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Health Care for All Philadelphia
Website: http://www.phillyhealth.org/
Media Contacts
Walter Tsou, M.D., MPH
(215) 242-6272
macman2@aol.com
Dr. Tsou is a nationally known consultant on public health and health care reform. Currently, he is on the visiting faculty of the University of Pennsylvania. He was President of the American Public Health Association in 2005. He served as Health Commissioner of Philadelphia from April 2000 to February 2002. Prior to his appointment, he was the founding Deputy Director for Personal Health Services and Medical Director of the Montgomery County (PA) Health Department from 1991-2000. Before 1991, he was the Clinical Director in the Division of Ambulatory Health Services for the Philadelphia Department of Public Health. He has extensive experience in public health and has lectured widely on public health and health disparities.
He is a founding member of the National Board of Public Health Examiners and the national board of Physicians for a National Health Program. His medical degree is from the University of Pennsylvania; his MPH is from the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health, and he has an honorary Doctorate in Medical Sciences from Drexel University.
Ana Malinow, M.D.
(713) 417-638
anamalinow@gmail.com
Ana Malinow was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina and earned a BA from the University of California at Davis and a master’s degree in Creative Writing before completing her medical education at Case Western Reserve University. She completed residency in pediatrics at Rainbow Babies and Children’s Hospital in Cleveland and practiced there as a pediatrician for 5 years, in an area where the patient to pediatrician ratio was 10,000:1.
Prior to moving to Pittsburgh, Dr. Malinow lived in Houston for 12 years. She was an associate professor of pediatrics at Baylor College of Medicine and attending physician in the Pediatric Emergency Center at the Ben Taub General Hospital, where most of her patients were uninsured. She is co-founder of Health Care for all Texas, a grassroots organization that promotes single-payer national health insurance. She is also co-founder of Doctors for Change, an organization of health care professionals that organize for improved access to health care in Houston and Harris counties. She is immediate past president of PNHP.
Tim Lachman, M.D.
(267) 294-1287
tim.lachman@tuhs.temple.edu
Dr. Lachman graduated from Antioch College with a BA in Philosophy in 1963. After attending the University of Pennsylvania, School of Medicine from 1963 to 1967, he interned at Pennsylvania Hospital. He was selected for the US Public Health Service, and was stationed for two years on the Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation in North Dakota. He was a neurology resident at the Cleveland Metropolitan General Hospital from 1970 until 1973 and a fellow in clinical neurophysiology at the Mass General Hospital from 1973 until 1975.
In 1975, he joined a private practice in the Philadelphia area. He joined the neurology faculty at Hahnemann University from 1978 to 1982, when he returned to solo private practice at Lankenau Hospital. In December, 2006 he became a full-time faculty member in the Department of Neurology at Temple University School of Medicine.
Scott Tyson, M.D.
(412) 5617541
styson@pediatricssouth.com
Dr. Scott Tyson, is the CEO of Pediatrics South. He received his training at Columbia University, and the University of Pittsburgh. Dr. Tyson completed his residency at Bellevue/Upstate and is board qualified.
William R. Davidson, Jr., M.D.
(717) 867-2492
billdavidsonjr@comcast.net
Dr. Davidson is a board certified Cardiologist who has been practicing in central Pennsylvania for nearly 30 years. After 8 years of undergraduate and medical training at the University of Virginia, he completed an Internship and Medical Residency in Baltimore. Prior to his Fellowship in Cardiology at the Hershey Medical Center, Dr. Davidson spent 3 years doing “whatever was needed” at a general hospital in rural Tanzania. The immediate past-president of the Good Samaritan Hospital, Dr. Davidson spends a lot of his spare time writing newspaper articles and giving lectures promoting Single-Payer healthcare reform.
Thomas R. Comerci, M.D.
