Healthcare-NOW

First Universal Health Care Bill in U.S. Marks Success of Vermont’s Human Rights Movement

By Anja Rudiger for NESRI – On May 5 the Vermont House followed the Senate in passing the final version of a health reform bill that creates a path for a universal, publicly financed health care system in Vermont. Governor Peter Shumlin has confirmed he will sign the bill into law. This makes Vermont the…

AFL-CIO Endorses Sanders/McDermott American Health Security Act of 2011

By the Labor Campaign for Single-Payer Healthcare – Stating that, “The fight to reform our nation’s healthcare system has only just begun,” AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker declared the Federation’s support for companion single-payer Bills submitted by Senator Sanders and Congressman McDermott. The Bills provide every American with affordable and comprehensive health care…

Video: Sen. Sanders and Rep. McDermott Introduce Single-Payer Bills

Legislation to provide health care for every American through a Medicare-for-all type single-payer system was introduced in the Senate by Sen. Bernie Sanders and in the House by Rep. Jim McDermott. Their twin bills would provide better care for more patients at less cost by eliminating the middle-man role played by private insurance companies that…

Cut Medicare? No Way! Make It ‘Medicare for All’!

By John Nichols for the Nation – House Budget Committee chair Paul Ryan, R-Wisconsin, proposes to undermine the integrity of the Medicare and Medicaid programs, with an eye toward enriching the insurance companies that so generously fund his campaigns. The American people are not amused. They have sent a clear signal that they want to…

Single payer healthcare: it’s only fair

By Bernie Sanders for the Guardian – The United States is the only major nation in the industrialized world that does not guarantee healthcare as a right to its people. Meanwhile, we spend about twice as much per capita on healthcare and, in a wide number of instances, our outcomes are not as good as…

Nurses Support American Health Security Act of 2011

From National Nurses United – On Tuesday, May 10, 2011, at 10:30 a.m., EDT, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Representative Jim McDermott (D-WA), will hold a joint news conference at the Senate Swamp to announce the introduction of the American Health Security Act of 2011 (the Act). The Act establishes a national healthcare program that…

Aidan Reed, 5, sells 3,000 drawings to pay for cancer treatment

From www.dailymail.co.uk – A little boy fighting cancer is selling pictures he has drawn of his favorite monsters to pay for the treatment that could save his life. Aidan Reed, five, from Kansas City, U.S., was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia on September 13 last year. Since then he has undergone weeks of treatment as…

Keep Your Hands Off My Medicare!

By Katrina vanden Heuvel for the Nation – It’s been a common refrain of politicians in Washington for as long as the capitol has been unpopular: “It’s good to get outside the Beltway, good to go get back to the real America.” But in recent days that cliché might feel a bit stale for Republican…

Health Justice Advocates Win on Immigrant Rights Issue

By Katie Robbins – Days after thousands of healthcare rights advocates rallied in Montpelier, Vermont, the Vermont Workers’ Center’s Healthcare is a Human Campaign was successful in forcing the state Senate to strike a harmful amendment from the universal healthcare bill that would have excluded undocumented immigrants from the state’s proposed universal healthcare system. Among…

California Single Payer Health Care Bill Passes Health Committee

From the Office of Sen. Mark Leno – May 4, 2011 SACRAMENTO, CA – The Senate Health Committee today approved the California Universal Health Care Act, authored by Senator Mark Leno (D-San Francisco). Senate Bill 810 guarantees all Californians comprehensive, universal health care while containing ballooning health care costs and improving the quality of care…