Healthcare-NOW

On the Individual Mandate

The Women’s Economic Agenda Project sends us a handout on the individual mandate to purchase health insurance that’s included in the recently-signed healthcare legislation. You can download the handout here.

PBS ombudsman: Ignoring single payer was a mistake

Single-Minded About Single-Payer: The Ombudsman Column By Michael Getler, PBS, April 23, 2010 – PBS’s venerable public affairs and investigative series Frontline is, I confess, a favorite of mine, and has been for as long as I can remember watching public television. For me, Frontline, along with CBS’s “60 Minutes,” is the best of what…

Frontline Disguises Single-Payer Advocates as Public-Option Promoters

By Peter Hart for FAIR – The PBS program Frontline on April 13 offered a look at the White House drive for healthcare reform titled Obama’s Deal. Like a previous Frontline special about the U.S. healthcare system, the program failed to adequately include single-payer. But the way the show did it this time was remarkable.…

Action Alert: Expect Better from PBS

Recently, we announced Frontline’s new program, “Obama’s Deal,” which included a segment that featured single-payer advocates arrested in the Senate Finance Committee protesting the exclusion of single-payer witnesses from the proceedings. It exposed some of the sordid deals struck by congressional lawmakers and the White House with the health insurance industry and Big Pharma. While…

Why the Health Reform Law Fails to Meet Human Rights Standards

By Anja Rudiger for Amnesty International – Amidst the celebrations of a ‘historical moment,’ a healthy dose of realism seems in order as we assess the new Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and the related reconciliation measures. What is seen as a crucial victory for the Obama Administration has been won on the backs…

In Response to Obama’s Deal

Below is Kevin Zeese’s, Executive Director of ProsperityAgenda.US, response to Frontline’s Obama’s Deal. If you would like to send your comment to PBS about Obama’s Deal, please go here. *** I really hope you will respond to this email because I was quite disturbed by the bias shown by Frontline in its two reports on…

No Time to ‘Wait and See’ on Health Law

By Dr. Quentin Young – Building the Single-Payer Movement Having just gone through a grueling, frequently raucous debate on health reform, capped by the narrowest of votes to pass the Obama administration’s bill, many activists are now tempted to adopt a “wait and see” attitude on how the new law plays out. A few others…

Health care bill does not fix health care system

By Peter Shapiro for fightbacknews.org – Passage of President Obama’s health care reform in late March made for great political theater. Here was House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, skillfully maneuvering the bill through Congress after many had given it up for lost. Here was House minority leader and Republican point man John Boehner, reduced to ranting…

Healthcare overhaul won’t stop premium increases

The new law doesn’t prevent rate hikes such as Anthem Blue Cross’ double-digit increase last year. ‘It is a very big loophole,’ says Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who is pushing regulatory legislation. By Noam N. Levey for the LA Times – Public outrage over double-digit rate hikes for health insurance may have helped push President Obama’s…

Leading Single-Payer Activists Discuss Health Insurance Reform

What did we get, what didn’t we get, and where to do we go from here? On April 11, 2010 we were lucky to be joined by Kevin Zeese (Prosperity Agenda) and Ethel Long Scott (Women’s Economic Agenda Project) on our monthly single-payer activists conference call to hear their excellent analysis of the health insurance…