Subscribe to Dollars & Sense magazine. Recent articles related to the financial crisis. More Sit-Ins for Single-Payer, Thurs. Dec. 10thThe Mobilization for Health Care for All, about which we have blogged several times, is having another Day of Action for single-payer this Thursday, December 10th, on the occasion of International Human Rights Day. I hope some regular D&S blog visitors can participate in these sit-ins! Here is the Mobilization's press release:We are making the point that health care is a human right—that means everyone should have access to health care. This is not just a nebulous right, but a life and death issue. We all know that 45,000 people die in the United States because of lack of access to health care. And, we know that more than a million have gone bankrupt due to health care problems. If we met the human rights standard of providing health care to all then these problems would diminish greatly. These Mobilization actions will urge support for Sen. Bernie Sanders' single-payer amendment. And, we are also telling the senate to allow states to put in place a state-level single payer system. We know improved Medicare for All is the solution to the health crisis in America and we will continue to advocate for it. Please support our efforts. We are not going to give up and accept the inadequate bills being considered in Congress. The problems in American health care will continue even if the best of these bills pass. We know that in order to get real health care reform ongoing organizing will be essential. To find an action in your state click here. Labels: civil disobedience, direct action, health care reform, Mobilization for Health Care for All, single-payer Please consider donating to Dollars & Sense and/or subscribing to the magazine (both print and e-subscriptions now available!). Next Wave of Health-Care Sit-InsThe Mobilization for Health Care for All had its latest big wave of sit-ins for single-payer on Wednesday (and this wave is ongoing). Here's their report:Yesterday [Oct. 28th], the next wave of the Mobilization for Health Care for All began with great success. See below for a list of media coverage of the actions. In 11 cities across the country, hundreds of everyday Americans who want Medicare for All confronted the insurance companies and demanded that they redirect the money they're spending to control our democracy to pay for the care they deny to their members. Almost every company refused to even talk to us, and 37 people were arrested including doctor Matt Hendrickson at a Cigna office in Glendale, California. Dozens more - like the 30 people who blockaded the Blue Cross office in San Francisco for hours - sat in but weren't arrested. In Rhode Island, however, the protestors who joined cancer patient Robert Darling in occupying the UnitedHealthcare office won the first concessions of our campaign - a company representative agreed to give an answer to Robert about paying for his previous bone marrow transplant within 24 hours and to arrange a meeting for the group with the UnitedHealthcare CEO within a week! After 115 arrests in 18 cities, these companies are starting to feel the heat of our movement. And with more than 900 people now signed up to sit-in, this battle is just beginning. Today, the Mobilization continued in Louisville, Kentucky and Baltimore, Maryland. The brave folks in Louisville are in the 9th hour of their sit-in inside the Humana headquarters as we send out this email. Humana is trying to wait them out, but may are prepared to stay overnight if they have to. In Baltimore, four people were arrested at a CareFirst (Blue Cross) office including two doctors. One of those doctors, Margaret Flowers of the "Baucus 8," has withheld her name and is planning to stay in jail until the CEO of CareFirst, Chet Burrell, agrees to a public meeting with her. Please call Mr. Burrell immediately and regularly at 410-528-2222 to demand that he agree to meet publicly with Margaret. You can also email CareFirst by going to http://www.carefirst.com/email/html/ContactMediaRelations.html. Send the following message in your email: I am writing to urge CEO Chet Burrell to agree to a public meeting with Dr. Margaret Flowers who was arrested at the CareFirst office in Baltimore while demanding to meet with Mr. Burrell about CareFirst business practices. She is going to stay in jail until Mr. Burrell agrees to a public meeting with her. CareFirst must publicly account for the serious concerns that citizens have about your company's practices. Also, please donate generously today so we can be prepared to pay any bail that is set for Margaret's release. She decided to risk arrest and stay in jail despite a possible 6 month jail sentence for violating probation from her previous arrest in the fight for real health care reform - let's show her that we've got her back. Please donate today to support Margaret and post messages of support for her at our Facebook page (we'll read all messages to her over the phone when she calls from jail). The Mobilization continues in Philadelphia tomorrow, and in more cities across the country next week. Click here for updated lists of all the upcoming actions and info about how you can plug in and participate. The insurance companies, the politicians in their pockets, and even some of the corporate media apparently want our movement to go away. But it's just getting started and spreading across America. Let's show them we're not going anywhere and we won't stop until health care is a right for everyone in America. Thanks for everything you do. —Katie, Kevin, Kai, Julia, Lacy, and the Mobilization team Press Coverage from 10/28: San Francisco Chronicle South Florida Sun-Sentinel NJ.com (Star-Ledger / Trenton Times / Jersey Journal blog) projo.com (Providence Journal blog) Glendale News-Press National Public Radio, Topics Democracy Now Free Speech Radio News Huffington Post Institute for Public Accuracy Atlas Press Photo La Jornada (Mexico) OpEdNews (featured story about doctors, by Kevin Gosztola): OpEdNews (about Philadelphia rally) Bay Area Indymedia (quality article, good for reference): Press Coverage from 10/29: Southern Maryland Online Wave3.com WFPL News Labels: health care reform, Mobilization for Health Care for All, single-payer, sit-in Please consider donating to Dollars & Sense and/or subscribing to the magazine (both print and e-subscriptions now available!). T.D.C.o.t.E: The Mendacity of HopeThe Dull Compulsion of the Economic (xvii)A series of blog postings by D&S collective member Larry Peterson The Mendacity of Hope: Obama's Healthcare Speech President Obama's speech to Congress on healthcare has been generally well received since it was delivered Wednesday evening. Commentators have focused on the President's charisma, of course, as well as his intelligence; but what was different this time was a pronounced hint of determination in the face of considerable adversity: and this is something we've yet to see from the young president. But the question then arises: what is there for Obama to be resolute about? The speech featured the submission of a comprehensive presidential plan (which had been hitherto lacking: the president has been content, up to now, with letting members of Congress write the competing bills). The main feature of the plan consisted of a deal--some would say with the devil--with the insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies and for-profit healthcare providers: in return for losing the right to drop insurance for preexisting conditions, jack up deductibles and out-of-pocket expenses, and discriminating against customers based on age or even geography, individuals would be mandated to purchase health insurance, or face a financial penalty. Employers, too, would have to offer insurance policies to their employees, or pay a stipulated amount into the insurance fund (the so-called "pay-or-play" provision). Subsidies and exemptions would be provided for small businesses and the indigent, and a fund would be established to protect individuals with preexisting conditions who, under the