citizen a day earlier.

The virtues of single-payer
BY JOHN KAY | News & Observer
Opponents of health-care reform have tried to twist the idea of a single-payer system into some sort of threat to the American way of medicine. They are wrong. As someone who spent half my working life in Canada and half in the United States, I've been covered by two single-payer health systems, one in Canada and now under Medicare. They both work.

It's Simple: Medicare for All
By George S. McGovern | Washington Post
For many years, a handful of American political leaders -- including the late senator Ted Kennedy and now President Obama -- have been trying to gain passage of comprehensive health care for all Americans. As far back as President Harry S. Truman, they have urged Congress to act on this national need. In a presentation before a joint session of Congress last week, Obama offered his view of the best way forward.

A note from Rabbi Michael Lerner
Tikkun Daily
President Obama knows that a single-payer program -- extending Medicare to everyone -- is far more rational than what he has proposed to Congress, but he also believes that eliminating the insurance companies, hospital chains, and other medical profiteers would require a battle beyond his current capacities.

September 11, 2009

Over 70 Labor Organizations Call on AFL-CIO Convention to Endorse HR 676
Kay Tillow | All Unions Committee For Single Payer Health Care--HR 676
More than seventy labor organizations have submitted resolutions to the AFL-CIO Convention calling for the labor federation to endorse HR 676, single payer healthcare legislation introduced by Congressman John Conyers (D-MI).

Health reform should start with moral question
Richard A. Damon, MD | The Missoulian | Letter to the editor
Amidst the give and take of the health care reform discussion is an underlying basic moral imperative: Does a wealthy country like the United States have an ethical obligation to provide access to health care to everybody?

Access to medical care a basic human right
Guest column | The Missoulian
The commercial aspects of restructuring the health care industry are receiving much attention. Those of us who have been involved in the actual delivery of medical care believe there is a principle underlying the entire enterprise. Understanding this principle provides perspective that helps to evaluate the business details in reform plans as they emerge in coming weeks.

September 10, 2009

Opinion: Single-payer health care: dead in Washington, but alive in the states
By Michael Corcoran | Opinion | Christian Science Monitor
The inability of a popular president with substantial majorities in Congress to pass a progressive health bill is immensely frustrating to healthcare activists, and to all who gave Obama a mandate for change. But their cause is not lost -- they just need a new strategy.

Iowa reaction to Obama's speech
Des Moines Register
Dr. Jess Fiedorowicz, a University of Iowa psychiatrist: He was not won over. Fiedorowicz favors a single-payer health care system, in which government insurance would cover everyone.

September 09, 2009

Everybody in, nobody out
By Susanne L. King, M.D. | Berkshire Eagle
The disruptions at town meetings in August were not just the work of conservative hecklers and their corporate backers. The wave of anger also revealed that many Americans feel left out during the current recession. It is not just the 50 million people who are left out because they don’t have health insurance, or the tens of millions who are left out because they have inadequate health insurance, or even the many people who have been bankrupted by their medical bills (the most common cause of bankruptcy in the United States).

British Physicians and Patients Respond to Lies about the NHS
Your reported call for "lies" about health care reform to be refuted is essential and requires an urgent response. To that end, may we -- British health professionals and patients - respectfully expose those "lies" which are about our National Health Service, a service which our experience shows to work successfully for the benefit of all in this country.

September 08, 2009

Sick and Wrong
By MATT TAIBBI | Rolling Stone
Let's start with the obvious: America has not only the worst but the dumbest health care system in the developed world. It's become a black leprosy eating away at the American experiment -- a bureaucracy so insipid and mean and illogical that even our darkest criminal minds wouldn't be equal to dreaming it up on purpose.

Giving Single-Payer a Second Look
By Rep. Anthony Weiner | Huffington Post
As President Obama prepares to address the nation about his vision for health care reform, we should not overlook the last, best truly transformative change to our health care system: Medicare. We have been staring so intently at the lessons of 1993 that we may have forgotten the universal rule of successful lawmaking: "keep it simple."

Insured, but Bankrupted Anyway
By Anne Underwood | New York Times Prescriptions blog
Dr. David Himmelstein is an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and a primary care doctor at the Cambridge Hospital in Massachusetts. Dr. Himmelstein is also a founder of Physicians for a National Health Program. In 2005 and 2009, he helped write major studies finding that medical bills were a leading contributor to personal bankruptcies in the United States. He spoke to the freelance writer Anne Underwood.

HMO claims-rejection rates trigger state investigation
By Lisa Girion | Los Angeles Times
California Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown is joining state regulators in scrutinizing how HMOs review and pay insurance claims submitted by doctors, hospitals and other medical providers.

September 04, 2009

California's Real Death Panels: Insurers Deny 21% of Claims
From California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee
More than one of every five requests for medical claims for insured patients, even when recommended by a patient's physician, are rejected by California's largest private insurers, amounting to very real death panels in practice daily in the nation's biggest state, according to data released today by the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee.

Will safety net hospitals survive health reform?
By Carla K. Johnson | Associated Press | San Jose Mercury News
To all the knotty issues involved in health care overhaul, add one more: The proposals in Congress may threaten the funding and future of the nation's already-struggling safety net hospitals.

Health Care That Works
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF | Op-Ed Columnist | New York Times
Health care reform may be defeated this year in part because so many Americans believe the government can't do anything right and fear that a doctor will come to resemble an I.R.S. agent with a scalpel. Yet the part of America's health care system that consumers like best is the government-run part.

Immigrant health plan called unfair
By Kyle Cheney | Dorchester (Mass.) Reporter
As state-subsidized health care for 31,000 legal immigrants lapsed Tuesday, the result of budget cuts imposed by the Legislature, advocates for a single-payer health care system blasted the cuts as "discriminatory" and said a backup plan endorsed Monday by the Patrick administration could leave them worse off than if they relied on a state fund for the uninsured.

September 03, 2009

Don't Be Fooled by the Public Option
By Bill Boyarsky | Truthdig
While the media are transfixed by all the screaming in town halls and on television, the real work of health care reform is being done in secret by congressional staff technocrats, government bureaucrats, health industry lobbyists and sometimes even a member of the Senate or House.

September 02, 2009

"Now Make Me Do It"
By Ralph Nader | CommonDreams.org
President Obama has never invited to the White House the leading consumer-patient champions in this country who favor full Medicare and free choice of physician and hospital-often called "a single payer" system. Open to the corporate barons who have failed decade after decade to deliver what patients need, the White House door is closed to the likes of Dr. Quentin Young-a founder of the Physicians for a National Health Program and an old Chicago friend of Obama's, Dr. Sidney Wolfe, who heads Public Citizen's Health Research Group, Drs. Marcia Angell, Stephanie Woolhandler, and David Himmelstein, who are nationally known and accomplished single payer advocates or Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director of the fast-growing California Nurses Association.

Focus on justice makes health solution obvious
By Paul DeMarco | Guest Columnist | The State (Columbia, S.C.)
Although many have complained about the tenor of the current health care conversation, this is the way Americans have settled matters since the founding of the republic: Our national debates always have been more like full-throated arguments after a few beers than refined cocktail party dialogue.

The Public Option: Doomed to Fail
David U. Himmelstein, MD, Steffie Woolhandler, MD, MPH, Sidney M. Wolfe, MD, Quentin Young, MD, Marcia Angell, MD | The Nation | Letters
Regarding your editorial "Public Option Now!" (July 20/27): a public option won't fix the mainstream Democrats' flawed healthcare reform proposals. Only a single-payer reform would make universal, first dollar coverage affordable. It would save about $400 billion annually on bureaucracy and rein in costs over the long term through global budgeting and rational health planning.

Mad as hell across the country
Andrea Hektor
A SMALL group of Oregon-based doctors and their supporters is getting ready for a cross-country tour to demand health care reform that will actually work to end the crisis--a government-run single-payer system that would cover everyone and cut out the private insurance industry.

August 31, 2009

Helena Handbag
by Cathy Siegner | Queen City News
When people oppose a single-payer system, I wonder if they have health coverage and whether it's Medicare, VA, or some other government-funded plan; in other words, a single-payer system. A lot of times, they do. So basically, it's okay for all of us to pay for them to have single-payer coverage, but they'll be doggoned if they'll chip in so everybody else can have it, too. In my world, that’s called hypocrisy.

August 28, 2009

Liar, Liar ... Well, Healthcare Pants on Fire
by Donna Smith | CommonDreams.org
So, we've been told over and over again that under the healthcare reform plans currently defended and pushed by the President and Congress that we can keep what we've got if we like it. No one will take your health insurance bennies away. Not under our employer-based, for-profit system.

Single Payer: A Conversation with David Himmelstein and Steffie Woolhandler
Health Care Cost Monitor
One of the biggest arguments against a public choice option is that it would lead to a single payer system. Many critics frame this as a frightening prospect, a radical intrusion of government into health care. But many doctors and others regard a single payer system as the best way -- perhaps the only way -- to control health care costs well enough to provide coverage for all. Advantages include saving hundreds of billions of dollars and helping to reduce regional inequities in available medical services. David Himmelstein, M.D., and Steffie Woolhandler, M.D., M.P.H., cofounders of Physicians for a National Health Program, answered questions about the single payer system and why they think it is superior to a public choice option.

Fiscal Responsibility and Health Care Reform
Robert A. Levine, M.D. | New England Journal of Medicine
All told, then, administrative expenditures, unnecessary care, and fraud probably account for $1 trillion or more in health care spending that does not go toward providing appropriate care. These are the areas in which the proper reform measures could generate savings that could pay for universal coverage.

August 27, 2009

Taking back the health care debate
By Nancy Welch | Vermont Woman
THE MORNING after the November election, I visited my father in a Cleveland rehab hospital. Weak from surgery to reinforce his disintegrating spine, he was nevertheless grinning as I walked in. "We're going to get national health care," he said.

August 26, 2009

Let's get back to what health care reform should be about
by Rose Ann DeMoro | Cleveland Plain Dealer
From the fabricated "death panels" scares to the traumatized seniors urging legislators to keep the government's hands "off my Medicare," it's apparent that the health care debate has lurched off the rails.

Expand Medicare to cover the uninsured.
By Jack Bernard and Dr. Daniel Blumenthal  | Atlanta Journal Constitution
A Harvard study recently found that, despite the intense disinformation effort by those against change, Americans still view health care as one of their highest public priorities. Insurance premiums are going up four times as fast as workers’ wages, but only 28 percent of Americans rate our existing health care system as good or excellent. Our per capita health care spending is double that of any other developed country, while our health care system ranks 37th in the world, behind Costa Rica.

A simple solution
Jerry Call | Bangor Daily News | Letter to the Editor
America invented Medicare; it is uniquely American. It is a proven, well-liked and efficient system. So why not just expand it so the rest of us can enjoy it?

We need major health reform
By Glen Peterson | My View | The Free Press (Mankato, Minn.)
Why does the U.S. compare so poorly to the rest of the industrial world? Among many reasons, our costs are excessive and a great number of Americans are uninsured or underinsured. These problems can be directly attributed to the practices of private health insurers who uniquely in the U.S. provide our primary means of connecting consumers with providers.

My Brain and the Ontario Health Care System
By Paul E. Barber | Huffington Post
You may have seen the stories about the television ad with first person testimony from a woman who claims she had a brain tumor and was unhappy about her care in the Ontario health care system, part of the ongoing assault on "Obamacare." Five years ago I actually had a brain tumor and dealt with the Ontario health care system. The truth about our system is much different than the misinformation spewing forth over the internet and the airwaves. This is my story.

Trumka Tells Netroots Nation: "My Preference Is Single Payer"
Kay Tillow | All Unions Committee For Single Payer Health Care--HR 676
In a wide ranging speech to the annual Netroots Nation Convention, Richard Trumka, AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer, said, "My preference, and the feeling of many in the labor movement, is that we should have a single payer health care system." Netroots Nation is the largest annual assembly of progressive bloggers and web journalists.

August 25, 2009

The art of the drug deal
By Helen Redmond
BILLY TAUZIN, a former Republican member of Congress from Louisiana and the current president of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), is all about the art of the deal. He's the Donald Trump of brand-name prescription drugs, but unlike "The Donald," "The Billy" goes to the White House and closes deals in private with the president of the United States.

5 Myths About Health Care Around the World
By T.R. Reid | Washington Post
As Americans search for the cure to what ails our health-care system, we've overlooked an invaluable source of ideas and solutions: the rest of the world. All the other industrialized democracies have faced problems like ours, yet they've found ways to cover everybody -- and still spend far less than we do.

A bailout for the U.S. health-care industry
By Rose Ann DeMoro | Ottawa Citizen
The fractured U.S. healthcare debate, replete with wild distortions of Canada's medicare, must seem incomprehensible to many north of our border.

The way is clear: Health insurance must end
BY JOHN HAMMOND | The News & Observer
In the first half of the 20th century, most health insurance was provided to those who could afford it by state-based, nonprofit Blue Cross/Blue Shield plans, which based premiums on a community rating system. The agency took the costs of its enrollees, added a reasonable overhead contribution and divided that by the number of enrollees to calculate the premium. Under this system, the young, healthy enrollees subsidized the cost of the older, more chronically ill enrollees.

Hold the line on healthcare, Mr President
Rose Ann DeMoro | The Times
To other industrialised countries, this fear of government having a role in protecting the health and safety of its citizens must seem especially hard to fathom. Among leading nations, only in the US is healthcare not a fundamental right, but bartered for profit by a maze of corporations.

August 24, 2009

"Mad as Hell Doctors" Embark on Cross Country Care-A-Van to Demand Single-Payer from Congress
Published by PR Web
Frustrated with the health care 'options' coming out of Washington, D.C., six "Mad as Hell" Oregon physicians are taking an unprecedented road trip across America to lobby Congress for a single-payer health care system.

Driving a Stake Through a Bad Health Policy's Heart
By David Moberg | In These Times
In absolute dollar terms, the affluent gain more, but as a percentage of income, lower-income earners receive a greater benefit and thus their tax rate--if benefits were taxed--would be higher. That's the usual definition of tax regressivity.

Healthcare insurers get upper hand
By Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger | LA Times
Lashed by liberals and threatened with more government regulation, the insurance industry nevertheless rallied its lobbying and grass-roots resources so successfully in the early stages of the healthcare overhaul deliberations that it is poised to reap a financial windfall.

Beware health-industrial complex
By Jack Bernard | Ledger-Inquirer (Columbus, Ga.)
Virtually all national polls show that health care reform is in trouble, just as it was under the Clintons. Once again, lobbyists from the health industrial complex have purposefully confused the American public, as they did with the misleading but highly effective "Harry and Louise" ads in the 1990s, and bought off our elected representatives in both parties.

Medicare-for-all option would cover everyone, reduce costs
By DR. THOMAS CLAIRMONT | New Hampshire Union Leader
Speaker Pelosi has pledged to hold a floor debate and vote on single-payer health reform this fall. This vote on an amendment to HR 3200 (the 1,000-plus page bill favored by the House leadership) would substitute the 27-page HR 676 as the new health care policy of the United States.

Where's the Wizard of Oz When We Need Him?
By Carol Miller | Taos Daily News
One problem is that most elected leaders, from the president on down, are cowards when it comes to standing up to the corporations. A few recent examples: bailouts for banks while homeowners still face foreclosure and homelessness; the AIG mega-insurance corporate bailout; and the current and most cruel bailout--protecting large sickness insurance corporations rather than giving us guaranteed access to health care. This is not reform.

August 21, 2009

Joe Scarborough Is Shocked, Yet Awed by Single-Payer Logic
By Leslie Savan | The Nation
Something rather remarkable happened on Tuesday's Morning Joe. Rep. Anthony Weiner of New York pointed out that the health insurance industry has no clothes, and Joe Scarborough, after first trying to spin it some gossamer threads, broke down and said, By God, you're right, this emperor is a naked money-making machine!

August 19, 2009

Physician-patient relationship should be sacrosanct
By Syed Quadri | The News Enterprise
I have watched with interest the debate over health care reform unfold in the columns of your newspaper and the rest of media. The airways and the pages of every newspaper in the country are saturated with several buzzwords. “Rationing,” “socialized medicine,” “federal bureaucracy,” and “government takeover of health care” are the names that appear to be driving the discussion and creating the frame of reference for the “debate.”

August 18, 2009

Opinion: Canadian health system works
By Miriam Schubert | Marin Independent Journal
I have had good care here, but the care in Quebec was better. Everything was done to get me healthy. And here, the out of pocket cost is much higher than the Medicare taxes I was paying in Canada.

August 17, 2009

Canadian health system has a fan in Schweitzer
By MIKE DENNISON | Billings Gazette
As Gov. Brian Schweitzer warmed up the crowd Friday for President Barack Obama, he paid a lengthy compliment to a health care system that leading Democrats, including the president, have declared "off the table" as a reform here: the Canadian single-payer system.

August 13, 2009

Health care for all
By Helen Thomas | San Francisco Chronicle | Politics Blog
In 2003 before he became a U.S. senator from Illinois, Obama actually called himself a single-payer "proponent." But now that he is president, Obama has buckled to Republicans and conservative Blue Dog Democrats in pursuit of consensus. My question is if Congress passes a watered-down version of health care that doesn't truly cover everyone, is the result worth it?

Inside Story on Town Hall Riots: Right-Wing Shock Troops Do Corporate America's Dirty Work
By Adele M. Stan | Alternet
The recent spate of town hall dustups may look like an overnight sensation, but they've been years, even decades, in the making.

Questions for Dr. Marcia Angell
By Anne Underwood | Prescriptions Blog | New York Times
Dr. Marcia Angell is a senior lecturer in social medicine at Harvard Medical School and former editor of The New England Journal of Medicine. A longtime critic of the pharmaceutical industry, she has called for an end to market-driven delivery of health care in the United States. She spoke with freelance writer Anne Underwood.

Healthcare reform: Locum tenens perspective on single payer
By Daniella Grossman | Modern Medicine
Sixteen years after the late Democratic Sen. Paul Wellstone proposed the American Health Security Act of 1993, which would have created national health insurance and extended benefits to all Americans, lawmakers are once again considering a single-payer healthcare system.

August 12, 2009

A Raucous Side of the Health Debate
Steven Kahn | Letters | New York Times
Health care isn’t too expensive; insurance is. A single-payer, nonprofit system would lower the cost, allowing insurance for all. The insurance companies, drug companies and the medical-industrial complex are all fighting for their very lives in fear of a better, cheaper option. Do politicians have the guts to stand up to the special interests?

New poll shows Canadians overwhelmingly support public health care
In a last-ditch effort to convince Canadians that their public health care system should be privatized, Canadian Medical Association (CMA) President Robert Ouellet has promised to "pull out all the stops" during the association's annual meeting next week. Trouble is, Ouellet's mission to lead the change to privatization is exactly the opposite of what 86 percent of Canadians want.

August 11, 2009

What About a Single-Payer System?
By Steffie Woolhandler | New York Times | Room for Debate Blog
"The Health Insurers Have Already Won" reads the cover story in Business Week's Aug. 6 issue. That's the short answer to why the public option option is off the table as well as to why the new bill will use an individual mandate to force the uninsured to buy private insurance. Or, more fundamentally, why Congress didn't pursue the single-payer, Medicare-for-all approach used in other developed nations.

Activist Fought for Civil Rights, Health Care
By T. Rees Shapiro | Washington Post
Marilyn Clement, 74, a social activist who helped expand black voting rights under the guidance of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in the 1960s and later was a campaigner for a universal health-care system in the United States, died Aug. 3 in New York. She had multiple myeloma, a cancer of the bone marrow.

Single-Payer & Interlocking Directorates
by Kate Murphy | From FAIR.org Extra!
How often are employees allowed to work on projects that might put some of the people they work for out of business? That's the conflict of interest that journalists reporting on the healthcare reform debate are often put in by the boards of media corporations they work for, which frequently include representatives of the insurance industry.

The Health Insurers Have Already Won
By Chad Terhune and Keith Epstein | Cover Story | BusinessWeek
How UnitedHealth and rival carriers, maneuvering behind the scenes in Washington, shaped health-care reform for their own benefit

August 07, 2009

Obama gives powerful drug lobby a seat at healthcare table
By Tom Hamburger | From the Los Angeles Times
As a candidate for president, Barack Obama lambasted drug companies and the influence they wielded in Washington. He even ran a television ad targeting the industry's chief lobbyist, former Louisiana congressman Billy Tauzin, and the role Tauzin played in preventing Medicare from negotiating for lower drug prices.

GOP doesn't dare challenge this government health care
By Eric Zorn | Chicago Tribune
See, Medicare, despite its faults, is an extremely popular and entrenched program. I could find no public opinion polls in the modern era that have even bothered to ask if it should be abolished and grandma and grandpa dumped back into the private health-care insurance market. Similarly, I couldn't find any recent polls in Canada that asked Canadians if they wanted to abandon their national health-care program in favor of an American-style system. A Harris-Decima poll released last month showed 82 percent of Canadians prefer their nation's health-care delivery system to ours.

Health care agency's payroll bloated
By Hillary Chabot and Joe Dwinell | The Boston Herald
The payroll at the agency steering the state’s controversial universal health care effort has swollen to more than four times its original size in just 18 months - with a top-heavy bureaucracy led by dozens of high-paid managers, newly released records show.

Medicare points the way to genuine health care reform
By John Geyman and Deborah Burger | Star-Ledger
Medicare, which turns 44 this week, has taught us many valuable lessons, perhaps none more valuable than this: the more we let private, for-profit insurance companies muscle into our publicly financed health care programs, the worse the outcome for patients, doctors and nurses.

August 05, 2009

Health Debate: Costs and Benefits
Michael M. Rachlis | Letter to the Editor | New York Times
Canada spends 10 percent of gross domestic product on health care, and everyone is covered. The United States spends 16 percent of G.D.P., but tens of millions lack coverage. The cost difference is almost entirely due to higher administrative costs and higher prices, which are directly related to the economics of a multi-payer system.

August 04, 2009

We need a single payer
By Laura McClure | The Daily Star (Oneonta, NY)
People in our area, and across the country, desperately need health-care reform. If the reforms President Obama is urging pass Congress, many uninsured people will get access to some kind of insurance, and that could be a great thing for them. But it's hard to exaggerate what a hash Congress and Obama have made of fixing our famously dysfunctional health-care system.

Why Single Payer Advocacy Matters Now More Than Ever
John Nichols | The Beat, a Nation blog
Americans who want to tip the debate in the most progressive direction should take advantage an opening provided at the last minute during negotiations to get a bill approved by the House Energy and Commerce Committee. And they should do so by advocating even more aggressively for single-payer health care.

August 03, 2009

"American Values" -- A Smoke Screen in the Debate on Health Care Reform
By Allan S. Brett, M.D. | New England Journal of Medicine
Amid all the rhetoric about health care reform, one claim has emerged as a trump card designed to preserve the current patchwork of private and public insurance and to stop discussion of a government-sponsored single-payer system in its tracks: the claim that single-payer health care -- a Canadian-style Medicare-for-all system -- is antithetical to "American values." The idea that American values dictate a particular approach to health care reform is often stated explicitly, and it is implicit in the generalization that "Americans want" a particular system. The underlying premise is that an identifiable set of American values point incontrovertibly to a health care system anchored by the private insurance industry. Remarkably, this premise has received very little scrutiny.

A Canadian doctor diagnoses U.S. healthcare
By Michael M. Rachlis | Los Angeles Times
Universal health insurance is on the American policy agenda for the fifth time since World War II. In the 1960s, the U.S. chose public coverage for only the elderly and the very poor, while Canada opted for a universal program for hospitals and physicians' services. As a policy analyst, I know there are lessons to be learned from studying the effect of different approaches in similar jurisdictions. But, as a Canadian with lots of American friends and relatives, I am saddened that Americans seem incapable of learning them.

Top Ten Ways To Tell Your President & His Party Aren't Fighting For Health Care For Everybody
by Bruce Dixon, Managing Editor | Black Agenda Report
With the corporate media relentlessly distorting the public discussion around health care reform, it time for some clear, bright lines to help us tell who is doing what to whom, and whether any of it leads to health care for all of us. Here are ten of them.

Obama's Personal Doctor Speaks Against Health Plan
CBS News, Channel 2, Chicago
President Obama's very own doctor thinks his proposed health care reform pushing government-run insurance is "a bad program," according to media reports.

Single payer plan the only solution that will work
By Dorothy Sistrom | Opinion | The Register Guard
Our health care system has failed. Church Women United of Eugene/Springfield has endorsed "single payer" health care for America. We have asked our members to contact our congressional representatives and the president to support House Resolution 676 and Senate Bill 703.

July 31, 2009

Want more choice? Pick single-payer
By Ann Settgast and Elizabeth Frost | Opinion | Pioneer Press (St. Paul, Minn.)
The health care reform debate is reaching a feverish pitch. As physicians, we are troubled by the direction the debate has taken. Whether via a public option or a mandate to purchase insurance, the proposals on the table aim to cover more, but not all Americans. They build on the structure of our broken system -- one that ranks as the most costly, fragmented and bureaucratic in the world.

July 30, 2009

Obama's Doctor: President's Vision For Health Care Bound To Fail
By Sam Stein | Huffington Post
The man Barack Obama consulted on medical matters for over two decades said on Tuesday that the president's vision for health care reform is bound for failure.

Obama's longtime doctor says healthcare reform plan falls short
By Mike Dorning | Los Angeles Times
The Chicago doctor who treated President Obama for more than two decades has a prescription for healthcare reform: a British- or Canadian-style single-payer system.

Single-payer system cuts barriers to care
By Beth Cardosi | TheSunNews
I'm a physician in South Carolina. I have firsthand experience regarding our broken, wasteful health care system.

July 29, 2009

House Members Debate Medical Bankruptcy Numbers
By Jane Norman | CQ HEALTHBEAT NEWS
The hearing in the Commercial and Administrative Law Subcommittee tackled a subject that often comes up in discussions of the need for health care system changes, and that's how often Americans declare bankruptcy because of heavy medical bills. A recent study published in the American Journal of Medicine -- and written by an advocate of single-payer insurance -- found 62 percent of bankruptcies in 2007 tracked back to medical debt in some form.

Discard this health plan
Ray Bellamy | Tallahassee Democrat
The proposal out of Congress does not meet Obama's goals, which I share, of universality (at least 10 million would not be covered), does not meet the affordability goal, and does not meet the guaranteed choice goal, since employees must take the plan offered to them at work.

Media needs to deepen coverage of healthcare reform
By James Rainey | Los Angeles Times
America has a healthcare crisis, yes, and so do broad segments of the media, particularly television news. They have transformed the story of how to fix an overpriced and inadequate care system into an overheated political scrum, with endless chatter about deadlines and combatants and very little about the kind of medical care people get and how it might change.

Single-payer system controls costs
By Phil Lopes | Guest Opinion | Special to the Arizona Daily Star
Empirical evidence clearly shows that the one proposal that will restrain the rate is single-payer. Those who fear that single-payer is new and foreign, and therefore untested, need to be reminded that Medicare is, in essence, a single-payer system. For those who are eligible, Medicare is universal and identical, not means-tested and is administered by the government, which acts as a single-payer through contracts with the private sector to provide hospital and outpatient physician services.

July 28, 2009

Public Option Advocates: Time to Come Home to Single Payer
By Mark Dunlea
As the various public option proposals in Congress for national health care reform become weaker every day, there is still time for its proponents to support what they really believe in: a single payer, Medicare for all type program.

Testimony of Steffie Woolhandler, M.D., M.P.H., on medical bankruptcy
Mr. Chairman, members of the Committee. I'm Steffie Woolhandler. I am a primary care doctor in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and professor of medicine at Harvard. I am also senior author of two studies on medical causes of bankruptcy, one published in Health Affairs in 2005, and the latest in the August 2009 issue of the American Journal of Medicine. Both studies were done in collaboration with colleagues at Harvard Law School and Ohio University.

Single-payer system required for real reform
Tucson Citizen | Arizona Voices
True reform must start with a single-payer system. From there, other problems and cost elevators can be tackled one at a time.

Many inconvenient truths on health care
By Dr. Stephen Sokol | Sun Journal (Lewiston, Maine)
Health care in America is a shambles and will, like a critically ill patient, likely collapse if not properly and promptly attended to.

Diagnosing Proposals for Healthcare Reform
Bill Moyers sits down with Trudy Lieberman, director of the health and medical reporting program at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, and Marcia Angell, senior lecturer in social medicine at Harvard Medical School and former editor in chief of the New England Journal of Medicine

July 27, 2009

For-profit insurance: No value added
By JAMES C. MITCHINER | Detroit Free Press
In the health care debate, the one question we should be asking is: What is the marginal value of having private health insurance?

Healthcare and Free Press: Two Human Rights We Lack
By David Swanson | July 23, 2009
Another name for "what's called a single-payer system" would be: healthcare as a human right, not a commodity to be purchased. Many humans have this right. They just aren't Americans.

Fixing A Sick Health Care System
By George E Curry | NNPA Columnist
By switching to a single payer system that covers all medical necessities, it is estimated that savings will amount to more than $350 billion per year.

Who will run health care?
by Bob Balhiser | Queen City News
With Barack Obama as our new president, Americans will never have a better opportunity to take our political system back from the lobbyists who are in control now. An ideal place to start would be with health-care reform. To illustrate just how ripe the opportunity is, ask yourself why the health-insurance lobby is spending $1.4 million every day running scare ads designed to prevent meaningful health-care reform.

Single-payer health care will work
By FLOYD E. McDOWELL SR. | The News Journal (Delaware)
Single-payer health care reform is a no-brainer for informed citizens and credible elected political decision-makers.

Universal healthcare for all: Mandate whose time has come
By Robert Dodge, M.D. | Ventura County Star (Calif.)
July 30 marks the 44th anniversary of Medicare providing healthcare to all over the age of 65. That system has provided a safety net to all of our seniors, irrespective of their ability to pay. As a single-payer system with the lowest administrative costs, it has proved the most cost-efficient for our nation.

July 24, 2009

Why we must vote on the public health care plan
By Rep. Anthony Weiner | Politico
It seems that big legislation isn't complete until it develops a collection of catchphrases. ("Shovel ready," everyone? "Cash for clunkers," perhaps?) The effort to tackle the long list of failings of our health care system and the way we pay for it has been no exception. This time, we are arguing over the so-called public option.

July 23, 2009

More of the Same Is Not Health Care Reform, It's a Placebo
by Leonard Rodberg, PhD
There is little reform, and no serious cost control, in the health care reform plans that President Obama and the Congress are proposing:

July 22, 2009

We can afford a single-payer health plan
LI-HSIA WANG, M.D. & HENRY L. ABRONS, M.D. | Letter to the Editor | San Francisco Chronicle
If congressional leaders are disturbed by the Congressional Budget Office report that their proposed health reform legislation will deepen "the already staggering national debt," they need to ask the question: How would the cost of a single-payer program compare?

Why Obama's Public Option Is Defective, and Why We Need Single-Payer.
By Drs. Steffie Woolhandler and David Himmelstein | The Progressive
Once Congress finishes mandating that we all buy private health insurance, it can move on to requiring Americans to purchase other defective products. A Ford Pinto in every garage? Lead-painted toys for every child? Melamine-laced chow for every puppy? Private health insurance doesn't work.

An ERISA waiver/state single-payer amendment introduced by Rep. Kucinich passed the Education and Labor committee, 25-19 (7/17/09)

Is NPR Ignoring the Single-Payer Health Care Proposal?
By Alicia C. Shepard | NPR ombudsman
The dilemma is a classic for all news organizations covering government or elections. The news media doesn't cover a proposal or political candidate because the media doesn't think either has a chance of success. But without news coverage, how will either get enough attention to make a difference? In this case, it's the single-payer approach to the current national debate over paying for health care.

Medicare for all
Letter to the Editor | Salt Lake Tribune
Because I am a physician and attorney with many years of experience in both fields, I can say unequivocally that the best way to solve the escalating cost in health care is also the best way to reduce medical errors and nearly eliminate medical malpractice lawsuits. It is also the simplest solution and it pays for itself without resorting to budgetary tricks. The solution I refer to is single-payer Medicare for all, embodied in Rep. John Conyers' bill, HR676.

