Feds and States Going After Insulin Makers for High Prices

By Sarah Jane Tribble for Kaiser Health News. Photo: Hunter Sego is flanked by his parents, Bryon and Kathy Sego, at a DePauw University football game this fall. Hunter, who is a punter and plays safety, has Type 1 diabetes. He needs four vials of insulin a month, and the price recently jumped to $487 each. […]

Division Among Democrats Over Medicare for All

By John Geyman for Truthout. The Democratic Party, as is the case with the Republican Party, has its own civil war going on as it looks to the upcoming election cycles in 2018 and 2020. Its division over how to proceed on health care shows how wide the divide is among Democrats. Democratic centrists, so […]

Future Doctors support Medicare for All

By Augie Lindmark, Vanessa Van Doren, Bryant Shuey, and Andy Hyatt in STAT News, October 25, 2017. Photo: Students for a National Health Program. Underneath a heap of hospital blankets, Stephen seemed small for a 7-year-old. His chest rose and fell rapidly, a frightening rhythm given his history of asthma. His parents stood nearby as veteran […]

Single Payer Myths: Removing People From Employer Plans

By Matt Bruenig for People’s Policy Project. Photo: Molly Adams / Flickr Critics argue that single payer has a unique problem in that it would remove people from employer-provided health plans. Krugman: A far more important consideration is minimizing disruption to the 156 million people who currently get insurance through their employers, and are largely satisfied […]

A net 3.5 million people in the United States lost health insurance this year

By Don McCanne for Quote of the Day. Gallup News October 20, 2017 U.S. Uninsured Rate Rises to 12.3% in Third Quarter By Zac Auter The percentage of U.S. adults lacking health insurance rose in the third quarter of 2017 to 12.3%, up 0.6 percentage points from the previous quarter and 1.4 points since the […]

As Washington Fails on Health Care, Keep Pushing Improved Medicare for All

By Margaret Flowers for Health Over Profit for Everyone. Photo: Michael Fleshman/flickr/cc As the White House and Congress play political football with our health care, it is critical for us to keep our eye on the goal of pushing for National Improved Medicare for All. Both the White House and Congress are taking steps to change […]

Down With the Copay

By Natalie Shure for Jacobin Magazine. We can’t eliminate the profit motive in health care without eliminating copays. In the week preceding the release of Bernie Sanders’s Medicare for All bill, the Vermont senator’s office was flooded with calls — so many, in fact, that the legislative aides on the other line often guessed callers’ […]

How Would ‘Medicare for All’ Help Health-Care Workers?

By Michelle Chen for The Nation. Photo: Nurses gather to protest health-care cuts at the National Day of Action in Los Angeles on January 15, 2017. (National Nurses United) Without robust worker protections built in to single-payer legislation, health-care workers will continue to be undervalued. If you get a check-up at any health clinic in America today, […]

‘Medicare for All’ has to be For All

By Anne Scheetz for Socialist Worker. Photo from Healthy CA. In response to “What’s the next step toward Medicare for All?”: One next step in the struggle for Medicare for all must be to organize for a fully funded, high-quality, equitable long-term program as part of Medicare for All, and that this program must respect the […]

The Ratchet Effect

By Michael Paarlberg in Jacobin Magazine. Photo from Americans United for Change. The latest failure of Senate Republicans to repeal Obamacare after repeatedly promising to do exactly that offers a basic political lesson for both sides: benefit programs create their own constituencies. This should be obvious, but many Democrats seem to be just starting to […]