plan, wouldn't be eligible for coverage until 2013. Such a plan would control costs in a definitive way in only one regard: it would force some thirty million people or so to purchase insurance (a good amount of these are children, and will be covered by their parents). And the savings to the system that would accrue from the proper funding and even avoidance of expensive emergency-room treatment of uninsured persons would indeed provide some offset to the relentless upward pressure in healthcare costs. But there was almost nothing else in the speech about containing costs, especially over the long term, as the population ages and the financing of Medicare(not to mention Medicaid) becomes a serious problem in its own right. Instead, the President played with the politics of the public option and spoke of offsetting the entire cost of the program--set at $900 billion over 10 years. Regarding the public option, the president brought it up merely to offer it as a potential sacrifice for measures that have yet to be put articulated--never mind put forward, especially by Republicans--as presumably equally valid means to one specific end: the controlling of health care costs. And on financing the program--providing all the subsidies and exemptions for many of the tens of millions who will be absorbed into the system--Obama claimed that all of the $900 billion should be capable of being offset by savings to the system that will be the result of the cutting of huge amounts of waste in the system. Many say that he won't be able to come up with even half of this figure. So what's wrong with all this? First of all, the idea that the insurers should be compensated for dropping some of the most despicable policies in America is absurd: the denial of preexisting conditions and so on has become a national scandal that should simply have been abolished outright. But such policymaking fits into the Obama notion of change very well: look at the banks, for example (and it's interesting: of all the things that aroused ire over the health care plan, pundits have yet to acknowledge that its timing, coming right after the bailout of the banks, may have played a major role in enhancing the negative connotations the program was capable of arousing, precisely because it is--somehow--a "government" program, and, as such, open to the sort of gaming that has come to characterize the banking bailout). Then there's the question of cost control. The reason why no Republicans or conservative Democrats have sought out the President's open door is because there simply is no clear way to even hope to control costs in the shorter-term other than through the implementation of a robust public option, or, even better, a single-payer system. Again, like with the banking system, we are in completely unchartered territory, and the signs of systemic health do not look promising. Obama said that he was reluctant to embark upon more ambitious measures like single-payer because he feared that potentially major disruptions involving nearly one-fifth of the economy were simply unacceptable to Americans. But he himself has acknowledged that the health care system as we know it is turning into an unsustainable drag on the economy. So--how do you combat an unsustainable drag, which is only getting bigger by the year? By implementing policies that more than anything else are chosen because they do not cause disruption? And this while disruptions--in finance, the labor market, you name it--are becoming the order of the day in so much of the rest of our daily lives? So where cost control is concerned, Obama seems to be asking us to trust him and the legislators he's reaching out to (some/most of whom, no doubt, are raking in wads of cash from big pharma, the insurance lobby and for-profit hospitals). It is conceivable that, although Obama pointedly didn't mention this in the speech, a "trigger" mechanism of some sort may be built into legislation, perhaps mandating some kind of public option if costs aren't sufficiently contained. But maybe not; and at this point, given all the prior hemming and hawing, it's hard to trust the administration on this score, never mind the Blue Dog Democrats Obama is looking to sway. It's quite possible that the establishment of heath care co-ops is as far as the latter will go, and who's to say that they won't demutualize or something even if costs are--relatively speaking--constrained for a few years, once/if things get back to "normal"? In the longer-term, though, the gamble grows more desperate: so many of the things that make the US healthcare system so very expensive, and at the same time so ineffective--the proliferation of specialists to the detriment of general practitioners, the emphasis on treatment of diagnosed conditions to the detriment of preventative medicine, the ludicrous sums spent in the last year of life (and especially to the extent that the latter command outsized levels of pharmaceutical and technology spending), the malpractice premiums, the ever-duplicated paper trail that wends between insurers, hospitals and bureaucracies, and even the President's beloved medical information-technology (also unmentioned in the speech) initiatives--there are no proposals to harness any of these for the sake of cost control. I suppose the President feels that to tinker with any of them would risk interfering with the sacred marketplace. But these factors play a big part in pushing costs up. And though, as noted before, the individual and company mandates may mitigate against the upward spiral somewhat, it is a crap shot at best, and more likely a desperate--even irresponsible--gamble to assume that these mechanisms alone will contain costs in anywhere near effective a way so as to convert the healthcare sector from being a drag on the economy to being a sustainable source of growth (not to mention turning it into a system that actually improves the health care indicators, and, by extension, the productivity--and well-being--of the people). And even if some kind of public option finds its way into legislation, there is a further worry: President Obama himself made a very unfortunate comparison on Wednesday when he spoke of the public university system as a successful--and popular--check on higher-ed costs. But, as we all know, in education the public alternative has been becoming less-and-less available as public costs follow those of their private competitors upwards: hardly a felicitous precedent for a public option that stands to be much, much weaker, in terms of its financing, than public universities. And then there's the question of quality: will quality decline for those who choose the public option, especially seeing that the funding is set to be so delicate? Will there be huge waiting queues like those we've endured here in Massachusetts for those forced to go on a system that doesn't have the capacity (remember the relative shortage of GPs here) to absorb the newcomers anyway? One other proposal was left unmentioned during the speech: the removal of the tax exemption for businesses that insure their employees. Presumably Obama is looking to his supporters amongst unionists here, seeking to appeal to their worst instincts to prevent them from demanding payback for getting him elected by insisting on single-payer. But this exemption, which has wrought so much havoc on pay scales in this country for so long, will presumably be allowed to distort them unabated. In a time of economic contraction like we're seeing, the continued drag on wages already reeling from the crash seems destined to hinder economic recovery--and screw up innumerable lives--in a major way. Surely Obama sees that? But, at the end of the day, the dirty little secret about American health care is that it uniquely sets different parts of the population against each other. And it does so in a way that is the inverse mirror image of that which is supposed to hold sway under competition: seniors with Medicare, the insured with employer-provided, tax-exempt healthcare, and the uninsured who must subsidize both, but who risk the running