July 20, 2009

Drug Makers Score Early Wins as Plan Takes Shape
By ALICIA MUNDY and LAURA MECKLER | The Wall Street Journal
The pharmaceuticals industry, which President Barack Obama promised to "take on" during his campaign, is winning most of what it wants in the health-care overhaul.

July 17, 2009

The fake persuaders
By George Monbiot | The Guardia
Persuasion works best when it's invisible. The most effective marketing worms its way into our consciousness, leaving intact the perception that we have reached our opinions and made our choices independently. As old as humankind itself, over the past few years this approach has been refined, with the help of the internet, into a technique called "viral marketing". Last month, the viruses appear to have murdered their host. One of the world's foremost scientific journals was persuaded to do something it had never done before, and retract a paper it had published.

July 16, 2009

Consider single-payer
Daniel Lee | Letter to the editor | Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel
People who believe a public option will make health insurance companies and health maintenance organizations more accountable should look at Medicare's Part C Medicare Advantage privatization option. Forbes found insurance companies and HMOs cherry-picking healthy seniors for their plans and lemon-dropping sickly seniors into Medicare Parts A and B.

For-profit industry is killing U.S. system
Stephen Kemble, MD | em>Letter to the Editor | Honolulu Advertiser
President Obama has said he wants health care reform that does three things: reduces costs, ensures free choice of providers for patients and ensures universal access. He also said we need to "build on what works" in health care and, "If you're happy with the insurance you have, you can keep it." However, the only ones who are happy with their health insurance these days are the ones who have not had to use theirs recently.

The Health Crisis: Letters from Patients
From Sen. Bernie Sanders
More that 4,400 people in Vermont and across the nation wrote to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) in mid-June describing their experiences with health care in America. Sen. Sanders, an advocate of single payer national health insurance and the lead sponsor of S. 703, has complied some of the letters in a booklet: The Health Care Crisis: Letters from Vermont and America. http://www.sanders.senate.gov/files/TheHealthCareCrisis.pdf

Going for the Gold
By Robert G. Evans | Journal of Health Politics
Political conflict over the respective roles of the state and the market in health care has a long history. Current interest in market approaches represents the resurgence of ideas and arguments that have been promoted with varying intensity throughout [the 20th] century.

Health Insurance Whistle-Blower Knows Where the Bodies Are Buried
By Amy Goodman | TruthDig.com
Wendell Potter is the health insurance industry's worst nightmare. He's a whistle-blower. Potter, the former chief spokesperson for insurance giant CIGNA, recently testified before Congress, "I saw how they confuse their customers and dump the sick--all so they can satisfy their Wall Street investors."

July 15, 2009

U.S. Health Spending Breaks From the Pack
By Catherine Rampell | Economix Blog | New York Times
Despite the fact that the United States is the only industrialized nation that does not ensure that all its citizens have health care coverage, the United States spends a (much) higher percentage of its gross domestic product on health care than its peers. It also spends (much) more per person on health care than its peers.

Say no to status quo, go for single-payer
By Christopher Stack | Indianapolis Star
Serendipity is a wonderful thing. On June 29, The Star published the "Our View" article by executives and physicians employed by Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield titled "Beware pitfalls on road to health-care reform." The same day, The New York Times printed an editorial titled "Insurance company schemes." Those interested in the health-care debate now consuming Congress should read both. The contrast could not be more stunning.

Organization of Women's 2009 Woman of Action
by Mike Hall | AFL-CIO Blog
Donna Smith, a community organizer and legislative representative for the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee (CNA/NNOC), was recently honored as the National Organization for Women's (NOW's) 2009 Woman of Action.

Your company health plan may ruin you
By Leonard Rodberg | Worthington (Minn.) Daily Globe
Underinsurance -- the failure of insurance plans to protect us from the cost of needed medical care -- is a growing problem for millions of middle- and lower-income Americans. As the national debate over reforming our costly and inefficient health care system heats up, recent studies show that deficiencies in our private insurance system afflict many more than the millions who are uninsured.

Patients are losing patience
Rose Ann DeMoro | The Guardian
With Barack Obama in the White House, large Democratic majorities in Congress, and a relentless focus in Washington on healthcare, this could have been the year the US finally joined the community of nations which guarantee healthcare for all their people.

Medical bankruptcies must factor into debate
By Jeffrey Freedman | The Buffalo News
No conversation about reform of our health care system is complete unless it includes a discussion of how medical costs are driving Americans to bankruptcy court.

Our right to health care, and to real reform
By RICHARD PROPP | Times Union (Albany, NY)
Hippocrates, the famous Greek physician, stated in his oath that "I will follow that system of regimen which, according to my ability and judgment, I consider for the benefit of my patients, and abstain from whatever is deleterious and mischievous." It is well to remember these cautions as we look to the healing of our health care non-system, particularly when studying proposals for a public option, as contrasted with single payer.

July 09, 2009

Health care reform, front and center
By Kathie Durbin | The Columbian
A boisterous audience of more than 100, including a large contingent of seniors, packed a Vancouver hospital auditorium Wednesday to hear U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., and a panel of health care providers dissect national health care reform.

ECONOMIC SCENE: The missing piece of the healthcare debate
By David R. Francis | Staff Writer | The Christian Science Monitor
If no one is paying any attention, create a fuss. Maybe that explains why 13 doctors and nurses got arrested last month when they disrupted a Senate hearing. Their protest: The committee wasn't considering a single-payer solution to fix America's healthcare system.

Single-payer reduces waste dramatically
By Jeremy B. Stern | SouthCoastToday.com
I am an orthopedic surgeon who has been practicing in this community over the past 16 years and may be familiar to many of your readers. As our Congress debates the future of our health-care system, I am writing to urge my fellow citizens to get involved in the process. The debate in Congress is being framed largely by the insurance companies. This is problematic because of the large sums of money donated by the insurance lobby to the same senators who are crafting the reform.

July 08, 2009

Single payer health care gets nod from UCC assembly
By Jeff Woodard | Worldwide Faith News
Citing both specificity and urgency, the General Synod of the United Church of Christ (UCC) passed without amendment a resolution titled "Calling for the Support of H.R. 676 -- Single Payer National Health Care Reform to Advance Health Equity for All and to Eliminate Health Disparities" on June 30.

Why Fiscal Conservatives Should Love Medicare-for-All
By CAROL MILLER | CounterPunch
Call me old fashioned, but a true conservative is someone who conserves, dislikes wasting money and is offended by endless corporate bailouts by hard-working taxpayers. A fiscal conservative like me. As a public health professional, I want to see health dollars used to keep people healthy through public health and wellness programs, as well as provide medical care when it’s needed.

July 07, 2009

The hijacking of health reform
By Susanne L. King, M.D. | The Berkshire Eagle
Headlines in the Berkshire Eagle recently proclaimed that Berkshire Health Systems (BHS) is cutting the equivalent of 65 full-time jobs, and will lose $3 million this year. This is neither good for employment nor for the health of our population in the Berkshires. The culprits are the cuts to Medicaid and Medicare, the programs that cover 70 percent of the BHS population.

A pay-go option for health-care reform
By John Geyman | The Seattle Times
A single-payer approach to providing health care can cover all Americans and still save money, argues John Geyman, professor emeritus of Family Medicine at the University of Washington. This option, including incentives for money savings, must not be discarded.

Single-payer system could remove burden from employers
By Jack Lohman | Milwaukee Small Business Times
Single-payer is the most cost efficient system for our nation and is the most humane. You get sick, you get care and the caregiver gets paid. Nothing could be simpler. And though Medicare is not perfect it is indeed the least costly system of all with full physician choice, no wait times and no rationing.

July 06, 2009

Single Payer Health Care
By Art Edelstein | Vermont Business Magazine
Dr Deborah Richter, a Cambridge-based family practice physician, is also chair of Vermont Health Care For All, a group advocating for publicly financed universal health care system, also known as single payer.

Britain's National Health Service: Simple, sensible and civilized
By Clancy Sigal | Opinion | Los Angeles Times
For the first couple of years I lived in Britain, I was an illegal immigrant from the United States, visaless with an expired passport and looking over my shoulder all the time. Even so, from the very first day I arrived at Victoria Station in London, suffering from bronchitis, I was accepted in the NHS -- the national health scheme, we called it -- no questions asked and no ID required.

A doctor fights for a single-payer plan
By Elizabeth Strother | The Roanoke Times
Dr. Janice Gable knows a lot of uninsured Americans. They became part of her family back in Konnarock, a village in the Appalachians where the mountains of far Southwest Virginia roll seamlessly into Tennessee and North Carolina. She practiced medicine there for 34 years. Those years made Gable an ardent advocate for health care reform -- and no half-measures, either.

Medical bankruptcy: A South Florida case study
By Bob LaMendola | South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Self-employed with no health insurance, Dorothy Carmona began descending into debt in 2004 when she had a stroke. Next, the housing crash ruined her title business. Then last fall she was diagnosed with aggressive lung cancer.

Left out of the discussion
By Gregg Blesch | Modern Healthcare
Lawmakers trying to get sweeping health care legislation passed this summer have made a point - and a show of keeping disparate industry and advocacy groups engaged in the discussions. The only ones with no seat at the large table are those who believe private insurance companies should lose theirs, but supporters of a single-payer health system are still fighting to be heard.

Obama health czar directed firms in trouble
By Fred Schulte | MSNBC
Nancy-Ann DeParle, President Barack Obama's health policy czar, served as a director of corporations that faced scores of federal investigations, whistleblower lawsuits and other regulatory actions, according to government records reviewed by the Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University.

'Congress doesn't know we've been arrested'
By JAY FRIESS | South Maryland News
Paris and 12 other advocates of a single-payer health care, sometimes known as "Medicare for all," were arrested for disorderly conduct after not being given an official opportunity to speak at the hearing conducted by Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.). Paris and seven fellow members of Physicians for a National Health Program, a nonprofit advocacy organization, resorted to making statements from the audience without being recognized. Five other members of the organization were arrested at a subsequent hearing May 12.

July 02, 2009

Dr. Sidney Wolfe's Testimony before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce at Hearing on Health Insurance
Testimony of Sidney M. Wolfe MD
What if you picked up the morning paper tomorrow and saw the following headline: "50 People Died Yesterday Because they Lacked Health Insurance"? The next day, the same headline--and the next as well. This is the average number of people in the United States who, according to a 2004 report by the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, die each day--more than 18,000 a year--because they lack health insurance. How should we respond to this unacceptable and embarrassing finding?

Single-payers crashing the gates
By Marcy Winograd | L.A. Progressive
One of the many frustrations for advocates of single-payer health care is the relentless drive to marginalize us, not only by conservatives but also by members of our own party.

Medical debt increasingly cited as factor in bankruptcies
By Doug Trapp | AMNews
Nearly two-thirds of bankruptcies in early 2007 were due in part to medical debt -- an increase of more than 20% since 2001 -- according to a national study of more than 2,000 cases.

Middle class battles illness, medical bills
BY COLLEEN LAMAY | Idaho Statesman
In the movies and in country music, spunky people dying of cancer take exotic vacations, jump out of airplanes, spend quality time with people they love - all the things they never had time to do before their diagnoses. The reality is very different for growing numbers of middle-class families who lack health insurance or have skimpy coverage.

July 01, 2009

Democratic party chairman favors single-payer health care
The Associated Press
The head of the Montana Democratic Party, also a candidate for Congress, is coming out in favor of universal health coverage.

June 30, 2009

Puerto Rican doctors rally at White House, urge Obama to create pilot single-payer system on island
Public Citizen | News release
The Puerto Rico College of Physicians and Surgeons urged President Obama today to create a single-payer pilot program on the island, saying it is the best way to provide universal coverage to all of Puerto Rico's 4 million residents.

June 29, 2009

State cuts its health coverage by $115m
By Kay Lazar | Boston Globe
Overseers of Massachusetts’ trailblazing healthcare program made their first cuts yesterday, trimming $115 million, or 12 percent, from Commonwealth Care, which subsidizes premiums for needy residents and is the centerpiece of the 2006 law.

Let Medicare cover all Americans
Greg M. Silver, M.D. | Letter to the Editor | St. Petersburg Times
We already spend enough to insure everyone right now and it's 2 1/2 times what the average industrialized country spends. To pump additional monies into a system that over the last 50 years has proven itself wasteful, expensive, complicated and which produces poorer health outcomes than other countries is as absurd as it is reckless.

Health care vs. sick care
By Dr. M. Joycelyn Elders | United Methodist News Service
The United States has the best "sick-care" system in the world, but our "health-care" delivery system is lacking. We have the best doctors, the best hospitals, best academic health centers, best nurses, the best drugs, and we are leaders in research. Our problem is that the system is not available to all of our citizens.

June 28, 2009

The Prescription From Obama's Own Doctor
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF | Op-Ed Columnist | New York Times
I hope President Obama tunes out the A.M.A. and reaches out instead to somebody to whom he's turned often for medical advice. That's Dr. David Scheiner, a Chicago internist who was Mr. Obama's doctor for more than two decades, until he moved into the White House this year.

June 26, 2009

Universal health care is near at hand
By Richard C. Dillihunt | Guest column | Bangor Daily News
I have been a proponent of universal health care and single payer since retiring from the practice of surgery more than 10 years ago. During this decade I have never waffled on my conviction that our nation should transition to a system in which every citizen has an equal opportunity to obtain their health care from practitioners of their choice.

Oliver Fein, of Physicians for a National Health Program, at St. Kate's: Give single-payer a chance
By Kathlyn Stone | TC Daily Planet
The American Medical Association has come out against President Obama’s “public option” for health care reform, but the AMA doesn’t represent all physicians. Some physicians’ groups support the public option but others think it doesn’t go far enough to fix changes in a badly broken system. Dr. Oliver Fein, president of the progressive Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP), found a warm welcome in the Twin Cities last week. Fein was here to present PNHP’s vision for a national single payer health program. PNHP has 16,000 members, including 300 in Minnesota.

June 25, 2009

Obama's Doctor Knocks ObamaCare
By David Whelan | Forbes
Scheiner, 71, was Obama's doctor from 1987 until he entered the White House; he vouched for the then-candidate's "excellent health" in a letter last year. He's still an enthusiastic Obama supporter, but he worries about whether the health care legislation currently making its way through Congress will actually do any good, particularly for doctors like himself who practice general medicine. "I'm not sure he really understands what we face in primary care," Scheiner says.

Paul Starr and Steffie Woolhandler on the public option
The heated debate over the proposal to offer a public plan option is certainly warranted, but the much of the debate misses the point. While most people are arguing over the design of the public option, they are neglecting the fundamental flaws of our multi-payer system.

Will a Public Plan Bring Better Care?
Steffie Woolhandler | Letters | New York Times
A public plan option that competes with private insurers won't fix health care. Competition in health insurance involves a race to the bottom, not the top. Insurers compete by not paying for care: by seeking out the healthy and avoiding the sick; by denying payment and shifting costs onto patients. These bad behaviors confer a decisive competitive advantage; a public plan would either emulate them -- becoming a clone of private insurance -- or go under.

Senate Report Finds Insurers Wrongfully Charged Consumers Billions
By David S. Hilzenrath | Washington Post
Health insurers have forced consumers to pay billions of dollars in medical bills that the insurers themselves should have paid, according to a report released today by the staff of the Senate Commerce Committee.

June 24, 2009

The Health Care Industry vs. Health Reform
By Wendell Potter | Center for Media and Democracy
I'm the former insurance industry insider now speaking out about how big for-profit insurers have hijacked our health care system and turned it into a giant ATM for Wall Street investors, and how the industry is using its massive wealth and influence to determine what is (and is not) included in the health care reform legislation members of Congress are now writing.

Testimony of Steffie Woolhandler, M.D., to the Health Subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee
Mr. Chairman, members of the Committee. I'm Steffie Woolhandler. I am a primary care doctor in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and associate professor of medicine at Harvard. I also co-founded Physicians for a National Health Program. Our 16,000 physician members support nonprofit, single-payer national health insurance because of overwhelming evidence that lesser reforms -- even with a robust public plan option - will fail.

Testimony of Quentin Young, M.D., to the House Ways and Means Committee
Mr. Chairman, members of the Committee, thank you for giving me the opportunity to comment on the proposal that has emerged from the three key House committees and to articulate the single-payer alternative. I am national coordinator of Physicians for a National Health Program, an organization of 16,000 American physicians who support single-payer national health insurance. Our organization represents the views of the majority of U.S. physicians, 59 percent of whom support national health insurance.

June 23, 2009

Medicare 2.0: Doctors group urges health care for all
By Casey Selix | MinnPost.com
Dr. Oliver Fein, president of the 16,000-member Physicians for a National Health Program, thinks the civil rights movement of the 21st century will be health care. As health policy reform moves up the domestic agenda of the president and Congress, a single-payer, government-run program appears to be off the table. But Fein, who was in the Twin Cities last week to launch the Hazardous to Your Health! series at St. Catherine University, thinks the single-payer concept is gaining momentum in the United States.

June 22, 2009

Unhealthy numbers
Editorial | Houston Chronicle
The health-care debate now cranking up in Congress is all about the numbers -- dollars and people and, ultimately, better lives for us all. No number is more widely noticed or fretted over than this one: 47 million. That's the number of Americans estimated to be going without health-insurance coverage, whether by choice or by circumstance.

Amnesty International USA calls on Senate to Consider Single Payer proposals -- Healthcare Is A Human Right
Amnesty International, USA
We at Amnesty International believe that policymakers have a historic opportunity to reform a broken health care system. During the presidential debates, Barack Obama took a step in the right direction by affirming that health care should be a right. The legislation now emerging from Washington is, however, a long way from fulfilling that vision.

Say bye to for-profit health insurance
Edwin L. Stickney M.D. | Letter to the Editor | Billings Gazette
The for-profit health insurance industry is the major culprit standing in the way of the American people obtaining for themselves their right to adequate universal health care. This industry employs thousands of people whose task it is to find reasons not to insure people (pre-existing conditions) in the first place, then to find ways not to pay claims of those already insured. Further, thousands of employees in hospitals and doctors' offices spend hours on the telephone attempting to file legitimate claims.

The private health industry's time is up
By Bernie Sanders | Opinion | Christian Science Monitor
To me, the evidence is overwhelming that we must end the private insurance company domination of healthcare in our country and move toward a publicly funded, single-payer, Medicare-for-all approach.

The Policy That Dare Not Speak Its Name
Robert Kuttner | The Huffington Post
The public option is a not-very-good second best--because our leading liberal politicians lack the nerve to embrace the one reform that simultaneously solves the problem of cost, quality, and universal inclusion. The policy that dare not speak its name is of course comprehensive national health insurance, or Medicare-for-All. I try to avoid using the term "single payer," because a technical, policy-wonk phrase not understood by most civilians has become insider shorthand for national health insurance. Let's call the thing by its rightful name. Medicare-for-All is something regular people understand.

The Health Reform We Need & Are Not Getting
By Arnold Relman | The New York Review of Books
President Obama has placed health care reform high on his domestic agenda. He believes that a better health care system is essential for the nation's economic recovery, so health reform "will not wait another year." However, he has made only general proposals for reform, leaving Congress to work out the details of the legislation. The Democratic-led Congress has already passed some limited health legislation and its leaders say that they will put a comprehensive reform bill on the President's desk before the end of this year.

Single-minded on healthcare
By ELIZABETH COONEY | Boston Globe
The debate in Washington about how to overhaul the nation’s healthcare system has included little from advocates for a single-payer plan. Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, a Cambridge Health Alliance internist and Harvard Medical School professor who cofounded Physicians for a National Health Care Program, has been raising her voice for a national plan for more than two decades, contending that the current system based on private insurance - including the Massachusetts model mandating near-universal coverage - does not serve people well, whether they are rich or poor, insured or uninsured. Here is an edited version of an interview last week.

June 19, 2009

Doctors drawing battle lines on health care debate
By Liv Osby | The Greenville News
The 64-year-old man with a family history of colon cancer working two jobs has insurance, but can’t afford the co-pays for tests to analyze his rectal bleeding. So he says he’ll wait a year until he’s eligible for Medicare. Advertisement Dr. Richard Lucarelli says the solution to this dilemma is a single-payer government health plan that covers everyone.

Canadians contrast their health care to U.S.'s
By Barry Brown | Washington Times
For a Canadian facing emergency surgery in the United States, a ride on a privately chartered Lear jet back to Canada is a whole lot cheaper than having the operation in a U.S. hospital.

More 'Skin in the Game' May Give Perverse Result
Thomas Clairmont, M.D. | Letters | Wall Street Journal
You completely discount any administrative savings from a single-payer system.You also ignore the rising number of bankruptcies related to medical care. Every other country covers its citizens, the way it should be here.

End Insurance's Bad Incentives
By Steffie Woolhandler and David Himmelstein | The New York Times | Room for Debate
There are a variety of bad ways of paying doctors, but no particularly good ones. Fee-for-service health care rewards the overprovision of care; capitation (a set monthly fee per patient) rewards underprovision; and salaries reward just showing up. The minority of physicians (and hospital administrators) who are motivated mostly by money will find a way to game an incentive system rather than do the hard work of providing excellent care.

Wrong Turns on the Road to Health-Care Reform
JERRY M. EARLL | Letter to the Editor | The Washington Post
A private insurance company's mission is to make a profit. Profit is best made by insuring the healthy, screening out the sick and denying health care to anyone unfortunate enough to get sick after enrolling. Managing all this wastes a significant portion of every dollar spent on health care.

Testimony of Margaret Flowers, M.D., to the Senate HELP Committee
By Margaret Flowers, M.D.
Thank you for inviting me to speak to you today from the perspective of a physician and activist. I am a pediatrician with experience both as the director of a hospitalist program and chair of pediatrics at a rural hospital and in community-based private practice. I am currently co-chair of the Maryland chapter of Physicians for a National Health Program. PNHP has over 16,000 members nationwide. I also sit on the steering committee of the Leadership Conference for Guaranteed Health Care/National Single Payer Alliance which represents over 20 million people nationwide. I know that today I am speaking on behalf of the majority of people living in America who desire a national health program.

Private insurance companies push for 'individual mandate'
By Lisa Girion | Los Angeles Times
As momentum gains for reforms, insurers hope to turn it to their advantage by supporting a proposal that everyone buy coverage. It would be a boost for the industry, which has seen enrollment decline.

Medicare system offers model for health reform
By Dr. Charles Katzenberg | Arizona Daily Star
'I just want to practice medicine well." If someone asked me what I would like to see come out of health-care reform, that would be my answer. So how do we get there?

June 17, 2009

Better Planning Needed for Health Expenses
By Philip Moeller | U.S. News and World Report
Health-care costs are the dominant cause of personal bankruptcies, according to a recent study based on detailed 2007 records and extensive interviews with people who filed for bankruptcy that year. The study was released for maximum impact amidst the Congressional debate over health-care reform, and it has been repeatedly cited as proof that the system needs fixing.

Health-Care Polemic
JAMES FLOYD | Letters | The Washington Post
Make no mistake: Single-payer advocates have much to be upset about, given our near-complete exclusion from the congressional debate on health reform. But we are the only health-care reform movement with strong and growing grass-roots support, and we will be heard.

The Truth About Healthcare Reform: What You Don't Know Can Kill You
By Sylvia Hampton | East County Magazine, California
Supporters of real health care reform want a national expansion of the popular Medicare single payer program now covering every American over age 65. But they are being told that it is just not "politically feasible." When one asks "Why?" there is double talk and a run-around. The facts are clear. Oxen will be gored--and the industry and some in Congress are circling the wagons to protect their own self interests. We have some blatant conflicts of interest here that would make an eight-year-old blush: Congress members who have stock holdings in the industry and get large campaign contributions from insurers. Imagine that.

Robert Douglas: Canada is a good model for health care reform
By Robert Douglas | Tallahassee Democrat | My View
My first encounter with the U.S. health care system was in 1979. Thirty years later, it still haunts me and fuels my passion for supporting fundamental reform.

Dr. Farley's Rx -- single-payer -- is the cure
Editorial | Capital Times (Madison, WI)
Dr. Linda Farley, the local physician and nationally recognized advocate for health care reform who died this week, had long championed the replacement of the current for-profit health care system with a single-payer plan. Such a plan would guarantee that all Americans have access to quality care while at the same time cutting costs associated with insurance and health care industry profiteering.

June 16, 2009

A singular solution for healthcare
By Judy Norsigian and Jennifer Potter | The Boston Globe
A single-payer healthcare system would more effectively control costs than any other plan that Congress is considering as it moves toward a reform bill. And by controlling costs, existing resources could be allocated more equitably, especially for the benefit of women.

Australian immigrant's health insurance struggles may send him back
By Alison Knezevich | The Charleston Gazette
Moving boxes are stacked in the living room of Andrew and Rita Watson's Kanawha City apartment. The Australian immigrants are preparing for a trip neither wants to make. "I don't have any insurance, and I'm uninsurable," 65-year-old Andrew Watson said. And that could send him back to Australia.

The AMA Does Not Represent Us
Dr. Margaret Flowers and Dr. Carol Paris | TruthDig
As the American Medical Association begins its annual convention in Chicago, we want to take this opportunity to make it clear to the American public, to the media, and to the president and members of Congress, that the AMA does not represent us. It is a common misconception that this organization speaks on behalf of most American physicians but that is a misconception with very serious consequences at such a critical time in the health care reform debate. So long as the public, the media and our elected officials lump all physicians together as “the AMA,” then we are guilty by association of a failure of our Hippocratic oath to “first, do no harm.”

June 15, 2009

Insurance interests total 1/4 of Baucus' fundraising
By Mike Dennison | The Montana Standard
As Sen. Max Baucus has taken the lead on health-reform legislation in the U.S. Senate, he's also become a leader in something else: Campaign money received from health- and insurance-industry interests.

Are you one big illness away from bankruptcy?
By Dean Calbreath | San Diego Union-Tribune
"The greatest health is wealth," the classical Roman poet Virgil once said. But to keep your health can cost you your wealth. In fact, it can drive you into bankruptcy. A survey this month showed that in 2007, on the eve of the current recession, roughly two-thirds of bankruptcies in the United States involved people who were driven into insolvency because they could not keep up with their medical bills.

June 12, 2009

Single payer: bold, affordable, humane
By Walter Tsou, M.D., M.P.H.
Congressman Andrews and members of the HELP subcommittee, my name is Dr. Walter Tsou. I am a public health physician and former Health Commissioner of Philadelphia. If you believe that every American has the right to quality, affordable health care, then the only affordable means to achieve that goal is through a properly financed, single-payer national health insurance program.

June 09, 2009

Protesters want Baucus to consider single-payer system
By JOHN S. ADAMS | Great Falls Tribune
Protesters in Helena, Great Falls, Missoula, Bozeman and Butte gathered at Baucus' local field offices and demanded that Montana's senior senator, and chairman of the powerful Senate Finance Committee, put single-payer back on the table.

Hold out for single payer
By Nick Skala
Today the Congressional Progressive Caucus faces a choice. That choice is whether Members should maintain their unflinching support for single-payer, or to accede to intense political pressure to support the plan currently being developed in Congress under the direction of President Obama: a mandate for Americans to purchase an insurance plan from a massive new regulatory "exchange," with one plan potentially being a "public option."

The Facts About the Health Insurance Industry
by Jeoffry B. Gordon, MD, MPH | DailyKos
Most people are unaware how similar the major health insurers are to our failed Wall Street firms.They are corporate cash cows and have virtually no fiduciary responsibility and few activities for protecting or improving health or the health care system.They will devote their vast resources to prevent any meaningful health reform. They have controlled Congress and the mainstream media. The only cure is vigorous popular support for a single payer, Medicare for All reform.

June 08, 2009

Doctor critical of Baucus promotes single-payer plan
By MIKE DENNISON | Billings Gazette
Maryland psychiatrist Carol Paris is calling herself one of the "Baucus 13" these days - in other words, one of the 13 doctors, nurses and activists arrested last month while protesting before a Washington, D.C., health reform hearing chaired by Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont.

Concerns about conflict of interests apply to Grassley, too
By JESS FIEDOROWICZ | Des Moines Register
The disclosure and management of conflict of interests is indeed an important concern for those with an ethical and fiduciary responsibility to act in the best interests of others. Physicians have a responsibility to act in the best interests of their patients. Elected officials have a responsibility to act in the best interests of those they represent. We should be pleased Grassley has brought up this very timely, relevant issue.

June 05, 2009

Q&A with: Single-payer advocate Dr. Thomas Clairmont
By Michael McCord | New Hampshire Business Review
Portsmouth physician Thomas Clairmont -- who has practiced medicine since 1977 and is a vocal member of Physicians for a National Health Program -- considers the current health reform effort a dog-and-pony show.

Regressive and Unaffordable
By Marcia Angell | NY Times
There would be no need for an individual mandate in a single-payer system, since everyone would be covered automatically and it would be paid for through their income and payroll taxes. So asking me, a supporter of a single-payer health system, about mandates is a little like asking someone whether he's stopped beating his wife.

Medical Bills Cause Most Bankruptcies
By Tara Parker-Pope | New York Times blog
Nearly two out of three bankruptcies stem from medical bills, and even people with health insurance face financial disaster if they experience a serious illness, a new study shows.

June 04, 2009

Study Links Medical Costs and Personal Bankruptcy
By Catherine Arnst | BusinessWeek
Medical problems caused 62% of all personal bankruptcies filed in the U.S. in 2007, according to a study by Harvard researchers. And in a finding that surprised even the researchers, 78% of those filers had medical insurance at the start of their illness, including 60.3% who had private coverage, not Medicare or Medicaid.

Charity care not answer, doctor says
Mike Penprase | News-Leader (Springfield, MO)
Dr. Judy Dasovich got national attention with her arrest during a recent Senate hearing in Washington, but she was more intent at a Saturday rally on getting attention paid to others.

Study: Most Personal Bankruptcies Caused By Medical Bills, Illness
By DIANE LEVICK | The Hartford Courant
Medical bills or illness contributed to more than 62 percent of personal bankruptcies in 2007, a new study says, showing a nearly 50 percent increase from 2001 and not even reflecting the growing number of people who are losing their jobs and insurance in the recession.

Grass-roots groups must test President mettle on health care reform
By Errol Lewis | New York Daily News
As the White House launches its bid to reform health care, the big questions bedeviling the activist base of the Democratic Party are how and when to nudge President Obama to the left on key issues.

Medical bills play a role in 62% of bankruptcies, study says
By Lisa Girion | Los Angeles Times
Findings by Harvard researchers show that medical-related bankruptcies have increased from 55% in 2001. The report could boost Obama's bid for healthcare reforms.

Life, health insurers invest big in tobacco
Agence France-Presse (AFP)
Major US, Canadian and British life and health insurance companies have billions of dollars invested in tobacco companies, a study published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine said.

How Much Do Life Insurers Profit from Tobacco?
By Kathleen Kingsbury | Time Magazine
In an era of corporate wellness programs and socially screened investment funds, some of the world's largest life-insurance companies still own billions of dollars in tobacco-industry stocks, Harvard physicians assert in a new report.

Medical bills underlie 60 percent of U.S. bankruptcies: study
By Maggie Fox | Health and Science Editor | Reuters
Medical bills are involved in more than 60 percent of U.S. personal bankruptcies, an increase of 50 percent in just six years, U.S. researchers reported on Thursday.

June 03, 2009

Baucus soothes single-payer backers
By Carrie Budoff Brown | Politico
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) told leading advocates of a government-financed health care system that he made a mistake by not giving their proposals more consideration in the reform debate, according to participants in a meeting Wednesday.

The Massachusetts Model: Massive Spending On Nonbenefit Costs
by Merton Bernstein | Health Affairs Blog
Plummeting coverage and soaring costs characterize the nation's health insurance crisis. With much coverage for the nonelderly based on employment, job loss contributes to this misfortune. In response, Congress seems headed to emulate the 2006 Massachusetts "reform." That's an unpromising prescription because it seriously increases costs -- just the opposite of what President Barack Obama cogently and correctly asserts that we need.

June 02, 2009

Thousands of Americans turn out to support single-payer healthcare!
Tim Carpenter, National Director | Progressive Democrats of America
Reports from the single-payer events, which took place on May 30 and the days leading up to it, are still rolling in, but we couldn’t wait to share the news with you. Read about the events in Seattle and Tacoma, Ohio, Rochester and Indiana. We’ll be posting more and invite you to send us your story, as well.