732.221.5348
trcomerci@verizon.net
State Organizations Endorsing HR676
- Allegheny County Council, PA
- Erie, PA
- Wilkinsburg, PA
- Chester County Pennsylvania Democratic Committee
Local Unions Endorsing HR676
- AFGE Local 2028, Pittsburgh, PA
- United Electrical Workers Local 506, Erie, PA
- Independent State Store Union, Harrisburg, PA
- United Electrical Workers (UE)
- National Association of Letter Carriers Branch 84, Pittsburgh, PA
- Allegheny County Labor Council, AFL-CIO, Pittsburgh, PA
- Steelworkers Organization of Active Retirees (SOAR), Chapter 20-20, Aliquippa, PA
- Beaver-Lawrence Central Labor Council, AFL-CIO, Beaver, PA
- Pittsburgh Airman Lodge 1044, International Association of Machinists & Aerospace Workers (IAM), Pittsburgh, PA
- Greater Westmoreland County Labor Council, Greensburg, PA
- Butler County United Labor Council, Butler, PA
- Pittsburgh Chapter, Coalition of Labor Union Women (CLUW), Pittsburgh, PA
- Philadelphia Chapter, Coalition of Labor Union Women (CLUW), Philadelphia, PA
- Pennsylvania AFL-CIO, State Convention, April 6, 2006.
- District 1199P, SEIU, Harrisburg, PA
- Local 544, United Auto Workers (UAW), Fisher Body, West Mifflin, PA
- Local 668, Service Employees International Union (SEIU), Harrisburg, PA
- Local 3, Service Employees International Union (SEIU), Pittsburgh, PA
- Harrisburg Region Central Labor Council
- United Labor Council of Reading & Berks County
- Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses and Allied Professionals (PASNAP)
Pennsylvania State News
By Judith L. Albert, M.D. and Ana Malinow, M.D. | Allegheny County Medical Society Bulletin, April 2018
Supporters of expanded and improved Medicare for all favor the following: “Universal coverage for all medically necessary care – health care that is publicly financed but largely privately delivered.”
By Amanda Zhou and Kris B. Mamula | Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, November 23, 2017
When Rep. John Conyers, D-Michigan., introduced a bill in Congress in 2015 that would create a single-payer health care system, he picked up 49 co-sponsors.
By Paula L. Stillman, M.D., M.B.A. | Philadelphia Inquirer, October 16, 2017
I do not want to have to switch my health care coverage. For the past 15 years, I have had multiple spinal epidural injections to relieve my sciatic nerve pain. The injection lasts for 4-6 months and I am pain free during that interval.
Panel featuring Dr. William Davidson | WITF, Smart Talk, October 2, 2017
The Senate's third attempt to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, failed last week before the vote made it to the floor. It was the third attempt since the inauguration of Donald Trump, who campaigned with the promise to overturn the ACA.
By Richard Master | The (Allentown, Pa.) Morning Call, August 1, 2017
With all due respect to President Trump, he is wrong about the single-payer model of health insurance. Single payer — centralized public financing of a continued privately operated health system — will not "bankrupt the United States."
By Elizabeth Hakas, M.D. | Pittsburgh Post Gazette, May 21, 2017
As a person with 30 years of experience working in health care (first, as a medical assistant during college, and later, as a physician), I am very concerned about the GOP’s American Health Care Act. It will remove $880 billion in funding from Medicaid and remove the subsidies that help millions of Americans buy private health insurance.
By William R. Davidson, M.D. | The Lebanon (Penn.) Daily News, April 7, 2017
The American people were right to reject the Republican Party’s recent attempt (Trumpcare) to “repeal and replace” Obmacare because a 300-billion-dollar tax break for the richest 2% while increasing the number of uninsured would have been a giant step backward. Still, Obamacare leaves a lot to be desired and this is the time to move forward, not backward, and bring all citizens under the umbrella of an improved Medicare-for-All.
By Gene Bishop, M.D. | The Philadelphia Inquirer, Letters, Feb. 16, 2017
The nomination and confirmation of Dr. Tom Price - widely described in the media as a fierce Obamacare critic - as secretary of Health and Human Services set my physician mind to thinking how two people (Price and I) both trained as physicians, yet have come to dramatically different conclusions on what Americans want and need as patients.
By John M. Rice | Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Letters, Jan. 11, 2017
Two recent articles, “House Republicans Work to Dismantle ACA” (Jan. 5) and “Uncertainty Over the Future of Obamacare May Drive Insurers Away” (Jan. 3), have generated responses from people rightfully concerned about what the future holds for their prospects of getting or keeping “affordable” health care.
By Kay Tillow | All Unions Committee for Single Payer Health Care - HR 676, Jan. 4, 2017
The Greater Wilkes Barre Labor Council and two United Steelworkers locals in Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania, have endorsed Congressman John Conyers’ HR 676, national single payer health care legislation, Expanded and Improved Medicare for All.