up of huge bills which fall on the insured (and increase their bills) if they can't stay out of the system, are all induced to get what they can out of the system at the expense of other groups. And the insurers and providers are all too eager to assist in this game, ordering expensive tests for some, denying those they can, and hoping that those left by the wayside won't form a common cause to overturn this rotten system. So far it has worked, and it looks like it will work again, whether or not a health care bill is passed. On Monday, on what is euphemistically known as "Labor Day" in the US, I was with thousands of demonstrators on Boston Common, rallying for healthcare reform. It was very strange. I, like many of my comrades there, found myself cheering for two opposed policies whenever they came up: single-payer and the public option. It was almost surreal, to use the cliche. What were we demonstrating for? The same thing, I suppose, that President Obama was calling up his commendable resolution about: the perceived necessity of a fudge. Obama is a unique political figure in that he has corralled his undisputed charisma to advance the agenda of discredited--but, in the eyes of the administration, indispensable--elites by putting a somehow positive spin on a palpable sense of his supporters that things are bad and getting worse--intolerable, even. This is the "hope" he speaks of with seeming conviction. That his most important policy stance--the one on which he has said he will risk his presidency--is so obviously defective, from so many standpoints, reveals in a particularly stark way the despair with which he must, in lucid moments, view his signature emotion. Labels: Barack Obama, health care reform, insurance industry, Larry Peterson, Medicaid, Medicare, pharmaceutical industry, public option, single-payer, the dull compulsion of the economic Please consider donating to Dollars & Sense and/or subscribing to the magazine (both print and e-subscriptions now available!). Whole Foods and Health CareJohn Mackey, the CEO of Whole Foods (or as we call it here in Boston, Whole Paycheck), wrote a hide-bound and ideological op-ed for the Wall Street Journal last month (find it here). The first tip-off that it's going to be silly is that it calls health-care reform "Obamacare" (nothing like a little derision right in the title of an op-ed to command the interest of the readers of the WSJ opinion pages). What follows are all the usual canards of the Right's views on health care, and all their usual free-market, individualistic, deregulatory policy solutions.A movement has developed to boycott Whole Foods because of Mackey's opposition to meaningful (i.e., single-payer) health-care reform. The group Single Payer Action is also part of this boycott. Now would be a good time to shift over to farmers' markets and food co-ops to send Mackey and Whole Foods a message. Here's an interesting tidbit from the Boycott Whole Foods website: Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore's Dilemma and other books about food and food production, has weighed in against the boycott, because although Mackey is wrong about health care, "Whole Foods is often right about food," Pollan tells us. According to the Boycott Whole Foods website, Pollan has spoken at a conference put on by America's Health Insurance Plans (the main lobbying organization for the health insurance industry), on a panel entitled "Leaving the 'Fast Food Nation' Behind: Challenging American's Attitudes Towards Personal Responsibility and Health." (The other speaker on that panel was Richard Thaler, co-author of the pop-behavioral economics book Nudge.) And he posted against the Whole Foods boycott on the website of archconservative David Frum (newmajority.com). Now, I don't begrudge Michael Pollan an appearance at an AHIP conference (Howard Dean also spoke on a panel at the conference), or a comment on a website "dedicated to the modernization and renewal of the Republican party and the conservative movement," as its "About" page says. The man is pretty much omnipresent, so why not in these venues? But it doesn't surprise me that he doesn't seem to get the importance of collective action. I heard a radio version of a talk he gave a couple of years ago--it was about the prevalence of corn in the American diet (via corn syrup, mostly, but also as feed for the animals that become our meat), and the history of overproduction of corn post WWII. A terrific talk--the whole time I was craving broccoli (which I don't usually care for too much), because I figured there's no way they'd figured out how to make broccoli with corn. But in the question period, someone asked him early on what we could do about this, and all he had to say was something about making good choices about what we eat, choosing to shop at places (like Whole Foods) that offer fresher food, etc. There doesn't appear to be a truly political bone in his body--for him it's all about individual consumer choice. (It reminded me of Al Gore's otherwise terrific movie, ending with rousing call for us to change our lightbulbs.) So I'm not surprised that Pollan blandly opposes this boycott. Joel Harrison, who wrote this terrific article for us last year, has written a point-by-point rebuttal of John Mackey's WSJ op-ed. Here are the basics; click on the links to get the details on each point. YES, TO HEALTHCARE FOR ALL, NO, TO MACKEY'S WHOLE FOOD CARE Labels: David Frum, health care, health care reform, health insurance, Joel Harrison, John Mackey, Michael Pollan, single-payer, Wall Street Journal, Whole Foods Please consider donating to Dollars & Sense and/or subscribing to the magazine (both print and e-subscriptions now available!). Good Piece on Deficiencies of Public OptionFrom MRZine, by Andy Coates. Mentions precedents in Maine and Massachusetts, and what's wrong with them, besides reminding us of other deficiencies of Obama-style healthcare reform with or without public option, like the ever-increasing healthcare bankruptcy problem.Notes on the Status of Health Reform by Andy Coates MRZine 5.9.09 The election of Obama raised expectations for sweeping health reform sky high. But in spite of several self-imposed deadlines, Senate and House health reform bills were not ready by the time of the August Congressional recess, when passionate local debate erupted at Congressional home district town hall meetings. The Onion pierced the din with truth: "After months of committee meetings and hundreds of hours of heated debate, the United States Congress remained deadlocked this week over the best possible way to deny Americans health care." If the goals are health care for all and reduced costs of care, the measures being prepared in Congress will not reform the health system. Instead they amount to a massive taxpayer subsidy for the private health insurance industry. In 2007, more than one of five working-age people were uninsured for a year or longer. One of six working people had health insurance insufficient to meet the expenses of a serious illness. And there were 8 million uninsured children in the United States. At least 5 million more people lost their health insurance in 2008 and 2009 thanks to galloping unemployment--on top of years of progressively unaffordable health insurance, inadequate coverage, and steep out-of-pocket costs. The failing economy further accelerated the crisis in health care through devastating state and local cutbacks in safety net care. Yet the Congressional bills that have come through committees, whose key provisions would not start until 2013, offer precious little relief for these ills. Against this background, a nascent mass movement for single-payer national health insurance, plugging away for decades, steadily accumulates new force. Single payer would deliver all necessary care for all individuals, lifelong, with no co-pays and no deductibles, through a system in which health care would be publicly financed but privately delivered. By eliminating private insurance, single payer would save an estimated $400 billion annually in health spending. The single-payer bills in Congress are HR 676 and S 703. HR 676 has 86 co-sponsors and has been endorsed by over 500 labor bodies, including 39 state AFL-CIO federations. Whether a bill passes or flounders this fall, the details in the proposals that have come through Congressional committees have little connection with the popular expectations and grassroots clamor this summer. If Congress enacts reform, in 2013, individuals will be required to purchase health insurance. This is the centerpiece of the "reform." The proposal has come straight from the insurance industry: criminalize the uninsured and subsidize unaffordable private insurance premiums with public funds. Read the rest of the post Labels: Andy Coates, Barack Obama, health care reform, MRZine, public option, single-payer Please consider donating to Dollars & Sense and/or subscribing to the magazine (both print and e-subscriptions now available!). Rallies for Single-Payer in 50+ Cities 5/30From Healthcare Now!