Two med students make case for single-payer health care
By Scott Swartz and Bradley Heinz for San Francisco Chronicle The most difficult part of our first year of medical school wasn’t memorizing anatomy or mastering the patient interview, but seeing firsthand how broken our current health care system is. We pay twice as much as other wealthy nations for health care, but receive some […]
Medicare for all: fears and facts
By Drs. James G. Kahn and Elliot Marseille for The Hill Each candidate has their own way to fix what ails health insurance. Everyone claimed “Medicare” at the heart of their strategy. Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) urged sweeping reform, while former Vice President Joe Biden and others advocated tinkering at […]
How Single Payer Captured Me in Canada
Above photo: Tommy Douglas, Canada’s “Father of Medicare.” From Sojourners. By Jean Swanson My dad poked his head into my room. “Canada is a nice country,” he said. “But watch out for Saskatchewan, they have socialized medicine.” It was about 1959. I was an Oregon teenager studying Canada in school. Fast forward 8 years later. […]
What Medicare For All Would Have Meant A Decade Ago
Imagine if a new generation could experience guaranteed care, with quality not determined by wealth or income, but instead delivered as the human right it should be. By Jarod Facundo for Inequality.org For years my aunt Sylvia knew something was wrong. She told doctors she was experiencing pain, but they shrugged it off as age-related. […]
Health insurance companies are useless. Get rid of them
By Michael Hiltzik for Los Angeles Times The most perplexing aspect of our current debate over healthcare and health coverage is the notion that Americans love their health insurance companies. This bizarre idea surfaced most recently in the hand-wringing over proposals to do away with private coverage advocated by some of the candidates for the […]
How slick consulting firms get us on drugs
By Martha Rosenberg for Intrepid Report Ninety-one people a day die from opioids and 1,000 visit ERs in the US, according to the CDC. How did opioid makers get such a deathly grip on the US population? Recently, the New York Times reported that the global consulting firm McKinsey & Company had a big hand […]
‘Our System Kills People’: 27-Year-Old Diabetic Man Latest to Die in US Amid Skyrocketing Cost of Insulin
“This is policy murder: Josh Wilkerson is dead because pharmaceutical companies sought to profit from his illness and federal regulators did nothing.” By Julia Conley for Common Dreams The latest reports of a young diabetic American’s death due to a lack of affordable insulin were met with outrage on Wednesday from Medicare for All advocates, […]
Support for Medicare for All Jumps When Right-Wing Talking Points Are Countered With Strong Progressive Response: Poll
“We can win this battle and guarantee health care as a human right, but we need a nominee who is going to fight hard for Medicare for All.” By Jake Johnson for Common Dreams A survey released Wednesday found that right-wing talking points against Medicare for All lose their effectiveness when met with a clear […]
The transformative potential of single-payer
An excerpt from Timothy Faust’s ‘Health Justice Now: Single Payer and What Comes Next.’ By Timothy Faust for The Outline Our highways are crumbling. Our trains, where they exist, are failing. Our sewer systems are disintegrating. So, too, is the health infrastructure of America. Under decades of for-profit domination, it has healed only some of […]
As Democrats Debate Single Payer, Humana’s Medicare Advantage Enrollment Soars
H.O.P.E. NOTE: As we advocate for National Improved Medicare for All, we must be aware that private health insurers are increasing their presence in Medicare through the so-called Medicare Advantage plans. We must be clear that we are advocating for a public system that excludes private insurance plans from covering what the system covers. No […]