Dr. Davidson is a board certified Cardiologist who has been practicing in central Pennsylvania for nearly 30 years. After 8 years of undergraduate and medical training at the University of Virginia, he completed an Internship and Medical Residency in Baltimore. Prior to his Fellowship in Cardiology at the Hershey Medical Center, Dr. Davidson spent 3 years doing “whatever was needed” at a general hospital in rural Tanzania. The immediate past-president of the Good Samaritan Hospital, Dr. Davidson spends a lot of his spare time writing newspaper articles and giving lectures promoting Single-Payer healthcare reform.
Scott Tyson, MD
Dr. Scott Tyson, is the CEO of Pediatrics South. He received his training at Columbia University and the University of Pittsburgh. Dr. Tyson completed his residency at Bellevue/Upstate and is board qualified.
Tim Lachman, MD
Dr. Lachman graduated from Antioch College with a BA in Philosophy in 1963. After attending the University of Pennsylvania, School of Medicine from 1963 to 1967, he interned at Pennsylvania Hospital. He was selected for the US Public Health Service and was stationed for two years on the Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation in North Dakota. He was a neurology resident at the Cleveland Metropolitan General Hospital from 1970 until 1973 and a fellow in clinical neurophysiology at the Mass General Hospital from 1973 until 1975.
In 1975, he joined a private practice in the Philadelphia area. He joined the neurology faculty at Hahnemann University from 1978 to 1982, when he returned to solo private practice at Lankenau Hospital. In December 2006 he became a full-time faculty member in the Department of Neurology at Temple University School of Medicine.
Rick Staggenborg, MD
Dr. Staggenborg is a psychiatrist who most recently worked at the VA outpatient clinic in North Bend, Oregon. Before that he worked at as the Medical Director at a community mental health clinic, providing care in both cases to underserved populations. He specializes in the non-pharmacological treatment of PTSD, using a combination of individual, group and family therapies. He ran for the US Senate in 2010 with a promise to introduce a constitutional amendment to abolish corporate personhood. He sees making corporate campaign contributions illegal as the only sure path to a national single payer health system.
Currently, he is working full time for the single payer, the end of the wars and other social justice causes.
On the Mad as Hell Doctors tour, he said: “I am mad as hell that our government puts the interests of corporations above those of the People.”
Paul Hochfeld, MD
Emergency Physician
Good Samaritan Regional Medical Center, Corvallis, OR
Graduated UC San Diego School of Medicine, M.D. 1978
I’m Mad As Hell because we have a broken, non-system of health care in this country designed and implemented around profit, not people. It not only represents a health crisis, it is also a fiscal disaster that threatens the solvency of our government. Some form of Single Payer is the only solution.
Mike Huntington, MD
Dr. Huntington went to OSU then OHSU for medical school and later residency in radiation oncology. Between medical school and residency, he interned at Madigan Hospital in Tacoma, Washington, and was an Army flight surgeon for two years.
Since his retirement in 2006, he has joined with several other physicians and other activists in Corvallis to form a group whose mission is to learn and teach about the urgent need for healthcare reform.
Thomas Pretlow, MD
Dr. Pretlow is Professor in the Departments of Pathology, Oncology, Urology, and Environmental Health Sciences at the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. Since becoming Professor in the Departments of Pathology and Biochemistry at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, Dr. Pretlow has spent a year or more on the faculties at Harvard, Stanford, and Case Western Reserve. He was Visiting Professor for a year at the Dana Farber Cancer Center at Harvard.
Andrei Vermont, MD
Dr. Vermont is a Radiologist who completed his post graduate training at Johns Hopkins Medical Institution. He now practices at the Cleveland Clinic and has taught on the faculty of SUNY University Hospital, University of North Carolina, Michigan State University, and Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine.
Mary Jo Groves, MD, FAAFP
Dr. Groves received her training at Ohio University, and Ohio State University, with clinical honors in internal medicine, OB/GYN, pediatrics, and psychiatry. She is Board certified in family practice, and a Fellow, American Academy of Family Practice. She currently is the Director of Community Mercy Urgent Care in Springfield.
Alice Faryna, MD
Dr. Faryna is certified in Internal Medicine and Rheumatology. She has 40 years of experience including private practice, Neighborhood health centers, the VA. Associate Professor of Medicine at the Wright State University School of Medicine (now the Boonshoft School of Medicine) for 14 years, and 8 years as Medical Director for Medicare Part B, Ohio and West Virginia.
It’s Time for the Adults in This Nation To Talk Seriously About Medicare for All
Today, we breathe a quick sigh a relief. But we cannot celebrate a return to the failed status quo.
By Carol Paris, M.D.
Common Dreams, July 28, 2017
Hundreds of people slept overnight in cars, or camped for days in a field. They told stories of yanking out their own teeth with pliers, of reusing insulin syringes until they broke in their arm, of chronic pain so debilitating they could hardly care for their own children. At daybreak, they lined up for several more hours outside a white tent, waiting for their chance to visit a doctor. For many, this was the first health care provider they’ve seen in years.
Is this a place torn by war, famine or natural disaster? No, this charity medical clinic was last weekend in southwest Virginia, in the wealthiest country in the world, where we spend nearly three times as much money on health care as other similar countries.
And what do we get for our money? The very definition of health care rationing: 28 million Americans without insurance, and millions more insured, but avoiding treatment because of sky-high deductibles and co-pays. Compared to ten other wealthy countries, the U.S. ranks dead last for life expectancy, and access to care. We even have the lowest number of hospital beds per capita, a way that health experts measure the capacity of a nation’s health system. It’s as if our system was designed to deny care.