—important rallies this weekend, in a city near you (visit the website for a long list of cities and events--most are on Saturday):May 30th: National Day of Action Nationwide Rallies for Improved Medicare for All Join thousands of single-payer supporters in a nationwide week of action to support improved Medicare for all (HR 676). Single-payer activists will be gathering all over the country to say, "Healthcare, yes; Insurance companies, no," and to show solidarity with demonstrations at the AHIP (American Health Insurance Plans, a private health insurance lobby) conference in San Diego. If an action isn't already in your city, plan your own day of action! It can be a town hall meeting, demonstration in front of a local insurance company, film showing, vigil, or your own unique idea. Let us know what you'd like to start planning by contacting info@healthcare-now.org. 47 million Americans are uninsured. Private insurance rates are rising faster than inflation and our incomes. By 2025 the cost of private health insurance will exceed our projected income. Click here for more info including a list of cities and events. Labels: health care, Healthcare NOW, HR676, single-payer Please consider donating to Dollars & Sense and/or subscribing to the magazine (both print and e-subscriptions now available!). All-Out Effort to Put Single-Payer 'On the Table'From AfterDowningStreet and elswehere. They also had a great letter from Dr. Margaret Flowers of Physicians for a National Health Plan (reposted at Consortium News); Flowers was one of the activists who disrupted Sen. Baucus' roundtable on May 5th to ask why single-payer proponents weren't part of the discussion. The activists were hauled away by the Capital cops, while Baucus quipped about the need for more police. Hat-tip to LF.All Out Effort: Put Single-payer Healthcare "On the Table" Submitted by Chip on Mon, 2009-05-11 02:48. Activism Healthcare All Out Effort: Put Single-payer Healthcare "On the Table" It's National Nurses Week, and we're joining the California Nurses Association in Washington, D.C. to promote single-payer healthcare. We need your help! Please make 2 calls TODAY to get single-payer experts into the Senate Finance Committee Roundtable discussion! This Tuesday, May 12, the Senate Finance Subcommittee is holding its final roundtable on healthcare reform. The California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee has issued a request to include Roseann Demoro, Executive Director of CNA/NNOC and longtime leader in the single-payer movement. PNHP has formally submitted the names of two outstanding physicians, Drs. Marcia Angell and Steffie Woolhandler, to testify as expert witnesses. Please call Sen. Baucus' office in Washington at 202-224-2651, or fax him at (202) 224-9412, and urge him to extend the invitations. Call your Senator, too! Members of Single-Payer New York met with Sen. Charles Schumer (NY), Senate Finance Committee member, on Friday evening. He agreed to ask Chairman Baucus to include a single-payer expert--if we can get another Senator on the committee to join him. Please call and ask your Senator to join Sen. Schumer in asking Chairman Baucus to include a single-payer expert in Tuesday's hearing.
At the last Senate Finance Committee hearing, physicians and single-payer advocates stood one-by-one to ask to for a seat at the table. The Senators laughed and had each one arrested. Watch the video here or at: Health Care Now. We need to end the exclusion of the only plan that will be truly universal and contain costs. Our health depends on it. Your action today is critical to the health of this nation. Labels: health care, Max Baucus, Physicians for a National Health Program, single-payer Please consider donating to Dollars & Sense and/or subscribing to the magazine (both print and e-subscriptions now available!). The Battle for Health Care BeginsFrom Katrina vanden Heuvel at the Nation:"If there is no public insurance option…then this is not reform at all." That's what Governor Howard Dean said last night in a conference call with thousands of activists—and he's absolutely right. As Dr. Dean noted, the battle for real reform begins Tuesday morning, when Senator Max Baucus chairs a Senate Finance Committee hearing that will look into the public plan option.Activists are writing messages on why such a plan is critical and Senator John Kerry will read some of them into the record at the hearing. The conference call—organized by MoveOn and Democracy For America—began with a story similar to that of too many citizens across the nation.MoveOn member Lisa Hall said she was in a car accident—hit by a drunk driver—and was laid off in the aftermath when she couldn't work.She lost her insurance, COBRA ran out, and the bills mounted as no insurance company would cover her due to pre-existing conditions. "Ultimately," Small said, "[I went into] bankruptcy, like so many others…. The healthcare in this country has to be accessible to everyone.Not just the healthy people or the rich.We're just working folks, trying to keep our jobs and what we've earned." Dean said the outcome of this fight will be determined by activists.We know what's coming—charges of "socialized medicine", "you won't be able to choose your doctor", "a bureaucrat in Washington will make your healthcare decisions," etc.It will be up to the people to write letters to the editor, call your congressman, talk to neighbors.Myths will need to be debunked, front groups exposed, and money trails followed.Already, special interest groups are making robocalls and devoting millions of dollars to an anti-choice campaign. "What we want to do is give people a choice," Dean said."And stop saying you've got to be in the private insurance market or have no insurance whatsoever if you're under 65."(People over 65 are already in a single-payer system—Medicare.) As Dean pointed out, the facts are on our side in this battle.For starters, the proposal of a public plan option allows people to keep their private insurance if they want to and even subsidizes it.It's also cheaper than private insurance since a greater percentage of premiums goes towards healthcare instead of CEO salaries, shareholder dividends, swank offices, etc.