Articles of Interest
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'.
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 wh