Articles of Interest

By Isaiah J. Poole | Campaign for America's Future
A new study has put a price tag on how much more the United States pays in health care costs because it has chosen not to adopt a single-payer system: $375 billion.

By Sarah Kollmorgen | The New Republic
Last summer, with Obamacare's initial troubles fading from view, The New Republic's Brian Beutler noted that certain problems with the healthcare overhaul won't ever go away because they're inherent to its architecture.

By A.W. Gaffney, M.D. | Jacobin
Has the tide of health care justice turned — in the wrong direction? Last month, Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin announced that he could no longer “responsibly support” a funding plan for his long-awaited “single-payer” plan for the state. It wasn’t long before some on the Right claimed a historic victory.

By Laura Ungar and Jayne O'Donnell | USA Today
Physician Praveen Arla is witnessing a reversal of health care fortunes: Poor, long-uninsured patients are getting Medicaid through Obamacare and finally coming to his office for care. But middle-class workers are increasingly staying away.

By Stan Gold | Sonoma County (Calif.) Gazette
In the December issue of the Gazette, we pointed out that the U.S. is No. 1 in the world in health care costs (17.3 percent of our GDP), and that the U.S. health insurance industry is a barrier to the delivery of affordable, comprehensive, health care to the American people. We also noted that “Single Payer Health Care,” aka “Expanded, Improved, Medicare for All,” is a tried and tested solution to our health care problems. It has had many decades of successful performance in a large number of the world’s industrialized democracies.

By Claudia Chaufan, M.D. | Labor Notes
Supporters of a single-payer, Medicare-for-all health care system in the U.S. were puzzled September 27 when Swiss voters rejected a reform proposal by 62 percent.

By Scott Goldberg | Chicago Sun-Times
On December 10, medical students at more than 70 schools across the country held “white coat die-ins” in response to the lack of indictments in the police killings of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., and Eric Garner in New York.

By Dave Dvorak, M.D., M.P.H. | Minnesota / ACEP Newsletter
As emergency physicians, we have chosen to work in a setting that treats all patients, regardless of their ability to pay. We deliver more uncompensated care than any other specialty. Whether you see this as honorable or unfair, it is emblematic of a long broken system.

By Philip Caper, M.D. | Bangor (Maine) Daily News
When I was a kid, I liked to play a game called “connect the dots” where I connected a series of numbered and apparently unrelated dots to reveal a picture of a person, animal or object. I still enjoy connecting dots, but now I do it with apparently unrelated observations and try and understand the picture they reveal. Here are several dots I have observed lately.