Healthcare-NOW

Love of Medicare chills tea party fever

By Clarence Page for the Chicago Tribune – Surprise, surprise! Faced with the prospect of Medicare cuts, even tea party folks find griping about “big government” to be a lot more fun than actually shrinking it. Seventy percent of those who identified themselves as supporters of the fiscally conservative movement in a new McClatchy-Marist poll…

Quarter-Million Dead and Not Counting

By Donna Smith – After this past weekend of horrific storms and tornadoes, it was clearly appropriate for our elected officials to declare a federal disaster in some areas. With the designation comes some federal money and help for the storm-ravaged areas and residents. Few would quarrel with our government stepping up and stepping in…

Pennyrile Area CLC Endorses HR 676, National Single Payer Legislation

“The Pennyrile Area Central Labor Council endorses HR 676” reports Betty Robertson, Treasurer of the council in Hopkinsville in western Kentucky not far from the Tennessee border. With this endorsement all eight of Kentucky’s CLC’s have endorsed HR 676. Betty Robertson had much more to say: “We feel that Americans must fight for better health…

Canada’s Health Care: An Alternate Universe

By Elizabeth Rosenthal – I recently returned from a visit of several days to an alternate universe: Canadian health care. As a physician who has practiced in the United States for 44 years, I have experienced many aspects of our health care system, including its terrible inequities. Although some Americans get very good health care,…

Another poll shows Americans oppose Medicare cuts to deal with debt

By Jon Cohen and Dan Balz for the Washington Post – Despite growing concerns about the country’s long-term fiscal problems and an intensifying debate in Washington about how to deal with them, Americans strongly oppose some of the major remedies under consideration, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll. The survey finds that Americans…

Obama’s ‘Shared Sacrifice’ Hits the Poor and Middle-Class Hardest

The Nation editorial – President Obama’s speech unveiling his deficit reduction plan contained few big surprises—by its very premise, it was destined to preserve the faulty assumptions behind the whole deficit discussion—but some of his words were welcome. The president called Social Security and Medicare fundamental American commitments and, in a rebuke to Congressman Paul…

Why Medicare Isn’t the Problem, It’s the Solution

By Robert Reich for RobertReich.com – I hope when he tells America how he aims to tame future budget deficits the president doesn’t accept conventional Washington wisdom that the biggest problem in the federal budget is Medicare (and its poor cousin Medicaid). Medicare isn’t the problem. It’s the solution. The real problem is the soaring…

Nurses to President Obama: Don’t Cut Healthcare, Retirement; Raise Corporate Taxes, End Wars

RNs Won’t Endorse Politicians who Vote to Cut Social Security In advance of President Obama’s speech Wednesday on the budget deficit, the nation’s largest union and professional association of nurses today called on the President to oppose any cuts in Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security – and strengthen the nation’s economy by restoring fair taxes…

When It Comes to Quality, New Poll Shows Americans Give U.S. Health Care Low Grades

Those with incomes less than $50,000 most likely to view the quality of their care as low. From the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation – A new poll shows most Americans believe the quality of U.S. health care is average at best—sober news for the nation’s health care leaders. More than half of American adults surveyed…

Paul Ryan’s Plan to Destroy Medicare

Editorial from The Nation – As an opening salvo from Republicans in the 2012 budget debate, the plan offered by Wisconsin’s Paul Ryan—supposedly a model of “seriousness” and “courage” next to overzealous Tea Partiers and Democrats silly enough to want to keep the government minimally functional—is remarkable mostly for its cynicism. Consider Ryan’s approach to…