Articles of Interest

By Kay Tillow | Firedoglake
The Affordable Care Act (ACA) of 2010, also known as Obamacare, presents challenges to the multiemployer plans through which some unions bargain collectively to provide health care insurance for their members. These plans, often called Taft-Hartley plans, currently cover about 26 million workers, families, and retirees. Unless there is a major regulatory change made by Health and Human Services, these union negotiated plans will be struck a harsh blow once the exchanges go into effect in 2014.

By Chuck Thompson | PhillyBurbs.com
Nearly two years ago, I turned 65 and signed up for Medicare. I was actually dreading this move as one often fears change, particularly when it relates to health care plans. For nearly 16 years, my wife and I operated our own consulting company and paid in excess of $14,000 a year in health care premiums.

By J. Wesley Boyd, M.D., Ph.D. | Psychology Today
My colleagues and I recently tabulated how long psychiatric patients who were deemed in need of inpatient admission -- overwhelmingly because of suicidal thoughts or plans -- stayed in the emergency department prior to being hospitalized, as well as the amount of time that the emergency department psychiatrists spent obtaining authorization from the patient’s insurer.

By Marc H. Lavietes, M.D. | The New York Times
Ross Douthat’s statement that liberals “remain wedded to the dream of a health care bureaucracy that pays” is disingenuous. Obamacare will provide greater access to health care but will neither diminish health care costs nor provide universal care. Progressive physicians favor a single-payer health plan serving as an insurance fund, leaving physicians free to organize their own practices and patients free to choose their physicians.

By Gerald Friedman | All Unions Committee for Single Payer Health Care--HR 676
America’s health care system is collapsing, and we can blame the economics profession.

By Andrew D. Coates, M.D., F.A.C.P. | WAMC Northeast Public Radio
Last week I had the privilege to visit West Virginia. I’ve been there before. My first impressions, made years ago, returned. If our everyday consciousness results from our everyday experience, it must be intense to live in West Virginia. There the phrase “king coal” leapt to mind at every turn.

Mississippi Public Broadcasting Radio
PNHP note: The following is an unofficial transcript of an interview that took place in the studios of Mississippi Public Broadcasting in Jackson, Miss., on April 19.

By Andrew D. Coates, M.D. | WAMC Northeast Public Radio
Many years back during my residency training, on my first overnight as the senior admitting resident, I got a call from an emergency physician at a tiny rural hospital. Her patient had pulmonary emboli -- blood clots to arteries of the lungs. She proposed to transfer the patient to our hospital, where closer monitoring would be available.

By the Editorial Board. | The Charleston (W.Va.) Gazette
If you think health care should be available to all Americans as a human right, you may be interested in a free public forum tonight at the University of Charleston.