(In Vermont, Governor Dean was able to cut administrative costs by 1/3 when the state ran Medicaid instead of a private company.) But in Washington—facts be damned—real reform that benefits ordinary citizens doesn't come without a tough fight."We're going to have an all out fight about this… and we're not going to go down again," Dean said."If members of Congress know how strongly people feel about this they're going to think twice about voting against it." Dean said that Senator Baucus is the legislator who most needs convincing since his committee is one of the two in the Senate that will deal with the bill—and he especially needs to hear from people from his home state. "He is nominally in favor of [the public option] but has also said that he might trade it away," Dean said."I don't think it's necessary to trade it away—we have a Democratic President, a Democratic Senate, and a Democratic House, there's no reason to trade it away…. I think we're going to get a good bill out of the House, the problem is in the Senate." Indeed, the Senate is a place that resists change and all too often kills needed reform.This time around, we can't let that happen.Tell your representatives now that it's time to give people the option of a public plan. Labels: health care, Howard Dean, Katrina vanden Heuvel, Max Baucus, single-payer Please consider donating to Dollars & Sense and/or subscribing to the magazine (both print and e-subscriptions now available!). Single-Payer UpdatesFirst, we noticed this excellent webpage, with links and resources on single-payer, from Physicians for a National Health Care Program.Second, our friend Dr. Christine Adams, who is statewide secretary of Health Care for All Texas, sent us her response to an article in Wednesday's WSJ by Laura Meckler. It's an excellent summary of reasons in favor of single-payer. Here it is: Dear Ms. Meckler, I am a supporter of single payer national health care as proposed by HR 676 (John Conyers, D-Michigan). All other health care reform proposals involve some type of subsidy to private for-profit health plans via low to moderate income households. It makes no sense to subsidize private, for-profit health plans just for us to have the privilege of having private companies continue to play a central role in health care financing. Medicare Advantage is a perfect example of that model. For the privilege of continuing to include for-profit private health plans, the U.S. taxpayer gets to pay 14%-20% more per Medicare recipient than for those in traditional Medicare (a single payer model, albeit imperfect). For the privilege, we do not get any value for our extra tax dollars. Medicare Advantage members do not have better medical outcomes and frequently they have worse medical outcomes - even though Medicare Advantage programs cherry-pick the healthiest in the Medicare pool. And where do we find our best medical outcomes at the best price? Our socialized medicine Veterans Administration Medical System. No other nation that is controlling health care costs while maintaining quality has for-profit health insurance companies playing a central role in health care financing because it cannot be done. Other nations that include private health plans have placed heavy regulations on them so that they cannot make profits, must offer standard, comprehensive benefits, cannot exclude anyone or restrict treatment and must go to the government (the citizenry) to get permission to raise premiums. Nations that still include private plans, still spend more than nations that have either adopted single payer or straight-forward socialized medical systems (England, Spain). Economically, it will cost you more to include private health plans even if they are regulated. At any rate, I doubt our American for-profit health plans would ever agree to the level of regulation it would take to control costs, even without making health care universal. Frankly, I don't understand why conservatives in Congress, such as Sen. Grassley, would even consider subsidizing or protecting for-profit health plans from a public competitor. If a public health plan could deliver good care for less money, why wouldn't we want that system? Why would we want to use tax dollars to subsidize a for-profit health plan? I already pay for-profit health plans plenty of money for not much back in the way of health benefits. I don't want to direct more of my tax dollars to them just to keep them in business. They are not an industry vital to our national security. In fact, they suck up so much in the way of resources without adding value back, they are a drain on our economy and our health. They are detrimental to our well being in the same way that companies that pollute are detrimental to our well being. Two Nobel prize winners in economics, Drs. Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman, have publicly stated that single payer makes the most sense for health care reform. They don't strike me as socialists or anti-business. To support a health reform measure that props up a private business when a public entity could do as good a job for less money seems opposite to what a conservative would support. When the data from so many forms of national health insurance, none of which include for-profit private health plans, are so clearly providing as good or better medical outcomes as we have here in the U.S. but with half the money and for all their people, I can only conclude that this resistance by a minority to single payer comes from irrational fears based on myths and outdated ideas in the same way that anti women's suffrage and anti integration are now seen as wrongheaded. Unfortunately, this minority position of pro for-profit, subsidized private health plans appears to have the ear of the Obama Administration—at least for the time being. Dr. Christine Adams Statewide Secretary, Health Care for All Texas Member, Physicians for a National Health Program Labels: health care, Health Care for All Texas, single-payer Please consider donating to Dollars & Sense and/or subscribing to the magazine (both print and e-subscriptions now available!). Single-Payer Rally in Burlington TODAYThis is happening in about 45 minutes, but in case any of our readers happen to be in Burlington...Hundreds of Activists to Rally in Burlington, Vermont Outside White House Regional Forum on Healthcare—TUESDAY Nurses, Doctors, Patients Call for Guaranteed Healthcare on the Single-Payer Model…And an End to Insurance Industry Denial of Care WHAT: Hundreds of healthcare activists from throughout New England and across the country will rally outside the White House’s latest regional summit on healthcare, and demand that Congress include single-payer reforms in its debate and discussion, including U.S. Rep. John Conyers' HR 676 WHO: A broad coalition of healthcare reformers brought together by the Leadership Conference on Guaranteed Healthcare, which includes the National Nurses Organizing Committee/California Nurses Association (NNOC/CNA), Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP), Healthcare Now, and Progressive Democrats of America (PDA) WHEN: Tuesday March 17th; rally @ 11:30 a.m. featuring Dr. Deb Richter from PNHP WHERE: Davis Center, University of Vermont-Burlington WHY: "We can look around the world’s other industrialized democracies and see very clearly that a guaranteed healthcare system, such as an expanded and improved 'Medicare for All,' is the only way to provide patients with the care they need. We will come to Vermont to make sure that Congress hears from the nation's healthcare reformers as they are drafting this life-and-death legislation," said Geri Jenkins, RN, co-President of NNOC/CNA. Labels: Burlington, health care, single-payer Please consider donating to Dollars & Sense and/or subscribing to the magazine (both print and e-subscriptions now available!). Insider Report on the Health Care SummitThanks to activist pressure, single-payer advocate Oliver Fein, MD, was allowed to participate in the White House health care summit. In his extensive post, Dr. Fein gives an inside account of the summit and lays out some reasons for cautious optimism for those pushing for a single-payer universal health care system.The major single-payer bill in the House is HR 676. Dr. Fein reports that Senator Bernie Sanders is planning on proposing a counterpart bill in the Senate shortly. From the Beaver County Blue website: Thanks to many grassroots activists and physicians who called the White House and threatened to demonstrate outside its gates, I was at the Health Care Summit at the White House on March 5 along with Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.). And it was good thing. It meant that the single-payer position was recognized as one pathway to health care reform. It also meant that one of our concerns was present: namely, that any health care reform that includes the for-profit, private health insurance companies will fail to provide universal coverage, will not be able to reduce