Baucus to meet with single-payer health care advocates
By JOHN S. ADAMS | Great Falls Tribune
Baucus, as chair of the powerful Senate Finance Committee, has made health care reform his top priority this session. However, Baucus has consistently said single-payer--a system in which the federal government acts as the nation's sole health insurance provider--is of the table.

June 01, 2009

Health reform plan is endorsed
By Laura Ungar | Louisville Courier-Journal
Despite resistance from President Barack Obama and some members of Congress, Rep. John Conyers of Michigan said yesterday he'll keep fighting for a publicly financed, privately delivered "single payer" health-care system that covers all Americans.

Baucus Battered By Voters For Health Care Stand
By Ryan Grim | The Huffington Post
Sen. Max Baucus got some not-so friendly advice from his Montana constituents last week as he works to reform the health care system: You're doing it all wrong.

Baucus to Meet with Single Payer Advocates
SinglePayerAction.org
Guess who's coming to dinner. After months of proclaiming that single payer is off the table, Senator Max Baucus (D-Montana) has invited five key single payer advocates to meet with him in Washington, D.C. this week.

Conyers promises a fight to get health-care reform bill through Congress
By Tim Louis Macaluso | Rochester (NY) City Newspaper
To the Baby Boomers who packed the Rochester Museum and Science Center's Eisenhart Auditorium last night, Representative John Conyers (D-MI) is something of a folk hero. He has pushed for health-care reform for more than a decade. In his soft-spoken Walt Disney-like voice, he said, "We're at a crossroads in this country," referring to the ailing US health-care system. Meeting President Barack Obama's request for a bill he can sign into law by the end of this year that would reform health care is going to be difficult, he said.

Health care activists lament single-payer snub
Victoria Colliver | San Francisco Chronicle
Frustrated by the exclusion of government-financed medical care from the debate to revamp the nation's troubled health system, advocates of a "single-payer" plan are increasingly turning to demonstrations and civil disobedience as a way to get their message across.

May 29, 2009

150 protest against private health insurers
By Linsen Li | Louisville Courier-Journal
The demonstration, organized by Kentuckians for Single Payer Healthcare and Physicians for a National Health Program, is part of a national effort to establish a universal health-care plan. "Our purpose is to educate the public and politicians about how the single-payer plan is the best option," said Dr. Ewell Scott, an internist in Morehead, Ky.

May 28, 2009

Groups Urge State and Federal Officials to Make Health Care a Human Right by Adopting a Single Payer Health Care System
Single Payer New York
A hundred single payer universal health care advocates rallied in the rain today at the state Capitol today as part of a national week of action to make healthcare a human right in America.

Single-payer topic dominates health-care listening sessions
By MIKE DENNISON | Billings Gazette
In a packed meeting room today at Anaconda's hospital, state worker and Butte resident Anna Dockter asked U.S. Sen. Max Baucus' chief of staff the question on everyone's mind: Why is national, public health insurance for all not being considered as a reform option?

May 27, 2009

Transcript of Bill Moyers Journal on single payer health care
BILL MOYERS: Welcome to the JOURNAL. Health care reform. It's the talk of the town - if the town is Washington, D.C. But some possible reforms aren't being talked about at all. Not officially, that is.

Unhealthy association for Bayh
Editorial | Indianapolis Star
Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh's vote could prove critical as Congress debates health-care reform later this year. Yet, Bayh has a clear personal interest in the financial stability of one of the key players in that debate -- Indianapolis-based WellPoint, the nation's largest commercial health insurer.

New Report Casts Exclusion of Single Payer Option as a Question of Democracy and Human Rights
The National Economic & Social Rights Initiative | PRESS RELEASE
At a critical moment for health care reform in the United States, The National Economic & Social Rights Initiative has published an in-depth assessment of single payer proposals, finding that a single payer system goes further towards meeting key human rights principles than market-based plans.

Canada's healthcare saved her; Ours won't cover her
By David Lazarus | Los Angeles Times
In November 2007, Maggie Yount was rushed to the emergency room after a drunk driver crashed into her car on a Nova Scotia highway. Yount, a Canadian citizen, spent three months in a Halifax hospital, receiving treatment and rehab that must have cost a small fortune. "I have no idea how much it cost," she said. "It's not something I've ever needed to know." So who paid the bill? "The government of Canada."

Remedy sought for flaws in health care
By EMILY DONOHUE | The Saratogian
While Beverly Alves' husband, Joseph, battled pancreatic cancer in 2006, she battled a medical establishment that she says was ill-equipped to handle the coordination of care her husband needed.

Single-payer mentions draw cheers at Baucus-sponsored health care talk
By MICHAEL MOORE | The Missoulian
When the time came for questions, McArthur stood up and asked a simple question. Looking across a standing-room-only crowd of about 275, he asked how many were happy with their employer-based health insurance. Less than 10 people raised their hands. "The number is bogus," McArthur said. "It's not working for 95 percent of us."

May 26, 2009

Single Payer Advocates Crash Wyden Meeting
Single Payer Action
Advocates of a single payer health care system held a silent protest demonstration at Senator Ron Wyden's town hall meeting in Forest Grove, Oregon on Sunday.

Responding to a national Code Blue
By BRIAN ETTKIN | Times Union (Albany, NY)
In Andrew Coates' first week as a doctoral intern in Cooperstown, he learned a harsh reality that disturbs him to this day: His ability to care for patients is inhibited by their ability to pay for health care.

Held hostage by the health system
By Dr. Marcia Angell | Boston Globe
The Senate Finance Committee's hearings on health reform earlier this month did not include testimony from any advocate for single-payer insurance. Physicians for a National Health Program, which represents 16,000 doctors, asked the committee to invite me to testify, but it chose not to. If I had been invited, this is what I would have said.

May 22, 2009

Reform talk dominates WellPoint meeting
By Daniel Lee | Indianapolis Star
Dr. Rob Stone, a Bloomington physician who heads the advocacy group Hoosiers for a Common Sense Health Plan, called WellPoint and its industry the "biggest barrier" to affordable health care. Stone's group is for a single-payer health plan, such as Medicare for all.

Don't take no for an answer on single-payer
C. Alfred Santillo | Letters to the Editor | Daily Gazette (Schenectady, NY)
How many police does it take to silence the voice of the American people? We do not as yet know, but Sen. Max Baucus of Montana wishes to add many more simply to assure that they do not even have to consider the only health care plan that would work well.

Rx and the Single Payer
by Bill Moyers and Michael Winship | CommonDreams.org
In 2003, a young Illinois state senator named Barack Obama told an AFL-CIO meeting, "I am a proponent of a single-payer universal health care program." There was only one thing standing in the way, Obama said six years ago: "All of you know we might not get there immediately because first we have to take back the White House, we have to take back the Senate and we have to take back the House."

Health care reform: The simple, humane solution
By Winthrop C. Dillaway | Guest Columnist | Star-Ledger
U.S. citizens and policymakers only need to look north to Canada for an example of a single-payer system -- universal public health insurance, financed by taxes, with a single-payment system managed by the government. It is not socialized medicine, but rather, socialized insurance. The delivery of health care remains mostly independent from the government with private doctors and private, nonprofit (so-call voluntary) hospitals.

Ocean City man arrested at Senate health committee hearing
By MICHAEL MILLER | Press of Atlantic City
A local doctor was arrested Tuesday along with four other people who disrupted a U.S. Senate hearing on health care reform in Washington, D.C.

May 21, 2009

Poems to the Editor
By Don Stechschulte
Health care, Health care is it something you’ve got?
For 45 million Americans, the answer’s, NOT!

Remind Baucus who he works for
Richard Buley | Letters | Missoulian (Mont.)
Baucus just can’t seem to understand that banks and health insurance companies haven’t exactly been working for the public good the last several years. Senators make $162,000 per year to supposedly represent the people of their state. Obviously, that salary isn’t enough for Baucus.

May 20, 2009

Insurance companies want to hide truth
Judith Dasovich | Springfield (Mo.) News-Leader
Government-financed health care is not government-run health care. Private for-profit insurance companies do not want you to understand this. Right now, your health care is run by people who value profits, not patients. Private insurance companies set the fees you can't afford, for care they will deny you when you need it. They decide which doctor you can see and which hospital you can use. You think you're "covered" until you get sick and find out that you are not. This is what happened to President Obama's mother when she was dying.

What Is 'Socialized Medicine'?: A Taxonomy of Health Care Systems
By Uwe E. Reinhardt | New York Times | Economix Blog
With another "national conversation" about health reform upon us -- as it is every decade or so -- we will hear a lot of derisive talk about the evils of "socialized medicine." The term is regularly confused with "social health insurance," which is not at all the same concept. The chart below may be helpful in appreciating the distinction.

Questioned, Obama Says Single Payer Would Be Best
Institute for Public Accuracy | News Release
AP is reporting: "President Barack Obama says if he were building the health care system from scratch, a single-payer system would be the best approach. But he says his goal is to improve the current system." The comments were made in response to the first question at the "town hall" type event in Rio Rancho, N.M. by Linda Allison, a local resident.

In health care reform, even the supporters are divided
by Bob Braun | Columnist | New Jersey Star-Ledger
One of the state's chief supporters of single-payer is Winthrop Dilliway, a faculty member at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey and a member of the Physicians for a National Health Program. He called such a system "the most humane, most efficient, and most democratic" way of providing health care. It would not be "socialized medicine," he says, because, unlike the British system, there would be no national health service that actually provides the doctors. The payment would come from the government -- not the service.

Single-payer health care is smart solution for America
Hedda Haning | The Charleston Gazette
Everyone agrees that we should all have health care. Most agree the federal government can fund it because we're desperate. Even the insurance companies agree. The one thing no one discusses is "single payer."

South Thomaston man arrested at Senate session
By Abigail Curtis | Bangor Daily News
A Maine health care activist was arrested, shackled and put in leg irons Tuesday in Washington for disrupting a U.S. Senate Finance Committee round-table discussion on health care reform.

Scare tactics aimed at single-payer health system
By GENE FENDERSON | Guest Opinion | Billings (Mont.) Gazette
Ezra Klein, a prominent health care and political journalist/blogger was recently interviewed by Mike Dennison, a reporter at the Gazette State Bureau. The interview addressed the hearings on health care reform being held by Sens. Max Baucus of Montana and Charles Grassley of Iowa, the U.S. Senate Finance Committee chairman and the ranking member. The most important question in the interview was, "Shouldn't a single-payer or Medicare-for-all system of universal coverage be considered?"

A single-payer plan would take greed out of the health-care business
By Wayne Madsen | Arizona Daily Star
Americans finally are starting to realize what citizens in other advanced democracies took for granted decades ago: Private health insurance is a shopworn relic from a bygone era when few people could afford quality medical care.

Baucus closes door on single-payer in national health care debate
By JOHN S. ADAMS | Great Falls Tribune
Last week lawmakers on the U.S. Senate Finance Committee wrapped up a series of hearings aimed at laying the groundwork for reforming the nation's ailing health care system. That committee will play a crucial role in any health care reform forwarded by Congress, and its chairman, Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., could be the most important player of all.

Springfield doctor arrested at D.C. protest
By Kathleen O'Dell | Springfield (Mo.) News-Leader
A Springfield physician was among five health care advocates arrested Tuesday at the U.S. Capitol for disrupting a Senate Finance Committee hearing on health care reform, run by Chairman Max Baucus, D-Montana.

Health care reform supporters arrested for protest
By MIKE DENNISON | Helena (Mont.) Independent Record
Physicians, nurses and other advocates of a national, single-payer health system are vocally protesting their exclusion from high-level reform talks at the committee chaired by Sen. Max Baucus - and getting arrested while doing it.

Health: a fight for rights
By Margaret Flowers | Baltimore Sun
Health care must become the civil rights movement of our time. And it is becoming clear that achieving guaranteed health care for every American will require all the tools that helped win earlier civil rights fights.

Universal health care: Private enterprise can't fix our ailing system
By PAUL DeMARCO | Spartanburg (S.C.) Herald-Journal
I wear a coat and tie every day to work. I'm in church each Sunday and am not embarrassed to tell you that Jesus is my Savior. I believe in chivalry; I open doors for women and expect my teenage daughter's dates to come into the house when they visit. So where do I get off backing a single-payer national health plan, a plan where everybody's covered in one big risk pool and health care is publicly financed (but privately delivered)? Shouldn't I be a rugged individualist, telling people that if they want good health insurance they can pay attention in class, go to college and get a good job with full benefits just like I did?

Taming Runaway Health Care Costs
Arnold S. Relman & Marcia Angell | Letters | New York Times
David Leonhardt, in his May 13 column ("Health Care, a Lesson in Pain," Economic Scene), is quite right that "the only way to have a sustainable universal health care system is to control costs." But in analyzing the experts' testimony before the Senate Finance Committee on how to pay for health care, he did not mention a solution that neither the experts nor the committee wants to consider: major reform of the system.

Middle Class Healthcare Reform? Bend Over...
by Donna Smith | CommonDreams.org
It's coming. You and me and every middle class, working person in this nation is about to start handing over more and more of their hard earned cash to the private insurance industry, courtesy of our own elected members of Congress and our very popular President. Fire up those Treasury Department presses. We're going to be printing and providing money for insurance companies like no bail-out we've seen yet this economic crisis cycle.

Single-payer health insurance is way to go
By Don Terry | Chicago Sun-Times
About 70 percent of the patients who Dr. Claudia Fegan treats at her South Side clinic don't have health insurance -- like the housekeeper whose breasts were purple and rock-hard from cancer. "She was just waiting at home to die,'' Fegan says. "She didn't have insurance. She didn't know what to do. Her daughter finally brought her in.''

Health-care status quo pushing out single-payer advocates in nation's capital
By Amy Goodman | Syndicated columnist | The Seattle Times
As health-care reform is debated in the nation's capital, advocates of a single-payer system are excluded from the Senate Finance Committee hearings being chaired by Democratic Montana Sen. Max Baucus, writes columnist Amy Goodman. Instead, industry bigwigs interested in preserving the current failing health-care system are taking the lead.

Health care's enigma in chief
David Sirota | San Francisco Chronicle
The most stunning and least reported news about President Obama's press conference with health industry executives this week wasn't those executives' willingness to negotiate with a Democrat. It was that Democrat's eagerness to involve those executives in a discussion about health care reform even as they revealed their previous plans to pilfer $2 trillion from Americans.

Health care reform advocates get arrested while protesting
By MIKE DENNISON | Gazette State Bureau
Physicians, nurses and other advocates of a national single-payer health system are protesting their exclusion from high-level reform talks at the committee chaired by Sen. Max Baucus - and getting arrested while doing it.

Protesters in Cranberry pressure Altmire to support single-payer health care
By Diana Nelson Jones | Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
About 60 people formed parentheses around the back entrance of the Cranberry Municipal Building, chanting their support for single-payer health care as U.S. Rep. Jason Altmire approached for a town hall meeting yesterday.

May 19, 2009

Put single-payer on the table
Editorial | Times Union (Albany, NY)
Earlier this month, eight courageous doctors, lawyers and other activists interrupted a Senate Finance Committee meeting on health care reform to ask why there wasn't one advocate of a single-payer health care system at the table. Chairman Max Baucus, a Montana Democrat, had them arrested. Shame on Senator Baucus, and shame on Congress if it continues to stifle debate on one of the biggest issues facing this country.

May 18, 2009

Doctor: Single-payer system would solve health-care woes
By Allison Ryan | News Tribune (LaSalle, Ill.)
Anne Scheetz, a Chicago-area doctor, is dedicated to single-payer health care as the only pragmatic solution for the nation's health care problems. "I've been in practice for more than 25 years and I've watched the health care system collapse around me, and really I'm ashamed. I'm ashamed to be an American physician," Scheetz told a small group at a Wednesday night event sponsored by Illinois Valley Center for Independent Living.

Baucus Healthcare Plan: Arrest Doctors, Nurses
by John Nichols | The Nation
Senate Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus, the insurance industry-friendly Democrat who is managing show hearings on healthcare reform, has come up with a novel way to express his commitment to care for the almost 50 million Americans who have no healthcare and roughly equal number who have inadequate care. The senior senator from Montana is ordering the arrest of doctors and nurses.

May 13, 2009

Not Change We Can Believe In
By Claudia Chaufan, MD, PhD | KQED
During his election campaign, President Obama said he believed that health care is a right, so I assume that whatever he does, granting this universal right must be a high priority. So to secure this right he has promised to "overhaul" health care. Very well. What may he and his supporters (like Kennedy, Baucus, etc.) have in mind? They have called their approach "uniquely American," and modeled it after Berkeley professor Jacob Hacker's proposal of a "public option" competing with private plans within a "highly regulated health care market." I call them all "hope it works" health care policy.

Can Health Insurers Be Cost-Cutters?
Laura S. Boylan | Letter to the Editor | New York Times
Our nation’s ability to afford decent health care for all our citizens must not depend on voluntary self-regulation of for-profit entities. We need single-payer national health insurance. Let’s circle the wagons around health care, not around private insurance companies and Big Pharma.

May 12, 2009

Single payer system subject of debate at health care roundtable
By RTT Staff Writer | RTTNews
Gerald Shea, Assistant to the President for Governmental affairs of the AFL-CIO, added his support for the single-payer system. "If you're going to do it the right way, I think that single-payer is the way to go," Shea said.

Health Coalition attacks American TV ad in open letter to Barack Obama:
“We are urging President Obama to listen to the overwhelming number of Canadians who value and depend on our public health care, not to Brian Day and his for-profit friends,” said Michael McBane, national coordinator of the Canadian Health Coalition. “Medicare has been good to Canadians since the 1960s when we parted from the American model.”

A Doctor's Letter to Senator Baucus
By ANA M. MALINOW, MD | Counterpunch
The more I listen, the more I hear that all Americans want a health care system that is affordable, accountable, accessible, comprehensive, universal and just - not another Band-Aid that will condemn thousands of us to unnecessary pain, suffering, bankruptcy and death. Listen for yourself, and you will hear Americans clamoring for true health care reform.

May 11, 2009

Max Baucus Should Not Be Deciding Health Care for America
by Kevin Zeese | OpEdNews
Senator Max Baucus and the Senate Finance Committee are too corrupted by corporate health industry profiteers donations to give America the health care policy it needs.

Doctor jailed after health care protest
By KAYLEIGH KULP | The Enterprise
Dr. Carol A. Paris spent Tuesday in jail -- all in the name of health care reform. "I interrupt this so-called public hearing to bring you the following unpaid, political announcement: Put single-payer on the table. My name is Dr. Carol Paris, and I approve this message," Paris said as she was taken out of a congressional public hearing by police for disorderly conduct, as several other protesters with Paris who are part of Physicians for a National Health Program also shouted similar messages.

May 08, 2009

Why we risked arrest for single-payer health care
By Margaret Flowers, M.D.
On May 5, eight health care advocates, including myself and two other physicians, stood up to Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and the Senate Finance Committee during a “public roundtable discussion” with a simple question: Will you allow an advocate for a single-payer national health plan to have a seat at the table? The answer was a loud, “Get more police!” And we were arrested and hauled off to jail.

Most M.D.'s, citizens favor single-payer system
Richard Curtin, M.D. | Guest Opinion | Fort Meyers News-Press
Medicare in this country allows free choice of physician, unless you join a Medicare Advantage plan run by an insurance company and then the plan may limit your choice. I have met no one with Medicare who has chosen to give up Medicare to get their insurance in the private market. Yes, it needs some improvement but is far superior to being without insurance or trying to pay thousands of dollars or not be able to get insurance otherwise.

May 06, 2009

The Only Humane and Affordable Option: Single Payer Health Care
By Marvin Malek Byrne | Times Argus and Rutland Herald
When you try to tell most Americans that the act of providing quality health coverage to everyone in the population can reduce health costs, their skepticism is overwhelming. How could covering people who aren't currently covered, while eliminating deductibles, preexisting condition clauses and other insurance company dodges actually reduce costs?

Call for single payer, universal coverage from Puerto Rico
Eduardo Ibarra MD | President | Puertorican College of Physicians and Surgeons
The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Puerto Rico strongly believes that your presidency constitutes an historical call from the people of the United States of America for a better World; not only for us, but for all humanity. Your presidency represents a new level of social justice, a major step in our continuing journey to achieve fundamental Human Rights for all citizens of the United States and, through our leadership, the world.

May 05, 2009

Single-payer
Editorial | Charleston Gazette
President Obama wants to create universal health insurance covering all Americans, a safety net of the sort that already exists in other advanced democracies. President Harry Truman first sought this reform in the 1940s, and other Democrats have pursued it intermittently, but each attempt has been scuttled by big-money interests that enjoy the current for-profit medical system.

Doctors, Single Payer Activists Arrested, Make History at Senate Finance Roundtable
By Donna Smith | California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee
It has finally happened right here in the United States. Citizens who believe healthcare is a human right have been arrested and are being processed like criminals through the Southeast District of Columbia police station. Their crime? Asking for single payer healthcare reform -- publicly funded, privately delivered healthcare -- to be discussed during the Congressional hearings on reform.

The Uninsured Are the Symptom, Not the Disease
By Claudia Chaufan, M.D., Ph.D. | KQED Radio Healthy Ideas
I was invited to join the [KQED] health care reform debate by addressing a set of questions falling under the general theme "Covering the Uninsured." The problem is that to answer these questions I have to challenge fundamental assumptions underlying them -- if one asks the wrong question or misunderstands the nature of a problem, the chances of getting the right answer or solving the problem are slim.

A 'public plan option' won't ensure quality care
By QUENTIN D. YOUNG | Politico | Letter to the editor
While Carrie Budoff Brown accurately reflects some of the arguments for single-payer health reform, such as the vast savings in administrative costs our nation stands to reap from national health insurance ("Groups strategize for single-payer plan," April 28), a casual reader might mistakenly get the impression that single-payer advocates are pressing their case merely as a bargaining chip to win a lesser reform -- specifically, the creation of a "public plan option."

May 04, 2009

Himmelstein replies to AARP falsehoods, distortions
By Single Payer Action
We asked Dr. David Himmelstein, a founder of Physicians for a National Health Program, to respond point by point to AARP's propaganda against HR 676 -- the single payer bill in the House.

April 30, 2009

Mass. Model for Health Overhaul 'Not Viable,' Expert Tells Lawmakers
By Alex Wayne | Congressional Quarterly Today
A Massachusetts doctor and health policy expert told Congress on Thursday that he believes his state's 2006 overhaul of its health system -- legislation that may be a model for a national overhaul -- "will fail."

Subcommittee Members Spar Over Cost Control Tactics
By Jane Norman | CQ HealthBeat
Another witness, David U. Himmelstein, a primary care doctor and associate professor of medicine at Harvard University who testified in favor of a single-payer plan like Canada's, retorted: "The problem is actually the private insurer wants not to pay." Himmelstein said lesser reforms, including a widely discussed public option accompanying private plans, could not realize the same kind of savings in administrative costs as a single-payer plan.

AFL-CIO's Health-Care Survey Ignores 'Single Payer' Plan Favored by Unions
By Harry Kelber | Labor's Voice for Change (31)
An AFL-CIO-sponsored on line health care survey of 26,419 respondents, more than half of them union members, reveals a widespread discontent with the cost, benefits and operating procedures of current health insurance plans. The survey, taken between Jan. 14 and March 3, shows that "ninety-four percent of the insured say the health care system needs fundamental change or to be rebuilt."

Fight for single-payer health care
Kay Mueller | Indiana Daily Student
Soon, thousands of IU students will be graduating. Those who were carried on their parents’ health insurance will now be on their own.

April 29, 2009

Congressman predicts single-payer health plan
By John Sammon | The Herald
National health care for all Americans is an idea whose time has come, a visiting lawmaker said Sunday at CSU- Monterey Bay. "It's in our face," Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash., said. "We can't avoid it. That's why something is going to happen."

Single-payer system and Florida's budget are linked
Ray Bellamy | Tallahassee Democrat | My View
Single payer is the only health care reform proposal that is revenue neutral in our $2.4 trillion national health care cost equation. It achieves universal coverage by saving an estimated $380 billion a year in wasted profit for the insurance industry and counter-productive administrative excess caused by that industry. These savings would go toward covering all of us with comprehensive coverage, free choice of physician and free choice of hospital, just as Medicare would be if it were much better funded.

The Public Option Con
By HELEN REDMOND | Counterpunch
What the public option plan is, no one can exactly say. There are no concrete proposals spelling out what the plan would include, who could join it, how much it would cost, or how it would be funded. But the details don't matter, they advocated for it anyway.

Big health care rally planned Friday
By DANIEL BARLOW | Times Argus
Health care has received little attention in this year's legislative session in Vermont. But residents worried about the future of the system will gather at the Statehouse on Friday for what promises to be a massive rally. Organized by the Vermont Worker's Center and sponsored by more than 100 other organizations and groups in Vermont, Friday's "Health Care is a Human Right" rally will draw attention to two bills that would institute a single-payer health care system in the state.

April 28, 2009

PNHP's Fein Delights Ohio Single-payer Supporters
By Michael Carano | PDA OH State Coordinator
On April 25, 2009, over one hundred and twenty-five Ohio healthcare advocates converged at the Ramada Plaza Hotel in the State's capital for the Sixth Annual Single-Payer Action Network of Ohio conference (SPAN Ohio). SPAN Ohio is a single-payer coalition working to enact "The Health Care For All Ohioans Act" in the Ohio legislature and, should that fail, through a petition initiative to put the single-payer bill on the Ohio ballot.

Paperwork, profits clog health care's efficiencies
By DEAN CALBREATH | San Diego Union Tribune
In testimony on Capitol Hill last week, David Himmelstein, national spokesman for Physicians for a National Health Program, argued that one reason for the high cost of health care in the United States is that American hospitals and clinics spend much more money on administrative services than other countries do, partly because U.S. doctors have to devote such a large portion of their time responding to questions and challenges from insurers.

Only patients should profit
By MARK A. DUNLEA | Albany Times Union
America's pundits used to deride the old Soviet Union for propping up obsolete factories and industries in the name of jobs. We don't hear such criticisms about President Barack Obama and the Democrats' decision to prop up health insurance companies in the debate over universal health care. Yet our system of health insurance is costing us hundreds of billions of dollars annually, tying up the health care system in paperwork, and contributing to the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans annually.

April 27, 2009

A proposal for health care reform for the U. S.
By Dr. David L. Brown | Times Beacon Record, Long Island
I admitted a patient today who I previously took care of following a heart attack in July. He was discharged on the appropriate medications, which he took for a month until he lost his job and his health insurance. Without the medications, which he could no longer afford, he suffered another heart attack. Unfortunately he didn't survive this one.

Montanans for Single Payer forms to promote universal coverage
The Clark Fork Chronicle
Campbell said that Montanans for Single-Payer is convinced the only way to assure quality health care for all Montanans and all Americans is to implement a single-payer system that can contain costs, allow individuals to choose their own doctors, hospitals and other health care providers, and integrate wellness programs throughout the nation’s health care. “Currently we have an inefficient, wasteful, and expensive patchwork, not a true health care system,” Campbell said. “Only a single-payer approach can provide a true system for health care delivery.”

Experts Call For Immediate Health Care Reform In Subcommittee Hearing
by RTT Staff Writer "[A] single-payer reform would make universal, comprehensive coverage affordable by diverting hundreds of billions of dollars from bureaucracy to patient care," [Dr. David] Himmelstein said in his testimony today. "Lesser reforms - even those that include a public plan option - cannot realize such savings. While reforms that maintain a major role for private insurers may be politically attractive, they are economically and medically nonsensical."

April 24, 2009

U.S. trails rest of world in health care
By Chris Doherty | Deseret News
Let me begin by stating that I believe that neither the Canadian nor the U.S. health-care system is perfect, and both could be improved. Some Canadians in need of elective procedures are said to have to wait to see a specialist for their medical conditions in Canada. I, personally, had an appointment last week with a specialist here whom I had been waiting 16 weeks to see, because he is one of a small group of providers "approved" by my insurance. Waits can occur on either side of the border.

Doctor assailed for leaving dead man in waiting room
By INGRID PERITZ | Globe and Mail
When man with severe breathing problem fell unconscious at private clinic in Montreal, physician did not try to revive him.

The Missing Witness: Why wasn't Eric Shinseki invited to testify on health care reform?
By Timothy Noah | Slate
Baucus and his staff recently met privately with experts from the VA to learn about these achievements, but he isn't about to put any of these folks in front of a TV camera. The rationale for excluding the VA from the hearing was that because it is run separately from the rest of the health care system, the VA probably won't be affected by any delivery-system reforms Congress enacts. But that's absurd. The hearing was an attempt to seek out models for reform. The VA hospitals represent the most successful large-scale reform in the delivery of health care that this country has seen in decades. But--shhhhh!--let's keep that between you and me. I've probably said too much already.

House Panel Debates Health Reform Cost Control Solutions
Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report | Capitol Hill Watch
On Thursday, witnesses at a House Education and Labor Health, Employment, Labor and Pensions Subcommittee hearing discussed strategies to curb rising health care costs while extending health insurance to more U.S. residents, CQ HealthBeat reports. Health care reform approaches discussed at the hearing include a single-payer health care system; a "employee benefit cooperative" system in which small employers, employees and families band together to purchase coverage; a national health insurance exchange; Medicaid expansion; and changes to the current model of employer-based plans to make coverage more affordable.

April 23, 2009

Medicare for All: Now is the Time
by Leonard Rodberg | Portland Observer
President Barack Obama has said repeatedly that he wants "ideas that work." In spite of this, leading Democrats are working hard on plans for health care reform that will fail.

Propaganda And Prejudice Distort The Health Reform Debate
by Merton Bernstein | Health Affairs blog
Medicare-for-all would save hundreds of billions every year. Private insurers expend enormous sums for insurer commissions, advertising, Wall-Street-scale executive compensation, and profits. In contrast, Medicare spends little or nothing on these unnecessary, unproductive activities. Health care providers and private plans struggle with thousands of different billing schedules. As the New York Times reported: "The average provider -- doctors or hospitals -- has between 5 and 100 reimbursement rates for the same procedure. . . . A hospital chain may have 150 rates for the same procedure."

Join the fight for single-payer
MICHAEL KAPLAN, M.D. | Letters | Berkshire Eagle
"The public plan option" now being discussed in Congress would not control costs as only 16 percent of the roughly $400 billion annually achieved by a single payer would be realized and would do nothing to streamline the administrative tasks (and costs) of hospitals, physicians' offices, and nursing homes. They would still contend with multiple payers, and hence still need the complex cost tracking and billing apparatus that drives administrative costs.

WellPoint Makes Three Million Calls
By Jacob Goldstein | WSJ's blog
How would you respond if a computer called you and asked the following question? "Would you be willing to get involved to make your voice heard so that we can improve our nation's health care system?" If the computer was calling you on behalf of WellPoint, the big insurer that runs Blue Cross and Blue Shield programs in 14 states, would your answer be any different?

April 22, 2009

Testimony of David U. Himmelstein, M.D. before the HELP Subcommittee
The following text contains the testimony of Dr. David Himmelstein at a hearing on "Ways to Reduce the Cost of Health Insurance for Employers, Employees and their Families" organized by Health, Employment, Labor and Pensions Subcommittee of the House Committee on Education and Labor on April 23 in Washington.

Statement of Uwe E. Reinhardt, Ph.D., James Madison Professor of Political Economy and Professor of Economics and Public Affairs, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey
Testimony Before the House Committee on Ways and Means
Any modern health system, regardless of its structure, must perform the following five major functions:

Single-payer health care plan isn't socialism
Saul Friedman | Gray Matters | Newsday
I was surprised during a recent conference for care- givers when several professionals, who should have known better, asked me if a "single-payer" health insurance system is "socialized medicine." The quick answer: No.

Healthcare Lifeboats
David U. Himmelstein, MD and Steffie Woolhandler, M.D., M.P.H. | The Nation
Massachusetts's 2006 healthcare reform plan, often cited as a model for the nation, is sailing through choppy waters. Governor Deval Patrick is keeping it afloat by throwing away the lifeboats: public hospitals and clinics. Freighted with tax-funded windfalls that brought private insurers and hospitals on board, the reform has proved far more expensive than politicians forecast--costing the state $1.3 billion this fiscal year, according to the state's report to its bondholders.

