Obamacare’s Founding CEO Wants To Bring Single Payer To Mass.

From Talking Points Memo – On his first day as governor of Massachusetts, Donald Berwick promises to set up a commission tasked with finding a way to bring single payer to the Bay State. It’ll have report back to him within a year — ideally sooner. Having run Medicare and Obamacare in Washington for 17…

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Mass. Gov. hopeful: Consider “single payer” care

From the AP – Democratic candidate for governor Donald Berwick is pushing Massachusetts to take a second look at creating a truly universal health care system. The former top Obama administration health care official said Thursday that the state should “seriously explore the possibility of a single payer system in Massachusetts” – a system which…

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Medical debt still problem in Mass.

From the Boston Globe – Architects of the pioneering 2006 Massachusetts health law, which required most residents to have insurance, expected it would reduce families’ medical debt. But the most recent data suggest the scope of medical debt has remained largely unchanged. Temporary lapses in insurance coverage and increasingly common plans with high deductibles and…

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Single-payer health care would save billions for Massachusetts

By David U. Himmelstein and Steffie Woolhandler for the Boston Globe – The House and Senate health care proposals would set imaginary limits for spending growth enforced by secret “improvement plans” and wrist slaps for hospitals that overcharge; establish tiered payment schemes to consign the poor and middle class to second-tier hospitals and doctors; push…

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Massachusetts Faces Costs of Big Health Care Plan

By Kevin Sack for the New York Times— Three years ago, Massachusetts enacted perhaps the boldest state health care experiment in American history, bringing near-universal coverage to the commonwealth with Paul Revere speed. To make it happen, Democratic lawmakers and Gov. Mitt Romney, a Republican, made an expedient choice, deferring until another day any serious…

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Mass. healthcare reform is failing us

By Susanne L. King— Massachusetts Has been lauded for its healthcare reform, but the program is a failure. Created solely to achieve universal insurance coverage, the plan does not even begin to address the other essential components of a successful healthcare system. What would such a system provide? The prestigious Institute of Medicine, part of…

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Video: National Lessons from State Health Reform

The following video was taken on February 25, 2009 at the “National Lessons from State Health Reform: The Massachusetts Case Study” forum in Washington, DC. National Lessons from State Health Reform: The Massachusetts Case Study from New Words on Vimeo. Speakers include: David Himmelstein, MD, Cambridge Hospital Physician, Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical…

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