heath care costs, and will increase the number of underinsured. Read the full post here. Read Joel A. Harrison's article on how U.S. taxpayers aren't getting what they're paying despite massive health care spending (from our May/June 2008 issue), and go here for more D&S coverage of health care issues. Labels: Bernie Sanders, health care, HR676, John Conyers, national health insurance, single-payer Please consider donating to Dollars & Sense and/or subscribing to the magazine (both print and e-subscriptions now available!). Stiglitz Criticizes O.'s Speech, Favors Single-PayerThis seems pretty explosive to me: Nobel-Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz came put in favor of a single-payer universal health program as "the only alternative" in an interview with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now!. Hat-tip to Dr. Christine Adams of Health Care for All Texas. Very interesting also that he also criticizes Obama as having "confused saving the banks with saving the bankers." (Amy Goodman's phrase, but Stiglitz responded: "Exactly.")There's also a discussion of nationalization, and from what I can tell Stiglitz calls for a Swedish-style "nationalization," which is really just temporary receivership (or what Krugman usefully calls "preprivatization"—though this is what Krugman favors too). This puts him barely to the left (on this issue at least) of Alan Greenspan, who as we've reported here, has said that "nationalization" will probably be necessary. Wish Amy had asked him about full, permanent nationalization... Click here for Fred Moseley's argument for it in the March/April issue of D&S. We'll have an article about single-payer in that issue too. Here is the beginning of the DN! transcript: AMY GOODMAN: Your first assessment of the speech last night? JOSEPH STIGLITZ: Oh, I thought it was a brilliant speech. I thought he did an excellent job of wending his way through the fine line of trying to say—give confidence about where we're going, and yet the reality of our economy—country facing a very severe economic downturn. I thought he was good in also giving a vision and saying while we're doing the short run, here are three very fundamental long-run problems that we have to deal. The critical question that many Americans are obviously concerned about is the question of what do we do with the banks. And on that, he again was very clear that he recognized the anger that Americans have about the way the banks have taken our taxpayer money and misspent it, but he didn't give a clear view of what he was going to do. AMY GOODMAN: Let's go to the clip last night. During his speech, President Obama acknowledged more bailouts of the nation's banks would be needed, but didn't directly say, as Joe Stiglitz was saying, whether the government would move to nationalize Citigroup and Bank of America. PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: We will act with the full force of the federal government to ensure that the major banks that Americans depend on have enough confidence and enough money to lend even in more difficult times. And when we learn that a major bank has serious problems, we will hold accountable those responsible; force the necessary adjustments; provide the support to clean up their balance sheets; and assure the continuity of a strong, viable institution that can serve our people and our economy. AMY GOODMAN: President Obama on Tuesday night. Joe Stiglitz, is he holding the banks accountable? JOSEPH STIGLITZ: Well, so far, it hasn't happened. I think the more fundamental issues are the following. He says what we need is to get lending restarted. If he had taken the $700 billion that we gave, levered it ten-to-one, created some new institution guaranteed—provide partial guarantees going for, that would have generated $7 trillion of new lending. So, if he hadn't looked at the past, tried to bail out the banks, bail out the shareholders, bail out the other—the bankers' retirement fund, we would have easily been able to generate the lending that he says we need. So the question isn't just whether we hold them accountable; the question is: what do we get in return for the money that we're giving them? At the end of his speech, he spent a lot of time talking about the deficit. And yet, if we don't do things right—and we haven't been doing them right—the deficit will be much larger. You know, whether you spend money well in the stimulus bill or whether you're spending money well in the bank recapitalization, it's important in everything that we do that we get the bang for the buck. And the fact is, the bank recovery bill, the way we've been spending the money on the bank recovery, has not been giving bang for the buck. We haven't gotten anything out. What we got in terms of preferred shares, relative to what we gave them, a congressional oversight panel calculated, was only sixty-seven cents on the dollar. And the preferred shares that we got have diminished in value since then. So we got cheated, to put it bluntly. What we don't know is that—whether we will continue to get cheated. And that's really at the core of much of what we're talking about. Are we going to continue to get cheated? Now, why that's so important is, one way of thinking about this—end of the speech, he starts talking about a need of reforms in Social Security, put it—you know, there's a deficit in Social Security. Well, a few years ago, when President Bush came to the American people and said there was a hole in Social Security, the size of the hole was $560 billion approximately. That meant that if we spent that amount of money, we would have guaranteed the—put on sound financial basis our Social Security system. We wouldn't have to talk about all these issues. We would have provided security for retirement for hundreds of millions of Americans over the next seventy-five years. That's less money than we spent in the bailouts of the banks, for which we have not been able to see any outcome. So it's that kind of tradeoff that seems to me that we ought to begin to talk about. AMY GOODMAN: So, you say Obama, too, has confused saving the banks with saving the bankers. JOSEPH STIGLITZ: Exactly. AMY GOODMAN: Should they all have been fired? JOSEPH STIGLITZ: Well, I think one has to look at it on a bank-by-bank basis. Clearly, the banks that have not been managed very well, we need to not only fire them, we have to change their incentive structure. And it's not just the level of pay; it's the form of the pay. Their incentive structures encourage excessive risk taking, shortsighted behavior. And in a way, it's a vindication of economic theory. They behaved in the irresponsible way that their incentive structures would have led them to behave. Read or listen to the rest of the interview. Labels: Amy Goodman, bailout, bank nationalization, Barack Obama, financial crisis, Joseph Stiglitz, Paul Krugman, single-payer Please consider donating to Dollars & Sense and/or subscribing to the magazine (both print and e-subscriptions now available!). Mass. Doctors Push for Single-PayerWe found a link to this on, of all places, Marginal Revolution—hardly a lefty site!—in a list of "Assorted Links" under the title "How is the Massachusetts health care plan working out?" The headline of the original link is a little misleading, since it suggests that (a majority of?) doctors in Massachusetts favor single-payer, but the report is really about Mass. docs who are members of Physicians for a National Health Program. But polls have shown that a majority of doctors in the United States favor single-payer, so I wouldn't be surprised if a majority in Mass. did too (especially given some of the snags of the new Mass. "universal" system).Meanwhile, in today's New York Times there's an article about closed-door sessions with the ailing Mass. Sen. Ted Kennedy to hammer out a consensus about what kind of health care reform congressional Democrats and the Obama administration should go for. "Lobbyists for a wide range of interest groups—some of which were involved in defeating national health legislation in 1993-4—are meeting with the staff of Mr. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, in a search for common ground." Lots of mention of insurance industry and big pharma lobbyists; no mention whatsoever of single-payer as an option. Forcing people to purchase insurance from private insurers is these folks' idea of universal health care. Similarly, Wednesday's Times reported that Kathleen Sibelius, governor of Kansas, is a leading candidate to be O.'s nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services. The article quotes an insurance industry lobbyist as saying that she'd be a great pick: "Karen M. Ignagni, president of America's Health Insurance Plans, said Ms. Sebelius would be 'a very smart choice' for health secretary." Check out this article we ran last year on the high costs of the current system, many of which would remain under a compulsory "universal" system of the sort O. seems to be moving toward. And our March/April issue will include an article on management costs and how single-payer does better. Now here's that piece on the Mass. PNHP doctors: Massachusetts doctors say single-payer or bust By Sarah Arnquist Massachusetts members of the Physicians for a National Health Program released a report today faulting the state's experiment with health reform for failing to achieve universal coverage, being too expensive and draining funds away from safety-net providers. The doctors' punch line is that the reform has given private insurance companies more business and power without eliminating vast administrative waste. In fact, it says, the "Connector" in charge of administering the reform adds about 5 percent more in administrative expenses. In summary, nothing less than single-payer national health reform will work, according to authors Drs. Rachel Nardin, David Himmelstein and Steffie Woolhandler, all professors at Harvard Medical School.  The report criticizes the Urban Institute's largely favorable report that found only 2.6 percent of Massachusetts' residents were uninsured in mid-2008 because it failed to sufficiently reach non-English speakers in its survey. Reports in Health Affairs this winter also found significant positive support for the reform among employers and the public. There was little evidence of crowd-out. The PNHP doctors' report says health plans people are forced to buy are not affordable and often skimp, making the mandate that individuals buy them regressive. And moreover, it says, peoples' experiences have shown that insurance does not guarantee access to care. The Boston Globe chronicled the long wait for primary care last September. A final criticism the 19-page report offers is that the reform is financially unsustainable, as it does "nothing about a major driver of high health care costs, the overuse of high-technology care such as CT scanners and surgeries, and the underdevelopment of primary care." Last winter, Himmelstein spoke about health reform to students at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. I asked him if single-payer advocates would work against any national reform effort that wasn't single-payer, as the single-payer camp did in California. Himmelstein said that if the reform plan looked like the Massachusett's reform he probably would prefer the status quo. He believes the reform has made most vulnerable patients in Massachusetts worse off. It looks like health reform is going to be a battle on the Left and Right. Labels: health care, insurance industry, Kathleen Sibelius, national health insurance, Physicians for a National Health Program, single-payer Please consider donating to Dollars & Sense and/or subscribing to the magazine (both print and e-subscriptions now available!). Single-Payer Job Recovery (Cal Nurses)What looks to be an impressive study from the California Nurses Association. Hat-tip to Dr. Christine Adams of Health Care for All Texas.First-of-Its Kind Study: Medicare for All (Single-Payer) Reform Would Be Major Stimulus for Economy with 2.6 Million New Jobs, $317 Billion in Business Revenue, $100 Billion in Wages Establishing a national single-payer style healthcare reform system would provide a major stimulus for the U.S. economy by creating 2.6 million new jobs, and infusing $317 billion in new business and public revenues, with another $100 billion in wages into the U.S. economy, according to the findings of a groundbreaking study released today. It may be viewed at www.CalNurses.org. The number of jobs created by a single-payer system, expanding and upgrading Medicare to cover everyone, parallels almost exactly the total job loss in 2008.  Read the whole report. Labels: California Nurses Association, Christine Adams, Health Care for All Texas, single-payer Please consider donating to Dollars & Sense and/or subscribing to the magazine (both print and e-subscriptions now available!). Call-In For Single PayerHealthcare Now, an organization dedicated to promoting national health insurance, has dedicated today as a national call-in day for Single-Payer health insurance. Specifically, they are urging Congress to support HR676, John Conyers’ National Health Insurance Act.For more information, click here. Labels: HR676, national health insurance, single-payer Please consider donating to Dollars & Sense and/or subscribing to the magazine (both print and e-subscriptions now available!). National Call-In Day for HR 676From Healthcare-NOW!:Give America a Gift: Single-Payer National Healthcare Dear Healthcare-NOW! Supporter, This is your reminder that Monday, December 22nd, is the National Call-In Day to Support Single-Payer Healthcare, HR 676! With your help for just a few minutes, we can get the message through to Congress that we want to remove corporate greed from our healthcare system and provide a truly equitable, guaranteed healthcare program for everyone. Every call counts! Call to guarantee our representatives hear loud and clear from their constituents to get on board with HR 676: single-payer national health care Here's how: 1) Find out if your representative supports HR 676. 2) Fax or call your federal Representative.* If you don't know your congresspersons' district office phone number, please follow these five easy steps: 1. Go to www.VoteSmart.org. 2. Enter your ZIP code in the top left of the page. 3. Click on a congressperson. 4. Click on "Complete Contact Information" under their photo. 5. Their district office phone number and address are under their photo. 3) Ask for the Chief of Staff or Health Care Aide to leave your message and use these scripts to help shape the message of your call. HR676 Co-sponsor call: Hi, my name is ----------------. I am calling to thank Representative ___________________ for his/her support of HR676, John Conyers' National Health Insurance Act. Rep. Conyers plans to reintroduce HR676 shortly after the Congress is back in session in January, but I want to reaffirm my support for HR676, single payer healthcare legislation and ask Rep. ____________________ to do the same by signing on again as a co-sponsor working for true reform of this terrible healthcare system. I say no to Massachusetts style health care, and yes to single payer health care as proposed in HR 676. Single payer gives more freedom of choice and access to quality care for patients and it is the most economical way to make sure we all can access care when we need it. Now is the time to give the gift of healthcare for all to every American. Happy holidays and thank you. If you have any questions about single payer or about me, please call me at __________________. Non-co-sponsors call: Hi, my name is ----------------. I am calling to urge Representative ___________________ to support of HR676, John Conyers' National Health Insurance Act. Rep. Conyers plans to reintroduce HR676 shortly after the Congress is back in session in January, and I want to reaffirm my support for HR676, single payer healthcare legislation and ask Rep. ____________________ to do the same by signing on as a co-sponsor and working for true reform of this terrible healthcare system. I say no to Massachusetts style health care, and yes to single payer health care as proposed in HR 676. Single payer gives more freedom of choice and access to quality care for patients and it is the most economical way to make sure we all can access care when we need it. Now is the time to give the gift of healthcare for all to every American. Happy holidays and thank you. If you have any questions about single payer or about me, please call me at __________________. 