April 17, 2009

LION AND THE LAMB: How good is your health insurance?
By R.C. Braun, M.D. | Crossville Chronicle
Today there are thousands of private insurance plans available and advertised as giving “choice” to the buyers. I am not infrequently asked for advice in purchasing a plan. But even with my medical background I cannot make sense out of the mishmash of plans. I cannot help but think that the confusion is intentional.

Affordable, functional health care
By Phil Caper and Joe Lendvai | Bangor Daily News
The health care reform bandwagon is rolling in Washington. Committees in both houses of Congress are at work on health care reform, and many politicians are saying "now is the time." But meaningful reform is about a lot more than getting a few more people "covered." It must also be about reining in the out-of-control cost, making sure health care is affordable and accessible to everyone and assuring that the right number and types of health professionals are there to care for the millions who are doing without decent health care.

Briefing on single payer national health insurance, April 1, 2009, Washington, D.C.
On April 1, 2009, a Congressional forum organized by the Leadership Conference for Guaranteed Healthcare and chaired by Congressman Eric Massa [NY-29], critically examined insurance mechanisms in the private sector. The expert panel included doctor, nurse, patient, researcher, labor, and economic perspectives.

April 16, 2009

Politico lets Gingrich attack public health insurance plan without disclosing financial ties to insurance companies
Politico quoted Newt Gingrich's criticisms of including a public health insurance plan option in a health care reform proposal without noting his financial ties to several major health insurance companies.

Crisis = Opportunity for Single-Payer
By Roger Bybee | Dollars & Sense
To many, a single-payer plan is the obvious way to ensure universal health coverage while containing costs. In addition to the dramatic reduction in administrative costs, single-payer plans offer other opportunities for controlling costs. For instance, they allow government--the "single payer" --to negotiate for lower costs with providers like doctors, hospitals, and pharmaceutical companies.

April 14, 2009

Focusing on doctor pay misses point
By PAUL DEMARCO | The State, South Carolina
Doctors complaining about Medicaid rates in the current health-care climate are about as tone-deaf as the crew of a sinking ship complaining to the passengers about their low pay. Yes, Medicaid rates are too low and need to be addressed, but Black approaches the problem from the wrong direction. We must put patients first, not doctors.

Indicting the insurance companies and the system that supports them
Compiled by Len Rodberg, Research Director, New York Metro Chapter of Physicians for a National Health Program
Count #1: That insurance companies charge such high insurance premiums that millions of Americans cannot afford to purchase any insurance at all, leading to 18,000 deaths every year.

April 13, 2009

A System From Hell
By Kate Michelman | The Nation
It was a crisp and brilliant autumn day last October when the medical and financial crises with which my family had successfully, if barely, coped for seven years became a catastrophe.

Why Has the Press Failed Us In Reporting on Health Care Reform?
Benjamin Day
An Open Letter to Bill Keller, Executive Editor, New York Times, and Clark Hoyt, Public Editor, New York Times

National call-in day on April 15
On April 15th, the Leadership Conference for Guaranteed Health Care is launching a nationwide call-in day for single-payer national health care. Our message is clear: "Tax payer dollars should go to people, not profits. Support single-payer national health care now."

April 09, 2009

State lawmakers tout single-payer healthcare system
Associated Press | Sun Journal
Maine lawmakers have passed a resolution calling on President Obama and Congress to establish a single-payer health system that covers everyone.

Post office a reminder of our past successes
Pat LaMarche | Bangor Daily News
You can stand in the town square of Old Sturbridge Village and realize that Benjamin Franklin and his buddies who crafted our Constitution weren't afraid of government delivering services. In fact, they wanted government to do so and used the Constitution to guarantee it. Consequently we now receive -- free of charge -- mail from all over the world; to include utility bills, advertisements, official correspondence and personal messages. But if we prefer to use a private currier to send our correspondence, we do not lose the right to receive our mail for free. Too bad health care in Franklin's time was leeches and bleedings. If health care had saved lives back then, Franklin and the other Founding Fathers would certainly have guaranteed the delivery of health care with the same enthusiasm they showed the mail.

Move to single-payer system is crucial
By Richard C. Dillihunt, M.D. | Bangor Daily News
As America prepares to reform our health care system, I wish to add some convictions reached while practicing surgery for nearly a half-century. Until about 15 years ago, doctors were powerful leaders in the health care system, taking their responsibilities seriously, and the system worked well. Then, dark clouds began to assemble and physicians began to lose their grip.

Physicians support health reform bill
From Staff Reports | Cumberland Times-News
A single-payer health reform bill introduced in the U.S. Senate last week could cover 46 million Americans who lack coverage and improve benefits for others by eliminating co-pays and deductibles.

Insurers shun those taking certain meds
By JOHN DORSCHNER | The Miami Herald
Trying to buy health insurance on your own and have gallstones? You'll automatically be denied coverage. Rheumatoid arthritis? Automatic denial. Severe acne? Probably denied. Do you take metformin, a popular drug for diabetes? Denied. Use the anti-clotting drug Plavix or Seroquel, prescribed for anti-psychotic or sleep problems? Forget about it.

April 07, 2009

Doc organization pushes 'Medicare-for-all' system
By Andis Robeznieks | Modern Healthcare
Sarcastically describing them as "brilliant," Physicians for a National Health Program National Coordinator Quentin Young warned that the legislative proposals currently being considered to improve access to healthcare are "a catastrophe in the making" and would rival the collapse of the financial markets.

Universal health coverage in spotlight at L.A. forum
By Lisa Girion and Noam Levey | Los Angeles Times
Even as President Obama toured Europe his administration pressed its healthcare reform campaign Monday in Los Angeles with a forum co-hosted by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who lost his bid in California to make many of the changes now on the table in Washington.

April 06, 2009

Are we safer than Natasha Richardson?
By Laura S. Boylan, M.D. | Commondreams.org
In an example of the circus of fear and hyperbole surrounding the health care debate, opponents of government involvement in health care are exploiting Natasha Richardson's tragic death from a skiing accident. The New York Post reports "Canadacare May Have Killed Natasha." The blogosphere has headlines like "Canada's Killer Healthcare."

Something is Rotten at PBS
By RUSSELL MOKHIBER
The producers of the Frontline piece had a point of view -- they wanted to keep the for-profit health insurance companies in the game.

If health insurance companies ran the postal service...
George Harris | Kansas City Star
If medical insurance companies ran postal services, citizens would pay a monthly premium to get mail delivery. The premium would vary by age, sex and region of the country. To enhance competition, multiple health insurance companies would compete for mail delivery business. Some companies would provide service only to citizens in cities with populations over 2 million and would deliver only to comparable cities with populations exceeding 2 million. To conserve costs, subscribers would be permitted to post mail only at selected in-network post offices.

Let Americans speak, and they will demand single payer now
by Claudia Chaufan | Santa Cruz Sentinel
What are we to expect from the last of five White House-sponsored Regional Health Care Forums in Los Angeles on Monday? Moderators will attempt to garner support for a "public option" that will compete with private plans in a "highly regulated health care marketplace."

Why "chocolate or vanilla"? Put Single Payer on the table!
by Claudia Chaufan | www.opednews.com
With 100,000 monthly foreclosures, 700,000 jobs lost every month, and the number of uninsured, underinsured, and deaths for lack of health insurance not getting any smaller, if the time for healthcare reform is not now, when then? And private health insurers know this too well, which is why they claim to have become "team players", and to support "change". But the question remains: which change?

April 03, 2009

Health forum hears from uninsured
By Mark Binker | Greensboro News & Record
When she lost her job a decade ago, Kirby Heard joined the N.C. Farm Bureau so she could get health insurance. But when one of her payments arrived late, her coverage was terminated. That, the High Point graphic designer told the Regional White House Forum on Health Care Reform on Tuesday, was when she joined the growing ranks of uninsured

Single payer pushed
By DANIEL BARLOW | Times Argus
When Ariel Zevon opened up her Barre business two years, she wanted to offer good health care to her employees. They signed up for a plan under the state's largest health insurance company. That lasted about a month.

March 31, 2009

Faith groups: health care is a moral right
By Single Payer New York
The Presbyterian Church joined today with local community, labor and medical groups to sponsor a Congressional Town Hall forum in support of a single-payer health care system that would provide health care to all Americans regardless of the economic or employment status. The forum drew about 300 people who jammed the Westminster Presbyterian Church.

The way forward on health care reform
By CORNELIUS HOGAN | Rutland Herald
In Vermont subsidizing health care has perhaps helped a very few people, but it is fiscally unsustainable in an environment where the cost of health care is rising at two to three times inflation. Nor will "disease management," although good public policy, have an impact on controlling health care cost within our lifetime.

March 30, 2009

Focus health care money on care
Richard Propp, M.D. | Albany Times Union | Letter to the Editor
Single-payer guaranteed health care for all, as in HR676, with an overhead of 4 percent, deserves equal consideration in all hearings and negotiations. Let there be honest comparisons with subsidized incremental private health insurance proposals, with their overheads of 15 to 25 percent and uncontrolled premium increases, totaling 100 percent in the last decade.

March 27, 2009

Change we can believe in: Americans need single payer now
by Claudia Chaufan | www.opednews.com
As president Obama recently acknowledged, the need to reform health care is no longer an issue. Indeed, on March 5th the White House convened a Health Care Summit, that so far have been followed by Regional Forums in Michigan on March 12, in Vermont on March 17, in Iowa on March 23rd, and upcoming ones in North Carolina on March 31st and in our state, in Los Angeles on April 6th.

Congressmen will talk about health reform
By Cathleen F. Crowley | Albany Times Union
As the nation grapples with improving the health care system and making it more affordable, a contingent of people believe the answer is a single-payer system. But advocates worry that their idea is being sidelined.

March 25, 2009

N.H. house backs single-payer health plan
New Hampshire Business Review
The New Hampshire House went on record in favor of a single-payer national health-care system Tuesday, in a last minute, 192-150 roll call vote.

Health care for all, but how?
By John McVey | The Journal (WV)
Dr. Margaret Flowers of Maryland Physicians for a National Health Program and Richard McVay of Penn Action were the panelists for the forum, which was sponsored by Eastern Panhandle Single-Payer Action Network and the Shepherd University Health Center.

March 24, 2009

Merkley backs single-payer system
By Rachel Beck | Corvallis Gazette-Times
Fielding questions, [Sen. Merkley] said, "I will support a single-payer plan if we can get it to the floor."

Protests at White House healthcare hearing in Iowa
By Kay Henderson | Reuters
Dr. Jess Fiedorowicz, a psychiatrist at the University of Iowa Hospitals who was with the protest group, told the meeting a majority of Americans support a "single payer" or government-run national health insurance program. "Can we put it on the table for discussion?" Fiedorowicz asked Nancy-Ann De Parle, director of the White House Office on Health Reform.

Residents learn about health care options
By Katelyn Farago | Daily Record
Borough residents Geoff and Laurie Thomas are currently facing a reality many unemployed and self-employed Americans share. They are paying for their own health insurance.

March 20, 2009

It was wrong to link forum access to cash
Editorial | Des Moines Register
It's no secret wealthy and powerful special interests dominate health-care discussions in this country. But the [Iowa] governor's office essentially extended an invitation for them to do so - and to send their logo for a little extra publicity. Iowa Health System, the state's largest hospital system, told the Register it had paid the state $5,000 to be a sponsor.

Why the media blackout on single payer?
Linda A. Haynes | Birmingham News | Letter to the Editor
It's amazing that single-payer insurance (national health insurance) is barely covered in the media right now. With President Barack Obama's focus on both health care and the economic crisis, you'd think information about the most cost-efficient way to design our health care system would be front and center. Add the fact 60 percent of all Americans and 59 percent of physicians favor national health insurance, and you might have to wonder whether private insurance and drug companies are now running the media. We already know they run Congress.

Numbers work for single-payer care
By Paul Heise | Lebanon Daily News
No harm would come to the medical care of the American people by ending the role of the insurance companies. Most of that payroll cost, and other administrative costs, are employed largely in shuffling claims and determining how to deny benefits, tasks that would disappear under a single-payer system. Virtually everything that the medical insurance carriers do constitutes a make-work project.

March 19, 2009

Time to think big on health care
Editorial | Brattleboro Reformer
No, nibbling around the edges won't deal with the threat that more and more Americans face -- that they will go broke or die because they haven't got health insurance. And the one plan that can solve this problem, some model of a single-payer system -- where the government collects taxes to finance national health insurance that covers every citizen and pays the bills for medical care -- is not being seriously discussed by anyone in the Obama administration.

March 18, 2009

Single-payer health care system touted
By Nancy Remsen | Burlington Free Press
Dr. John Walsh, a neuroscience researcher from Worcester, Mass., stood Tuesday with 150 other sign-carrying supporters of government-financed health care outside the building where 400 invited guests would attend a regional health care reform forum sponsored by the Obama White House. Walsh passed out yellow fliers that denounced President Barack Obama for failing to live up to promises to consider a Canadian-style health insurance system. "Single payer is the choice in the polls," Walsh declared.

The real health care lessons from Europe
By Irfan Dhalla and Chris Mackie | Ottawa Citizen
If our goal is merely to convince Canadians that privatization can improve health care, selectively citing some European examples is a pretty good strategy. But if we truly want to bring the lessons of European health care to Canada, we should realize that privatization has never been the European prescription.

March 16, 2009

Health care now rationed by ability to pay
By Bill Roy | Topeka Capital-Journal
Some claim universal medical care would open the floodgates of use and cost of medical care, and the government would soon be in the business of overtly rationing care. That's pretty frightening unless we look objectively at how we are now rationing medical care, and how badly our results compare with nations with universal coverage.

Fair-Weather Reformers
James Floyd | Washington Post | Letter to the Editor
The pharmaceutical and insurance lobbies have offered early support for President Obama's effort to reform health care. Judging by the measures discussed, they have little reason to oppose it.

How to Pay Less for More Health Care
Leonard Rodberg | New York Times | Letters
The Congressional Budget Office has shown that a mandate to purchase insurance will not lead to universal coverage. It has shown, as well, that neither information technology nor chronic disease management nor comparative effectiveness analysis -- all of which the administrationis counting on -- will significantly curb costs. Only a unified public plan, based on our successful experience with Medicare, can truly address the problems of the health care system.

Forum to highlight Vt. health successes
By Nancy Remsen | Burlington Free Press
For 90 minutes Tuesday afternoon, 400 people will vie for time to share an idea or concern they have about health care during the second of five regional health reform forums sponsored by the Obama White House.

March 13, 2009

Single-payer is the cure
By John Nichols | Capital Times
Health care reform is a vital and engaging concern for tens of millions of Americans. But you would not have known it from Thursday's White House Forum on Health Reform, which was so narrowly focused and uninspiring that it almost made Hillary Clinton's bumbling efforts of the 1990s look good.

VT: Single-payer advocates plan to protest health care forum
By DANIEL BARLOW | Rutland Herald
Vermont doctors and other medical professionals who support a single-payer health care system plan to protest next week's Burlington health care reform forum organized by President Barack Obama's administration.

Attendees at White House forum voice health care reform ideas
By Jay Greene | Crain's Detroit Business
Dr. Jim Mitchiner, an emergency physician from Clawson who supports a single-payer system, said health care insurance should not be linked to a job that can be lost or taken away. "I see people every day who have lost their job and have no insurance. It makes no sense. You lose a job and they don't take away your life or auto insurance policy," Mitchiner said. "I have lost complete faith in the private insurance industry."

March 12, 2009

The health care summit
By RICHARD DAVIS | Brattleboro Reformer
Opponents are preparing the next round of Harry and Louise ads. They will raise the specter of socialized medicine and the evils of government run health care. Their argument will fail this time not only because it isn't true, but also because people are hurting so much that they understand what changes need to be made.

Health care: crisis or opportunity?
Joy Slagowski | Daily News-Sun
A health-care expert said Tuesday night there is one way to receive comprehensive medical treatment: Go to jail.

State must act to control costs of top-heavy health-care system
By Dr. Bruce Bender | Worcester Telegram & Gazette
Massachusetts should find ways to reduce the administrative costs of providing health care. Rather than pay an average of 34 to 38 cents of each health-care dollar, we should work to match the same percentage as Canada, 17 cents. This could save $9 billion annually, which could either help prevent the need to cut health-care programs or could be shifted to help our towns, schools, universities, parks, roads, and bridges.

Bill Clinton on Health Care Reform
Dr. Sanjay Gupta and former Pres. Bill Clinton | CNN, Larry King Live The good thing about single payer is the administrative costs are quite low. We probably waste $200 billion a year between the insurance administrative costs, the doctors and other health care providers' administrative costs and employers' administrative costs in health care that we would not waste if we had any other country's system.

March 11, 2009

Put Single-Payer on the Table
By Amy Goodman | TruthDig
President Barack Obama promises health-care reform, but he has taken single-payer health care off the table. Single-payer is the system that removes private insurance companies from the picture; the government pays all the bills, but health-care delivery remains private. People still get their choice of what doctor to go to and what hospital to use. Single-payer reduces the administrative costs and removes the profit that insurance companies add to health-care delivery. Single-payer solutions, however, get almost no space in the debate.

March 10, 2009

Nurse's insurance nightmare makes her a single-payer advocate
By Michael Vitez | Philadelphia Inquirer
Marilyn Cawthon has been a nurse for 30 years. "All my life I provided health care to people," she said recently. "I thought when I needed it, it would be there and wouldn't drive me broke or crazy." It nearly did both.

As Obama Hosts Summit on Healthcare, Marginalized Advocates Ask Why Single-Payer is Ignored
Democracy Now
President Obama hosted a White House summit Thursday on reforming healthcare. While President Obama said every idea must be considered, the idea of creating a single-payer national health insurance program appears to have already been rejected. We speak to Harper's senior editor Luke Mitchell, author of the article "Sick in the Head: Why America Won't Get the Health-Care System It Needs."

An ailing economy needs national health insurance
By Lance Dickie | Seattle Times editorial columnist
Get ready for the coming conversation on a national health-insurance plan. As a crashing economy pushes millions out of their jobs and homes, continuing to link access to medical care to employment is hazardous to the nation's physical and economic health.

Grim Prognosis For Massachusetts Reform
Steffie Woolhandler, M.D., M.P.H. & David U. Himmelstein, M.D. | Letter to the Editor | Health Affairs
In the end, Massachusetts' 2006 reform may be remembered as a short-lived expansion of publicly-subsidized coverage that served as political cover for the permanent destruction of institutions that have provided care and advocacy for New England's poor for decades.

State of Change: Talking About Health Reform, But Not About A Cure
By John Nichols | The Nation
Health care reform is a vital and engaging concern for America--and for Americans. But you would not know it from Thursday's White House Forum on Health Reform, which was so narrowly focused and uninspiring that it almost made Hillary Clinton's bumbling efforts of the 1990s look good.

The Health-Care Crisis Hits Home
By Karen Tumulty | Time Magazine
When you've been strong and fit your whole life, it can be easy to discount your body's first whispers of sickness as merely the side effects of daily living. Looking back over the past three years, my older brother Patrick now understands the meaning of his increasingly frequent bouts of fatigue, his fluctuating appetite and the fact that his blood pressure had crept up to 150/90. But Pat had always put off going to the doctor until he had to. Having bought health insurance that carried a $2,500 deductible, he knew he would have to pay for a checkup himself. That is no small consideration for someone who makes $9 an hour, as my brother did in his job as an administrative assistant for a lighting firm in San Antonio.

March 09, 2009

Portsmouth doctor: Obama hears my views on health care reform
By Michael Mccord | Portsmouth Herald
Though he didn't attend President Barack Obama's health care forum in Washington on Thursday, Dr. Thomas Clairmont felt that he was heard -- after fearing the health care reform proposal he supports would not be part of the discussion.

March 05, 2009

Single-payer isn't socialism
B. Jason MacLurg, M.D. | Letter to the Editor | Seattle Post-Intelligencer
As a long-time Seattle physician, I was pleased that the P-I supports health care reform toward a single-payer system (Opinion, Wednesday). Most Americans now fully understand that our health care delivery system is too expensive, too complex, too fragmented and overwhelmingly frustrating. Although some still believe that America has the best health care in the world, the truth is that our reimbursement system is killing us.

March 03, 2009

Obama to Single Payer Advocates: Drop Dead
Corporate Crime Reporter
President Obama’s White House made crystal clear this week: a Canadian-style, Medicare-for-all, single payer health insurance system is off the table.

Not All Invited to Obama's Health Reform Forum
Published by Swing State Blog
One group is being left out of the White House's health reform forum Thursday: supporters of single payer health care.

Action Alert: Call The White House: Let Single Payer In
On Thursday, March 5, 2009, the White House will host a summit on how to reform the healthcare system. The 120 invited guests include lobbyists for various interest groups including the private-for-profit insurance industry (AHIP), some members of Congress including Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus who has already ruled single payer "off the table," and various others concerned with healthcare. No single payer advocates have been invited to attend.

Sen. Baucus: We Need Accurate Numbers not "Creative" Figuring
Kay Tillow | All Unions Committee For Single Payer Health Care
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT), who ruled single payer "off the table" before he even started considering healthcare reform, is now trying to pressure the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) to judge the Baucus health plan financially sound.

March 02, 2009

National Health Care Act worthy of public support
By BETH SIRR | Helena Independent Record
Sick of health insurance costs? Then pay attention. Some in Congress want to perpetuate the power of insurance corporations over our health care and what we pay to get it. There is an alternative. The U.S. National Health Care Act: Expanded and Improved Medicare for All, HR 676 could be implemented within 13 months (like Medicare was) and unlike the Wall Street bailout, would be funded by eliminating waste while providing a real hand up for every American family and business -- except the insurance industry.

Massachusetts healthcare reform is failing us
By Susanne L. King | Boston Globe
Massachusetts has been lauded for its healthcare reform, but the program is a failure. Created solely to achieve universal insurance coverage, the plan does not even begin to address the other essential components of a successful healthcare system.

Letter to Obama: Health care access a national scandal
By ANA M. MALINOW, MD | Houston Chronicle
The more I listen, the more I hear that all Americans want a health care system that is affordable, accountable, accessible, comprehensive, universal and just -- not another Band-Aid that will condemn thousands of us to unnecessary pain, suffering, bankruptcy and death. Listen for yourself, and you will hear Americans clamoring for true health care reform.

Millions losing jobs will mean many without health care
By James E. Dalen | Arizona Republic
Due to the recession, more than 2 million Americans lost their jobs in 2008 and millions more are expected to lose their jobs in 2009. The consequences of increasing unemployment will be much more serious in the United States than in other western countries. Our country is unique in that most of its citizens, at least 175 million, have employment-based health insurance. In most cases, loss of job means loss of health insurance.

Single payer only route to Obama's grand vision on healthcare reform
by Chuck Idelson | California Nurses Association blog
Hours after President Obama's speech to Congress in which he laid down a marker for achieving "comprehensive" healthcare reform, and getting it done this year, top administration aides have outlined the goals of what they want to achieve.

February 27, 2009

Behind Closed Doors, Repeating Mistakes from the Past on Health Care Reform
James Floyd, M.D. | Huffington Post
Last week, the New York Times reported that Senator Ted Kennedy has been holding secret meetings with lobbyists to reach "consensus" on a proposal for national health care reform. Included in the list of participants were America's Health Insurance Plans, the National Federation of Independent Business, and the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America -- some of the same players who defeated the Clinton health care reform effort 15 years ago. Notably absent was Physicians for a National Health Program, the California Nurses Association, Healthcare-Now, and other advocacy groups that oppose the private insurance industry and support the creation of a national single-payer program.

Subsidizing COBRA Is Not Enough--We Need Single Payer
Andrew Coates MD
To keep family coverage under COBRA, with the subsidy, it will cost people who are laid off, on average, almost one-third of every unemployment check. This money will go to a health insurance company, instead of food, housing and school expenses for the family.

President Obama Must Include Single-Payer Advocates In National Health Care Debate
Statement of Sidney Wolfe, M.D. and James Floyd, M.D.
Under a single-payer system, doctors, hospitals and other health care providers are paid from a single fund administered by the government. The system would eliminate the wasteful spending and high administrative costs of private insurance, saving almost $400 billion annually. This savings is enough to provide every American with the same high-quality care, including those who currently have insurance but still cannot afford medications and treatment.

Health Care Reform: Learning from the International Experience -- A Case for Single Payer
by Claudia Chaufan | Social Medicine Portal
So President Obama gets it: he has recognized that the time to reform health care is now, and he is right. After touring the country during his campaign, he must be aware that thousands of Americans are going bankrupt, every year, because they cannot afford their medical bills, even when they have insurance, and are employed and middle class. He surely is also aware that thousands die of perfectly preventable illnesses because they lack health insurance. And that all of these things are unheard of, at least in developed economies.

February 26, 2009

Joseph Stiglitz on Single Payer
I think I've reluctantly come to the view that [single payer is] the only alternative. You know, we've tried a lot of other things. And we've been--you know, I was in the Clinton administration, and we debated a lot of alternatives, and I've watched things as they've emerged and, you know, evolved over the last twelve, sixteen years, and I think there's a growing consensus that the private market exclusion is not going to work.

Tell Baucus single-payer is best
by Bob Balhiser | Queen City News, Montana
Now that Tom Daschle is out of contention for HHS secretary, Sen. Baucus seems to think he has an inside track and is teaming up with Sen. Kennedy to push through his plan for health care reform. I cannot imagine a worse outcome.

Insurers, drug makers poised to profit from Obama health plan
By Timothy P. Carney | DC Examiner | Beltway Confidential blog
Although President Barack Obama promised that he would freeze out the lobbyists in order to finally reform our broken health-care system, his nascent push to overhaul the industry already shows signs of becoming a lobbying feeding frenzy, with health insurers, drug makers and employers all poised to benefit from government's expanded role.

February 24, 2009

Seattle City Council Endorses National Single-Payer Health Program
PNHP Western Washington
By unanimous vote, the Seattle City Council today passed a Resolution sponsored by Councilmember Nick Licata, to ask the Washington State Congressional delegation to support two single-payer bills that would create a national health program. Congressman Jim McDermott has introduced HR 1200, the American Health Security Act, and Congressman John Conyers HR 676, the United States National Health Care Act.

Renew Auto Industry? Start With Real Health Reform
by John Nichols | The Nation blog
Even though U.S. autoworkers have accepted pay cuts and efficiency schemes that mean they make less than autoworkers in many other countries, the enormous expense imposed by this country's for-profit health care system places an extreme burden on firms that manufacture vehicles in the U.S. How extreme? It is estimated that health care costs add as much as $1,400 to the cost of a car made in an American plant.

February 23, 2009

Time for Universal Care
By Pat LaMarche | Bangor Daily News
It's because this year, as he has for many years, Michigan Rep. John Conyers has introduced HR 676, which already has garnered nearly 50 co-sponsors -- a bill that restructures our health care system much like the rest of the civilized world and guarantees health care for all Americans. And it's because poll after poll, like the October 2008 ABC News poll, shows that two-thirds of Americans support changing our current system to a universal system.

Health Insurance Is Not Synonymous With Health Care
Rachel Nardin, M.D. In April 2006, Massachusetts enacted a health care reform law with the stated goal of providing near-universal coverage of the Massachusetts population. Nearly three years into the reform, we know a lot about what has worked and what hasn't. Examining this data critically is vitally important as the Obama administration considers elements of Massachusetts' plan as a model for national health care reform.

Massachusetts' 2006 Health Insurance Law Not A Good Model for National Health Care System Reform, Physicians Say
Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report
Modeling the U.S. health care system after Massachusetts' health insurance law would leave many residents without affordable health coverage, according to analysis by three Harvard Medical School physicians and a letter signed by 500 state physicians sent to Sen. Edward Kennedy.

America's Economic Future Requires Health Care Reform
Dr. Margaret Flowers | Maryland Commons
We are told reforming health care is impossible in tough economic times. However, it is not only possible, it is necessary for economic recovery.

Members of Congress Offer Prescription for General Motors' Competitive Disadvantage
Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) and two other Members of Congress today sent a letter to the CEO of General Motors, Mr. Richard Wagoner, Jr., to propose a different kind of auto industry rescue plan that eliminates the competitive disadvantage of inflated health care costs.

Health care bills suffer conspiracy of silence
Saul Friedman | Gray Matters | Newsday
Too often journalism ignores or belittles reports or proposals as outside the mainstream and bound to fail, thus assuring they will remain outside the mainstream and fail. That, I believe, is what has been happening to proposals by three Democratic members of the House of Representatives to provide health care for all Americans through a system like Medicare, rather than depending, as now, on many private insurance companies.

February 20, 2009

Insurance industry is intimidating lawmakers
Dr. John Benziger | Kennebec Journal / Morning Sentinel
Under pressure from the insurance industry, Obama's health-care reform is poised to completely exclude a single-payer "improved Medicare for all" option. Such a program would save enough money to provide comprehensive benefits for all Americans.

What Obama can learn from us
David Olive | Business Columnist | Toronto Star
"Canada's health-care system is cheaper than America's by far (accounting for 9.7 per cent of GDP, versus 15.2 per cent here)," [Fareed ] Zakaria writes, "and yet does better on all major indexes."

Former journalist crusading for affordable health care
BY PAT FERRIER | Fort Collins Coloradoan
T.R. Reid is uncharacteristically angry. He's angry the richest country in the world cannot provide efficient, affordable health care to all its residents. He's angry the World Health Organization ranks the U.S. 37th for the cost, quality and coverage of its health-care system.

Single payer would improve health care for everyone
By Madeline Zevon | Lower Hudson Journal News
What is single payer? It refers to the administration of health-care funds by one payer, rather than by the current multiple insurance companies. This payer would be the federal government. Think of single payer as enhanced and improved Medicare for all. The League of Women Voters of Westchester, New York state and the U.S. League all advocate for single-payer health care.

February 19, 2009

Seattle City Council endorses single payer health
Strange Bedfellows blog | Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Single payer seemed like a futile cause during the Bush Administration, which put forward ideals for the partial privatization of Medicare. Now, with a Democrat back in the White House -- and a promise of action on health care - McDermott, and Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., have introduced versions of a single payer plan in the new Congress.

Doctors criticize Massachusetts health law
By Lisa Wangsness | Boston Globe
A trio of Boston doctors says the 2006 Massachusetts healthcare law is a poor model for a national system because it leaves too many people without affordable care.

February 18, 2009

State single-payer bill passes its second test in Senate
BY KIP SULLIVAN | Southside Pride, Minneapolis
SF 118, the Minnesota Health Act, which would guarantee health insurance for all Minnesotans under a program called the Minnesota Health Plan, passed out of the Senate Commerce and Consumer Protection Committee by a party-line vote of 7 to 3 on Feb. 10. The lopsided vote was a sign of the growing support for the single-payer approach. This is the first year since 1991, the year single-payer legislation was first introduced in the Minnesota Legislature, that a single-payer bill has cleared two committees in the Senate. The bill has never been heard in the House. It will get its first hearing in the House on Feb. 25.

Single payer: mainstream and 'shovel ready'
Laura S. Boylan, MD | The following letter was sent to the editor of The New Yorker on Jan. 22.
Most Americans, including most physicians, supported national health insurance even before the recent economic collapse, polls show. Endorsers of the single payer bill H.R. 676 (Expanded and Improved Medicare for All) include 93 co-sponsors in the House of Representatives, 450 union organizations in 45 states, and countless others representing a wide range of constituencies. This is not a fringe movement.

February 11, 2009

Et Tu, Atul?: Test-Case for a Single-Payer Hypothesis
by Russell Mokhiber | CommonDreams.org
A politician says -- I support health care for all. That is a politician you should support, right? Wrong. A politician says -- I support universal health care. That is a politician you should support, right? Wrong. Universal health care. Health care for all. More often than not, these are code words for -- keep the private insurance companies in the game.

More Than a Band-Aid for Health Care Reform, Single-Payer is the Solution
By James Floyd, M.D. | Huffington Post
As the global economic crisis deepens, our broken health care system continues to neglect an increasing number of uninsured Americans, which will top 50 million this year. Tens of millions more who have health insurance still cannot afford the care they need. The resulting illness from inadequate health coverage will lead to missed days of work and lost jobs, making it harder for us to recover from the recession.

