Des Moines Register, April 16, 2018
Andie Dominick, an editorial writer at the Des Moines Register, on Monday won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing for a selection of Iowa-focused editorials criticizing policies that restrict access to health care.
The Pulitzer Prize citation states that Dominick won “for examining in a clear, indignant voice, free of cliché or sentimentality, the damaging consequences for poor Iowa residents of privatizing the state’s administration of Medicaid.”
The Register invited Iowans to share the experiences they have had with Medicaid under privatized management, which allowed Dominick to put a human face on denials of care, loss of access to services, and providers going out of business because they were not being reimbursed by for-profit insurers.
Dominick called health care “a passion of mine” and said she was honored to be recognized for her work on such an important topic.
“It’s such an honor to be recognized for the whole paper’s work on Medicaid and ensuring Iowans have access to health care,” Dominick said. “And we’ll continue to work to make Iowa a better place to live.”
(The article includes links to nine editorials such as, “Branstad’s private Medicaid ‘success’ that wasn’t” and “Privatized Medicaid is worst prank ever.”)
https://www.desmoinesregister.com…
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The Register’s Editorial: Why tie insurance to jobs?
Des Moines Register, August 27, 2013
Employer-based health insurance creates problems for workers. They are at the mercy of their company when it comes to which plans are available.
In some ways, the health reform law addresses some of these problems.
Yet the Affordable Care Act is built on a broken system. As the Register’s editorial board wrote for years prior to the passage of the health law in 2010, this country needs a single-payer health care system with coverage facilitated by the government. Similar to Medicare, everyone could contribute through taxation and everyone would be covered. Instead of such a change, Congress cemented in place the practice of tying health insurance to jobs by requiring many companies to offer it.
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Comment:
By Don McCanne, M.D.
The editorial staff of the Des Moines Register has long been a leader in advocating for health care justice, having supported repeatedly a single payer health care system for the United States. Although the Pulitzer Prize committee in the past has failed to recognize the significance of the single payer editorials, at least they now acknowledge the importance of health care justice by granting their Prize to editorial writer Andie Dominick “for examining in a clear, indignant voice, free of cliché or sentimentality, the damaging consequences for poor Iowa residents of privatizing the state’s administration of Medicaid.”
We can make it our job to remind the nation that the solution advocated by the Pulitzer Prize winning editorial team of the Des Moines Register is “a single-payer health care system with coverage facilitated by the government, similar to Medicare.”
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