November 2008 – Healthcare-NOW

2008 National Strategy Conference Round-Up

Thank you to all who made it to Chicago for the Healthcare-NOW! National Strategy Conference! It was a weekend packed with review, assessment, strategy, and inspiration for those of us bracing for the upcoming legislative battle for single-payer. For those of you who weren’t there, you missed a GREAT conference! This post contains a detailed…

Republicans for Single-Payer?

You wouldn’t know it from the candidates’ debates or reports on the major television networks, but a majority of Americans favor a government-run health insurance system similar to Canada’s. Those lining up to support single-payer health care include medical professionals, business people, and many Republicans. Dr. Rocky White has been all of those things. White…

How the Economic Crisis Presents Opportunities to Advance Single-Payer Healthcare

During Healthcare-NOW’s 2008 National Strategy Conference, Dr. Arthur MacEwan outlined how the current economic crisis presents opportunities to advance single-payer healthcare in the US. Dr. MacEwan is a Professor Emeritus of Economics and Senior Fellow of Center for Social Policy at the University of Massachusetts in Boston. He has been a faculty member of the…

Oregon Teamster Local Endorses HR 676

Teamster Local 206, which represents workers in a variety of occupations through out the state of Oregon, has endorsed HR 676, single payer healthcare legislation introduced by Congressman John Conyers (D-MI). Tom Leedham, Local 206 Secretary-Treasurer said: “Members of our union are very involved in health care and have studied a number of proposals for…

Uninsured Give but Rarely Receive Organs for Transplant

Call it the ultimate inequity in health care. A team of Harvard researchers finds that people without health insurance are about 20 times more likely to donate a liver or kidney than to receive one. The results of the study, which appear in the current issue of International Journal of Health Services, looked at U.S.…

Man emerges as uninsured advocate after sick wife was denied coverage

Jack Conaway was laid off last year. A few weeks later, his wife was diagnosed with stage-three breast cancer. Then the Amherst couple lost their health insurance. Faced with possibility of having to chip away at their savings to pay out of pocket for cancer drugs that cost $6,500 every three weeks, they scrambled to…

Single-Payer Healthcare Alliance Forms in Washington, D.C.

By David Swanson With Barack Obama about to assume the presidency and take up the healthcare issue, leaders of single-payer healthcare organizations met for two days, November 11 – 12, at the AFL-CIO headquarters in Washington, D.C. The California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee (CNA/NNOC), Physicians for a National Health Plan (PNHP), Healthcare-NOW! , and…

Learn all you can about health care alternatives

The following editorial is from www.Courier-Journal.com. By now it is almost a cliche to say that America’s health care system is broken. In response, many politicians who are calling for “reform” and “universal health coverage” are not, in fact, clarifying the situation because they include in their new plans the very elements that have busted…

Action Alert!

On November 19th, 2008, at 10 a.m., the Senate Finance Committee will hold a host a hearing in 215 Dirksen Senate Office Building, in Washington, D.C., titled: “Health Care Reform: An Economic Perspective” As of this time, only two U.S. Senators, Max Baucus of Montana and Charles Grassley of Iowa, are slated to offer statements,…

Single-payer system is the way to go

By Ray Bellamy Millions of families are struggling with economic hardship. Health-care costs are weighing on more Americans, contributing to about a million bankruptcies a year, and are a major factor in many home foreclosures. Distressed companies are struggling with the rising costs of providing health coverage for their employees, and there is evidence of…