Healthcare-NOW

CBO Says GOP Medicare Plan Would Double The Cost Of Health Care For Seniors

By Rick Ungar for Forbes – Despite Rep. Paul Ryan’s suggestion that the independent and bi-partisan Congressional Budget Office had signed off on the numbers he has presented in his 2012 budget proposal, it is now emerging that Rep. Ryan has failed to tell us the entire story. One of the key provisions contained in…

Ryan Turns Knife on Medicare, Medicaid

By Margaret Flowers – Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, the Republican chairman of the U.S. House Budget Committee, unveiled two proposals this week which if enacted would constitute a mortal threat to our nation’s health – particularly to the health of our seniors and our most vulnerable populations. The first proposal, Senate Joint Resolution 10,…

Riding the Wave

Why the HIV community (and everybody else) should support single-payer health care. By Sue Saltmarsh for Positively Aware – As a peer-led agency, the Test Positive Aware Network (TPAN) has always been staffed by many HIV-positive people, as well as others who have diabetes, heart problems, sleep disorders, cancer, and a variety of other ills…

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…

House Republicans Propose $4 Trillion in Cuts Over Decade

By Carl Hulse for the New York Times – House Republicans plan this week to propose more than $4 trillion in federal spending reductions over the next decade by reshaping popular programs like Medicare, the Budget Committee chairman said Sunday in opening a new front in the intensifying budget wars. Appearing on “Fox News Sunday,”…

‘Deficit gurus’ launch assault on women’s health

By Claudia Chaufan – March is Women’s History Month. But this year, for the vast majority of women in America, there is little to celebrate. Over the past months, “deficit gurus” in the U.S. House of Representatives have unleashed the most devastating assault on women’s health in our nation’s history. If legislation already passed in…

The Human Cost of Boehner’s Cuts

John Boehner is calling for cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid this spring claiming these programs aren’t sustainable. The only thing unsustainable is the parasitic greed of the corporations and a Congress complicit in supporting them. Just a few weeks ago Congress approved huge tax cuts to the wealthy, and now we have to…

Rising Calls to Replace Top Man at Medicare

By Robert Pear for the New York Times – WASHINGTON — Members of Congress, including Democrats, have urged the Obama administration to search for another Medicare chief after concluding that the Senate is unlikely to confirm President Obama’s temporary appointee, Dr. Donald M. Berwick. Dr. Berwick’s principal deputy, Marilyn B. Tavenner, has emerged as a…

WSJ/NBC Poll: Hands Off Medicare, Social Security

Many Deem Big Cuts to Entitlements ‘Unacceptable,’ but Retirement and Means Testing Draw Support By NEIL KING JR. and SCOTT GREENBERG for the WSJ – WASHINGTON— Less than a quarter of Americans support making significant cuts to Social Security or Medicare to tackle the country’s mounting deficit, according to a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News…

Government more efficient?

A Milford Daily News Editorial – A [Massachusetts] official may have gone off-script last week, but what he had to say is an important contribution to the state’s ongoing debate over reining in health care costs. Terry Dougherty, director of MassHealth, the state’s Medicaid program, was addressing a budget hearing in Boston Friday, State House…