4) Contact Senator Kennedy at his in-district office. Phone: 617-565-3170 / Fax: 617-565-3183. Senator Kennedy is proposing health care legislation early next year, and he needs to know that we want it to be single-payer. Message to Senator Kennedy: Hi, my name is ----------------. I am calling to urge Senator Kennedy to make his proposed legislation for health care reform single-payer. The current reform in Massachusetts is leaving thousands uninsured and is far too expensive to be sustained because it leaves profit in our health care system. In the most recent election, local ballot initiatives supporting single payer and opposing individual mandates passed by landslide margins in all ten legislative districts where they appeared. With almost all precincts tallied, roughly 73 percent of 181,000 voters in the ten districts voted YES in support of a single-payer system. Say no to Massachusetts style health care, and yes to single payer health care as proposed in HR 676. Happy holidays and thank you. If you have any questions about single payer or about me, please call me at __________________. Please forward this message widely and let us know how your calls went. Thanks for making single-payer national healthcare a priority this holiday season. In peace and health, National Staff Healthcare-NOW! P.S. Healthcare-NOW! survives on the generosity of our supporters. Please consider making a donation to support national efforts to pass HR 676. *Emails can also be sent in support of HR 676, but calls and faxes are considered to be the most effective way to get the word out to elected officials today. Labels: health care, Healthcare NOW, Physicians for a National Health Program, single-payer Please consider donating to Dollars & Sense and/or subscribing to the magazine (both print and e-subscriptions now available!). Insurance Co.'s Endorse Universal Coverage......as long as it isn't single payer.The New York Times is reporting that the health insurance industry is suddenly in favor of universal coverage--as long as it looks like the Democrats' proposals, and not single-payer. According to this article in today's Times: The health insurance industry said Wednesday that it would support a health care overhaul requiring insurers to accept all customers, regardless of illness or disability. But in return, the industry said, Congress should require all Americans to have coverage.The article also notes the similarity between what the insurance companies are proposing and the plan Hillary Clinton proposed in the presidential primaries (and the differences with Obama's plan): But the industry's position differs from that of Mr. Obama in one significant respect. Insurers want the government to require everyone to have and maintain insurance. By contrast, Mr. Obama would, at least initially, apply the requirement only to children.During the primaries, many of us in Massachusetts, which has the kind of mandated plan that Clinton was calling for (but leaves the insurance industry intact) were ambivalent about Clinton's version of universal coverage. But Obama's plan hardly seemed better. The idea that he "wanted to be certain that insurance was affordable and available to all," yet his plan leaves the insurance companies in the picture, seemed ridiculous. This latest development hardly counts as news. An earlier article in the Times indicates that the industry has even endorsed expanding publicly-funded health care. What's more, the industry made a similar proposal for mandating care in 1992. In fact, the Times article about that proposal makes the current announcement sound like déjà vu: The industry has often been described as an obstacle to change in the nation's health-care system. But with the new proposal, to be announced Thursday, the industry signals its willingness to accept sweeping changes, many of them similar to those proposed by President-elect Bill Clinton.But the fact that the insurance industry essentially endorses the Democrats' approach to universal health care shows how timid this version of universal care is. If the new Democratic president and Congress really want to expand coverage and cut costs, they should go for single-payer; John Conyers' "Medicare for All" bill (H.R. 676) would bring that about. For evidence that a single-payer would reduce costs, see Joel Harrison's article explaining why leaving insurance companies in the loop costs everyone more--in premiums, co-pays, and tax dollars, and whether or not you're actually covered. And visit this page, which lists other coverage of health care in the pages of D&S. Labels: Barack Obama, health care, hillary clinton, insurance industry, single-payer Please consider donating to Dollars & Sense and/or subscribing to the magazine (both print and e-subscriptions now available!). How hospitals are killing E.R. patients.This is from Joel A. Harrison, author of our recent feature, Paying More, Getting Less, which provides a novel argument in favor of a single-payer health care system.The issue of long waits at emergency rooms has been in the news, and even the Institute of Medicine has looked at the problem of "divert status," where ambulances are told by the nearest emergency room they are filled up and they need to go to another more distant emergency room. One story told of an ambulance spending 45 minutes before finding an emergency room willing to accept a patient. Keep in mind that divert status has nothing to do with being insured! Some of the reasons are: 1. Because emergency rooms can't refuse treatment, they lose money on the uninsured, and many hospitals are closing their emergency departments; 2. Patients who are uninsured or underinsured use emergency rooms for primary care and/or wait until their conditions get serious, thus ending in emergency. Now a new article in the online magazine Slate adds one more nail in the coffin of the profit-motive in health care, which puts us all at risk. Notice that in "socialized-medicine" England, the government requires and enforces that 98% of patients be seen within 4 hours. Of course, since everyone has health insurance and a family practitioner, one of the reasons for crowding is eliminated. Notice also that American hospitals are fighting tooth and nail against even keeping waiting statistics. A recent report by the Commonwealth Fund put United States dead last in ability to get medical attention at night and on weekends among advanced industrialized nations, and poor placement in getting to see primary-care physician within 48 hours.
Labels: health care, single-payer, Slate Please consider donating to Dollars & Sense and/or subscribing to the magazine (both print and e-subscriptions now available!). The Doctors' RevoltIda Hellander, executive director of Physicians for a National Health Program, emailed us recently with praise for Paying More, Getting Less, from our May/June issue. She called the article "very clear and compelling. It will be very, very useful to all of us in the single payer movement... Thanks again for publishing this article. I've wanted something like this for many years!"In fact, a solid majority of U.S. doctors now support a single-payer system, as reported in a web-only piece posted to the American Prospect website on Tuesday: The Doctors' Revolt Visit the new health care links page on our site for more articles from D&S on health care, and for links to national and state-level organizations working for single-payer. Labels: American Prospect, health care, Physicians for a National Health Program, single-payer Please consider donating to Dollars & Sense and/or subscribing to the magazine (both print and e-subscriptions now available!). |
