I just returned from the annual conference of the National Health Care for the Homeless Council, where the link between medical bankruptcy and homelessness was made more clear than ever.
Which raises the question: Will the health reform we get end the “Only in America” phenomenon of medical bankruptcy? Just asking….
I am not usually the one […]

By Ryan McIntyre
Dr. Donald J. Palmisano, a past president of the American Medical Association, recently wrote that our country’s health care system “the finest in the world” and went on to say how a publicly financed health care system could ruin what has been built. He cites such potential horrors as long waits for specialists, […]

Katie Robbins thinks the fight for universal healthcare is so important she is willing to put her butt on the line.
An organizer with Healthcare-NOW!, Robbins is helping to ratchet up protests to push Congress to establish a single-payer healthcare system.
As part of the campaign, Robbins and others are donning hospital gowns and shiny plastic buttocks […]

Now that we have a new president espousing health care reform and a Democratic majority in both houses of Congress, isn’t this a time to be excited and optimistic for long-overdue reform? Much as we would like to say “Of course!”, we cannot. The “reform” effort is already way off the track, despite the hype […]

Illness brings financial ruin and severe and avoidable hardship to millions of families here in the wealthiest nation on earth. Of all bankruptcies in 2007, 62% were precipitated by illness.
Of those bankrupted by medical costs, 4 out of 5 started out with health insurance, according to a study just released by the American […]

The following remarks were presented to the Congressional Progressive Caucus on June 4.
By Nick Skala
Today the Congressional Progressive Caucus faces a choice. That choice is whether Members should maintain their unflinching support for single-payer, or to accede to intense political pressure to support the plan currently being developed in Congress under the direction of President […]

by Kip Sullivan
President Obama and Democratic congressional leaders are playing a dangerous game with health care reform. They are raising the public’s expectations sky high before figuring out how to meet those expectations. They are promising to give us the moon – significant cuts in health care costs and universal coverage or something close to […]

In the United States, medical bankruptcy is very real, it is common, and it impacts primarily the insured middle class. And Congress is going to fix it with more of the same broken financing system?

Jim Mitchiner from PNHP Michigan arranged for me to speak to the House of Delegates at the annual meeting of the Michigan State Medical Society this April. There I met David Share, a physician working for Blue Cross of Michigan, which is still an independent non-profit insurance company like all the Blues were less than 20 years ago. They can’t turn down anyone with a pre-existing condition. Their board is made up of consumers and providers whose average annual compensation is under $50 thousand a year, compared with over $300 thousand per year on the WellPoint board. They support 42 free clinics throughout the state. It’s what the Blue Cross brand used to stand for. The idea of calling for WellPoint to re-mutualize was born.

The Democratic National Committee (DNC), at its Organizing for America website, barackobama.com, has initiated nationally coordinated local events in June, the “Health Care Organizing Kickoff.”
Organizers will call local contacts using an “Invite Call Script:”
“For decades, health care reform has been blocked by special interest lobbying and political point-scoring in Washington. We’re doing everything we […]