No Day is an Ordinary Day
by doctoraaron | DailyKos
Saturday was a short day in the office. I came in to handle some paperwork and to see a few patients whom I couldn't manage to work in over the course of a busy week. It was an ordinary day with a typical, ordinary selection of patients....which is to say, that almost every one came with a story which cried out about how we desperately need change in our health care system.

February 10, 2009

A Sworn Foe of Single-Payer
By VICENTE NAVARRO | CounterPunch
Why Sanjay Gupta is the Wrong Man for the Top US Health Job.

February 09, 2009

What now for health reform?
By Mike Dennison | Helena Independent Record
With last week's political demise of Tom Daschle, the man expected to shepherd serious health care reform through the minefield of Congress, has reform been dealt a deadly blow? Not according to Montana's senior U.S. senator, Max Baucus, who said in no uncertain terms last week that he remains committed to enacting "comprehensive health care reform" this year.

'Medicare-for-all' cure for health woes
By DANIEL P. WIRT, M.D. | Houston Chronicle
Americans are increasingly afraid that they can't afford to get sick, and with good reason. About half of all personal bankruptcies are caused by medical expenses, and 76 percent of these individuals had health insurance when they got sick or injured. Those of us with insurance are paying a greater share of the premium and more deductibles and co-pays as well. Thus, not only do we have 46 million Americans without health insurance, but at least an equal number who are seriously underinsured.

February 05, 2009

New Report Highlights Health Care System's Financial Squeeze on Cancer Patients
Kaiser Family Foundation | News Release
Cancer patients can face severe challenges in paying for life-saving care -- running up large debts, filing for personal bankruptcy and even delaying or forgoing potentially life-saving treatment -- even when they have private health insurance, according to a new report by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the American Cancer Society.

Medicare 'Rip-Off' Hits Elderly as Obama Maps Changes
By Avram Goldstein | Bloomberg News
Just as President Barack Obama prepares to overhaul the U.S. medical system, providers of U.S.- backed health plans for the elderly are raising prices.

February 04, 2009

Now Is The Time For Universal Health Care
By Kamyar Kalantar-Zadeh, MD, PhD, MPH | Renal and Urology News | Commentary
It is unfortunate that the 35-year-old Medicare [End-Stage Renal Disease] program remains our nation's only universal health coverage not dependent on age, albeit limited to ESRD. The program has worked well, and its success should provide the impetus for replacing our present fractured health-care financing system with one that provides universal coverage for all U.S. residents regardless of age.

February 03, 2009

Small Payroll, but Big Woes on Insurance
By KEVIN SACK | The New York Times
Determined not to lay off any of her tight-knit band of workers, Ms. Allen is now agonizing over an equally unappealing option: whether to terminate the health benefits she provides for her employees and herself.

February 02, 2009

Let's Expand Medicare
William Thar, MD | New York Times | Letter to the editor
The best way to save a lot of money and provide universal coverage is to expand Medicare to everyone. The system, widely supported by more than 60 percent of Americans, has the lowest overhead in American health care and works for more than 40 million elderly people.

January 30, 2009

Review: Do Not Resuscitate
Reviewed by Theresa Welsh
In this highly researched and well-written book, Dr. John Geyman lays out in clear language the repeated failure of the private health insurance industry to bring affordable and comprehensive coverage to the American people. He demonstrates with a wealth of facts and figures how the inexorable and continuous rise of health care costs have meant insurance companies must work hard at excluding anyone who might require expensive treatment, reduce coverage for everyone and constantly raise premium rates.

Cognitive Dissonance: The Healthcare Reform Battle's State of Mind
by Donna Smith
It seems everyone in the healthcare reform movement is hitching up his or her britches and feeling mighty proud of the prospects for action under President Obama and the adoring Democrats in his Congressional arsenal. Even some prominent Republicans are inching ever closer to supporting change to the broken health system. But I'm feeling significant dissonance between the words spoken and the policy offered to move forward.

Single Payer Moment
By David Swanson
While a Democratic polling firm has just found, as pollsters always do, dramatic public support for public health coverage, Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill appear divided, as they have always been, over whether to take a comprehensive approach to health care.

From the Front Lines: Single-Payer System Is the Sole Solution
Public Citizen
Public Citizen has joined the Leadership Conference for Guaranteed Health Care because a single-payer national health insurance program is the only viable solution to our health care crisis.

January 29, 2009

Philadelphia City Council Votes to Support Single-Payer Healthcare
Today, groups representing doctors, nurses, healthcare advocates and labor unions are applauding the Philadelphia City Council for voting in favor of single-payer healthcare. The resolution, sponsored by Councilman Greenlee and Councilwoman Tasco, makes Philadelphia the 28th city and 46th local government to pass a resolution in favor of HR 676, the National Health Insurance Act, sponsored by John Conyers (D-Ill). The resolution also calls for the enactment of the two single-payer state bills, SB 300 and HB 1660.

How the U.S. measures up to Canada's health care system
World Focus
As part of Worldfocus’ Health of Nations signature series, correspondent Edie Magnus conducted this half-hour interview with Uwe Reinhardt on January 20, 2009, the day of President Barack Obama’s inauguration.

House Democratic Leader Declares National Health Care Legislation "Off The Table" This Year
Bruce Dixon, Managing Editor | Black Agenda Report
It is estimated that 18,000 premature deaths occur in the US each year because of lack of medical coverage. Fifty or sixty million Americans have no health coverage at all, and another hundred fifty million are grossly underinsured. Democrats were able to pass SCHIP with a smaller majority under the Bush administration. They did not run on promises of "incremental reform". They ran promising to deliver national, comprehensive, universal health care. Clyburn himself is a co-sponsor of the single payer bill. So why are the expectations of House Democrats and the White House, with a popular wind at their backs, so unconscionably low now?

An International Perspective on Health Care Reform
by John R. Battista, M.D. | Prepared for Grand Rounds, Department of Medicine, Stamford Hospital, Stamford, CT
The United States is the only industrialized country without universal health insurance. The United States consistently ranks in the lower third of industrialized nations in terms of the two universally accepted measures of health care system efficacy: infant mortality and life expectancy. In addition, because the United States spends about twice as much per capita on health care than other industrialized countries it ranks at the very bottom of the industrialized world in terms of health care efficiency, that is efficacy per dollar spent.

Liberal Groups Seek Single-Payer Health Care Bill
By Alex Wayne, CQ Staff | CQ TODAY PRINT EDITION -- HEALTH
A coalition of liberal advocacy groups and labor unions is trying to breathe new life into the idea of a European-style "single-payer" health system in the United States, a concept thought discredited after the collapse of President Bill Clinton's attempt at overhauling the health care system.

January 27, 2009

Single-payer health bill has healthier prospects than ever
By Andy Birkey | The Minnesota Independent
Sen. Linda Berglin chairs the powerful Health and Human Services Budget Division in the Minnesota Senate and has long advocated a managed-care approach to rising health care costs. Although a staunch progressive on health care policy (she helped create and protect MinnesotaCare, the state’s health insurance program for low-income residents), she has typically demonstrated lukewarm interest in a single-payer system. But this year, Berglin has signed on as a coauthor of the Minnesota Health Act, the bill that would create the Minnesota Health Plan. The Act (HF 135, SF 118) would take health insurance out of the private sector and put it under the control of a state board to cover all Minnesotans.

BBC Show on U.S. Health Care Unavailable in USA
John Tepper Marlin | Huffington Post
My sister Brigid Marlin lives in the UK and a few days ago was watching a BBC program on health care in the United States. Brigid is not a public affairs junkie so I was interested when she sent me an email reporting that the program was a shocking portrayal of the high cost and low coverage of U.S. medical care. This itself is not news but there are two things about the show that are worth an alert: (1) The BBC's effectiveness in describing the problems with U.S. health care, and (2) The fact that Americans can't watch it.

January 26, 2009

Conyers To Introduce Universal Healthcare Bill Today
Ryan Grim | The Huffington Post
John Conyers plans to introduce his universal healthcare legislation today, a Conyers aide tells the Huffington Post. The bill - known last session as H.R. 676 - is a favorite of healthcare reformers who back a single-payer system.

Who Does Senator Baucus Listen To
Unions for Single Payer Health Care
Montana Senator Max Baucus, Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, has said that in writing his new healthcare legislation “everything is on the table” except single payer. One wonders if Senator Baucus has been reading his home state newspapers or just listening to the lobbyists for the private insurance industry.

Tell Sen. Baucus single-payer should be on the table
By GENE FENDERSON | Great Falls Tribune
We don't really have a "system." What we have is a confused maze of coverage types and providers -- Medicare, Medicare Advantage, Medicaid, SCHIP, military, veterans administration, Indian Health Service, federal employee coverage, health savings accounts, community health centers, private insurance, dental insurance, vision insurance, medical coverage in auto insurance and more. Unfortunately, the Baucus plan simply adds even more layers of confusion to this hodgepodge, which is already driving costs up and up for all Americans. We can do better. We must do better. That is why a single-payer system must be on the table.

Health care forum looks at single-pay insurance
By Robert Wolfington III | Marshall (Minn.) Independent
Dr. Ann Settgast, co-chairwoman of the Minnesota chapter of Physicians for A National Health Program, said a single-pay insurance program would provide care for all U.S. citizens, while at the same time save money compared to the current multi-payer system.

January 23, 2009

For healthcare, single-payer system is best
By Dr. Stephen Kemble | Honolulu Advertiser
Economic analysis has repeatedly shown that administrative overhead is far greater for competing private health plans than for a publicly financed single-payer system. Administrative costs are about 31 percent of the healthcare dollar in the U.S., 15 percent in countries with single-payer plans.

January 22, 2009

Health care system needs help
JACK BERNARD | Atlanta Journal Constitution | Letter to the Editor
Given the upcoming stimulus package, it is the perfect time to do something about our irrational health care system. What better way to stimulate the economy than to spend funds on those in need of medical services vs. more bridges to nowhere.

Which Way to Universal Healthcare?
By Ezra Klein | In These Times
The reason healthcare in this country costs so much more than in any other country is because we’re the only country that treats healthcare as a commodity.

January 20, 2009

HR 676: "Still the One"
by Tim Foley | Change.org Blog
The top vote getter among health care ideas in Change.org's Ideas for Change competition was "Free Single-Payer Health Care for All." This no doubt is cause for joy for many of you who frequent this page.

Update benefits and assure care for the jobless
By MERTON C. BERNSTEIN | Kansas City Star
Growing unemployment threatens workers, their families and the economy. Losing work income degrades family purchasing power and business income. Task one: Improve cash benefits to bolster both. And the unemployed and their families need assured health care. Being out of work increases the chance of illness and injury while decreasing the ability to cope with it.

Let's hope Obama doesn't blow it
By HELEN THOMAS | Seattle Post-Intelligencer
There is a lot on the incoming president's plate-- to put it mildly. Health care reform is one thing. With the economy in the tank and 47 million people without insurance, Obama should take a bold step and support a single-payer plan a la Social Security. It makes sense-- and better still-- it works.

Tackling Union Opposition to Single-Payer
By MISCHA GAUS | Labor Notes
Labor activists from 31 states gathered in St. Louis last weekend, solidifying their strategies to push "Medicare for all"--and to oppose the half-hearted health care plans circulating in Washington.

New Albany City Council relays confidence in universal health care
By DANIEL SUDDEATH | The Evening News and Tribune (IN)
The most expensive health care in the world provides only run-of-the-mill results. That’s how Dr. Rob Stone, an emergency room doctor in Bloomington and director of Hoosiers for a Commonsense Health Plan, described America’s health care system during a New Albany City Council workshop Thursday.

Is Universal Coverage enough?
by Ann Settgast, MD | Twin Cities Daily Planet
The upcoming change in administration has brought optimism and hope to the American public. Now is the time to demand meaningful healthcare reform rather than a replay of past failures. As a physician, I know that offering a placebo in place of known effective treatment is unethical. Hence, while I applaud the good intentions of Senator Tom Daschle, the Healthcare for America Now (HCAN) coalition, and others, I advise against their proposals to extend a system that is fundamentally flawed. In these times of economic uncertainty and crisis, single payer is the only fiscally responsible option for reform…and it is the only solution that will actually work.

January 15, 2009

Cancer Care, Simplified
By Louis Balizet, M.D.
"Everybody talks about it, but nobody does anything about it." So said Will Rogers about the weather, but he may as well have been referring to our health care system -- roundly decried, but still intact. Finally, however, on both state and national levels, well designed plans have emerged to replace our current wasteful chaotic system with the only workable alternative -- a single-payer, tax-financed system that eliminates private health insurance, provides universal coverage, and introduces adult supervision (centralized planning). Like the majority of American physicians, I feel that "medicare for all" is long overdue.

January 14, 2009

Health care tops agenda
By Laura Ungar | Louisville Courier-Journal
Louisvillians had a strong message for President-elect Barack Obama yesterday: The nation's health-care system needs either massive reforms or a complete overhaul.

January 13, 2009

Health for All Inaugural Ball Brings Renowned Speakers and Entertainment to Election's Key Issue
PRNewswire
PNHP President Dr. Oliver Fein will be speaking at the "Health for All Inaugural Ball"

Health insurer accused of overcharging millions
By Melissa Dahl, Jeff Rossen and Robert Powell | msnbc.com
One of the nation’s largest health insurers has agreed to pay $50 million dollars in a settlement announced today after being accused of overcharging millions of Americans for health care.

January 12, 2009

Universal health care local group's preference
ROBERT CROWE | Palm Beach Post | Letter to the Editor
Recently, my wife and I attended one of the meetings requested by Barack Obama to create a document advising the Obama team on health-care action to be taken by the new administration. About a dozen of us met at the Scottish Rites center in Lake Worth, a meeting which had been organized by a retired physician.

How to Push Obama
By John Nichols | The Progressive
Perhaps most impressive are the moves made by the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee, Physicians for a National Health Program, and Progressive Democrats of America to ensure that the option of single-payer is not forgotten as Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi establish their domestic policy priorities. To that end, sixty activists from these and allied groups met one week after Election Day at the AFL-CIO headquarters in Washington with Michigan Congressman John Conyers, an early Obama backer and the chief House proponent of real reform, to forge a Single-Payer Healthcare Alliance and plot specific strategies for influencing the new Administration and Congress.

January 09, 2009

New film indicts U.S. health care system
By PNHP staff
Dr. Paul Hochfeld, an emergency medicine physician in Corvallis, Ore., has produced and directed a new 47-minute film titled "Health, Money and Fear." The DVD features interviews with over a dozen physicians, administrators, civic leaders and health policy experts on the problems of today's U.S. health care "non-system" and the prospects for its reform.

January 08, 2009

Conyers: Obama should not nominate Sanjay Gupta
By Sam Stein | Huffington Post
Rep. John Conyers has written a letter to Democratic colleagues urging them to join him in publicly opposing the nomination of Dr. Sanjay Gupta for Surgeon General.

January 07, 2009

Memo to Obama: Seize the Moment for National Health Insurance
By John Geyman, MD | Tikkun magazine
Together with a sizable majority of Americans, I am again hopeful for the future of our country. My special concern, however, is for our failing health care system and how it is pricing health care beyond the reach of ordinary Americans. Our system has come to the point where none of the many incremental reforms will work. The business model of insurance has failed, and we need to rebuild the system on a social insurance model.

January 05, 2009

A genuine cure for our health care woes
By Johnathon S. Ross | Toledo Blade
With new leadership in place, America can end a national disgrace. Forty-six million of our friends, family and neighbors have no health care coverage at all. The Institute of Medicine estimates that over 18,000 Americans die each year from lack of health insurance alone. Tens of millions more risk bankruptcy because they have bare-bones insurance. Our troubled economy will only worsen this sad situation.

Replace for-profit insurance with Medicare for all
Robert Stone | The Journal Gazette
Private health insurance, with its rising premiums, co-pays, deductibles, exclusions and so on, is becoming increasingly unaffordable for individuals, families and businesses. The private model of financing care is no longer sustainable; it is dying. It is more like a dinosaur stumbling toward a tar pit than a mighty gorilla.

America's health-care famine is slowly killing us
By Clark Newhall | Editorial columnist | The Salt Lake Tribune
We don't have a health-care problem. We don't have a health-care crisis. What we have is a health-care famine.

National Health Insurance Act would be a good start
DR. WILLIAM R. ELSEA | Atlanta Journal-Constitution | Letters
Most people don’t realize that all could be covered for what we’re now spending if we adopted a Medicare-for-All system, and that private administrative costs are about 10 times Medicare’s administrative costs. Many studies show superior health care results in countries with national care.

Single-payer health system preserves choice
Linda Mulka, MD | Summit Daily News (Frisco, CO)
I am a board-certified family physician unable to actively practice because of effects of bilateral breast cancer radiation on my immune system. When dealing with Los Alamos National Lab’s self-insured United Healthcare administered program, I was evaded throughout the appeal process until arbitration to pay for services that Medicare would have covered to determine the appropriate treatment for my breast cancer. These tests incidentally saved over $30,000 for my treatment while allowing me to avoid cytotoxic chemotherapy. Considering what happened to me as a physician in their system, I can only imagine what would have happened to a non-physician.

There's No Place Like Home for The Holidays, Until There is No Home
by Donna Smith | CommonDreams.org
One of the most heart-breaking losses we've felt in recent years as we tried in vain to cling to some semblance of middle class reality as health crises crushed us is the loss of holidays, the loss of traditions, the loss of intimacy and the loss of respect from our own children who see no home to come to - and no reason to interrupt more exciting holiday pursuits when we can no longer play host to any sort of Smith family soiree with the same sort of meaning.

December 22, 2008

Prospects rising for better health care delivery
By Bill Roy | Topeka Capital-Journal
In my most fertile imagination, about March 1, President Obama and new secretary of Health and Human Services, Tom Daschle, would call the governors to whatever site they choose and tell them they have a plan to turn health care administration and delivery over to them, along with adequate funds to implement the best system they possibly can.

All I Want For Christmas Is Less Charity: Cure the Plight of Care
By ROSE ANN DeMORO | The Tampa Tribune
The most heartbreaking e-mail alerts that crossed my computer screen this holiday season arrived from an active, progressive union that has set up a fund for medical benefits for widows and orphans of their former members. Reliance on charity rather than a public safety net symbolizes what has become a perversely unique American solution to social problems, especially in the Bush administration era.

Our plea: No more Natalines
By Hilda Sarkisyan | Los Angeles Daily News
One year ago, my beautiful daughter Nataline lost her long struggle with leukemia. Our insurance company, Cigna Healthcare, closed the door on us. Now we need to make sure that other families can have the security that our daughter didn't.

Real Health Care
Aaron M. Roland | Letter to the Editor | New York Times
The problem with President-elect Barack Obama's supposed emphasis on the costs of health care is that his proposals fail to deal with the biggest source of wasteful expenditures, our dependence upon private health insurance.

Seize opportunity to fix health care system
by Bob Balhiser | Queen City News, Helena, Montana
Like the old saying, "Too many cooks spoil the broth", it can likewise be said that too many fingers in the till ruin a health care system. Dr. Putsch has recently done an excellent job of outlining just how much of our health care dollar is spent on administrative costs by citing studies that peg the range between 31 to 38 cents. I think everyone can agree that either amount is out of line and serves to explain why our health care costs have grown exponentially.

Atlanta physicians on curing faulty system
Letters to the Editor | Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Let’s put the dollars that would otherwise be spent paying administrators back into the health care system and enact a single-payer system.

December 19, 2008

Is anybody listening? Californians Speak Out for a Single Payer Plan
by Joel Moskowitz | IndyBay
In 2007, CaliforniaSpeaks, a statewide initiative led by government and major health foundations, invited 3,500 Californians to discuss their views on health care reform. To the surprise of the organizers, an overwhelming majority expressed its support for single payer (which was explicitly written out of the “discussion guidelines”). Yet somehow, the final report managed to ignore the will of the people. Today, as Americans throughout the country head to house parties to discuss health care reform, invited by Tom Daschle, future Secretary of Health and Human Services, and armed by similarly constraining "discussion guidelines", the experience of Californians is worth remembering.

U.S. Health Care Costs, Part V: Can Americans Afford Medicare?
By Uwe E. Reinhardt | New York Times
The percentage of the American population age 65 or over is 12.4 now and is projected to rise to about 21 by 2050. Only 7 percent of China’s population is 65 or over now, but that figure will shoot up rapidly to over 22 percent by 2050. And in a number of other industrialized countries — notably in Japan, Germany, Italy and Sweden — the elderly already represent close to 20 percent of the population, a level the United States will not reach until about 2040. Yet the world has not come to an end in these older countries.

Opinion: Creating a Single-Payer Plan is Best Solution to Health Care Crisis
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation | News Digest
The rising numbers of unemployed and uninsured mean that "affordable health care has never been more urgently needed," and "at this critical juncture, a single-payer plan is the only medically, morally and fiscally responsible path to take," writes Oliver Fein, M.D., associate dean and professor of clinical medicine and public health at Weill Cornell Medical College and president of Physicians for a National Health Program, in an Atlanta Journal-Constitution guest commentary.

December 18, 2008

Only in our failed health care system
CHARLES I. WOHL, M.D. | Berkshire Eagle | Letters
The extensive layoffs at KB Toys, as described in the Dec. 13 Eagle, will cause far more misery for KB employees than the loss of their jobs alone. The laid-off workers also lost their medical insurance on the day their jobs ended. Many unemployed KB workers will not receive subsidized health insurance through Commonwealth Care, the Massachusetts health plan, because their incomes before the layoffs exceeded 300 per cent of the poverty level, making them ineligible for subsidized coverage. They must buy health insurance or they face fines; and if they require medical care while uninsured, they face bankruptcy.

December 17, 2008

Time to fight for new health system
By Dr. William Davidson Jr. | Lebanon Daily News (PA)
Unfortunately, only 70 cents of every dollar paid into the system actually returns to us in the form of health care. Thirty cents out of every dollar goes to administer a very dysfunctional system that has become a profit center for special interests that do not have the best interests of our people at heart.

December 16, 2008

The Politics of Healthcare Reforms in US Presidential Elections
Vicente Navarro, MD, PhD | Harvard Health Policy Review
I appreciate the invitation from the Harvard Health Policy Review to discuss the relationship between national health care systems and the policy process. One cannot analyze this relationship without analyzing the political context in which it occurs, and since the U.S. is now in the midst of a very important political process -- the presidential primaries of 2008 -- it may be of special interest to readers of the Review to focus on the impact of the political process on the health care reform proposals put forward by the presidential candidates in this and past elections.

Letter to American College of Surgeons on single payer: enact Medicare for all
Sherif Emil, MD, CM, FACS | Bulletin of the American College of Surgeons
Americans, the public, and their physicians have a major decision ahead. Will health care continue to be treated as a commodity bought and sold according to means or as a service sought and delivered according to need? American surgeons should continue to lead the world in innovation and creativity, but they should also apply the results of their resourcefulness to any patient in need, in an atmosphere of evidence-based care, patient freedom to choose their doctor, and resource optimization, free from micromanagement and bureaucratic hassles. I don't believe this can be achieved through expanding or amending our current nonsystem.

December 15, 2008

Who's A Health Care "Moderate"?
by Paul Bass | New Haven Independent
She said she didn't know a lot about the health care plan Harry S. Truman pushed at the time. It was a universal health care plan. Government-run. Business interests like General Motors killed it by arguing that Americans don't trust government to run health care. They argued that private interests do it better -- private insurers, and private companies that offer the insurance plans to employees. Six decades later, companies like GM are struggling to stave off bankruptcy in part because of out-of-control health care costs.

Single-payer insurance puts more money into health care
By Robert W. Putsch | Helena Independent Record | Your Turn
Montanans spent $4.9 billion on health care in 2003. If these authors are right, then Montanans paid over $1,600 in administrative costs for every man, woman and child in the state, including the uninsured. That means that only 69 cents of every dollar spent went to health care needs. Remember, administrative costs are passed on to patients, bill by bill, paycheck deduction by paycheck deduction, and even at the pharmacy!

Special Message to the Congress Recommending a Comprehensive Health Program
By HARRY S. TRUMAN | November 19, 1945
Millions of our citizens do not now have a full measure of opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health. Millions do not now have protection or security against the economic effects of sickness. The time has arrived for action to help them attain that opportunity and that protection.

Health insurance proposal: Medicare for all
By Saul Friedman | Newsday | Gray Matters
Here's a question for Medicare beneficiaries and those who will soon become eligible: Why should you care about the estimated 47 million American men, women and children who have too little or no health coverage?

There is a cure available for our health care woes
By DR. OLIVER FEIN | Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Opponents of single payer often admit it's the best, most efficient and equitable way to provide quality care, but say it's not politically feasible and is therefore off the table in this round of the debate. How so? A solid majority of physicians, 59 percent, and an even higher percentage of the public, 62 percent or more, support national health insurance, recent surveys show. Single payer should be front and center.

December 12, 2008

Everyone has a right to health care
By Marc Yacht M.D. | St. Petersburg Times | Guest Columnist
A simple legislative solution such as the Medicare for all goes nowhere as Americans suffer the consequences of a failing health care system affecting those with and without insurance. Onerous oversight and other cost cutting measures, driven mainly by insurers, have demoralized physicians, hospitals and other providers.

Why Does U.S. Health Care Cost So Much? (Part IV: A Primer on Medicare)
By Uwe E. Reinhardt | New York Times
Medicare, the federal health-insurance program for America’s elderly, plays a major and highly controversial role in our health-care system. To many Americans it is a blessing. Others view it as a source of all that’s wrong with American health care. I propose to explore these views in this and the next two posts to this blog.

Obama and Daschle should opt for single-payer
By Rose Ann DeMoro | The Progressive
Barack Obama needs to make good on his campaign pledge to reform health care. It is not enough to throw the issue off to former Senator Tom Daschle, Obama’s choice to head the Department of Health and Human Services.

December 11, 2008

Americans Support Single payer. Why Doesn't Celinda Lake?
By Kip Sullivan
Data derived from polls have long found strong support for "Medicare for All" or single payer national health insurance. For example, a recent AP/Yahoo poll found that 65 percent of Americans agree that the U.S. should "adopt a universal health insurance program in which everyone is covered under a program like Medicare that is run by the government and financed by taxpayer". But so do other kinds of data, including data from citizen juries, focus groups, and even a national series of government-sponsored town hall meetings that were carefully designed to solicit support for anything but single payer. So, how come Democratic pollster Celinda Lake now claims Americans won't support single payer, and instead favor a plan that is a variant of managed competition? Because her latest research was brazenly biased. Kip Sullivan explains how and why.

Olson promotes fixing broken health care system
By Jean Ruzicka | Park Rapids Enterprise
When the Legislature convenes Tuesday, Jan. 6, health care reform will be on the docket and Sen. Mary Olson, DFL-Bemidji, will be advocating restructuring the current “business commodity.”

December 10, 2008

Single-payer health system could save billions
Peter Mott | Rochester Democrat And Chronicle | Guest essayist
How could covering more people decrease total expenditures? The difference is in "administrative costs." Private insurance companies have such costs totaling 15 percent to 30 percent. Medicaid is at 5 percent and Medicare at 1 to 2 percent. "Administrative costs" include advertising and shareholders' profits, as well as the billing and collecting costs of hospitals, doctors' offices, labs and X-ray facilities. These become a nightmare as patients change among a variety of insurers, or when they lose insurance by changing or losing their jobs.

Talking Points: Why the mandate plans won't work, and why single-payer "Medicare for All" is what we need
By Len Rodberg, PhD

December 09, 2008

Can single payer revive our ailing emergency departments?
Andrew D. Coates, MD, Albany Medical Center | Empire State Emergency Physicians Interim Communique (EPIC)
The fact that 47 million Americans had no health insurance during all of 2006, and that tens of millions more have inadequate insurance and/or shorter periods without coverage, weighs especially heavily upon the [emergency department]. Non-urgent care in the emergency room has boomed, yet this is not the root cause of crowding in the ED. Instead, bottlenecks caused by the intense needs of a few patients result in ED crowding -- even one critically ill patient waiting for an ICU bed can trigger a cascade leading to a significant back-up for all patients, for hours, even days.

Local man spearheads statewide health-care movement
By Shlomit Auciello | The Herald Gazette
H.R. 676 would establish the U.S. National Health Insurance program to provide all residents of the United States and U.S. territories with free health care that includes all medically necessary care, such as primary care and prevention, prescription drugs, emergency care, and mental health services.

Firms see writing on the wall
Dr. Rachel Nardin | Boston Globe | Letter to the Editor
It's remarkable that an insurance industry group's website features an interview with a woman who says, "It's time for the government to step in." The American public increasingly realizes that we need real healthcare reform. We need national health insurance, which would cover everyone without deductibles or copays, be financed through payroll and income taxes, and give everyone free choice of doctor and hospital. The private insurance industry knows this would put them out of business, and they are determined to make sure it doesn't happen.

December 08, 2008

Coverage mandate will fail as a health-care reform plan
By Rose Ann DeMoro | The Philadelphia Inquirer
It's time for Congress to stop getting carried away with financial bailouts for big industries, especially when it comes to some of the most-profitable and least-responsible companies: the health-insurance giants.

Why Does U.S. Health Care Cost So Much? (Part III: An Aging Population Isn't the Reason)
By Uwe E. Reinhardt | New York Times
Research around the world has shown that the process of the aging of the population by itself adds only a very small part -- usually about half a percentage point -- to the annual growth in per-capita health spending in industrialized societies, which tends to range between 5 and 8 percent, depending on the country and the period in question. The bulk of annual spending growth can be explained by overall population growth (about 1.1 percent per year), increases in the prices of health care goods and services, and the availability of ever more new, often high-cost medical products and treatments used by all age groups.

HMS Sees Inequity in Organ Donations
By DANIELLE J. KOLIN | The Crimson
Americans who lack health insurance are about 20 times more likely to donate a liver or kidney than to receive one, according to a new study by researchers at Harvard Medical School.

December 05, 2008

Health Reform via Guaranteed Choice
By Roger Bybee | Z Magazine
With employers flitting from one plan to another, sometimes on an annual basis, the notion of consistent, continuous health coverage has all but disappeared. "The average length of time a patient stays in any given private health insurance plan has dropped to less than two years," notes Rose Anne DeMoro, director of the California Nurses Association. "Health insurance on a continual basis is practically non-existent in the private insurance market," observes McCanne. In countless situations, "the insured individual was not granted the option of 'keeping the insurance you have'," McCanne notes.

December 04, 2008

Unemployed and uninsured
By Marie Cocco | Denver Post
Here is a number easily understood by even the math-phobic: Every 1 percent increase in the unemployment rate leads to another 1.1 million Americans becoming uninsured -- and causes still another million more children and adults to become eligible for state health insurance programs.

Doctors oppose US health plan
By Rebecca Knight in Boston | Financial Times
The Massachusetts healthcare programme widely seen as a test case for universal health coverage in the US faces mounting opposition from doctors who say the reform is failing.

Insurance industry positions itself for the fight ahead
By CHRIS FRATES | Politico
With President-elect Barack Obama showing no signs of backing off his pledge to push health care reform early in his administration, jockeying is intensifying among interest groups to position themselves for the fight ahead.

December 02, 2008

It's Time for a Real Debate on National Health Insurance
by Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon
In a single-payer system, private insurance companies are basically removed from health care. Instead, the government pays all health care providers, and controls fees and costs. As in Canada, consumers would choose their own doctors-but almost never receive a hospital or doctor bill. Insurance deductibles and co-payments are also eliminated.

December 01, 2008

The time is now: Reform health care
Editorial | Des Moines Register
A single system could reduce administrative expenses associated with facilitating thousands of different private health-insurance plans in this country. It could increase leverage for negotiating lower prices. It could facilitate the expansion of electronic medical records, which would streamline paperwork and help prevent costly medical errors. It would boost the country's economy in the long run.

Why is single-payer health reform not viable?
By MIKE DENNISON | Reporter's notebook | Billings Gazette
When it comes to health care reform in America, there is a relatively simple solution that will cover everyone's basic health care, control costs and save businesses, most people and the country a lot of money.

