By Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese for Popular Resistance. With just a week left before Congress’ budget reconciliation process ends, the Senate is once again peddling a poorly-thought out plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA). If Senators vote before the September 30 deadline, they only need 50 votes instead of the filibuster-proof 60 votes to pass ...

By Jim Kavanaugh for The Polemicist. Duplicitous Democrats are trying to sabotage single-payer, again. It’s great that more than a third of Democratic senators have signed on to co-sponsor Bernie Sanders’s Medicare-for-All bill. It’s a potentially strong bill that’s been welcomed by single-payer activist organizations like Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP) and National ...

By Tom Murphy of Associated Press in USA Today. NOTE: This is what we predicted that businesses would do after the ACA was passed as health insurance costs continued to rise – drop coverage and give their employees money to try to buy insurance on their own. I wrote about this four and a half ...

By Yves Smith for Naked Capitalism. Above photo: UPS aircraft maintenance workers and family members from Atlanta, Memphis, Dallas and Louisville protest outside a UPS store in the Buckhead neighborhood of Atlanta to keep their current level of health care benefits. COURTESY OF TEAMSTERS 2727   Yves here. If nothing else, be sure to look at the chart, ...

By Dennis Bernstein for Consortium News. Above photo: Russell Mokhiber outside the US Supreme Court. Sen. Bernie Sanders has unveiled a new single-payer healthcare plan which would provide all Americans with government-sponsored health coverage. Sanders’s plan, supported by some 16 Democrats in the Senate, calls for an overhaul of the healthcare system with what would ...

By Ben Palmquist for In These Times. Above photo: Put People First! Pennsylvania rallies on November 3, 2016 in Philadelphia, Penn. (Courtesy of Put People First! Pennsylvania) —And It’s Thanks to People’s Movements It’s up to grassroots movements to demand—and win—the healthcare system we need. As Senator Bernie Sanders introduces a bill for universal, publicly financed ...

By Mike Pappas for TruthDig. Above photo: TPP protest in front of the White House. Medical students protest the impact of trade agreements on access to medicines, the cost of health care, worker rights and the environment.   It’s time to start talking to our patients about climate change and the structural causes of disease. ...

By Maria L . La Ganga in the Miami Herald. Photo by Kyle Green. NOTE: Since we reported that Senator Sanders’ health bill will not include long term care, we have been hearing from many folks that this needs to be included, as it is in HR 676. Here are a few comments. “I believe ...

By Denis Campbell for The Guardian. Photograph: Victoria Jones/PA Stephen Hawking blames Tory politicians for damaging NHS Physicist criticises ministers over funding cuts, privatisation and pay caps before address revealing his reliance on health service “The NHS saved me. As a scientist, I must help to save it.” Stephen Hawking has accused ministers of damaging the NHS, ...

By Daniel Marans for Huffington Post. Above photo: The Baucus 8 (minus Katie Robbins) with their lawyers after a court hearing for their arrests ordered by Senator Max Baucus. Key Obamacare Architect Who Shunned Single-Payer Now Backs It. Max Baucus’ comments show how far the debate has shifted. Former Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), a fiscal ...