Healthcare-NOW

Why Single-Payer Health Care Can’t Wait

Americans’ experience with employer-paid health benefits has been far from happy. A steady stream of reporters from corporate news media outlets warmed things up at a frigid Camp Hope in Chicago last week, when CNN and the local affiliates of ABC, NBC, FOX, and CBS all called at Drexel Park on day two of the…

COBRA Too Costly for Many Unemployed, Report Finds

The cost of buying health insurance for unemployed Americans who try to purchase coverage through a former employer consumes 30 percent to 84 percent of standard unemployment benefits, according to a report released yesterday. Because few people can afford that, the authors say, the result is a growing number of people being hit with the…

Health Care Tops Agenda

Louisvillians had a strong message for President-elect Barack Obama yesterday: The nation’s health-care system needs either massive reforms or a complete overhaul. “Health care in this nation costs too much and is serving too few,” said Scott Wegenast of AARP Kentucky, one of more than 80 people who attended a community health-care forum at the…

AFT and NEA Local Unions Endorse HR 676

AFT and NEA local unions in New Jersey and Massachusetts have endorsed HR 676, single payer healthcare legislation introduced by Congressman John Conyers (D-MI). In Mahwah, New Jersey, AFT Local 6308, North Jersey Skills for Technology Union, which represents instructors working at Lincoln Technical Institute, has endorsed HR 676. Lincoln Tech is a for-profit, post-secondary,…

Change policies to aid auto industry

This new year, we’ve got a huge task ahead of us: Restructuring the American auto industry for a viable, long-term future. It won’t be easy — just as it wasn’t easy to win the emergency bridge loans which give us a chance for a brighter tomorrow. When we went to Washington seeking to help so…

How to Push Obama

The Leadership Conference for Guaranteed Healthcare: the National Single-Payer Coalition is mentioned in this months issue of The Progressive Magazine in the following article by John Nichols. On November 4, the American people by a popular majority of more than eight million votes selected as their new President a Democratic contender who had been attacked…

America’s health-care famine is slowly killing us

Editorial Columnist Clark Newhall is a physician and attorney in Salt Lake City, as well as a single-payer activist and contributer to Healthcare-NOW! He writes an eloquent assessment of the severity of the failure of our health care system. Read on… January 3, 2009 Salt Lake City, “America’s health-care faminie is slowly killing us” We…

Action Alert: Vote for single payer on Obama’s website

Until December 31st, 2008, we have the opportunity to use the Obama web site to vote your support for the single-payer position. The Obama transition team is soliciting questions from the public via their web site. Visitors may “vote” for the best questions, which will then be responded to by the Obama team. As of…

Teen’s family sues Cigna over denied transplant

17-year-old leukemia patient died hours after insurance reversed refusal updated 6:32 p.m. ET, Fri., Dec. 26, 2008 LOS ANGELES – The family of a 17-year-old leukemia patient has sued health insurance giant Cigna Corp. for her death in 2007 after the company initially refused to pay for a liver transplant. The lawsuit filed last week…

There’s No Place Like Home for The Holidays, Until There is No Home

Donna Smith’s holiday message is featured on the front page of Common Dreams today. It is a message to all of us as we struggle to include health care for all as the basis of any economic recovery package: A little box arrived from Chicago last week to my temporary digs here in Washington, DC. Inside…