Election Articles by PNHP
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.
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.
April 22, 2008
The Discredited Magic of Competition in Private Health Insurance Markets
By Don McCanne, MD | PNHP Senior Health Policy Fellow
Those of us who contend that private insurance is an obsolete method of financing health care are not the least surprised by AHIP's statement that "many companies accepted applications for insurance that they should have refused as bad risks." AHIP's contemporary position is that private insurers should not cover individuals with significant health care needs because that drives premiums so high that they are priced out of the market. Instead they support taxpayer-funded programs to pay for the 80 percent of health care used by the 20 percent of people who have higher health care needs.
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.
April 16, 2008
"Sick Around the World"
Washington Post reporter T. R. Reid takes a look at the health care systems of the United Kingdom, Japan, Germany, Taiwan, and Switzerland, and shows how each has settled on different models that are simpler, fairer, cheaper, and include everyone. He contrasts these nations with the United States which is "unlike every other country because it maintains so many separate systems for separate classes of people."
April 11, 2008
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.
January 07, 2008
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.
December 15, 2007
I Am Not a Health Reform
By DAVID U. HIMMELSTEIN and STEFFIE WOOLHANDLER | The New York Times | Op-Ed
IN 1971, President Nixon sought to forestall single-payer national health insurance by proposing an alternative. He wanted to combine a mandate, which would require that employers cover their workers, with a Medicaid-like program for poor families, which all Americans would be able to join by paying sliding-scale premiums based on their income.
Nixon's plan, though never passed, refuses to stay dead. Now Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and Barack Obama all propose Nixon-like reforms. Their plans resemble measures that were passed and then failed in several states over the past two decades.
December 05, 2007
The Mainstream Democratic Candidates' Proposals for Universal Health Care
By Len Rodberg, PhD
The mainstream Democratic candidates for President -- John Edwards, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton -- have each put forward their proposals for "affordable quality health coverage for all." The three Democrats' proposals, while purporting to provide "universal health care", will not actually achieve this goal:
May 30, 2007
Obama's and Edward's Unhealthy Health Plans
by PNHP Executive Director Dr. Ida Hellander with PNHP National Coordinator Dr. Quentin Young
Obama's health plan, announced yesterday, is essentially the same as the Edwards' health plan, continuing reliance on the employer-based system of private health coverage that has failed America and brought the health system to the point of crisis.