America does hit the top of the list in some areas. Compared to other nations, American doctors and patients waste the most hours on billing and insurance claims. We have the highest rate of infant mortality, and the highest percentage of avoidable deaths—patients who die from complications or conditions that could have been avoided with timely care.
Clearly, this system is broken. Like a cracked pipe, money gushes into our health care system but steadily leaks out. Money is siphoned into the advertising budgets of insurance companies and the army of corporate bureaucrats working to deny claims. Even more dollars are soaked up by the pockets of insurance CEOs who have collectively earned $9.8 billion since the Affordable Care Act was passed in 2010. Nearly a third of our health care dollars go to something other than health care.
President Trump recognized voters’ frustration and campaigned on a promise of more coverage, better benefits, and lower costs. We couldn’t agree more with these goals. However, instead of trying to fix our broken system, GOP leaders are acting more like toddlers, mid-tantrum, smashing our health system into smaller and smaller pieces, threatening to push even more Americans—the most vulnerable among us—through the cracks. Last night, a few Senate Republicans stood up and acted like adults, putting an end to this dangerous game.
Today, we breathe a quick sigh of relief. But we cannot celebrate a return to the status quo, a system that rations health care based on income and allows 18,000 Americans to die each year unnecessarily.
Where do we go from here?
Republicans had eight years to come up with a plan that achieves more coverage, better benefits and lower costs. Have our elected leaders simply run out of ideas?
The good news is that we already have a proven model for health financing that is popular among both patients and physicians. It provides medically-necessary care to the oldest and sickest Americans with a fraction of the overhead of private insurance. It’s called Medicare, and I can tell you as a physician that it has worked pretty darn well for more than 50 years.
Not only do we have a model, we have a bill that would expand Medicare to cover everyone and improve it to include prescriptions, dental, vision, and long-term care. It’s called H.R. 676, the Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act, a single-payer plan that would provide comprehensive care to everyone living in the U.S. The bill would yield about $500 billion annually in administrative savings while covering the 28 million currently uninsured. Medicare for all is gaining steam with a record 115 co-sponsors, a majority of House Democrats.
Now that Republican senators have finally worn themselves out, Sen. Bernie Sanders plans to file his own single-payer Medicare for all bill. Senators from both parties will be asked to choose a side: Do you support the current system of health care rationing, medical bankruptcies and unnecessary deaths; or a program proven to work both here and in every other developed country?
A majority of Americans now believe that health care is a human right, and that it is our government’s responsibility to achieve universal coverage. We’ve tried everything else except Medicare for all. What are we waiting for?
Dr. Carol Paris is a psychiatrist and president of Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP).
The obvious Obamacare replacement, but when?
The obvious Obamacare replacement has been here all along
By John Garamendi
The Sacramento Bee, July 27, 2017
The ongoing uncertainty in Congress surrounding health care legislation, and the intentional sabotage of the Affordable Care Act, is destabilizing the insurance marketplace, driving up costs, discouraging new enrollments, and making Americans worried about the future of their health care.
In the short term, Congress should shore up the Affordable Care Act with bipartisan, commonsense improvements, such as a reinsurance program to stabilize the market for high-risk policyholders, legislation to make cost-sharing reductions permanent, and government permission to negotiate for lower prescription drug prices. But in the longer term, the time is right to think about ways to make access to health care truly universal and cover those who are still left behind. By far the simplest solution is Medicare For All.
Opponents may point to the difficulties California has had in trying to implement its own state-based universal health care system. A stand-alone plan in California would somehow have to incorporate existing federal health insurance programs – an impossible task given the political realities of the Trump Administration.
But a federal Medicare for All program would face no such obstacles: It would simply use the existing Medicare infrastructure and expand it to cover everyone.
Seniors know the peace of mind that comes from having the guarantee of health insurance. Imagine if all Americans could say the same.
John Garamendi represents the 3rd congressional district in California.
***
Comment:
By Don McCanne, M.D.
As soon as John McCain joined Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski and cast the vote that defeated the Republican effort to repeal and replace Obamacare, Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer repeated McCain’s earlier plea to return to regular order and reform health care on a bipartisan basis through the usual committee process. That inevitably leads to incremental change, if any change at all, which would have only a negligible impact compared to the need that exists.
Americans previously understood the deficiencies of the Affordable Care Act, and now they have been shown that reducing a government role in oversight of the private insurance industry would never fulfill the promise by the politicians of better care at a lower cost. Americans are ready for a national health program, and that is reflected in the response of the 115 members of Congress who are cosponsoring John Conyers’ HR 676, the Expanded & Improved Medicare for All Act.
Congressman John Garamendi of California represents the enthusiasm for a federal Medicare for All as he explains in his op-ed. But he joins other members of Congress in qualifying his support by saying, “In the short term, Congress should shore up the Affordable Care Act with bipartisan, commonsense improvements.” “But in the longer term, the time is right to think about ways to make access to health care truly universal and cover those who are still left behind.” Now is not that time?
“Single payer but not now” has become the byword of the incrementalists. If we move forward with an emasculated public option or an unaffordable Medicare buy-in, the process will come to halt, likely for decades, while we “see how this works.” We do not need more policy experimentation. We know what works. Single payer, Medicare for all, or whatever you want to call it, but let’s do it now!
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