Healthcare-NOW

Humiliation and Shame: Part of Being Insured in America

By Donna Smith – Oh, the things we did not fix in the healthcare bill are shocking. Just as seniors falling into the Medicare drug benefit donut hole begin to get the $250 checks meant to calm their fears about our new healthcare legislation, the rest of us would do well to remember the abuses…

Uninsured Woman, Shoots Herself In Shoulder To Get ER Treatment

By Laura Bassett for Huffington Post – An unemployed Michigan woman who was unable to afford medical treatment for a searing pain in her shoulder took matters into her own hands last week, shooting herself in the shoulder in a last-ditch effort to get into the ER. Kathy Myers, 41, said she was pushed to…

Rising Costs: A Health Care Challenge For Democrats

by Julie Rovner for NPR – For Democrats, passing the new health care law may have been the easy part. Now that it’s the law, everything that happens in health care, whether due to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act or not, is their responsibility. “The Democrats have guaranteed that the American health care…

Critics Question Study Cited in Health Debate

By REED ABELSON and GARDINER HARRIS for the New York Times – In selling the health care overhaul to Congress, the Obama administration cited a once obscure research group at Dartmouth College to claim that it could not only cut billions in wasteful health care spending but make people healthier by doing so. Wasteful spending…

Whacking the Old Folks

By William Greider for the Nation – In setting up his National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, Barack Obama is again playing coy in public, but his intentions are widely understood among Washington insiders. The president intends to offer Social Security as a sacrificial lamb to entice conservative deficit hawks into a grand bipartisan…

In Canada: Public health care as sustainable as we want it to be

Claim that medicare is too costly to maintain is based on economic and political myths By Robert G. Evans, University Killam Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of British Columbia, for thestar.com – “There are stark and unpalatable choices that we face with respect to health care, but there is no magic…

Infection in Our Healthcare System

From the Media Mobilizing Project – Philadelphia’s two major newspapers have been acquired by outside investors. Comcast cable dominates the market, but thousands of our neighbors can’t afford to get online. In an era of dwindling outlets telling the stories of everyday Philadelphians, the Media Mobilizing Project has launched MMPtv, a monthly half-hour newsmagazine knitting…

Former President Bush’s brother collapses at Wellpoint meeting

From wishtv.com – INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) – The WellPoint shareholders meeting in downtown Indianapolis ended much earlier than some disgruntled shareholders would have liked when 71-year-old William H.T. Bush, brother of the first President Bush, collapsed. For the fourth year in a row, in the shadow of WellPoint corporate headquarters in downtown Indianapolis, on the day…

3rd Largest Labor Council in Ohio Endorses HR 676

On April 27, 2010, the Tri-County Regional Labor Council, the third largest labor council in the state of Ohio, endorsed HR 676, national single payer health care legislation sponsored by Congressman John Conyers (D-MI). John Wagner, Executive Secretary Treasurer, stated that the council supports single payer “Because we believe that it’s the real solution to…

After the Reform: Aiming High for Health Justice

By Margaret Flowers, M.D. for Tikkun Magazine – As we sit here on the other side of the recent health reform process, we have an opportunity for reflection. There were many times during the past year and a half when passage of a health bill seemed unlikely. However, in the end, the White House and…