Why Does Celinda Lake Oppose Single Payer?
By All Unions Committee For Single Payer Health Care--HR 676
Self-described as "one of the Democratic Party's leading political strategists," Celinda Lake has claimed that single-payer reform lacks meaningful popular support. Lake's research, done for the Herndon Alliance, has consistently supported reform based upon private health insurance. She and the Herndon Alliance are largely responsible for the notion that a single payer Medicare-for-all healthcare system is 'not politically feasible.'

Use opportunity to reform health care
By Elizabeth Frost, MD | Pioneer Press | Letter to the Editor
As a family practice doctor who works with the uninsured in St. Paul, I have recently become involved in health care reform. I believe single-payer national health insurance is the only way to provide quality affordable care for all.

Single-payer is path to universal coverage
By Dr. Taro Adachi | Baltimore Sun | Letter to the Editor
Leaders of America's Health Insurance Plans have suggested that, in exchange for agreeing to accept all customers regardless of health conditions, they want a federal requirement that everyone buy coverage. But we have already seen such plans consistently fail on a state level.

November 26, 2008

Yes: Government-financed, privately delivered care would work
By AMY F. ISAACS | Great Falls Tribune
It's no longer news that at least 47 million Americans lack health insurance, and an additional 50 million are "under-insured" -- meaning whatever ails you is excluded. But we seldom hear that private health insurance wastes $350 billion every year, enough to pay for high-quality comprehensive health care for everyone.

Building a New Wall: The Fundamental Right to Healthcare
By Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. | The Huffington Post
Because our current economic crisis is forcing us to think outside the box, one topic worthy of renewed discussion is health care. What if the Constitution said: "All citizens shall enjoy the right to health care of equal high quality and the Congress shall have the power to implement this article by appropriate legislation?"

Disgrace
Editorial | Charleston Gazette
America's for-profit medical system is the world's most expensive. For people with good insurance, it provides high-quality care. But 45 million "working poor" Americans - and many among the 1.2 million who lost their jobs so far this year - have no coverage. They must seek charity care or do without. That's shameful.

November 25, 2008

America's Looming Health Care Disaster
By DAN CHILDS | ABC News Medical Unit
"Unfortunately, the COBRA legislation guarantees laid-off workers the right to continue coverage at their own expense, but does not make that coverage affordable," said Dr. David Himmelstein, associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and co-founder of Physicians for a National Health Program.

November 24, 2008

Yikes!!! I'm a Slave to Socialized Medicine
by: Steve Weissman | t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Growing up in Florida in the 1940s, I saw many of the doctors my family knew fighting against Harry Truman's effort to enact what they called "Socialized Medicine." Their immediate target was Sen. Claude Pepper, a New Deal Democrat who supported universal health care. Our doctor friends dubbed him "Red Pepper" and helped defeat him in the elections of 1950. Yet, for all this early "fight for freedom," I now find myself in France enjoying single-payer, socialized medicine, which I would heartily recommend to all Americans.

November 21, 2008

Why Does U.S. Health Care Cost So Much? (Part II: Indefensible Administrative Costs)
By Uwe E. Reinhardt | New York Times
More and more Americans are being priced out of health care as we know it. The question is how long American health policy makers, and particularly the leaders of our private health insurance, can justify this enormous and costly administrative burden to the American people and to the harried providers of health care.

A letter to our new president
By Susanne L. King, M.D. | Berkshire Eagle
Dear President-elect Obama: As you prepare to begin your presidency during a period of severe recession, you will be searching to make financially sound decisions for our country. You have promised to reform the health care system, and only one solution will enable you to create an effective system and save money: a single-payer national health program.

Officials advocate for single payer health care
By Scott Merzbach | Amherst Bulletin
If a new presidential administration in Washington, D.C., could do one thing to help Amherst's budget problems, it might be to solve the issue of rising health care costs for municipal employees, according to town officials.

November 19, 2008

A Senator's Health Plan
Rose Ann DeMoro | National Nurses Organizing Committee/California Nurses Association
Millions of Americans have found out the hard way that access to coverage is not the same as access to care. A better, more cost-effective approach would be to simply expand Medicare to cover everyone, the only real way to assure guaranteed health care for all.

November 18, 2008

Senator urges reform to 'hodge-podge' health care system
By DIANE COCHRAN | The Billings Gazette Staff
Everything should be on the table as lawmakers consider ways to improve health care, Baucus said.

Uninsured Give but Rarely Receive Organs for Transplant
Posted by Vanessa Fuhrmans | Wall Street Journal Blog
Call it the ultimate inequity in health care. A team of Harvard researchers finds that people without health insurance are about 20 times more likely to donate a liver or kidney than to receive one.

November 17, 2008

Health plan more of same
By Bob Balhiser | Independent Record
The Baucus health care reform plan looks like the hodge-podge system we now have, just more of it! To top it all off, he “didn’t have a price tag for the plan.” Amazing!

Learn all you can about health care alternatives
By DAVID ROSS STEVENS | Louisville Courier-Journal
By now it is almost a cliche to say that America's health care system is broken. In response, many politicians who are calling for "reform" and "universal health coverage" are not, in fact, clarifying the situation because they include in their new plans the very elements that have busted the system. So the political battle in the first days of 2009 will be over "token reform" or a bold, truly universal type of health insurance.

'Medicare Advantage' a misnomer
Jonathan D. Walker | The Journal Gazette
America has a split personality when it comes to health care. There is recognition that the government has to provide care for the people, but there is a conflicting sense that private industry has to be involved because it can somehow be more efficient. Medicare Advantage is the upshot of this thinking -- but the result has been a lot of taxpayer dollars wasted on windfall payouts to private insurance companies.

Sen. Grassley knows a good story when he sees it
By Gilbert Cranberg | Nieman Watchdog | Commentary
AARP, which purports to be the seniors' friend, has a lot of explaining to do to Iowa's Senator Charles Grassley, ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee. In a scorching letter to AARP, Grassley implies that the organization is more interested in profiting from seniors than in serving them.

Single-payer system is the way to go
Ray Bellamy | Tallahassee Democrat
Millions of families are struggling with economic hardship. Health-care costs are weighing on more Americans, contributing to about a million bankruptcies a year, and are a major factor in many home foreclosures.

Single-payer health care
Dr. William Klepack | Ithaca Journal
In the U.S., where private health insurance companies dominate the payment system, of every dollar, 31 cents goes to administrative expenses and 69 cents to actual health care. In Canada, where there is a single-payer national health insurance program, administration accounts for 16.7 percent of health expenditures, with 83.3 percent of spending going to the care of patients.

November 12, 2008

Why County Administrators Should Advocate for Single-Payer Health Care
Paul Clay Sorum, MD
The politicians must be convinced, as they are writing a health reform bill, that the model should be HR 676, not the current Obama plan. County administrators have great credibility as professional public servants who are familiar with all the concrete problems caused by our current health care system. It is time for them not only to persuade their own county legislators to pass resolutions in support of HR 676, but more importantly to persuade the politicians in Washington to have the courage and foresight to institute truly universal coverage through a single-payer health care system.

Senator Takes Initiative on Health Care
By ROBERT PEAR | New York Times
Without waiting for President-elect Barack Obama, Senator Max Baucus, the chairman of the Finance Committee, will unveil a detailed blueprint on Wednesday to guarantee health insurance for all Americans by facilitating sales of private insurance, expanding Medicaid and Medicare, and requiring most employers to provide or pay for health benefits.

Why We Would Benefit
By Don McCanne, MD | California Family Physician
An efficient health care financing system should ensure that everyone receives the health care they need without facing undue financial hardship. Because of the millions of uninsured and the rapid expansion of inadequate underinsurance products, the burden of medical debt has become commonplace for all too many Americans.

Buoyed by election, U.S. doctor group calls for single-payer system
By Mike Shields | Kansas Health Institute
More than 15,000 U.S. physicians, including some in Kansas, are calling on President-elect Barack Obama and the new Congress to enact a single-payer, national health insurance plan.

November 10, 2008

How Universal Health Care Changes Everything
By Sara Robinson | Campaign for America's Future
With one fell stroke, giving Americans universal access to health care will undermine some of the deepest and most persistent myths of the conservative worldview.

AS I SEE IT: Health-care system needs more primary-care physicians
By Josh Freeman, MD | Kansas City Star
National discussions about which system of universal health coverage -- and yes, we need a system of universal health coverage -- will be the best to adopt often miss the point. The goal is not simply to "cover everyone," but to provide universal access to high-quality, cost-effective care.

Unhealthy Solutions: Private Insurance, High Costs and the Denial of Care
An Interview with Steffie Woolhandler | Multinational Monitor
Steffie Woolhandler is a co-founder of Physicians for a National Health Program, a not-for-profit organization for physicians, medical students and other healthcare professionals who advocate a national health insurance program. She is an associate professor of medicine at Harvard University and co-director of the Harvard Medical School General Internal Medicine Fellowship program. Woolhandler is a co-author of Bleeding the Patient Dry: The Consequences of Corporate Healthcare (2001).

November 05, 2008

Single Payer Ballot Question Passes by Landslide in 10 Districts
In an election that has brought out the highest voter turnout in Massachusetts probably since 1928, local ballot initiatives supporting single payer and opposing individual mandates passed by landslide margins in all ten legislative districts where they appeared. With almost all precincts tallied, roughly 73 percent of 181,000 voters in the ten districts voted YES to the following:

November 04, 2008

It is time for Medicare for all
By Ahmed Kutty | Kearney Hub
With an economic meltdown under way and a new president and a new Congress about to be in charge of our country, time is now for Americans to demand a publicly funded health care financing system of universal, comprehensive and equitable coverage against illness.

November 03, 2008

Universal health insurance now
Editorial | The Daily Gazette (Schenectady, NY) Americans will survive a protracted economic downturn if they have to forgo luxuries like daily lattes at Starbucks or new flat-screen TVs. But many will not make it if they continue to skimp on health care, as a story in last Friday’s Gazette indicated they’ve been doing. Stories like that -- another one appeared on the front page of Wednesday’s New York Times -- make the best argument yet for the government to provide universal health insurance. Left to their own devices and dwindling resources, too many Americans can’t or won’t buy it themselves.

Where is bailout for U.S. health-care system?
Rose Ann DeMoro | Palm Beach Post | Letters to the Editor
If we can take ownership of our banks, why not a similar approach for our imploding health-care system? In homes across America, our health-care system is dying a quiet death. The millions who endure their pain away from the spotlight of Wall Street deserve sweeping systemic solutions as well.

Medical costs still burden many despite insurance
By Kay Lazar | Boston Globe
"Many of the [insurance] policies out there have such huge copayments and deductibles that people can't afford care," said Dr. David Himmelstein, associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and a primary care doctor at Cambridge Health Alliance.

Who Has the Better Health Plan?
Richard L. Stivelman | The New York Times | Letters to the Editor
No proposal for the delivery of health care in the United States will make a difference unless somewhere in the debate single payer (Medicare for all) figures in.

October 20, 2008

Local surgeon tells audience at Greater Fort Wayne Chamber of Commerce: Health reform is crucial
By Bob Caylor | The News-Sentinel
Even a few years ago, a Fort Wayne physician laying out an impassioned argument for national health insurance - at the Greater Fort Wayne Chamber of Commerce, no less - might have seemed like an elaborate put-on. Dr. Jonathan Walker, a retinal surgeon, wasn't kidding anyone. In his own highly specialized practice, he sees a toll in people with disabilities and avoidable catastrophic expenses, and he knows that it's only a minuscule fraction of the human suffering and economic damage caused by tens of millions of Americans lacking health insurance.

Health insurance for a bad economy
By Phil Kadner | Southtown Star
I suggested to someone the other day that now would be a good time for the government to launch a national health insurance program. "That would be socialism!" the person exclaimed. Our government plans to spend hundreds of billions bailing out Wall Street, including $250 billion for ownership in private banking institutions.

Massachusetts needs universal health care
By Pat Berger | West Roxbury Transcript
Voters in parts of West Roxbury, Roslindale and Brookline (Michael Rush’s district) will have the opportunity to vote on a non-binding ballot question on Election Day -- Nov. 4. The ballot question was initiated by Mass-Care, the organization that sponsors the campaign for single-payer health care reform in Massachusetts.

October 10, 2008

Candidates Disagree On Primary Flaws Of Health Care Financing
By Don McCanne, M.D., PNHP Senior Health Policy Fellow | Huffington Post
John McCain and Barack Obama both recognize that there are serious problems with our health care system, and that the voters want something done about it. They would both use public policies to modify the private health insurance market to accomplish their goals. Although it would seem that their goals are similar, the specifics are quite different because they have started from very dissimilar perceptions of the primary flaws in health care financing.

October 09, 2008

Vetting McCain's Health Plan
By Jane Bryant Quinn | Newsweek
If you think that "The Market" -- whatever market -- always works for the best, you'll love John McCain's version of health insurance reform. It uses the tax code to shove you toward individual policies (more "choice!") and away from comprehensive, employer supported plans. The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center puts the cost of his proposed subsidies at $1.3 trillion over 10 years.

October 08, 2008

How Do You Think Your Healthcare is Trading?
By Donna Smith | California Nurses Association
If you think the companies that collect your health insurance premiums and pay your health care claims have been insulated from the economic crisis, think again. And if you think the health insurance industry that is suffering right alongside the financial services industry isn’t going to need a bail-out too, think yet again. Only the bail-out we will give the health insurance industry will be much more insidious and potentially far more dangerous to us all.

PBS Frontline Interview with T.R.Reid
T.R. Reid is a veteran foreign correspondent for The Washington Post, a commentator for National Public Radio and the author of nine books, including three in Japanese. He is currently working on his 10th book, titled "We're Number 37!," in which he compares America's health care system to others around the world. It is scheduled to be published by Penguin Press in early 2009.

Health care proposals of the candidates
by Harry S. Jacob, MD | HemOnc Today
The Presidential candidates have provided markedly different health care proposals, neither of which seem likely to solve many serious ongoing problems facing our sick fellow citizens.

October 07, 2008

In Pennsylvania, churches back single payer
By Morton Mintz | Nieman Watchdog | Commentary
Are there good questions that reporters could ask of religious leaders in their communities about the morality of a system that leaves 46 million Americans without health insurance, millions more with inadequate coverage, and, because of the economic crisis, guarantees big increases in these numbers? Are there also good questions about that same system that reporters could put to businessmen in their communities? Indeed there are, as I learned at a health care conference at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pa., on Sept. 18.

October 02, 2008

Private Health Insurance at Work: Hassling Cystic Fibrosis Patients
Cory Heidelberger | Madville Times, South Dakota
Deron Arnold pays Blue Cross Blue Shield for his health coverage. Yesterday he got a letter from the Blue Cross Blue Shield saying that as of October 28, the company will no longer cover expenses at Fairview University Hospital in Minneapolis, where Deron plans to have his transplant. As of August 23, Blue Cross Blue Shield will stop covering physician expense at that hospital.

October 01, 2008

MS Patient Falls Into American Insurance Gap
By Joanne Silberner | National Public Radio
So the scorecard comes to this. Linda Oatley of Buckland, England, had several months' delay in getting coverage for a new treatment. She also has to pay a small fee for weekly physical therapy. Overall, she's happy with the National Health Service. And the scorecard for Jeff Rubin? A year and a half of cutting drug dosages, a repossessed house and bankruptcy. A few years ago, he wouldn't have supported a British-style system, with its slower drug approvals and limited ability to pick your own doctors.

September 30, 2008

America Needs A New New Deal
By KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL and ERIC SCHLOSSER | Wall Street Journal
[W]e need reconstruction, not only of America's physical infrastructure, but also of its society. Today close to 50 million Americans lack health insurance. About 40% of the nation's adult population is facing medical debts, or having difficulty paying medical bills. A universal health-care system would help American families, while cutting the nation's long-term health-care costs. And a large-scale federal investment in renewable energy and public-works projects would build the foundation for a strong 21st century economy.

Thinking big on health
Editorial | Bangor Daily News
A doctors’ organization, Physicians for a National Health Program, has been pressing for single-payer national health insurance. It points out that the United States now spends twice as much as other industrialized nations on health care, while Americans lag in life expectancy and infant mortality rates and 47 million lack health coverage. It argues that 31 percent of the nation’s health care cost now goes into the private insurance bureaucracy and paper-work and that a single-payer plan would save more than $350 billion a year.

September 29, 2008

A healthy perspective
By Julie Mason | The Ottawa Citizen
It's hard for Canadians to imagine the choices Americans must make to ensure health care. Can I take this more interesting job or will I lose coverage? Will I be able to send the kids to camp if my premiums go up? What if my illness isn't coverage later? What if I get sick while I'm waiting to get insurance? It's just as hard for Americans to get it that ordinary Canadians like our health care system.

September 16, 2008

McCain's Radical Agenda
By BOB HERBERT | New York Times
Talk about a shock to the system. Has anyone bothered to notice the radical changes that John McCain and Sarah Palin are planning for the nation's health insurance system? These are changes that will set in motion nothing less than the dismantling of the employer-based coverage that protects most American families.

September 15, 2008

How Many Are Underinsured? Trends Among U.S. Adults, 2003 and 2007
Cathy Schoen, M.S., Sara R. Collins, Ph.D., Jennifer L. Kriss, Michelle M. Doty, Ph.D. | Health Affairs The number of underinsured U.S. adults--that is, people who have health coverage that does not adequately protect them from high medical expenses--has risen dramatically, a Commonwealth Fund study finds. As of 2007, there were an estimated 25 million underinsured adults in the United States, up 60 percent from 2003.

No on Prop. 101: It's a false pitch that blocks reform
By Phil Lopes and George Pauk | Tucson Citizen
When Arizona voters cast their ballots this November, one of the questions they face is whether to vote yes or no on Proposition 101, the misnamed Freedom of Choice in Health Care Act. They should definitely vote no.

Look before you leap into McCain's idea of health coverage
By James C. Mitchiner | Other Voices | The Ann Arbor News
Let us suppose, however, that a worker could find and purchase a policy for only $5,000 per year. What would it look like? My guess is that it would have either multiple coverage restrictions (non-coverage for pre-existing conditions, a prolonged waiting period before insurance became effective) or significant financial limitations (high deductibles or co-pays, puny lifetime maximums), which defeat the purpose of having insurance in the first place. Clearly, private insurers cannot make a profit by selling comprehensive insurance at premiums the average individual can afford.

September 12, 2008

Senator Kuehl's Open Letter to the Governor on SB 840
Sheila James Kuehl | Senator, 23rd District
I am writing to respectfully urge your signature on SB 840 because this legislation will bring a modern universal health care system to California, make health care predictably more affordable for California employers and families, and provide every Californian with a complete choice of their individual doctors and hospitals.

September 10, 2008

In Texas, the health care crisis is only getting worse
By DR. ANA MALINOW | Houston Chronicle
Texans had little to cheer about in the recent report by the U.S. Census Bureau that the number of Americans without health insurance dipped slightly in 2007. Instead of the 47 million uninsured in 2006, last year our nation had "only" 45.7 million who lacked health insurance, a drop of a half percentage point from 2006 (from 15.8 percent of the population to 15.3 percent). Most of the dip was due to an expansion of government programs like Medicaid, especially among children.

Expand Medicare
Dr. William Clark | Times Record | Letter to the Editor
Medicare for everyone costs less because administration at every level is cheaper. It's cheaper because insurers don't profit from your illness and because we would not pay chief executive officers seven-figure incomes. And we could finally get a handle on rising costs by planning and budgeting.

A Market for Compassion: Single-Payer Health Insurance
by Prajwal Ciryam | From The Medscape Journal of Medicine | Webcast Video Commentaries
A single-payer system will harness the market's strengths while addressing its limitations. The private health insurance market is inefficient, bloated by advertising, duplicated bureaucracies, dividends, and executive compensation. What's worse, insurance policies are so complex and individuals' future needs so unpredictable that consumers cannot make the informed selections that induce competition between insurers.

September 09, 2008

Single-payer health reform
Albany Catholic Blog
Saturday, September 13th, in Albany, we will launch Single Payer New York, a grassroots coalition of organizations and individuals to work together in New York state for single-payer health reform, both state and federal. An amazing diversity of single-payer advocates have responded with plans to attend.

September 08, 2008

Medicare-for-All: Why We Should Say Yes, Not "Yes But"
by Merton Bernstein and Theodore Marmor | Health Affairs Blog
Sometimes even Medicare-for-All admirers succumb to the "yes but" syndrome, as in "yes, but Medicare-for-All is politically impractical." For example, after praising Medicare-for-All, The Health Care Mess concluded that "political reality compels us to ask whether there are not other ways" (besides Medicare-for-All) and answered that question "yes." Princeton economist Paul Krugman, who had extolled Medicare-for-All in 2006, put a foot in the "yes but" camp in 2007. He welcomed the Edwards, Massachusetts, and Schwarzenegger plans to compel individuals to select from among insurance plans, thereby forgoing Medicare-for-All's economies. The Edwards and Obama plans required a Medicare-like plan as one option. Krugman argued that such a plan's lower cost will eventually crowd out more expensive private plans. This overlooks private insurance's history of cutting prices to gain market share, later returning to double-digit boosts.

The Massachusetts Way?
Leonard Rodberg | New York Times | Letters
The cost of health care in Massachusetts is continuing to rise faster than the cost of living -- by 10 percent in just the past year. It will quickly outstrip government subsidies and the willingness of employers to provide decent coverage for their employees. Leaning on government subsidies that can’t be sustained, and requiring people to buy insurance they can’t afford, is not a solution. Only a real change in the way we pay for health care can truly address our long-term problems.

Doctors support single-payer plan
HOWARD A. GREEN, M.D. | Palm Beach Post Letters to the Editor
The lower overhead costs of the most efficient Medicare insurance plan, which already treats more than 40 million people, would provide substantial cost savings to all Americans and businesses while maintaining quality private physician practices and hospitals. A majority of physicians in this country can't be wrong in their support of a single-payer national health insurance plan such as HR 676.

September 05, 2008

An interview with PNHP Senior Health Policy Fellow Dr. Don McCanne on McCain and Obama's health care proposals.
Dr. McCanne served as PNHP President in 2003-2004 and writes a daily health policy "quote of the day" for single payer advocates.

September 04, 2008

America Un-Covered
by Cheryl SooHoo | Ward Rounds
"America already has singlepayer national health insurance. It's called 'Medicare,'" [Dr. Quentin Young] explains. "Medicare is the most successful program in the country, outshining any of the private sector insurance companies with their high administrative costs. Thirty-one percent of all health care dollars now go to absorbing the administrative costs of the big carriers. Medicare has an administrative cost of 3 percent. When you are dealing with a system where every percentage point is 21 billion dollars, the costs are fairly significant."

A feasible health care plan
By ALWIN STEINMANN | Albany Times Union
A number of medical professional societies, have called for health care reforms to provide universal coverage including the possibility of a single-payer system. An article published in the Annals of Internal Medicine showed that the majority of polled physicians (59 percent) supported the notion of a single-payer system. Given that 15 percent of our population lacks health insurance, and our overall expenditures on health care is in excess of $2.1 trillion, a single-payer system is no longer a fringe idea to be thought of as a dream. It's instead a realistic solution to a health care system that rewards excessive care and administrative infrastructure while ignoring the real needs of its patients and providers.

September 03, 2008

Single-payer health care would benefit all
By JAMES J. BARBA | Albany Times Union
Multiple payers have multiple rules for authorizing services, billing and the supply of requested data on the care actually delivered. A single set of rules, which everyone in the provider community follows, will eliminate most of this costly bureaucratic expense.

September 02, 2008

Pennsylvania Healthcare Conference
Progressives for Pennsylvania Presents:
Single-Payer Guaranteed Healthcare For All: A Mainstream Solution!
Thursday, September 18, 2008, 7-9 PM

Calif. Nurses Laud Passage of Single-Payer, SB 840, Seen as National Model for Guaranteed Healthcare for All
California Nurses Association / National Nurses Organizing Committee
The California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee today hailed the California Legislature's passage of a single-payer, expanded Medicare for all, style bill that would guarantee quality health care for all Californians -- and called it a model for the national healthcare reform debate that is sure to emerge in 2009.

For-profit health insurance has outlived its usefulness
By Oliver Fein | The Philadelphia Inquirer
The plight of the uninsured and uninsurable shows how the for-profit, private health insurance model of financing health care has outlived its usefulness. Originally conceived as a nonprofit enterprise (e.g. Blue Cross), the industry is now bent on maximizing profits by screening out the sick and minimizing claim payments.

Make U.S. healthier and wealthier
James V. Bertolone | Guest essayist | Rochester Democrat and Chronicle
This coming Labor Day, working people from coast to coast will be working for candidates who are ready to turn around our health care system, turn around our economy, turn around the decline of the middle class and turn around America.

August 27, 2008

How Long?
Remarks by Dr. Claudia Fegan at Reception at the DNC in Denver, Tuesday, August 26, 2008 for co-sponsors of HR 676
There are 45.7million uninsured people in the United States. There are probably some 50 million people who are underinsured, meaning even though they have health insurance they cannot afford the care they need. While it is true we saw a slight decrease in the number of uninsured last year, this was due to a massive expansion of public programs. Were it not for the fact that 2.7million more people were covered by public programs last year; Medicaid, SCHIP and Medicare we actually would have seen an increase in the number of uninsured. It is so clear that a public national health insurance program is no longer the best option to cover all Americans, it is the only option. The private insurance industry is never going to get us to universal coverage.

Health Care: It's time to rock
Seattle Post-IntelligencerEditorial Board
The Census Bureau reported Tuesday that the number of people lacking health insurance dropped by more than 1 million in 2007 to nearly 46 million people. This is a headline that looks great until you see that what's declining is private insurance coverage and what's increasing is the number of people eligible for government programs such as Medicaid.

August 26, 2008

Doctor's Orders: Health Coverage for Everyone
by Daina Saib | YES! Magazine
You wouldn't know it from the candidates' debates or reports on the major television networks, but a majority of Americans favor a government-run health insurance system similar to Canada's. Those lining up to support single-payer health care include medical professionals, business people, and many Republicans. Dr. Rocky White has been all of those things.

August 15, 2008

Doctor says U.S. needs universal health care
By STEVE DOYLE | Huntsville Times
Dr. Wally Retan knows the odds aren't great that Congress will pass a universal health care bill anytime soon. But the chairman of Alabama's "Health Care for Everyone" chapter still dreams of a time when all Americans have comprehensive, low-cost health insurance provided by the federal government.

August 12, 2008

Only national insurance can fix broken system
Dr. John Benziger | Letter to the Editor | Kennebec (Maine) Journal
Some claim that uninsured Americans can get the care they need in emergency rooms. But ERs may provide too little, too late for the millions of uninsured with chronic conditions. They need regular medical monitoring and medications to control their illnesses and a whole array of services they cannot afford. Our profit-driven health care system leaves tens of millions vulnerable. Only single-payer national health insurance can fix this broken system and save thousands of lives each year.

August 08, 2008

Vital signs for national health insurance
By Lance Dickie | Editorial Columnist | Seattle Times
Searing headlines about local job cuts sharpen interest in universal health-insurance coverage. The topic grabs the attention of those vulnerable families and voters broadly defined as the middle class, the engine of change. Increasingly, the focus is on national single-payer health insurance. Acceptance of the concept is growing, especially among a key constituency: doctors.

August 07, 2008

The Polling Is Quite Clear
The American Public Supports Guaranteed Healthcare on the "Medicare for All" or "Single-Payer" Model.
Click here to download the flyer from California Nurses Association / National Nurses Organizing Committee

August 06, 2008

'Single Payer New York' to be founded on Sept. 13
Albany Catholic
On Saturday, Sept. 13, single payer advocates from across New York will meet here to form a new statewide organization. Our aim: to build an unbeatable movement for a single payer public system that would fully fund comprehensive health care, including prescription drugs, for all. We invite all single-payer supporters to join us!

Uninsured Americans Carry Large Chronic Disease Burden
By John Gever | MedPage Today
Nearly one-third of uninsured Americans under age 65 reported having cardiovascular disease, diabetes, hypertension, or some other chronic condition, researchers said.

August 05, 2008

Recovering Rush seeks care for all
By Azam Ahmed | Chicago Tribune
U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.) declared himself cancer-free on Monday at the Duchossois Center for Advanced Medicine at the University of Chicago and challenged Barack Obama and John McCain to push for national health care for all Americans.

Stephanie Woolhandler shares her views on universal healthcare
Harvard Medical Labcast
Stephanie Woolhandler, an associate professor of medicine at the HMS-affiliated Cambridge Health Alliance, investigates disparities and inequalities in healthcare and medicine. In recent years, she has published studies on the relative cost and effectiveness of the Canadian healthcare system. In published editorials and on Capitol Hill, Dr. Woolhandler has argued for full-scale reform of the current system here in the U.S. Last year, she uncovered insurance shortfalls for American military veterans, and her most recent research found unexpected disparities in the way free prescription drug samples are distributed.

Many U.S. adults with chronic illness are uninsured
By Anne Harding | Reuters
"Primary care doctors know that people who don't have access to health care due to health insurance suffer," Wilper, who is now with the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle, told Reuters Health. "We wanted to study that issue and bring public attention to it."

One-Third of Uninsured Are Chronically Ill
By Amanda Gardner | HealthDay Reporter
One out of every three working-age, uninsured Americans suffers from a chronic illness and isn't getting the medical care they need, a new report shows. Although the study didn't specifically look at the health consequences of lack of insurance and lack of access to medical care, it's reasonable to assume that these factors would lead to various medical complications, said the authors of a study published in the Aug. 5 issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine.

Millions With Chronic Disease Get Little to No Treatment
By REED ABELSON | New York Times
Millions of Americans with chronic disease like diabetes or high blood pressure are not getting adequate treatment because they are among the nation's growing ranks of uninsured. That is the central finding of a new study to be published Tuesday in the medical journal Annals of Internal Medicine.

Keep Medicare as a family
By RICHARD PROPP | Albany Times Union
Dear Medicare: Happy birthday! Since I first met you on July 31, 1965, I have been smitten with your looks, your fairness, your support of the elderly without regard to social or economic status, skin color, ethnicity, intellectual IQ, emotional IQ, address, clubs, choice of transportation, hobbies, reading list, or favorite restaurant. You took care of our grandparents, our parents, and now you are taking care of us!

August 04, 2008

Seniors have a special interest in single-payer health care
By William Klepack | The Ithaca Journal
In early July, Congress passed a bill to prevent a scheduled cut in Medicare payments to doctors. Although I am pleased with the outcome of this vote, there are several reasons that senior citizens should be concerned about the political maneuvering affecting their care that surrounded this bill and be very interested in single-payer health care.

August 01, 2008

What About Single Payer?
By Drs. Edward P. Ehlinger and Susanne L. King | MetroDoctors
An increasing number of health care professionals and policy makers are claiming that a single-payer system is the only rational approach that can actually contain costs, achieve universal coverage, and maintain or improve quality. They argue that only a single-payer approach can address the economic pressure on businesses and the rising costs of health care for individuals and still be able to expand coverage to everyone. However, these statements are guaranteed to bring forth a series of questions about single payer. Here are responses to some of the questions that are frequently raised.

Make original Medicare the foundation for health care reform
By JOHN GEYMAN and MALINDA MARKOWITZ | Guest Columnist | Seattle Post Intelligencer
Medicare today covers about 43 million American seniors and the disabled, paying about one-half of their health care expenses. Amidst an increasingly unaffordable health care market, Medicare recipients have a solid rock of coverage. The program is administered with an overhead of about 3 percent, less than one-fifth the overhead of competing private programs, while offering defined benefits with free choice of physician and hospital.

July 31, 2008

Can't Get No Health Care Satisfaction
by Pat LaMarche | Bangor Daily News
A Fox News anchor said Saturday that if Mick Jagger was from the United States he'd finally qualify for Medicare. She's kidding -- right? The anchor made a pretty lame attempt at highlighting the rock star's advancing age. She did, however, do a good job of pointing out how backward the U.S. health care system is.

Julius Richmond, surgeon general under Carter, dies
By Bryan Marquard | Globe Staff
In a career that ranged from serving as a flight surgeon in the Army Air Corps during World War II to serving as surgeon general from 1977 to 1981, Dr. Richmond left few areas of medicine untouched.