By the Editorial Board | The Times-Tribune (Scranton, PA), July 29, 2016
Health insurance companies made their pitch this week to state regulators for rate increases next year, and the prospects provide bad news for consumers. Insurers seek double-digit increases on individual health insurance policies, citing their own rising costs. Discouraging examples include a 17.2 percent increase proposed by Aetna Health Inc., 25.4 percent to 48 percent advances projected by Highmark and 19.9 percent to 22.5 percent sought by Independence Blue Cross.
By Richard Master | The Morning Call (Allentown, Pa.), Letters, July 19, 2016
Reflecting on the story, "New peak for U.S. health care spending," that annual U.S. health care cost has surpassed $10,000 per person: That's an astounding figure that should wake up readers, that our health care system is eating the rest of the U.S. economy alive. Clearly, other countries of the industrialized world deal with health care more effectively.
By Tom DeLoe, Ph.D. | Gettysburg (Pa.) Times
As a business leader, you want to control your business environment as much as possible. This means controlling costs, building a good product or service, and beating the competition. There are at least four principles that you must strive to achieve in order to survive in a competitive business environment. They are efficiency, transparency, predictability, and the building of core functions. Let’s look at each of these principles, and how they relate to your business and our present health care system.
By Richard A. Lippin, M.D. | The Philadelphia Inquirer
While a single-payer system would not solve all our problems, it would bring the United States closer to other Western countries in terms of per capita costs by cutting out the middle man - insurance companies - and simplifying the process.
By Ralph Nader | The Huffington Post
Just when the prospects for single-payer or full Medicare for everyone, with free choice of doctors and hospitals, appear to be going nowhere, from Pennsylvania's Lehigh Valley comes a stirring that could go national and make single-payer a reality. Throwing down the gauntlet on the grounds of efficiency and humanness, businessman Richard Master, CEO of MCS Industries Inc., the nation's leading supplier of wall and poster frames, is bent on arousing the nation's business leaders to back single-payer - the efficient full Medicare for all - solution.
Berks Community Television (Reading, Pa.)
HARRISBURG, Pa. - A bill to create a single-payer health-care system in Pennsylvania will be introduced in the state Legislature by the end of the month.
By Richard A. Lippin, M.D. | Philadelphia Inquirer
David Sell tried his best to write a balanced article in Sunday's Inquirer ("When pharma, academia join forces"), but he wrote about a scandal of monumental proportions in American medicine that has grown worse, especially over the past two decades.
By the Editorial Board | The Delaware County Daily Times (Secane, Pa.)
As the nation marks the 50th anniversary of Medicare the discussion of expanding the program and offering universal health care is resurfacing.
By Walter Tsou, M.D. | Philadelphia Inquirer
By the early '60s, America was in the throes of the civil rights movement led by its charismatic leader, Rev. Martin Luther King. Discrimination and Jim Crow laws applied not only to bus rides and dining rooms but also to hospital wings and doctors’ waiting rooms, which often had separate curtains for blacks and whites. As it turned out, separate but equal was a failure not only in education, but in health care, too. Well before we started to measure health disparities, it was well known that minorities suffered far worse health outcomes.
By Theresa Chalich, R.N. | Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Nicholas Kristof’s commentary “Poverty: Yes, It’s About Personal Responsibility but It’s Also About the Choices We Make as a Society” (July 12 Forum) on the need for collective responsibility was written at an opportune time. This July we celebrate the 50th anniversary of Medicare. What an impact this social program has made on improving health and financial stability.
By Tom Gates, M.D. | Lancaster (Pa.) Online
I was astonished to read U.S. Rep. Joe Pitts’ criticism that Obamacare does not do enough to cover the uninsured, leaving 30 million without coverage, and that it “achieves too little at too high a cost.” Astonished, because for the last five years Pitts and his congressional colleagues have to all appearances been concerned not with covering the uninsured, but rolling back the modest progress we have made.
By Dwight Michael, M.D. | Gettysburg Times
We are five years into the Affordable Care Act (ACA), and yet we truly do not know how this very complicated bill will ultimately affect the affordability of healthcare in our country.
By Miranda Rosenberg, MS2 | Palm Beach Post
In 2004, only about 5.3 million Medicare enrollees participated in a Medicare Advantage plan. Now, that number has nearly tripled to 15.7 million. Payments to Medicare Advantage plans account for nearly a third of total Medicare spending today.
