Occupy Wall Street – Healthcare-NOW

Strike Debt Abolishes $1.1 Million of Medical Debt

By Allison Kilkenny for the Nation – Strike Debt, a group that emerged from the Occupy Wall Street movement, has planned a week of actions in multiple cities across the country to mark the abolition of $1.1 million in medical debt belonging to 1,064 people as part of the “Rolling Jubilee” project. While that may…

May 1 – A Day Without the 99%

For more than 120 years, May 1 has been celebrated internationally as a day to honor workers and commemorate the suffering they have endured – and continue to endure – in their struggles for equity for all in the workplace. Building on the history of May Day, the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement is calling…

Occupy Wall Street Gives Award to Pfizer: “Excellence in Profiteering”

Part of National Day of Action against corporate greed and corruption New York, NY – February 29 – Healthcare workers, doctors, nurses, and Occupy Wall Street activists gathered outside of Pfizer’s International Headquarters in New York City to protest the world’s largest drug company’s connection to the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, a right-wing,…

Health Insurers Remain in Many “Socially Responsible” Funds

From the Wall Street Journal – Mention “socially responsible investing” and most people think of a stock-picking strategy that involves abstinence—that is, avoiding industries or companies whose ethical, environmental or governance practices fall short of certain standards. The mutual-fund industry began offering products based on this idea in the 1970s, and Morningstar Inc. recently identified…

Speakout lets locals voice views on health care

From Gainesville.com – Dr. Lynn Chacko put her money where her philosophy is. Chacko told those gathered at a speakout on health care Saturday that she gave up a profitable job as a private physician in South Florida to work for the Veterans Administration in Gainesville. “I had a wonderful group of patients, but I…

Students Occupy for Health Justice

By Danielle Alexander for AMSA On Call blog – I met a patient last week who stopped taking her antidepressant medications because she had been denied long-term health insurance and thought it would improve her chances of eligibility. Unfortunately this obviously wasn’t in the best interest of her health. I had another patient who presented…

Why the Occupy Movement is Good for Our Health

By Julie Matthaei and Neil Wollman for Common Dreams – Recently, the Congressional Budget Office released a report on income inequality which found that the incomes of the top 1% nearly tripled between 1979 and 2007, whereas those of the middle class increased by less than forty percent. In his 2007 study, Jared Bernstein found…

Occupiers plan epic New York to Washington march

Their target: The congressional supercommittee and the Bush tax cuts for the rich By Justin Elliott for Salon – Persistent criticism of Occupy Wall Street for failing to specify demands has helped obscure the fact that groups of people within the movement have been mobilizing around concrete political goals. The latest example is a small…

Thursday, November 3rd: Make Wall Street Pay!

Join Healthcare-NOW! and National Nurses United for a day of action on Thursday November 3rd. We have to let the world know we will not let the 1% continue to steal our money or cut Medicare, Medicaid, or Social Security–the programs that help keep us housed, healthy, and fed through hard times and older age.…

Occupy SF: the teenager who was refused cancer treatment

Miran Istina, 18, joined protests after four years of being denied life-saving bone marrow transplant for leukaemia By Eoin Reynolds for the Guardian – As Miran Istina puts it, she has been living on borrowed time since she was 14. Diagnosed with cancer, she was given just months to live after her health insurer refused…