They Know What's in Your Medicine Cabinet
by Chad Terhune | Business Week
That prescription you just picked up at the drugstore could hurt your chances of getting health insurance. An untold number of people have been rejected for medical coverage for a reason they never could have guessed: Insurance companies are using huge, commercially available prescription databases to screen out applicants based on their drug purchases.

July 29, 2008

Unions Back Plan that Could Kill Off Real Health Care Reform
By Kip Sullivan | Labor Notes
If Barack Obama wins the fall election, he will be under more pressure to establish universal health insurance than any president in U.S. history. This will be due not only to public disgust with the current health care system, but to the hard work of organizations dedicated to universal health insurance. But the most powerful of these groups, including the AFL-CIO and Service Employees (the major Change to Win health care union) are promoting a solution that won't fix the problem.

Uninsured left in the lurch
By LOUIS LLOVIO | Richmond Times-Dispatch
They have come by the thousands. They walk through the gates of the fairgrounds, give their most personal information to complete strangers and are ushered off for a battery of tests and procedures. An expected 3,000-plus residents of Southwest Virginia and neighboring states are here through today for one reason -- to get basic medical care they couldn't otherwise afford.

Happy Birthday Medicare
By Judy Deutsch | Guest Columnist | Sudbury Town Crier
July 30th will be Medicare’s 43rd birthday. And many people across our nation will be celebrating the event by letting their Congressional representatives know that they want to be included, too. They’ll do so be sending a birthday cake and/or card to their representatives saying, " Happy Birthday Medicare: Now It’s time for Medicare for all" or "Support HR 676."

July 28, 2008

Ethics panel may back universal coverage, ponders access as a "moral imperative"
By Kevin B. O'Reilly | AMNews staff
Steffie Woolhandler, MD, MPH, argued that the single-payer model prevails around the world in countries that provide better access to care at lower cost than the U.S. system. "I think single payer is the only morally acceptable reform choice, because it's the only effective one on the table," said Dr. Woolhandler, a primary care doctor who co-founded Physicians for a National Health Program in 1986. "If we're concerned about the 18,000 deaths a year due to uninsurance, then we are morally obligated to go with a plan that has been shown to work."

July 25, 2008

Obama's Health Plan, Dissected
Rachel Nardin | Letter to the Editor | New York Times
Barack Obama proposes to make health care affordable for all Americans with an injection of cash from the repeal of the Bush tax cuts and with savings realized from electronic health information technology and programs to improve disease prevention and chronic disease management. While better record-keeping and prevention and management programs would improve the quality of our medical system, there is little data that they would actually save money. They certainly would not do so for many years.

Let's make a health care system that aids people, not insurance companies
Dr. Daniel D. Bennett | Austin American-Statesman
If you did not already believe that our current health care financing system is rigged to benefit insurance companies over patients, then President Bush's recent veto of legislation to halt Medicare cuts to physicians should have changed your mind.

July 23, 2008

A Response to HCAN: Flawed Data, Failed Strategy
A collection of five responses to "Health Care for American Now" (HCAN) is below by authors Kip Sullivan, Ph.D., Dr. Quentin Young, Dr. Oliver Fein, PNHP co-founders Drs. David Himmelstein and Steffie Woolhandler, and Nicholas Skala.

Health-care matchup finds Ohio falls short
By David Knox | Beacon Journal staff writer
To explore how Ohio compares to the nation and the world, the Beacon Journal looked 60 miles across Lake Erie to the Canadian province of Ontario. How does Ohio measure up to its neighbor?

Testimony of Joe Bak, Ph.D. before the House Judiciary Committee
My name is Dr. Joseph Bak. I am a clinical psychologist in private practice for 25 years and therefore, also the owner of a small business. In addition, I have been actively involved in advocating for universal healthcare since the early 1990s. Most importantly, I am a consumer of healthcare services. It is from five different perspectives, that of psychologist, small business owner, taxpayer, healthcare reform advocate and patient that I strongly support the enactment of H.R. 676. I believe it is the only solution that can comprehensively and cost-effectively address what is wrong with our fatally flawed healthcare system; a system that long ago became too sick to cure.

Mayors join those lined up behind national health care
By Steve Porter | Northern Colorado Business Report
Another major group recently endorsed a federal bill that would expand the nation's Medicare system to include everyone in America in a universal health-care plan. The U.S. Mayors Conference, meeting in Miami in late June, voted for a resolution in support of HR676, also known as the United States National Health Insurance Act.

Expand successful Medicare program to all
Edith Kenna | Fort Wayne Journal Gazette
July 30 is the 43rd anniversary of the passage of Medicare. Medicare began because no one except the government was willing to cover the oldest and sickest of us. Medicare now covers 34 million Americans. Consumer ratings of Medicare remain higher than that of private insurance companies. Medicare itself remains a model of effectiveness and efficiency, publicly funded and privately delivered, operating with administrative cost between 3 percent and 5 percent. If you don’t believe that Medicare is a success, try asking those covered by Medicare, friends, parents or grandparents if they want to give it up and go back to private insurance.

July 17, 2008

Presidential foes both fall short on reforming health
By Malinda Markowitz | Lansing State Journal
If you're wondering why health care has been such a central issue of the presidential campaign this year, meet Karyn McCartney of Mason. In February, Karyn, then nine months pregnant, and her husband were hit by another car "from the passenger side where I was sitting," wrote Karyn recently to the National Nurses Organizing Committee.

Expanding healthcare, cutting costs
By Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) | The Hill
When you consider that Americans pay about twice as much or more per capita for healthcare costs and that a third of the healthcare dollar goes to administrative activities you become aware that our system is really about insurance care more than healthcare. It is a racket benefiting a few insurance companies at the expense of the health of the American people, particularly our children.

Insurance industry forming activist army
By: Chris Frates | Politico
Ahead of the approaching health care reform storm, the insurance industry is building an ark: a nationwide education campaign aimed at raising an activist army at least 100,000 strong.

Why Not the Best? Results from the National Scorecard on U.S. Health System Performance, 2008
Authors: The Commonwealth Fund Commission on a High Performance Health System
Prepared for the Commonwealth Fund Commission on a High Performance Health System, the National Scorecard on U.S. Health System Performance, 2008, updates the 2006 Scorecard, the first comprehensive means of measuring and monitoring health care outcomes, quality, access, efficiency, and equity in the United States. The 2008 Scorecard, which presents trends for each dimension of health system performance and for individual indicators, confirms that the U.S. health system continues to fall far short of what is attainable, especially given the resources invested.

July 16, 2008

Confronting the cost of health care
By Amy Kotlarz | Catholic Courier
An estimated 18,000 people in the United States die unnecessarily each year because they have no health insurance, according to the nonprofit Institute of Medicine of the National Academies. Robin Salerno is trying her best to not become one of them. But Salerno has adrenal cancer, no insurance and few options.

Dr. Steffie Woolhandler on the Presidential Candidates & Single-Payer in the 2008 Elections
Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, co-founder of Physicians for National Health Program (PNHP), a group of over 15,000 physicians nationwide who support a single-payer health care system, spoke on June 26 in Chicago at the PNHP offices. She spoke about the presidential candidates' health plans and single-payer in the 2008 elections. She is an associate professor at Harvard Medical School and an internist at Cambridge Hospital in Cambridge, Mass. The transcript below was prepared by Elizabeth Lalasz of Chicago; it was subsequently edited by Dr. Woolhandler.

The Untold Health Care Story: How They Crippled Medicare
By Lillian B. Rubin | Dissent Magazine
Until recently, my husband and I had been seeing one of those “Oh-I’m-so-glad-he’s-my-doctor” physicians for two decades. Then one day the mail brought the announcement that the office was closing its doors and that the four doctors who had been in the practice were either retiring or leaving San Francisco. They enclosed a list of doctors who, they said, had indicated they had room in their practices. So started my search for a new primary-care physician.

Response to Health Care for America Now Campaign
NY Metro Chapter, Physicians for a National Health Program
The American health care system is in deep trouble. Everyone recognizes that it needs substantial reform. For too many Americans, health care is simply unaffordable. As each year passes, millions more are added to the rolls of the uninsured and underinsured. Physicians for a National Health Program believes that only a real structural change, to a publicly-financed single payer program, can effectively address its many problems.

July 15, 2008

National Health Insurance: Could It Work in the US?
James E. Dalen, MD, MPH and Joseph S. Alpert, MD | The American Journal of Medicine
The US health care system, which depends on private, for-profit health insurance, is not working. It is time for national health insurance!

July 14, 2008

Americans down on the U.S. health-care system
By Kristen Gerencher | MarketWatch
"What Americans are upset about is the unbelievable hassle of having to select health insurance, maybe not getting it ... losing insurance when they lose their job," Reinhardt said. "The American citizen is massively insecure." Doctors and nurses routinely hear demoralizing news that U.S. medicine is inferior "when the real problem is the way we finance health care and the hassle of claiming insurance," he said.

Health care as a right is hard sell, except outside U.S.
By Wendi C. Thomas | Memphis Commercial Appeal
What is it like to be sick outside of the United States? Well, if you are among the 47 million uninsured or 25 million underinsured in America, health care in capitalist democracies such as Switzerland, Germany, Japan, Great Britain or Taiwan is decidedly better than the broken system we have here.

A system 'in the process of collapse'
By Jeoffry B. Gordon | The San Diego Union-Tribune
Daily I see patients without health insurance who have avoided care, omitted pharmaceuticals they could not afford, or had to use emergency rooms at times of true need and incurred extraordinarily huge charges. Every two or three months I see a patient literally at death's door due to illness previously unexamined due to financial fears.

July 08, 2008

"Show Me the Money": Labor and the Bottom Line of National Health Insurance
By Marie Gottschalk | Dissent Magazine
A WELL-KNOWN political scientist once declared that the definition of the alternatives is the supreme instrument of power. The simple question--single-payer or not--conceals major differences over whether to frame the health care issue primarily as an economic question or a moral one. Economic considerations are critical to propelling the cause of universal health care. But advocates of universal health care should not cast the economic competitiveness of U.S. business as the central economic issue at stake in the debate over health care reform.

Three Approaches to Health Care Reform
By Len Rodberg, PhD
What's Wrong with Approaches that Include Private Insurance?

July 07, 2008

But What Have They Done Lately?
Marcia Angell, M.D. | Wall Street Journal | Letter
Far from doing scientific innovation, the large drug companies license or otherwise acquire discoveries from universities or small biotech companies, then develop them for commercial production and sponsor the clinical research necessary for FDA approval. That's expensive, but hardly creative in the scientific sense

What About Single Payer?
BY EDWARD P. EHLINGER, M.D., MSPH, AND SUSANNE KING, M.D. | MetroDoctors
In discussions of health care reform, consensus is rapidly developing around the urgent need for universal health care coverage in the United States. There is also an almost universal understanding that this coverage is not feasible without cost containment. Given the facts that over 47 million people in the U.S. are uninsured and an even greater number are underinsured and that the percentage of the U.S. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) going to health care is over 16 percent, it's not surprising that the issues of access and cost have become priority issues in our country.

July 02, 2008

Unitarian Universalists Endorse Single-Payer Health Care
by Larry Stauber
At their annual General Assembly in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Unitarian Universalist (UU) delegates passed a resolution endorsing single payer universal health care.

The Doctors' Revolt
Roger Bybee | The American Prospect
Doctors have historically been the watchdogs of the U.S. medical system, with the American Medical Association scaring New Dealers into dropping national health coverage from the Social Security Act and then the AMA shredding Harry Truman's reform efforts in the late 1940s. But a new poll and other significant indicators suggest that doctors are turning against the health-insurance firms that increasingly dominate American health care.

June 30, 2008

Study: Most Doctors Favor National Insurance
By Parker Duncan | Southern California Physician
For advocates of true healthcare reform, spring is in full bloom. April brought two important surveys and a high-profile investigative television report, all of which were supportive of national health insurance such as a "single-payer" system. California health professional students continue to add even more voices to the chorus. Will the California Medical Association join in?

Presbyterian Church USA votes to support single payer healthcare
Last week there was a major victory at the Presbyterian Church USA General Assembly where many hundreds of commissioners from across the country met in San Jose to discuss and set church policy on a broad range of faith and justice issues. They voted 377 to 250 with 12 abstentions to support publicly financed privately delivered single payer health care.

June 27, 2008

The battle to save Medicare
Saul Friedman | Newsday
Reader Jack Wajda, 69, of Orlando, a retired AT&T executive and financial planner, identifies the single greatest problem with the American health-care system as well as anyone. He writes: "To allow private for-profit insurance companies to decide whether and what type of care we receive is incomprehensible to me."

June 26, 2008

International Health Systems for Single Payer Advocates
By Dr. Ida Hellander | PNHP Executive Director
Health care systems in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries primarily reflect three types of programs.

June 25, 2008

Single Payer "American Style"
By Robert Zarr MD, MPH, FAAP | American Academy of Pediatrics | Letters
Let's not forget that we still have 9 million children without health insurance. These 9 million children forego necessary care, and suffer unnecessarily because of it. There is no doubt that the average Canadian child has better access to primary care than his/her American counterpart. The Canadian pediatrician, with lower office overhead, either specialist or primary care, is reimbursed with fewer hassles and more timely than his/her American counterpart.

Fein Calls For Taking Profit Out Of Health
by Melinda Tuhus | New Haven Independent
This man wants to get rid of co-pays and deductibles for health insurance, which he calls "remarkably crude ways of controlling demand." He has a better idea -- health insurance for all in a system that allows private coverage with public funding.

June 24, 2008

Media Miss Bigger Picture in Healthcare Debate
By Roger Bybee | Fair & Accuracy in Reporting
In the 2008 Democratic primary campaign between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, each is offering a slightly different variant of individual mandate-based healthcare plans relying on the private insurance industry. Media coverage has magnified the slight variations while almost entirely ignoring the big picture: Both health plans are based on a model that has consistently failed to get off the ground in numerous states.

Dixon, U.S. Conference of Mayors push single-payer health coverage
by Sue Schultz Staff | Baltimore Business Journal
"By taking this action, the mayors have put, in the boldest way, single-payer national health insurance on top of the domestic agenda, squarely in the middle of the legislative and presidential election," said Dr. Quentin Young, national coordinator of Physicians for a National Health Program.

June 23, 2008

Stories That Go Nowhere Because They're Ignored
By Saul Friedman | Nieman Watchdog blog
This indifference and the resulting ignorance of the public, are haunting another issue–the prospect of single-payer, universal health care such as “Medicare for All.” Such a system is now supported by 56 percent of Americans, according to the Associated Press, and, for the first time, by 59 percent of the nation’s physicians. But you would not know that there is such a widely supported proposal awaiting congressional action, if you were reading the mainstream press accounts of a day-long health care forum staged by the Senate Finance Committee at the Library of Congress on June 16.

A Presbyterian Minister Blogs for Single Payer
by David Bos | Louisville Letter
But, to me, Its still a mystery why we have 100,000,000 who are either uninsured or underinsured with the numbers and heart-rending stories growing day by day and millions of others with insurance who are just a serious illness away from backruptcy with apparently no political voice. Just think, polls show that over 60%, perhaps 70%, of the people want a Single Payer plan. The most recent polls show that a majority of doctors favor Single Payer. There are 90+ co-sponsors of Single Payer Bill HR 676 in the House of Representatives. Labor union locals are endorsing Single Payer at a rate of several a week. How can it be that these numbers represent no real decision-making power or influence in the political realm?

The Experience of Exclusion: What Do We Do With People Like You?
By Donna Smith | Phoenix, Arizona
For those of you who have seen Michael Moore's movie, SiCKO, you know that my husband and I lost our home in South Dakota after suffering through years of healthcare related financial trauma and finding no way to hang on. We are filmed moving into our daughter's small storage room or computer room or spare office or whatever you'd like to term it. And you see our youngest son confronting us about our situation. He asks us: "What Do We Do With People Like You?"

Single payer system is path to universal care
By Bill Roy | Topeka Capital-Journal
[P]ressure is building. Some day shifting public opinion and looming personal, business, state and federal bankruptcies will make elected officials consider a single payer-universal care system, which, in one form or another, has been adopted by every other industrial democracy, many of which have healthier populations that live longer. All spend substantially less.

June 20, 2008

Taiwan: Surprising Lessons From a Small Island
By John Reichard | CQ HealthBeat Editor In the middle of May, two Taiwanese officials, Hou Sheng-Mou and Michael S. Chen, came to Washington facing a tough assignment: promote single payer health care in a city where it's widely regarded as a non-starter in the debate over revamping the U.S. system.

25 Million Americans Are 'Underinsured'
By Steven Reinberg | HealthDay
The number of American adults who had inadequate health insurance to cover their medical expenses rose 60 percent from 2003 to 2007, from 16 million to more than 25 million people.

June 19, 2008

Health Care: Go Canadian
by James Clancy, National Union of Public & General Employees | Business Week
I find Top 10 lists are a useful way to quickly distill large and complicated issues down to the bare essentials. So here are my Top 10 reasons the U.S. should adopt Canada’s single-payer health-care system.

Paying More, Getting Less
By Joel A. Harrison | Dollars and Sense magazine | May/June 2008 issue
Americans may well underestimate the degree to which they subsidize the current U.S. health care system out of their own pockets. And almost no one recognizes that even people without health insurance pay substantial sums into the system today. Not only is the money [going to health insurers] lost to health care, but it pays for a system that often makes it more difficult and complicated to receive the care we've already paid for.

Health Care, the Massachusetts Way
Alan Meyers | The New York Times | Letters
As a Massachusetts primary care physician, I dearly wish that your optimism for our state’s health care plan were well placed. My fear, however, is that any plan that does not eliminate the colossal waste of multiple competing private health insurers is doomed to failure.

A Cure for Our System
Harvey Fernbach, MD | Letters to the Editor | The Washington Post
While I welcome the heightened attention of policymakers, including Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke, to our failing health-care system, I was struck by how few real "prescriptions for change" emerged from the Senate Finance Committee’s health reform "summit" Monday.

State Assembly points the way forward on health care
Andrew D. Coates, MD | Poughkeepsie Journal
Our critics smile at us and say that national health insurance a great idea, but they add a wink, for they believe the insurance companies are simply too rich and too powerful. The not-so-subtle message: give up and prepare for compromise with the private insurance industry. Enter the New York State Assembly, not known as a den of starry-eyed idealists, with an overwhelming vote of support for single-payer health reform.

June 09, 2008

Nurses know that single-payer universal care is best solution
By MALINDA MARKOWITZ, RN, and BETH PERKINS, RN | The Tennessean
Nurses hear the pleas of patients and their families every day to fix what ails the U.S. health-care system. But in the din of the upcoming November election, it can be very difficult to hear the pleas made by the American people for genuine solutions for the pain endured by so many patients and families. Registered nurses, however, are still listening, and working to press all the candidates to take heed.

June 06, 2008

Physicians' Rx for an ailing healthcare system: an interview with Claudia Fegan.
Multinational Monitor Friday, October 1 2004 Claudia Fegan is president of Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP), which advocates a universal, comprehensive Single-Payer National Health Program. PNHP has more than 10,000 members and chapters across the United States. Fegan...

Obama's health care lite
By Froma Harrop | Syndicated Columnist | The Seattle Times
A remarkable thing just happened in the people's party. Democrats have chosen a candidate, in the year 2008, who does not have a plan for universal health coverage. Barack Obama caresses the words "universal coverage" almost hourly, but his proposal offers nothing of the kind.

June 05, 2008

National Demonstrations Against Insurance Company Denials and Rejections of Patients
Healthcare-NOW!
On June 19th, 2008, the American Health Insurance Plans (the trade group of the thousands of insurance company executives) will have their annual meeting in San Francisco. June 19th is also the national day of celebration of the emancipation from slavery for millions of Americans. Healthcare-NOW will be combining activities on both.

June 04, 2008

Dr. Paul Farmer Challenges Profit-Driven Medical System While Bringing Healthcare to Poor Communities Worldwide
Democracy Now | National Public Radio
DR. PAUL FARMER:[T]o get into the hospital, the uninsured--47 million people, maybe 50--they have to pass through an emergency room, waste time, and things happen to them there that probably shouldn’t, because they’re primary healthcare problems, they’re in an emergency room. And then again, on top of that 47 million, probably just as many Americans are poorly insured and can be thrown into destitution by serious illness. So, you know, there’s 100 million Americans who are in--are not--they don’t have health security. They don’t know that a devastating illness could not wipe out their savings or make them lose their home. They may know that. I hope they do.

June 02, 2008

Empty promises on health care
By Marie Cocco | Indy Star
Neither presumptive Republican nominee John McCain nor Democrat Barack Obama, the likely nominee of his party, has pledged to cover all of the 47 million uninsured Americans who are falling through the cracks of a system that already is at a breaking point. Neither has proposed a health-insurance plan that would make health care more fair and equitable by putting everyone in a pool in which risks are shared among those who are healthy (but might one day get sick) and those who are not. This is how insurance -- whether it be government insurance, such as Social Security, or private insurance, such as the policies we buy for automobiles -- works. With everyone in the same system, everyone shares the burden of paying as well as the benefit of coverage when it is needed.

May 29, 2008

Insurers don't like to 'share'
Dr. Susanne King | Berkshire Eagle, MA
Under pressure from Wall Street for disappointing earnings during the first quarter of 2008, CEOs from the two largest health insurance plans, United Health Group and Wellpoint, told investors last week that they would "continue to protect their (profit) margins" and "not sacrifice profitability for membership" i.e., they aren't going to hold down premium increases to keep members on their rolls.

May 27, 2008

Health care for veterans should be a priority
By Jonathan Walker | Fort Wayne Journal Gazette
If you spend much time reading the news in Fort Wayne, you would get the impression that “Veterans Don’t Deserve Health Care” reflects how we feel about our veterans. For instance, there have been numerous reports about veterans trying to maintain the inpatient services at the Fort Wayne VA Medical Center so that they don’t have to drive to Indianapolis to obtain care. And veterans are not the only ones having trouble with health care. The family members of active-duty soldiers are given an insurance plan that is so bad that it can be hard to find a doctor. I have a patient who is married to a soldier in Iraq, and she has to drive from LaGrange to Huntington to see the only primary care doctor who will accept patients on the plan.

Viewpoints: The Health Care Debate - Dr. David Himmelstein
David Himmelstein, co-founder of Physicians for a National Health Program, which advocates for a universal, single-payer national health program, and Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, talks with the Foundation's Jackie Judd about how a single payer model will lead to universal coverage, the obstacles to achieving it and the implications of such a plan on health care providers and the insurance market.

America already has several models for health-care reform
By Christine B. Helfrich | The Salt Lake Tribune
The Tribune sought to reassure us that these plans would not be a single-payer, government-financed plan but would "force insurance companies to compete on price, benefits and quality." Let's be clear, universal coverage, as discussed by the current presidential candidates and the Bennett/Wyden plan, does not mean equal coverage.

May 22, 2008

CBO Questions Savings From Digital Health-Care Records
By ANNA WILDE MATHEWS | The Wall Street Journal
Official congressional analysts dealt a blow to the prospects for broad legislation to boost information technology in the health system by taking a skeptical view of the savings that would likely result.

May 20, 2008

Doctors Without Borders: Why you can't trust medical journals anymore.
By Shannon Brownlee | Washington Monthly
Should research scientists who have financial stakes in the products they are writing about be forced to disclose those ties? To which the average person might reasonably respond, of course they should. But the more pertinent question is why scientists with financial stakes in the outcome of scientific studies are allowed anywhere near those studies, much less reviewing them in elite journals.

May 12, 2008

Is Your Kid Covered?
by Ben Elgin and Jessica Silver-Greenberg | BusinessWeek
In fall 2006, Ralph Giunta Sr. decided to buy his son Ralph Jr. a practical birthday gift: health insurance. The father, who owns a small financial-services company that lacks an insurance plan, phoned Palm Beach Community College, where his son was on the dean's list. The Lake Worth (Fla.) school recommended a policy provided by MEGA Life and Health Insurance, whose student business was acquired in late 2006 by giant UnitedHealthcare. Giunta wrote a check for $1,044 for one year. "They assured me he was well covered," he says.

Advocates asking for health coverage for all New Yorkers
By MARIA BRANDECKER | Legislative Gazette Staff Writer
Supporters of a single-payer health care system held a rally outside the Capitol in Albany last Tuesday urging state and federal leaders to ensure all Americans get coverage.

A New Health Care Plan...Physicians for national health program finds willing ears in Ithaca
By Karen Gadiel | Ithaca Times
A group of area physicians, frustrated by the limitations of providing health care to all who need it, recently formed a regional chapter of Physicians for a National Health Program, or PNHP. "We think the time has come," said Dr. John Paul Mead, doctor of internal medicine.

Let's share cost of health insurance
Jerry Frankel | Los Angeles Times | Business Letters
Except for the healthy and the wealthy, the rest of us -- not just employers -- are being pinched, if not strangled, by rising healthcare costs.

May 09, 2008

Rising insurance costs may force MDs to quit
By Saul Friedman | Gray Matters | Newsday.com
I know, everyone has a doctor story, including me. But most of today's doctors are besieged, working under great pressure from insurance companies and the corporations that own or finance their practices. They are trying to keep up with the latest devices, drugs and developments in their fields, and dealing with sick patients who can't afford all the medical care they should get.

Single-Payer Healthcare: a Reality for California?
By Julie Illi Laird | Synapse, UCSF Student Paper
As a nurse, I have seen countless examples of the devastating outcomes that result when people do not have access to care due to lack of insurance. Just last week, I visited a 35-year-old cancer patient to help her manage oxygen treatments at home. She had beaten breast cancer at age 25. However, she was a restaurant worker and did not have health insurance; consequently, once she started working again, she no longer qualified for MediCal and could no longer see a doctor to be screened for recurrence. Sadly, when the cancer did come back it was not detected until she went to the ER one night when she could no longer breathe.

May 08, 2008

Video: Who will fix America's broken health care system?
The Real News Network
[Right wing] author Regina Herzlinger and PNHP Senior Health Policy Fellow Don McCanne each take a look at how effective the proposals will be in increasing quality of health care and the number of insured.

Pariah Diplomacy
by JOEL ALBERS | Southside Pride
Proposed solutions to the health care crisis have reached a crossroads, with essentially two paths that Minnesota and the U.S. can follow. One path views health care as a market commodity, in which health care is for sale. Patients are also consumers who must shop around, compare prices and quality of care, and buy insurance. That is if you can afford it. If you cannot, you are uninsured. And therein lies the crisis.

May 07, 2008

Pushing the Single-Payer Solution
By Amy Goodman | Alternet
As the media coverage of the Democratic presidential race continues to focus on lapel pins and pastors, America is ailing. As I travel around the country, I find people are angry and motivated. Like Dr. Rocky White, a physician from a conservative, evangelical background who practices in rural Alamosa, Colo. A tall, gray-haired Westerner in black jeans, a crisp white shirt and a bolo tie, Dr. White is a leading advocate for single-payer health care. He wasn't always.

May 05, 2008

Canadian health care is better for the consumer
By Anita Watkins | Guest Column | The Ithaca Journal
As a dual United States and Canadian citizen who has experienced health care in both countries, I'd like to add some perspective to warnings against government health care modeled after the Canadian system.

May 02, 2008

Our Health Care System at the Crossroads: Single Payer or Market Reform?
By David U. Himmelstein, MD, and Steffie Woolhandler, MD, MPH | The Annals of Thoracic Surgery
Almost all agree that our health care system is dysfunctional. Forty-five million Americans have no health insurance, resulting in more than 18,000 unnecessary deaths annually according to the Institute of Medicine. Tens of millions more have inadequate coverage. Health care costs will reach $7498 per capita this year, 50% higher than in any other nation, and continue to grow rapidly. Market pressures threaten medicine's best traditions. And bureaucracy overwhelms both doctors and patients. Opinion on solutions is more divided.

May 01, 2008

National health insurance best way to ensure care for all Americans
By DAVID MCLANAHAN and DONALD MITCHELL | GUEST COLUMNIST | Seattle Post-Intelligencer
The need for meaningful health care reform remains one of the hottest topics in the public as we approach our national election. An important new study, in the prestigious Annals of Internal Medicine, reveals a growing consensus among practicing physicians that our broken health care system would be best fixed by legislation establishing national health insurance (NHI).

Missing: Single-Payer in Pennsylvania
By Trudy Lieberman | Columbia Journalism Review
The Pennsylvania primary may be over, but one of the campaign's hottest and most fiercely contested issues--whether the state on its own can reform health care and cover some portion of the uninsured--is not.

April 30, 2008

The Folly of McCain-Care
By Jonathan Cohn | The New Republic
A big problem with [McCain's] scheme, as critics like me pointed out, was that it wouldn't do much for people who were already sick. Insurance companies generally won't offer coverage directly to people with "pre-existing conditions," since they represent such bad financial risks. (It turns out people with medical problems need medical care!) So buying insurance on their own really isn't an option.

April 29, 2008

Side-by-Side Comparison of the Candidates' Positions on Health Care
Kaiser Family Foundation
This side-by-side comparison of the candidates' positions on health care was prepared by the Kaiser Family Foundation with the assistance of Health Policy Alternatives, Inc. and is based on information appearing on the candidates' websites as supplemented by information from candidate speeches, the campaign debates and news reports.

April 28, 2008

Politicians limited in health debate
Dr. Bill Davidson Jr. | North Annville | Lebanon Daily News
With health care the leading domestic issue facing our country today, one would have expected the leading presidential candidates to have presented the nation with serious, viable solutions. Unfortunately, none has been willing to look at this issue without the lens of party ideology or special-interest politics, and as a result the American people are unlikely to see any relief from soaring health-care costs, a million annual bankruptcies, 47 million uninsured and less-than-anticipated medical-quality outcomes.

The French Health Care System
by Jean-Francois Briere
The French health care system was rated the best in the world by the World Health Organization in 2001. The American health care system ranked 37th. In 2004, France spent 10.5% of its gross domestic product on health while the U.S. spent 15.4%. Again, in 2004, the last year for which figures are available, the per capita total expenditure on health in U.S. dollars was $3,464 in France but $6,096 in the U.S. Analyzing the French system might provide some ideas for a solution to the current health care crisis in America. We need to start with an understanding of how the French system works.

Doctors agree: We need single-payer health care
By LEONARD A. ZWELLING and ANA MALINOW | Houston Chronicle
We have all heard it before. The health care system in the United States is broken. We have all heard it, but when is someone going to do something about it?

April 25, 2008

U.S. must look for a health care system to cover everyone
By Robert Stone, M.D. | Bloomington Herald Times | Guest column
Nationally, the week of April 27 to May 3 is Cover the Uninsured Week. Locally, many of the 883 GE employees and their families are getting closer every day to becoming uninsured. Since World War II, access to health care in this country has been based on employer-sponsored insurance, but the percentage of workers covered by their employers peaked in 2001 at 65 percent and has been dropping ever since. The projections are that in a very few years less than half of Indiana workers will have coverage through their work.

Providing health care for all shouldn't make insurers rich
By Milton Fisk and Kay Mueller | Herald-Times | Guest column
Government subsidies and outsourcing may be good for business without always being good for the public. Medicare outsources the administration of its prescription drug program, Medicare D, to private insurers. Medicare Advantage -- Medicare C -- subsidizes managed care insurance plans for seniors choosing them. Several current presidential aspirants -- Clinton and Obama -- would subsidize the purchase of insurance for the low-income uninsured. Each of these plans offers private insurers protection against a less wasteful plan, one that does without private insurers.

April 24, 2008

Health Reform You Shouldn't Believe In
Marcia Angell | The American Prospect
For all their promise of change, Democrats are remarkably timid about changing the health-care system. The system now costs twice as much per person as those of other advanced countries and delivers worse average outcomes. It prices tens of millions of people out of health coverage altogether and limits care for countless others. Yet leading Democrats are clinging to this system, proposing to cover more people but not changing the system itself except at the margins.

