By Roger Bybee
In These Times, December 7, 2011

Healthcare reform in the shape of the 2010 Affordable Care Act (aka “Obamacare”) was supposed to relieve working Americans of the burdens of rising healthcare costs as they struggle to survive the jobless recovery.

Instead, working Americans are being confronted with the emergence of a new stage in America’s downward slide on healthcare. “‘Unaffordable under-insurance’ is rapidly becoming the new standard in the United States,” Dr. Don McCanne, senior health policy fellow for Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP), told In These Times.

For McCanne and fellow health professionals in PNHP, the downward spiral in healthcare will finally end only with the United States installing a Canadian-style “Medicare for all” single-payer system that puts a halt to the machinations of for-profit insurers.

http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/12348/health_reform_runs_into_unaffordable_under-insurance

Comment: 

By Don McCanne, MD

This brief article from In These Times, available at the link above, explains how the Affordable Care Act is bringing us a new national standard of “unaffordable under-insurance.” It’s not simply that we can do better, we have to do better.

Health Reform Devolves Into ‘Unaffordable Under-Insurance’

By Roger Bybee
In These Times, December 7, 2011

Healthcare reform in the shape of the 2010 Affordable Care Act (aka “Obamacare”) was supposed to relieve working Americans of the burdens of rising healthcare costs as they struggle to survive the jobless recovery.

Instead, working Americans are being confronted with the emergence of a new stage in America’s downward slide on healthcare. “‘Unaffordable under-insurance’ is rapidly becoming the new standard in the United States,” Dr. Don McCanne, senior health policy fellow for Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP), told In These Times.

For McCanne and fellow health professionals in PNHP, the downward spiral in healthcare will finally end only with the United States installing a Canadian-style “Medicare for all” single-payer system that puts a halt to the machinations of for-profit insurers.

http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/12348/health_reform_runs_into_unaffordable_under-insurance

This brief article from In These Times, available at the link above, explains how the Affordable Care Act is bringing us a new national standard of “unaffordable under-insurance.” It’s not simply that we can do better, we have to do better.