Articles of Interest
These articles highlight many of the health care related stories in the news--ranging from single-payer op-eds by PNHP members to reports by newspapers on corporate health care.Is Your Kid Covered? - May 12, 2008
by Ben Elgin and Jessica Silver-Greenberg | BusinessWeek
In fall 2006, Ralph Giunta Sr. decided to buy his son Ralph Jr. a practical birthday gift: health insurance. The father, who owns a small financial-services company that lacks an insurance plan, phoned Palm Beach Community College, where his son was on the dean's list. The Lake Worth (Fla.) school recommended a policy provided by MEGA Life and Health Insurance, whose student business was acquired in late 2006 by giant UnitedHealthcare. Giunta wrote a check for $1,044 for one year. "They assured me he was well covered," he says.Advocates asking for health coverage for all New Yorkers - May 12, 2008
By MARIA BRANDECKER | Legislative Gazette Staff Writer
Supporters of a single-payer health care system held a rally outside the Capitol in Albany last Tuesday urging state and federal leaders to ensure all Americans get coverage.A New Health Care Plan...Physicians for national health program finds willing ears in Ithaca - May 12, 2008
By Karen Gadiel | Ithaca Times
A group of area physicians, frustrated by the limitations of providing health care to all who need it, recently formed a regional chapter of Physicians for a National Health Program, or PNHP. "We think the time has come," said Dr. John Paul Mead, doctor of internal medicine.Let's share cost of health insurance - May 12, 2008
Jerry Frankel | Los Angeles Times | Business Letters
Except for the healthy and the wealthy, the rest of us -- not just employers -- are being pinched, if not strangled, by rising healthcare costs.Rising insurance costs may force MDs to quit - May 9, 2008
By Saul Friedman | Gray Matters | Newsday.com
I know, everyone has a doctor story, including me. But most of today's doctors are besieged, working under great pressure from insurance companies and the corporations that own or finance their practices. They are trying to keep up with the latest devices, drugs and developments in their fields, and dealing with sick patients who can't afford all the medical care they should get.Single-Payer Healthcare: a Reality for California? - May 9, 2008
By Julie Illi Laird | Synapse, UCSF Student Paper
As a nurse, I have seen countless examples of the devastating outcomes that result when people do not have access to care due to lack of insurance. Just last week, I visited a 35-year-old cancer patient to help her manage oxygen treatments at home. She had beaten breast cancer at age 25. However, she was a restaurant worker and did not have health insurance; consequently, once she started working again, she no longer qualified for MediCal and could no longer see a doctor to be screened for recurrence. Sadly, when the cancer did come back it was not detected until she went to the ER one night when she could no longer breathe.Video: Who will fix America's broken health care system? - May 8, 2008
The Real News Network
Health care scholar and author Regina Herzlinger and PNHP Senior Health Policy Fellow Don McCanne each take a look at how effective the proposals will be in increasing quality of health care and the number of insured.Pariah Diplomacy - May 8, 2008
by JOEL ALBERS | Southside Pride
Proposed solutions to the health care crisis have reached a crossroads, with essentially two paths that Minnesota and the U.S. can follow. One path views health care as a market commodity, in which health care is for sale. Patients are also consumers who must shop around, compare prices and quality of care, and buy insurance. That is if you can afford it. If you cannot, you are uninsured. And therein lies the crisis.Pushing the Single-Payer Solution - May 7, 2008
By Amy Goodman | Alternet
As the media coverage of the Democratic presidential race continues to focus on lapel pins and pastors, America is ailing. As I travel around the country, I find people are angry and motivated. Like Dr. Rocky White, a physician from a conservative, evangelical background who practices in rural Alamosa, Colo. A tall, gray-haired Westerner in black jeans, a crisp white shirt and a bolo tie, Dr. White is a leading advocate for single-payer health care. He wasn't always.Canadian health care is better for the consumer - May 5, 2008
By Anita Watkins | Guest Column | The Ithaca Journal
As a dual United States and Canadian citizen who has experienced health care in both countries, I'd like to add some perspective to warnings against government health care modeled after the Canadian system.Our Health Care System at the Crossroads: Single Payer or Market Reform? - May 2, 2008
By David U. Himmelstein, MD, and Steffie Woolhandler, MD, MPH | The Annals of Thoracic Surgery