April 21, 2008

An Evangelical from a Conservative Background, Dr. Rocky White is Not Your Typical Advocate for Single-Payer Healthcare
Democracy Now | NPR
While there are differences between the healthcare plans offered by Democratic presidential opponents Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, neither of them is proposing a single-payer system of national healthcare. That's despite the endorsement of precisely such a plan last December by the American College of Physicians, the largest medical specialty organization. We speak with Dr. Rocky White, a passionate, if unusual, advocate for a single-payer health insurance program. He describes himself as an evangelical from a conservative background and is on the Board of Directors of the nonprofit Health Care for All Colorado.

Public Utilities and Health Care
Greater Louisville Medical Society | President's eVoice
In this political season I cringe every time a pundit makes reference to health care reform proposals as "socialized medicine." Do you fear "socialized gas and electric?" Although there are strong advocates for a single-party payer system, none of the major presidential candidates or political parties advocates this solution. However, any physician who has experienced the changes in health care delivery systems over the past generation has to have serious doubts about free-market solutions to the problem.

April 15, 2008

Statement of Stephen Finan, Associate Director of Policy, American Cancer Society
Testimony Before the Subcommittee on Health of the House Committee on Ways and Means
I would like to share a story of a cancer patient who was insured and struggled financially because of the high cost-sharing for covered benefits. Martha, a 63 year-old retired woman, was diagnosed with Stage I breast cancer in November 2007. For her cancer treatment, Martha had surgery followed by radiation. Martha is now post-treatment, but still needs periodic follow-up visits to her oncologist to monitor for recurrence. Martha has a health insurance policy, but the policy is inadequate for her needs. For example, the insurance paid $1,000 of a $10,000 hospital bill for her surgery. Martha said she is $28,000 in medical debt due to her cancer diagnosis, and the hospital is threatening her with a collection agency. Martha lives in a state that has a medically underwritten individual insurance market, so it is unlikely she would be offered another policy. Martha beat her cancer, but now she is struggling with keeping her head above water financially.

Health Plan Payments to Lobbyists Soared in 2007, Could Grow More in 2008
By Steve Davis | Managing Editor | AIS's Health Business Daily
Health insurers collectively paid more money to lobbyists in 2007 than they did a year earlier, according to disclosure forms made available last month by the U.S. Senate's public records office.

April 14, 2008

Co-Payments Soar for Drugs With High Prices
By GINA KOLATA | The New York Times
With the new pricing system, insurers abandoned the traditional arrangement that has patients pay a fixed amount, like $10, $20 or $30 for a prescription, no matter what the drug's actual cost. Instead, they are charging patients a percentage of the cost of certain high-priced drugs, usually 20 to 33 percent, which can amount to thousands of dollars a month. The system means that the burden of expensive health care can now affect insured people, too.

April 11, 2008

Health Care Horror Stories
Paul Krugman | The New York Times
Not long ago, a young Ohio woman named Trina Bachtel, who was having health problems while pregnant, tried to get help at a local clinic. Unfortunately, she had previously sought care at the same clinic while uninsured and had a large unpaid balance. The clinic wouldn't see her again unless she paid $100 per visit -- which she didn't have. Eventually, she sought care at a hospital 30 miles away. By then, however, it was too late. Both she and the baby died.

Health Care System Profiles
Author(s): Karsten Vrangbaek, Isabelle Durand-Zaleski, Reinhard Busse, Niek Klazinga, and Anders Anell | Commonwealth Fund
The work of the Commonwealth Fund's international program highlights the valuable lessons the U.S. can learn from the health care systems in other industrialized countries. These country profiles provide overviews of the health care systems of several countries, including Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, and the U.K. Each profile includes descriptions of how each country organizes, finances, and delivers health services and highlights quality, efficiency, and cost-controlling policy initiatives and reforms

Health Policy Placebos
by DAVID U. HIMMELSTEIN & STEFFIE WOOLHANDLER | The Nation
The Democratic contenders proffer a superficially plausible reform model that has a long record of failure. Their proposals trace back to Nixon's 1971 employer mandate scheme, concocted to woo moderate Republicans away from Ted Kennedy's single-payer plan. Like mandate reforms subsequently passed (and failed) in Massachusetts (1988), Oregon (1989) and Washington (1993), Clinton's and Obama's plans would couple subsidies for the poor with a requirement that large employers foot part of the bill for employee coverage.

Medical students rally for health care
By Jesse Muhammad | Houston - FinalCall.com Rallying for affordable health care for all, hundreds of medical students from around the country recently gathered at Houston City Hall in conjunction with the American Medical Student Association’s (AMSA) 58th Annual Convention.

April 07, 2008

National health care rising in popularity
By JOHNATHON ROSS | Toledo Blade | Op-Ed
This past week, researchers at Indiana University published an important new study that reveals a growing consensus among medical professionals on a path forward. Reflecting a shift in thinking over the past five years among U.S. physicians, a solid majority of doctors, 59 percent, now support national health insurance.

An unheard majority for national health insurance
By Jess Fiedorowicz and Dennis Fiedorowicz | Guest Opinion | Iowa City Press-Citizen
The adjective "broken" has so frequently been used to describe our healthcare system as to become a cliché. Recently an important new study was published in the Annals of Internal Medicine that reveals a growing consensus among medical professionals on a path forward. A solid majority of doctors, now 59 percent, support national health insurance.

Local doctor not alone in favoring national health insurance
By JOHN BULGER | Idaho Statesman
Pocatello physician Bill Woodhouse delivers a grim prognosis on the state of health care in America. “We’re dealing with a catastrophe of the first order,” Woodhouse said. Woodhouse is not alone in his opinion. A recent study in Annals of Internal Medicine reported that a solid majority -- 59 percent -- of U.S. physicians support national health insurance.

April 04, 2008

Health care for all
Brattleboro Reformer | Editorial
Regarding health care, in a recent survey of 26,000 American workers conducted by the AFL-CIO, nearly three-quarters of the people interviewed said they feared losing their health insurance if they changed jobs. Ninety-five percent said they were unhappy with the cost of health care and 64 percent said they were unhappy with the quality of the care they received.

April 02, 2008

National health care? Even doctors want it
Editorial | Des Moines Register
Among the most powerful special interests on health care: insurance companies and physician groups. Both have opposed national health insurance that would provide coverage to all Americans similar to the way Medicare covers seniors. Well, the times they are a changin'.

Editorial: National health care? Even doctors want it
Editorial | Des Moines Register
Among the most powerful special interests on health care: insurance companies and physician groups. Both have opposed national health insurance that would provide coverage to all Americans similar to the way Medicare covers seniors. Well, the times they are a changin'.

Health care changes sought
By CATHLEEN F. CROWLEY | Albany Times Union
A majority of doctors now think the federal government should pay for health care, according to a study in Tuesday's Annals of Internal Medicine. Doctors and student doctors at Albany Medical College held a news conference on Tuesday to draw attention to the study and show support for a single-payer system.

April 01, 2008

Physician Opinion Tips in Favor of National Health Insurance
By Charles Bankhead | MedPage Today
A majority of U.S. physicians support national health insurance, according to findings from a nationwide survey.
Listen to Study Co-Author Dr. Aaron Carroll

Dr. Quentin Young, a Chicago legend, to retire
Phil Kadner | Southtown Star
Young, who is giving up his medical practice, will devote all of his energies to reforming health care. "I tell people that I will refuse to die until there is national health care," he laughed.

National health plan support up
By JULIE M. McKINNON | Toledo Blade
A 10 percent spike in the percentage of doctors supporting national insurance - to 59 percent last year from 49 percent five years earlier - shows more are ready for a system overhaul, said Toledo physician Dr. Johnathon Ross, past president of Physicians for a National Health Program. "What this means is the usual block of anti-reform is breaking up," he said. "These doctors are looking in the eyes of sick [uninsured] patients every day."

Doctor pulls for health-care cure
By TIM WILKIN | Albany Times Union
Dr. Richard Propp, formerly of Albany Medical College and active in Albany civic affairs, chairs the Capital District Alliance for Universal Health Care Inc. The group advocates on behalf of adopting a universal health care system in New York and a national single-payer system in the United States.

Health insurers are the issue
By Susanne L. King, M.D. | Berkshire Eagle, MA
Is it time for your annual health insurance renewal? Have you noticed that your premium has gone up, while the coverage you receive is less than the coverage you had last year? Have you noticed that you are paying more, but getting less; that before you can even use your insurance, you have to pay a sizable deductible; and that if you visit your doctor or buy medication, your co-payment has increased?

Majority of U.S. Doctors Back National Insurance Plan
HealthDay News | Forbes.com
"Across the board, more physicians feel that our fragmented and for-profit insurance system is obstructing good patient care, and a majority now support national insurance as the remedy," Ackermann said in a prepared statement.

Most Docs Favor National Health Insurance
by Catherine Arnst | BusinessWeek | News Analysis
Most U.S. doctors now support the idea of national health insurance, a shift from a half-decade ago, when less than half favored a national system, a new survey has found. According to a study published in the Mar. 31 issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine, 59% of the nation's physicians support federal legislation to establish national health insurance, often referred to as a single-payer system. These plans usually involve a single, federally administered fund that guarantees health-care coverage for everyone, much like Medicare currently does for seniors, and eliminates or substantially lessens the role of private insurers. In a similar survey five years ago, only 49% favored it.

Doctors support universal health care: survey
Reuters
More than half of U.S. doctors now favor switching to a national health care plan and fewer than a third oppose the idea, according to a survey published on Monday.

March 24, 2008

Universal Insurance Could Lift New Mexico
By Winthrop Quigley | Journal Staff Writer | Albuquerque Journal
Testifying before the Health Coverage for New Mexicans Committee, a team of consultants said a state-funded single-payer system would be the least expensive way to cover all of the state's 400,000 uninsured residents.

Why Not Health Care?
by Jeff Crosby | AFL-CIO Weblog
We fight and fight, but health care costs are killing us. And you can't bargain your way out of this mess. Understandably, getting the labor movement on the same page on a specific plan to fix health care is no easy task. I can't even get all the local unions in my labor council to support the same person for school committee!

March 19, 2008

Private health insurance and access to health care in the European Union
By Sarah Thomson and Elias Mossialos | Euro Observer
Private or voluntary health insurance (VHI) does not play a significant role in many health systems in the European Union (EU), either in terms of funding or as a means of gaining access to health care.

March 18, 2008

Universal health care or universal nightmare?
by Claudia Chaufan | IndyBay Media
When compared to health care systems of other wealthy economies, the American one comes out as the most expensive, the most unfair, and the worst in relevant health indices. While in other countries most health care costs are financed by individuals contributing to a system that guarantees everybody some amount of medical care, in the United States most individuals purchase a commodity in a market, a liability insurance policy (White 1995). This article explains key differences between the two systems, each based on two types of insurance, and the implications of choosing either type for achieving universal coverage.

Debate: Is Health Care a Right?
Justice Talking | National Public Radio
Host Margot Adler speaks with professors Russell Roberts and Dr. Quentin Young about whether or not Americans have a right to health care.

March 17, 2008

Doctor to prescribe cure for health care ills
By BENNETT HALL | Gazette-Times reporter
After more than 30 years of practicing medicine, Dr. Don McCanne has devoted himself to prescribing a cure for the nation’s ailing health care system: national health insurance.

March 14, 2008

Yes, We Can! Can We?
By VINCENT NAVARRO | Counterpunch
A major problem--if not the major problem--for many people living in the U.S. is the difficulty of accessing and paying for medical care when they are sick. For this reason, candidates in the presidential primaries of 2008--the Democrats more often than the Republicans--have been recounting stories about the health-related tragedies they have encountered in meetings with ordinary people around the country (an exercise conducted in the U.S. every four years, at presidential election time).

March 12, 2008

Some 241 thousand Dutch have no medical insurance
Mnistry of Health Welfare and Sport, The Netherlands
On 1 May 2006, some 241 thousand people in the Netherlands were not insured for the costs of medical care. This 1.5 percent of the Dutch population.

March 11, 2008

Single payer supporters advance their plan
By MARIA BRANDECKER | Legislative Gazette Staff Writer Citing the recent Democratic upset victory in a special Senate election and the theme of change that is central to the candidacies of the same party’s presidential primary candidates, at least one supporter of a single payer health care system sees now as an opportune time to advocate for health care reform in New York.

March 07, 2008

Opinions of New Hampshire Doctors Contrast with Presidential Candidate Plans for Healthcare Reform
The survey found that 81% of responding physicians agree healthcare should be “available to all citizens as part of the social contract, a right similar to basic education, police and fire protection”, with 94% of primary care doctors endorsing this view. Two thirds of New Hampshire doctors, including 81% of primary care clinicians, indicated they “would favor a simplified payor system in which public funds, collected through taxes, were used to pay directly for services to meet the basic healthcare needs of all citizens”. Only one third of physicians indicated support for an employer-based system or agreed that “the free market system is the best way to create a high quality, equitable, affordable and accessible healthcare system”.

February 28, 2008

"Why Not Single Payer?" Parts 1-4
Miles Mogulescu | The Huffington Post
Faster than you can say the word "Sicko" and turn around 3 times, the Democrats' promise of health care for all has gone from "Universal Medicare For All" to "Individual Insurance Mandate". In Monday's New York Times, Paul Krugman defends that reversal in an article entitled "Why Not Single Payer?"

What's wrong with individual health insurance mandates?
by Claudia Chaufan | San Francisco Bay Area Indymedia
Individual health insurance mandates have lately been hailed as the solution to the health care crisis in America. Mandates to purchase health insurance have been included in legislative proposals at the state level -- for instance, by Gov. Schwarzenegger and Speaker Nunez, in their "Health Care Security and Cost Reduction Act", or at the federal level, by Hillary Clinton in her "American Health Choice Plan". Can mandates achieve universal access to health care and control rising costs of medical care? This article explains why they can't.

'Socialized medicine' loses much of its stigma
By Susan Brink | Staff Writer | Los Angeles Times
The term "socialized medicine" may be losing its boogeyman status, according to a survey of voting-age adults. Long uttered in warnings against any sort of government involvement in healthcare, today the term has largely lost its scare power.

February 26, 2008

Bush's privatization agenda for Medicare
By LAURA S. BOYLAN | Sacramento Bee
The Bush administration is eating away at the heart of Medicare. The first assault was the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003. And the second assault is the budget that President Bush just submitted to Congress.

Mythbusting Canadian Healthcare, Part II: Debunking the Free Marketeers
By Sara Robinson | OurFuture.org
In the previous post, I looked at ten of the most common myths that get bandied about whenever Americans drag Canada into their ongoing discussions about healthcare. In this follow-up, I'd like to address a few of the larger assumptions that Americans make about health care that are contradicted by the Canadian example; and in the process offer some more general thinking (and perhaps talking) points that may be useful in the debates ahead.

February 20, 2008

Myths and Memes About Single-Payer Health Iinsurance in the United States: A Rebutal to Conservative Claims
By John P. Geyman | International Journal of Health Services
Recent years have seen the rapid growth of private think tanks within the neoconservative movement that conduct “policy research” biased to their own agenda. This article provides an evidence-based rebuttal to a 2002 report by one such think tank, the Dallas-based National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA), which was intended to discredit 20 alleged myths about single-payer national health insurance as a policy option for the United States.

A Single-Payer Health System
John Steen | The New York Times | Letter to the Editor
To be sustainable over the long term, a plan requires structural change in how health care is financed and delivered, and states simply don’t have the power to do this. Nothing less than a single-payer public system administered nationally will do so.

February 15, 2008

Asking about single-payer for Massachusetts
By Dr. Susanne King | Berkshire Eagle
I often talk with people about health care reform, advocating for single-payer health care as the only answer to problems that include 47 million uninsured people in the United States, and an even greater number of underinsured; the economic pressure on businesses; and the rising costs of health care for our country, states, towns and individuals. Here are the questions people most frequently ask.

State plan could work in Kansas
IRA STAMM | Letters to the Editor | The Capital-Journal (Kansas)
The plan is a single-payer plan and involves the state becoming the insurance company for all Kansans. It is a given that many Kansans, including myself, have reservations about turning something as important as health care over to the government. At the same time, government protects our citizens and fights our wars. It builds our highways and provides subsidies to farmers to ensure a steady supply of food. Why should health care be singled out as the one area where government shouldn't be a partner?

February 13, 2008

10 Myths About Canadian Health Care, Busted
By Sara Robinson | TomPaine.com
2008 is shaping up to be the election year that we finally get to have the Great American Healthcare Debate again. Harry and Louise are back with a vengeance. Conservatives are rumbling around the talk show circuit bellowing about the socialist threat to the (literal) American body politic. And, as usual, Canada is once again getting dragged into the fracas, shoved around by both sides as either an exemplar or a warning -- and, along the way, getting coated with the obfuscating dust of so many willful misconceptions that the actual facts about How Canada Does It are completely lost in the melee.

February 12, 2008

Doctors balk at request for data
By Lisa Girion | Los Angeles Times
The state's largest for-profit health insurer is asking California physicians to look for conditions it can use to cancel their new patients' medical coverage. Blue Cross of California is sending physicians copies of health insurance applications filled out by new patients, along with a letter advising them that the company has a right to drop members who fail to disclose "material medical history," including "pre-existing pregnancies."

Wyden's "Healthy Americans Act" is Wrong Model for Health Reform
Personal communication, Dr. Walter Tsou
The bipartisan authors of the Healthy Americans Act, Senators Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Bob Bennett (R-UT) were in Philadelphia today for a two hour session to explain their bill. Their purpose was to build public support for their bill with the goal of having most of the disagreements worked out by the time a new president takes office in January 2009. The bill depends on the "mandate" model of private insurance. The potential problems with this approach have been extensively written about by PNHP.

February 11, 2008

Medical industry plans to rate payment history
By Jason Roberson | The Dallas Morning News
Mortgage lenders aren't the only ones showing more interest in your credit score these days -- the health industry is creating its own score to judge your ability to pay.

Universal health care: Advocate discusses Pennsylvania single-payer plan
By CHRIS KELLY | The Evening Sun
Imagine a world without worrying if a doctor could see you - or if you could pay the bill. A world where all Pennsylvanians can afford health care. That's the world discussed Wednesday night by Chuck Pennachio at Gettysburg Area Democracy for America's meeting.

Universal health care: U.S. could outdo Canadians
By Elizabeth Kurczynski and Allen Chauvenet | West Virginia Gazette
As physicians who treat children with blood diseases and cancer at Women and Children's Hospital, we frequently see families with either inadequate insurance coverage or no coverage at all. These are almost always working families with one or both parents who have a steady job. These families are part of the 47 million Americans and the 322,000 in West Virginia with no health insurance coverage. Even families with "good" coverage are paying more per year with much higher co-payments and deductibles, since the cost of health insurance for a family is now over $12,000 per year.

AMA's Conflicted President
By Adam Doster | In These Times
"At best … the AMA is advocating a completely unproven method of achieving their ends and ignoring things that we know will work," says Dr. Stephanie Woolhandler, co-founder of Physicians for a National Health Program.

Hey, candidates: selling insurance no health plan
By Rose DeMoro | Guest Column | Waco Tribune
With the presidential contest closing in on Texas, voters may well wonder how to distinguish among the various candidates on health care, which -- at least on the Democratic side -- has been one of the hottest issues of debate.

Veterans are growing segment of the uninsured in America
By Dr. Rob Stone | Bloomington Herald Times
A newly published study from Harvard in the American Journal of Public Health (Himmelstein, Woolhandler, et al, December issue) adds a new sad story to the picture -- another bunch of losers -- American veterans. Almost 2 million of the uninsured are veterans, along with almost 4 million of their family members, so that one in every eight uninsured is a veteran or member of a veteran's household.

Prescription for change
By Daniel Lee | The Indianapolis Star
Dr. Rob Stone, an emergency room physician at Bloomington Hospital, has emerged as one of Indiana's most outspoken advocates for making insurance accessible to all. He is co-founder and director of Hoosiers for a Commonsense Health Plan, which contends that the current system is too profit-driven, too inefficient, and leaves too many people without affordable access to health care.

Estimated cost of state's health plan raises alarm
LEONARD RODBERG | Letters to the Editor | Boston Globe
At least 18 studies conducted since 1991, including two that examined single-payer plans for Massachusetts in 1998, have found that a single-payer plan could provide comprehensive coverage for everyone while costing less than is now being spent. Savings in insurance overhead and hospital and physician office billing costs would more than offset the cost of providing access to care for those who now don't have it.

February 08, 2008

Thankfully, there's an alternative to the AMA
By John Warner | Op-Ed | West Virginia Gazette
I HAVE written very critically of the American Medical Association, nor am I finished with my criticism. But I will report to you that there is light at the end of the tunnel. Not all physicians are enamored with the senior medical association. Today there is a younger organization, the Physicians for a National Health Program, comprising 14,000 physicians who support a plan for universal health care in America. It's about time.

February 07, 2008

Market-Based Failure -- A Second Opinion on U.S. Health Care Costs
By Robert Kuttner | The New England Journal of Medicine
Changing demographics and medical technology pose a cost challenge for every nation's system, but ours is the outlier. The extreme failure of the United States to contain medical costs results primarily from our unique, pervasive commercialization. The dominance of for-profit insurance and pharmaceutical companies, a new wave of investor-owned specialty hospitals, and profit-maximizing behavior even by nonprofit players raise costs and distort resource allocation.

Would Clinton sign a single-payer bill?
Posted by Marcella Bombardieri | Political Reporter | Boston Globe.com
In New Haven on Monday, a fourth-year Yale medical student named Liza Goldman approached us excitedly to report on a conversation she had with the New York Senator on the rope line. According to Goldman, she told Clinton, “I’m sure you know that single-payer would save billions of dollars and thousands of lives.” Clinton, Goldman says, responded in agreement but said, “It’s not politically feasible.” So Goldman offered her a hypothetical: “Would you sign it if it came across your desk?” “She said yes, and shook my hand,” Goldman said.

What Government Does Better: Health Care
Howard A. Green, MD, FACP, FAAD, FACMS | Palm Beach County Medical Society
Medicare, the government health insurance for the elderly uses only 1-2% of your dollar to achieve rates of morbidity (sickness) and mortality (death) among their patients which are identical to those of the private health insurance corporations. However, private insurance corporate bureaucracies inefficiently siphon $350 billion per year, or 20-25% of your hard earned dollars away from doctors, hospitals and patient care into the pockets of their executives, administrative employees, shareholders and politicians. The recent stock option fraud perpetrated by the CEO of United Health Care demonstrates the negligent disdain the private insurance corporations have for physicians, hospitals, health care workers and patients.

February 05, 2008

ABX1 1 favored insurers over health for all Californians
Leland Y. Yee | San Francisco Chronicle
I joined California nurses, school employees, senior groups and a number of labor unions last week in opposing the governor's flawed health-care bill, Assembly Bill X1 1. While the bill was touted as a fix to our broken health-care system, after extensive study by the Senate Health Committee and the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst's Office, it is now clear that this proposal was bad for consumers and unfairly favored insurance companies.

GHI/HIP change could hurt health care
By RICHARD PROPP | Albany Times Union
When a health insurance company seeks for-profit status, it appears it has made a decision to fundamentally change how it operates to acquire a large infusion of cash. This fundamental change will logically result in a shift from a consumer-satisfaction priority to a shareholder-satisfaction focus.

January 30, 2008

Health Care In South Africa: Medical Error
by David Adler | The New Republic
Conservative lawmakers and many business leaders are touting health savings accounts as the silver bullet to fix America's dysfunctional health care system. But, while widespread use of health savings accounts is untested here, there is a country with a decade's worth of experience with similar consumer-driven health plans: South Africa.

January 29, 2008

Ten Lessons for the Candidates from the California Healthcare Fiasco
Rose Ann DeMoro | The Huffington Post
Before the leading Democratic candidates come to California for the upcoming super Tuesday primary February 5 and spend a lot of time talking about their health plans, they might want to cast a look at the demise of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's much ballyhooed healthcare bill.

RNs Praise Courageous Vote by Senate Committee On Badly Flawed Healthcare Bill
The California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee today offered praise to the Senate Health Committee for resisting enormous pressure to pass a badly flawed healthcare bill and pledged to work with legislators, community groups, and labor for genuine healthcare reform that avoids the serious shortcomings of AB x 1.

January 28, 2008

U.S. should have Medicare for all ages
By Robert Gumbiner | Press-Telegram
There is a somewhat illogical argument being made against expanding Medicare to include all citizens and taxpayers in the U.S., which is that Social Security and Medicare are going to go broke. This argument makes no sense. For one thing, if this were true, how could the federal government keep borrowing from Social Security and Medicare? The fact is, Medicare has the money and the federal government doesn't.

Opinions of New Hampshire Physicians Contrast with Presidential Candidate Plans for Healthcare Reform
New Hampshire Medical Society
The survey found that 81% of responding physicians agree healthcare should be "available to all citizens as part of the social contract, a right similar to basic education, police and fire protection," with 94% of primary care physicians endorsing this view. Two thirds of New Hampshire physicians, including 81% of primary care clinicians, indicated they "would favor a simplified payor system in which public funds, collected through taxes, were used to pay directly for services to meet the basic healthcare needs of all citizens."

January 25, 2008

Report cards won't improve health care
By KIP SULLlIVAN | Minneapolis StarTribune
If you liked the school report cards required by President Bush's No Child Left Behind law, you're just going to love the doctor and hospital report cards that will almost certainly be recommended by the two state health care commissions -- the Health Care Access Commission and the grandly named Minnesota Health Care Transformation Task Force -- due to report in the next few weeks.

January 24, 2008

Cost of health initiative up $400m
By Alice Dembner | The Boston Globe
Spending on the [Massachusetts'] landmark health insurance initiative would rise by more than $400 million next year, representing one of the largest increases in the $28.2 billion state budget the governor proposed yesterday.

Medical Research Increased Throughout Decade of PharmaCare Reference Pricing
Media Release | The University of British Columbia
Ten years after BC PharmaCare implemented spending limits for equivalent prescription drugs -- a policy known as reference pricing -- investments in British Columbia medical research are as strong as ever and continue to increase, according to a UBC study.

Miracle Worker?
By Peter Freyne | 7 Days - Vermont's Independent Voice | Inside Track
Surprise, surprise! Rep. Topper McFaun's health-care-reform bill -- the one the powers-that-be said was absolutely, positively not coming off the committee-room wall -- is going to get two days in the spotlight next week, after all! H.304, the Vermont Hospital Security Plan, would guarantee hospital coverage for all Vermonters while cutting $60 million in annual spending. Pretty radical stuff, eh?

January 23, 2008

National Medicare is the answer, not the bogeyman
H. DAVID PRENSKY | Letter to the Editor | Palm Beach Post
The U.S. National Health Insurance Act, if enacted, would eliminate the excessive drainage of money that has nothing to do with providing care. The huge sums now going to the sales forces, advertising budgets, lobbying campaigns, shareholder dividends, and huge executive salaries and bonuses would be saved. These expenditures are the root cause of the present attempt to reduce the fees Medicare pays doctors.

Emergency Room Delays
Editorial | New York Times
The nation’s failure to provide health insurance for all Americans seems to be harming even many of those who do have good health coverage. That is one very plausible interpretation of a disturbing increase in waiting times at emergency rooms that are often clogged with uninsured patients seeking routine charity care.

January 22, 2008

Don't believe claims of America's health-care superiority
By Craig Axford | The Salt Lake Tribune
America will never solve its health-care problem so long as we insist on arguing our crisis is inferior to the crisis everywhere else and therefore our system is superior to everyone else's. One is not being unpatriotic when pointing out other nations have managed to do some things better.

January 15, 2008

Schwarzenegger-Nunez Health Proposal for California Flawed
ABX1 1 contains an individual mandate with subsidies available to a very limited group of individuals. Employees who are offered health care, no matter how minimal or unaffordable, are denied all subsidies and access to the pool.

January 14, 2008

ABX1 1: Universal health insurance without health care
by Claudia Chaufan | Indybay.org/news
The "Health Care Security and Cost Reduction Act", also known as ABX1 1, and described by New York Times reporter Kevin Sack as a "bipartisan blueprint" conceived by Republican governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and Democratic Assembly speaker Fabian Nunez to bring "near-universal coverage to the country's most populous state", will neither provide health care security nor reduce costs of medical care. This article explains why.

Countering arguments by pharmaceutical industry
JOEL A. HARRISON | San Diego Union-Tribune | Letters to the editor
As the old saying goes, a lie told often enough becomes the truth. In this case, that it cost $1 billion to develop new drugs. Over the past 20 to 30 years, the pharmaceutical industry has averaged net profits three times that of other Fortune 500 companies. It spends more on marketing and lobbying than on research, often including marketing research in its calculations.

A health care system for all, that works for all
Thomas Clairmont, M.D. & Pamela Clairmont, R.N. | Portsmouth Herald
No one likes the current system with 47 million uninsured, an equal number under-insured, 50 percent of bankruptcies related to medical debt and heartbreaking story after story in the newspapers about local citizen's problems with the health care system. So how about evidence-based governance? All you have to do is look at the systems in Canada, Britain, France and other nations to see that it is possible to devise a health care program that covers everyone the same way, without any middlemen, and where there is never any worry about being able to afford a doctor's visit or an operation.

January 10, 2008

150 rally for health care bill
By Daniel Barlow | The Barre Montpelier Times Argus
Doctors, nurses and other health professionals led a rally of more than 150 people at the Statehouse on Wednesday in support of a once under-the-radar bill that would create a "single-payer" system for covering hospital care in Vermont.

January 09, 2008

Canadian health care better and cheaper than U.S., says research
Joanne Laucius | CanWest News Service | Ottawa Citizen
Canada's health care system offers "excellent value for the money" says a British researcher who has studied preventable deaths in 19 industrialized nations.

Financial Burden of Health Care, 2001-2004
Jessica S. Banthin, Ph.D., Peter Cunningham, Ph.D., Didem M. Bernard, Ph.D. | Health Affairs
Rising health care costs, combined with slowed economic growth, have created greater financial burdens for U.S. families in recent years--and raised the likelihood that they will face problems paying bills, accumulate medical debt, and even forgo needed medical care.

Single-payer system is best option
By Tom Linnell, EdD | The Coloradoan
I am starting to see why all of us - liberals, conservatives and independents - might really like single-payer health insurance.

January 08, 2008

US has worst record of death from treatable disease
By Nicholas Timmins | Financial Times
More US patients die from diseases that could be treated by timely intervention than in any other leading industrialised country, a study by top health academics showed yesterday.

U.S. Has Most Preventable Deaths Among 19 Nations
Ellen Nolte, Ph.D., and C. Martin McKee, M.D., D.Sc. | Health Affairs
In a Commonwealth Fund-supported study comparing preventable deaths in 19 industrialized countries, researchers found that the United States placed last. While the other nations improved dramatically between the two study periods--1997–98 and 2002–03--the U.S. improved only slightly on the measure.

Add Insurance Industry to the Iowa Loss Column
Rose Ann DeMoro | The Huffington Post
As the scorecard in Iowa is tallied, add insurance companies to the loser camp along with the disgraceful, rhetorical sham that forcing individuals to buy insurance is universal healthcare.

January 07, 2008

To Our Health, in the New Year
J. Wesley Boyd | New York Times | LETTERS
Why can't the leading Democratic candidates muster the courage to propose real health reform that will save lives, time and money -- and in addition that would be the most equitable of all options -- instead of rehashing proposals that have never resulted in universal coverage and haven't done anything to rein in the costs of health care? We have single-payer armed services, fire prevention and road maintenance. Aren't we long overdue for single-payer universal health care?

Missing the Boat on Health Care?
John P. Geyman, MD | Tikkun
As we face the 2008 presidential campaigns, the stakes have never been higher for health care reform. Health care is pricing itself beyond the reach of lower-income and middle-class Americans with no cost containment yet on the horizon. Seniors with Medicare are paying much more out-of-pocket for their medical care now than when Medicare was enacted in 1965.

Advocates push new hospital care funding
By DANIEL BARLOW | Vermont Press Bureau
While legislative leaders talk about a slow expansion of Catamount Health and Gov. James Douglas eyes reforms to stem jumps in insurance premiums, a wide-reaching proposal for the health care crisis is gaining steam among advocates.

January 03, 2008

Free drug samples go to wealthy, insured
By Kim Dixon | Reuters
Insured and wealthy Americans were more likely than the poor to get billions of dollars in free drug samples distributed by pharmaceutical companies to win patient and doctor loyalty, a study released on Wednesday showed.