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 […]
New Report: How Media and Polling Company Adoption of Insurance Industry Spin Warps Democracy
H.O.P.E. Note: This post includes excerpts from the National Economic & Social Rights Initiative (NESRI) report. Find the full report here. Mainstream media and public-opinion polls commonly state that the country has a choice between government and private insurance. This portrayal is inherently biased because it invokes government control while rendering insurance companies invisible, warping […]
Corporate Media Are Here to Warn You: Medicare for All Is a Very Bad Idea
By Alan MacLeod for FAIR The race for the Democratic presidential nomination is heating up, and healthcare is a key issue up for debate. A number of high-profile candidates, including Kamala Harris, Tulsi Gabbard and Elizabeth Warren, have endorsed a Medicare for All solution to America’s healthcare problem. However, the idea is most closely associated […]
Look at These Absolutely Ordinary Americans Who Hate Medicare for All (*Cough)
By Libby Watson for Splinter News The Partnership for America’s Health Care Future is a lobbying group dedicated to fighting single-payer and even public option health plans, formed by the biggest players in the health insurance industry—pharmaceutical companies, hospitals, and health insurers, among others. We don’t know how much money they have, but one of […]
UnitedHealth stock paces Dow losers, as blow from ‘Medicare for all’ bill leaves a mark
Don’t expect a snap-back rally in the stocks even though M4A has ‘no chance’ of passing, says JPMorgan analyst By Tomi Kilgore for Market Watch The sharp selloff in managed-care stocks continued Monday, in the aftermath of the “Medicare-for-All” bill introduced last week, with UnitedHealth Group Inc. shares leading the Dow Jones Industrial Average’s losers […]
We Don’t Need Private Health Insurance
New single-payer plans don’t need to worry about carving out roles for health-care profiteers. By Adam Gaffney for The Nation Does achieving “Medicare for All” mean mostly eliminating private health insurance? Single-payer proponents say yes: After all, if a public plan provides comprehensive, no-deductible coverage for everyone, nobody would want—much less be willing pay for—duplicative […]
Establishment looks to crush liberals on Medicare for All
The coalition that fought Obamacare repeal has fragmented as the party tries to follow through on campaign promises. By Adam Cancryn for Politico The united front that helped Democrats save Obamacare just a year ago is falling apart over single-payer health care. Deep-pocketed hospital, insurance and other lobbies are plotting to crush progressives’ hopes of […]
Why Doctors Are Warming to Medicare for All
Burnout, cynicism, and endless insurance red tape. As America’s private health care system crumbles, doctors are waking up to the need for Medicare for All. By Meagan Day for Jacobin According to a poll earlier this year in the New England Journal of Medicine, a majority of American physicians say that single-payer is the best […]
The Disappearing Doctor: How Mega-Mergers Are Changing the Business of Medical Care
Big corporations — giant retailers and health insurance companies — are teaming up to become your doctor. By Reed Abelson and Julie Creswell for The New York Times Is the doctor in? In this new medical age of urgent care centers and retail clinics, that’s not a simple question. Nor does it have a simple […]