Health Insurance Costs Surpass $20,000 Per Year, Hitting a Record
Ever-rising premiums have pushed some to drop coverage By John Tozzi for Bloomberg The cost of family health coverage in the U.S. now tops $20,000, an annual survey of employers found, a record high that has pushed an increasing number of American workers into plans that cover less or cost more, or force them out of the insurance […]
Progressives Say GM’s Decision to Cut Off Employee Health Insurance ‘Yet Another Reason Why We Need Medicare for All’
Under a single-payer system, said one Medicare for All advocate, employers would no longer have “tons of leverage because workers are desperate to keep their benefit.” By Jake Johnson for Common Dreams General Motors’ decision Tuesday to stop paying healthcare premiums for nearly 50,000 of the company’s striking workers offered a powerful case for why […]
Medicare for All Would Cut Poverty by Over 20 Percent
By Matt Bruenig for People’s Policy Project The Census released its annual income, poverty, and health insurance statistics earlier this week. The summary report shows that 8 million of the nation’s 42.5 million poor people would not be poor if they did not have to pay medical out-of-pocket (MOOP) expenses like deductibles, copays, coinsurance, and […]
Almost 2 Million More Americans Uninsured in 2018, U.S. Says
By John Tozzi for Bloomberg The number of Americans without health insurance increased by almost 2 million people in 2018, according to new data released by the U.S. Census Bureau Tuesday. The increase in the rate of uninsured, from 7.9% in 2017 to 8.5% last year, is particularly remarkable given the falling unemployment rate during […]
UVA Suspends Medical Lawsuits In Wake Of KHN Investigation
By Jay Hancock and Carmen Heredia Rodriguez for Kaiser Health News CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — Under pressure after Kaiser Health News reported Monday that it sues thousands of patients a year and sends many into bankruptcy, University of Virginia Health System suspended about a dozen patient lawsuits Thursday and said it will announce changes to its […]
Medicare for All might raise taxes but still save individuals money
By Tami Luhby for CNN The cost of Sen. Bernie Sanders’ “Medicare for All” national health insurance plan prompted a heated argument between the senator and former Vice President Joe Biden, who supports building on the Affordable Care Act, at Thursday’s Democratic presidential debate. Biden hammered Sanders, saying America can’t afford the roughly $30 trillion […]
The Dialysis Duopoly Spends Big to Protect Profits in California
A scam to get patients to switch from Medicare to private insurance for dialysis care is being threatened by a bill in the Golden State. DaVita and Fresenius, the dialysis giants, have placed enormous funds into opposing it. By Alexander Sammon for The American Prospect Two companies dominate the American outpatient kidney dialysis market: Denver-based […]
Medicare for All would improve outcomes, reduce costs
By Andrew Huston for Herald Tribune It is time that we transition to a health-care system that assures coverage of every man, woman and child in this nation while controlling costs. The central goals of Medicare for All are to significantly improve health outcomes for U.S. residents while also forming effective cost controls. An economic […]
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 […]
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 […]