Almost all agree that our health care system is dysfunctional. Forty-five million Americans have no health insurance, resulting in more than 18,000 unnecessary deaths annually according to the Institute of Medicine. Tens of millions more have inadequate coverage. Health care costs will reach $7498 per capita this year, 50% higher than in any other nation, and continue to grow rapidly. Market pressures threaten medicine's best traditions. And bureaucracy overwhelms both doctors and patients. Opinion on solutions is more divided.National health insurance best way to ensure care for all Americans - May 1, 2008
By DAVID MCLANAHAN and DONALD MITCHELL | GUEST COLUMNIST | Seattle Post-Intelligencer
The need for meaningful health care reform remains one of the hottest topics in the public as we approach our national election. An important new study, in the prestigious Annals of Internal Medicine, reveals a growing consensus among practicing physicians that our broken health care system would be best fixed by legislation establishing national health insurance (NHI).Missing: Single-Payer in Pennsylvania - May 1, 2008
By Trudy Lieberman | Columbia Journalism Review
The Pennsylvania primary may be over, but one of the campaign's hottest and most fiercely contested issues--whether the state on its own can reform health care and cover some portion of the uninsured--is not.The Folly of McCain-Care - April 30, 2008
By Jonathan Cohn | The New Republic
A big problem with [McCain's] scheme, as critics like me pointed out, was that it wouldn't do much for people who were already sick. Insurance companies generally won't offer coverage directly to people with "pre-existing conditions," since they represent such bad financial risks. (It turns out people with medical problems need medical care!) So buying insurance on their own really isn't an option.Side-by-Side Comparison of the Candidates' Positions on Health Care - April 29, 2008
Kaiser Family Foundation
This side-by-side comparison of the candidates' positions on health care was prepared by the Kaiser Family Foundation with the assistance of Health Policy Alternatives, Inc. and is based on information appearing on the candidates' websites as supplemented by information from candidate speeches, the campaign debates and news reports.Politicians limited in health debate - April 28, 2008
Dr. Bill Davidson Jr. | North Annville | Lebanon Daily News
With health care the leading domestic issue facing our country today, one would have expected the leading presidential candidates to have presented the nation with serious, viable solutions. Unfortunately, none has been willing to look at this issue without the lens of party ideology or special-interest politics, and as a result the American people are unlikely to see any relief from soaring health-care costs, a million annual bankruptcies, 47 million uninsured and less-than-anticipated medical-quality outcomes.The French Health Care System - April 28, 2008
by Jean-Francois Briere
The French health care system was rated the best in the world by the World Health Organization in 2001. The American health care system ranked 37th. In 2004, France spent 10.5% of its gross domestic product on health while the U.S. spent 15.4%. Again, in 2004, the last year for which figures are available, the per capita total expenditure on health in U.S. dollars was $3,464 in France but $6,096 in the U.S. Analyzing the French system might provide some ideas for a solution to the current health care crisis in America. We need to start with an understanding of how the French system works.Doctors agree: We need single-payer health care - April 28, 2008
By LEONARD A. ZWELLING and ANA MALINOW | Houston Chronicle
We have all heard it before. The health care system in the United States is broken. We have all heard it, but when is someone going to do something about it?U.S. must look for a health care system to cover everyone - April 25, 2008
By Robert Stone, M.D. | Bloomington Herald Times | Guest column
Nationally, the week of April 27 to May 3 is Cover the Uninsured Week. Locally, many of the 883 GE employees and their families are getting closer every day to becoming uninsured. Since World War II, access to health care in this country has been based on employer-sponsored insurance, but the percentage of workers covered by their employers peaked in 2001 at 65 percent and has been dropping ever since. The projections are that in a very few years less than half of Indiana workers will have coverage through their work.Providing health care for all shouldn't make insurers rich - April 25, 2008
By Milton Fisk and Kay Mueller | Herald-Times | Guest column
Government subsidies and outsourcing may be good for business without always being good for the public. Medicare outsources the administration of its prescription drug program, Medicare D, to private insurers. Medicare Advantage -- Medicare C -- subsidizes managed care insurance plans for seniors choosing them. Several current presidential aspirants -- Clinton and Obama -- would subsidize the purchase of insurance for the low-income uninsured. Each of these plans offers private insurers protection against a less wasteful plan, one that does without private insurers.