Barack Obama – Healthcare-NOW

Big Pharma Buys Off The Senate

An eleventh-hour loophole in the “fiscal cliff” deal confirms our worst suspicions about how Congress operates. By Bill Moyers – The inauguration of a president is one of those spectacles of democracy that can make us remember we’re part of something big and enduring. So for a few hours this past Monday, the pomp and…

Is Obama Selling Us Out on Medicare?

Hiking the eligibility age is such a terrible idea Obama can’t possibly be considering it. Or can he? By Joan Walsh for Alternet – I want to put a public service announcement on top of this post: The fiscal cliff scenarios discussed here may never become reality. The worst sell-outs of liberal principles allegedly under…

On Medicare Vouchers and Cuts

Medicare is the main issue for both major political parties. Republicans Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney’s platform is to privatize Medicare and gut Medicaid, but Republicans are not alone in their attacks on our social safety net. Ryan developed his Medicare plan with Democratic Senator Ron Wyden last year. Ryan’s proposal (deceptively titled the “Path…

Republican and Democratic Plans for Medicare and Medicaid Misguided

Push for Privatization will Accelerate Costs and Deaths By Margaret Flowers, M.D. for FireDogLake – Leadership in Washington recognizes the damage our soaring health care spending is doing to our entire economy. Although their rhetoric differs, recent budget proposals from both Republicans and Democrats mistakenly place the blame on Medicare and Medicaid. Cuts to and…

America Needs a Single Payer Health Care System

Even if Obama’s overhaul works as planned, there will still be 23 million Americans lacking health insurance in 2019. By Kay Tillow for OtherWorlds.org – More than a year after President Barack Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act into law, our nation’s health care delivery and coverage remain the disgrace of the…

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…

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…

The Budget Battles: The Threat to Medicaid and Medicare

A New York Times Editorial – Representative Paul Ryan’s proposals to reform Medicare and Medicaid are mostly an effort to shift the burden to beneficiaries and the states. They have very little reform in them. Related in Opinion They certainly won’t solve the two most pressing problems in the nation’s health care system: the relentlessly…

Obama administration delaying some rules for appealing health insurance denials

By Susan Jaffe for Kaiser Health News – The Obama administration is delaying until next January its enforcement of some new rules designed to protect patients who appeal insurers’ decisions to deny or reduce health care benefits. In the meantime, the Labor Department said in a posting on its website that it will revise the…

The Health Care Crisis Grows While the 2010 Health Reform Shrinks

By Kevin Zeese for FireDogLake.com – At its one year anniversary the Obama health care law is shrinking while the health care crisis grows. Americans who lack any health coverage still exceeds 50 million, over 45,000 deaths occur annually due to lack of health insurance, and 40 million Americans, including over 10 million children, are…