May 2012 – Page 2 – Healthcare-NOW

Health Care Costs To Exceed A Record $20,000 Per Year For Families

By Jeffrey Young for the Huffington Post – Health care costs for a family of four covered by workplace health insurance will exceed $20,000 for the first time ever this year — $20,728 to be precise — according to a new study released Tuesday. That’s $1,335 more than in 2011. A family of four will…

Oregon Activists Look to Grassroots Approach to Win Universal Health Care

By Peter Shapiro for Labor Notes – With health care premiums rising three times faster than workers’ income, more and more unions have come to see the existing health care system as unsustainable, despite their best efforts at the bargaining table. In Oregon, activists are responding by rejuvenating a dormant campaign to win a health…

Mental Health and the Call for Single-Payer Healthcare

By Isobel Wohl, Healthcare for the 99% Working Group, Occupy Wall Street – Join Healthcare for the 99% in recognizing Mental Health Awareness Month this May. Mental health is an integral part of overall health, and its prevalence and severity are yet another reason to demand single-payer healthcare. About one in six adults lives with…

Healthcare for My Neighbors?

By Ron du Bois, Prof. Emeritus – Our medical and medical insurance ethos sadly is that sick people are good for business. That health care should be a money making machine is the mentality of a nation tricked into believing for-profit health care and medical insurance are superior to national health care as practiced in…

Legislation Introduced to Make Health Care a Right in New York State

Doctors, Nurses, Patients Advocates Applaud Updated Single Payer Medicare for All Legislation by Gottfried, Duane and 70 lawmakers Doctors, nurses, patients, senior citizens, anti-poverty advocates, faith leaders and medical administrators joined Assemblymember Richard Gottfried and Senator Thomas Duane in unveiling an updated and revised single payer legislative proposal for New York State. More than 70…

Why emergency rooms don’t close the health care gap

By Aaron Carroll for CNN – For decades, the attempts at health care reform have aimed to increase access. The United States is one of the few industrialized nations in the world that does not provide universal health care to its citizens. And repeatedly, those who oppose it have been forced to argue that access…

Health care increasingly out of reach for millions of Americans

By Phil Galewitz for Kaiser Health News – Having trouble finding a doctor? You’re not alone. Tens of millions of adults under age 65 – both those with insurance and those without – saw their access to health care worsen dramatically over the past decade, according to a study abstract released Monday. The findings suggest…

Missouri Single-Payer Bill Introduced

Ed Weisbart, MD, of PNHP-St. Louis, sends us this report about the introduction of Missouri’s state single-payer bill. On May 4, 2012, the Missouri Health Care Policy committee gave a formal hearing to MO HB1405, a bill that would establish a MO state-wide single payer health plan. Two Physicians for a National Health Program physicians…

Take Our Social Media Survey

We would like your help. Healthcare-NOW! wants to reach out to new single-payer supporters and strengthen ties with our current members, and to do this we need to make sure that our website and social media sites are as current and informative as possible. If you could take this brief 10-question survey, it would greatly…

Nurses, Robin Hood, Prepare to Converge on Chicago May 18

Healthcare-NOW! is proud to be one of more than 85 environmental, labor, and health groups to endorse National Nurses United’s “Protest the Global 1%” march and rally on May 18 in Chicago. As part of their Main Street Not Wall Street campaign, NNU is calling for a financial transaction tax – or Robin Hood tax…