Healthcare-NOW

Obama’s Health Care Bill Is Enough to Make You Sick

By Chris Hedges for Truthdig – A close reading of the new health care legislation, which will conveniently take effect in 2014 after the next presidential election, is deeply depressing. The legislation not only mocks the lofty promises made by President Barack Obama, exposing most as lies, but sadly reconfirms that our nation is hostage…

‘Don’t shred our safety nets’

The following text is the testimony that Katie Robbins, national organizer for Healthcare-NOW!, presented to the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform on June 30 in Washington. Thank you for this opportunity to testify. My name is Katie Robbins and I am here on behalf of Healthcare-NOW!, an organization founded in 2004 to support…

America Speaks Back: The Effort to Gut Social Security and Medicare Takes a Hit

By Dean Baker for TPM – The opponents of Social Security and Medicare are getting in high gear. After all, it makes perfect sense that after the collapse of a housing bubble has just destroyed the life savings of near retirees that we would cut their Social Security and Medicare. Okay, at least in Washington…

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…

The Deficit Commission and Cuts to Medicare, Social Security

This year, Medicare turns 45, and maintaining this important federal program and protecting it from those who want to cut it is more important than ever. Because of recent economic and natural catastrophes, many people in this country are finding their quality of life slipping to standards lower than before the 1990s. Despite this, our…

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…

The Baucus 8 One Year Later (Video)

On May 5, 2009, 8 health advocates stood up to the members of the Senate Finance Committee, chaired by Senator Max Baucus, to expose the exclusion of the health reform favored by the majority of people in America: a single payer/national improved Medicare for All health program. Industry lobbyists were invited to testify before the…

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…

4 million likely to pay health fine

By Kim Dixon – WASHINGTON (Reuters) – About four 4 million people in the United States could be fined for failing to buy health insurance when the health overhaul law is fully in force in 2016, the Congressional Budget Office forecast on Thursday. Most individuals must buy health insurance under the landmark legislation passed by…