AFL-CIO Endorses National Day of Action for Medicare’s 50th Anniversary!

The AFL-CIO has endorsed the National Day of Action to Protect, Improve and Expand Medicare to All being organized by Healthcare-NOW! and our national allies on July 30, 2015. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka  circulated this letter to the AFL’s 56  affiliated unions and their 12.5 million members, urging them to mobilize for Medicare’s 50th Anniversary, because: [A]dopting…

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Is the Single-Payer Movement Winning?

Benjamin Day, Executive Director for Healthcare-NOW!, delivered the keynote address for the 12th Annual State Conference of Single-Payer Action Network Ohio on “The State of the Single-Payer Movement and Movement Action Planning.” The keynote provides a detailed analysis of how to evaluate social movements as opposed to campaigns, why it is that most activists in…

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Healthcare-NOW!’s Office Has Moved!

Starting June 2015, Healthcare-NOW! has moved its offices from Philadelphia to Boston! We are sharing office space with Mass-Care, the Massachusetts Campaign for Single Payer Health Care in the heart of downtown Boston, right on the Boston Common and a block from the Massachusetts State House. Our phone and email contact information remain the same…

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If The Fire Department Were Run Like Healthcare…

During a press conference prior to the first of six public hearings held by the New York Assembly across the state, Assemblyman Richard Gottfried, Chair of the Assembly Health Committee since 1987, was asked by a reporter whether his legislation for universal, public health coverage for all of New York would limit patients’ choice of…

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New Study: Health Insurance Overhead Waste Unchanged by Affordable Care Act

The International Journal of Health Services published a research paper by Healthcare-NOW!’s Executive Director, Benjamin Day, PNHP co-founders David Himmelstein and Steffie Woolhandler, and former Healthcare-NOW! intern Michael Broder, titled “The Affordable Care Act and Medical Loss Ratios: No Change in First Three Years.” The article found that, despite the promise of the Affordable Care…

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The U.S. Medical Education No One Discusses

Chelsea McGuire, a medical student at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, couldn’t believe what she was asked to do for her psychiatry clerkship: track down whether desperate patients have a source of income, in order for the hospital to decide whether to treat them or not. Listen to her testimony, and her plea for a…

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WEBINAR: Vermont at the Crossroads

December 2014, just after being re-elected to office, Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin dropped a bomb shell by recommending that the Vermont state legislature not proceed with financing for universal, public health coverage for Vermont, stating that “now is not the time.” What were Governor Shumlin’s reasons? Were they legitimate? What are the implications for state single-payer…

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Readers’ Guide to Racial Equity in Healthcare

Race is a Social Construct To start, it’s important to understand that there is no biological basis for race. Race is purely a social construct, and racial inequities in health all have social roots (although health impacts on a social group can lead to genetic consequences for that group’s descendents, such as in sickle cell…

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Losing Your Vision & Bartering For Care

Dr. Daniel Root testified before the New York Assembly Health Committee on December 4, 2014 about trying to care for the uninsured and underinsured in a rural county primary care practice. He describes a farmer, whom he has treated since childhood, losing his vision due to lack of access to basic preventive care; and another…

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