By Ana Malinow, M.D. | Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
As Americans gain more experience with the ACA, they will become disappointed when they realize that plans in the marketplace have low actuarial value and high deductibles. Narrow provider networks will prevent Americans from having choices in physicians and hospitals. Those previously satisfied with their employer-sponsored coverage will find they, too, have fewer options at greater cost. This incremental step will put billions in the pockets of insurance companies, entrenching them further in our system.
By William R. Davidson Jr., M.D. | The Patriot-News (Mechanicsburg, Pa.) Conservatives have largely distanced themselves from single-payer movements. That might be changing.
By Peter Durantine | Franklin & Marshall College News PHILADELPHIA – The Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, will not heal America’s “wasteful, fractured healthcare system,” a four-member panel of healthcare experts told a Franklin & Marshall College audience Nov. 18.
By Bruce L. Wilder, M.D. | Pittsburgh Post-Gazette In "Physicians Brace For Insurance-Induced Headaches," (Oct. 3), the writer might have pointed out that "insurance-induced headaches" are not a new phenomenon.
By Sandra Fox | Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
It is a story of the influence of the private for-profit insurance industry and its well-paid lobbyists in Washington who were able to reverse the government's decision to reduce subsidies of private so-called "Medicare Advantage" plans. Now, instead of a planned 2.2 percent reduction, subsidies will increase by 3.3 percent.
By William Davidson, M.D. | The Patriot-News (Mechanicsburg, Pa.)
Both Mr. Kusler and Ms. Turner reflect the views of our present political power structure and both leave out the only viable solution which is a publicly financed, privately delivered single-payer system.
By Chuck Pennacchio | OpEd News
A single-payer health care plan will save Pennsylvania families, businesses and tax payers $17 billion annually while providing comprehensive health care to all, according to an economic impact study released today.
By Amy Stansbury | The Evening Sun (Hanover, Pa.)
Michael has been a board-certified physician for the past 28 years and is the co-owner of the Gettysburg Family Practice. He was a strong advocate for the Affordable Care Act and now has his eyes set on a single-payer system. He is also a Republican.
By David Steil | Erie Times-News
When asked, almost all Americans will say that access to health care is of major concern to them. But access means different things to different people. For some who have chronic illnesses, it is how to pay for the continuing costs of treating the illness. That may mean paying for health care insurance and its deductibles and co-pays, or it may mean having the ability to acquire health care insurance even if cost is not an issue. For others it may mean having the ability to manage one's own health care along with their medical professionals and not having to subject themselves to the dictates of the health insurance carrier.
By Ed Grystar, Chuck Pennacchio and Tony Buba | Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
The current contract disagreement between Highmark and UPMC provides a clear example of why the free-market health care system has failed. When profit is the primary motive, patient needs get short shrift.
By JACQUELINE PALOCHKO | The Evening Sun (Hanover, Pa.)
A few years ago, Dr. Dwight Michael would have said he was not in favor of a universal health care system in Pennsylvania. He believed, like many of colleagues, that a person has the right to choose their health care provider. But the Gettysburg physician said his views changed after he saw so many of his patients face the "unfairness" of the system - especially during the economic downturn when so many lost their jobs and had no health insurance.
Health Care for All Pennsylvania | PRESS RELEASE
Medical students from Penn State, Penn, and Temple will convene a press conference on the State Capitol steps, Monday, May 3, 2010 to rally their support behind the Family and Business Healthcare Security Act (SB 400/HB 1660), a cost-saving, job-generating, outcomes-based bill that would provide comprehensive health care for all Pennsylvanians through a single risk-pool mechanism - a publicly-funded, privately-delivered healthcare system.
Pennsylvania's four BlueCross BlueShield plans have staked out different territories, effectively eliminating market competition between the Blues. One of the reasons that the reform model was based on private health plans was that market competition was supposed to bring us higher quality insurance products at lower costs. Instead, Pennsylvania is getting higher costs at whatever quality.
From Health Care for All Pennsylvania
The Pennsylvania Democratic State Committee today unanimously endorsed a resolution calling for passage of single payer healthcare, Senate Bill 400 and House Bill 1660, also known as the "Family and Business Healthcare Security Act."
I am here to share my reformed and informed belief that Senate Bill 400 is by far the best way to provide high-quality, affordable, accessible healthcare to all Pennsylvanians at a cost to practically all of us that is less than what we currently pay.