Healthcare-NOW

Montanans for Single Payer forms to promote universal coverage

A new statewide group has formed to affect the current national debate on health care reform. Montanans for Single-Payer is committed to true universal health care, a Medicare-type system where everyone is in and no one is out, according to the group’s spokesman, Phil Campbell. Campbell said that Montanans for Single-Payer is convinced the only…

Saratoga Springs backs universal healthcare, HR 676

By Andrew J. Bernstein for the Saratogian— After a vote Tuesday, the City Council threw its support behind universal health care, passing a resolution to back federal legislation to establish a new paradigm for medical insurance. If passed through Congress, the HR-676 will create a single-payer health care system administered by private entities and funded…

Cost control, universal care impossible without single-payer health system

Policy expert challenges effectiveness of lesser reforms at House panel With President Obama and congressional leaders vowing to pass a health reform bill by the end of the year, a prominent Harvard-based health policy analyst warned a House subcommittee Thursday that the leading incremental models for reform, including those patterned after the Massachusetts plan, are…

Portland IBEW Local Endorses HR 676

The 4,000 member IBEW Local 48 has voted to endorse HR 676, single payer healthcare legislation introduced by Congressman John Conyers (D-MI). Dana Welty, Oregon Nurses Association, and Tom Leedham, IBT Local 206, made a joint presentation on HR 676 to the February membership meeting but the endorsement of HR 676 was tabled until the…

Belly Dancers Rally for Universal Health Care

By Scott Hershberger for Your4State.com— MARTINSBURG, WV – It may have looked like a party in Martinsburg: belly dancers and loud, festive music, but the people involved weren’t celebrating. The group is hoping to see “single payer” health insurance in the United States, and they want some support from a local lawmaker. They’re hoping to…

Testimony of David U. Himmelstein, M.D. Before the HELP Subcommittee

By David U. Himmelstein from PNHP.org— Mr. Chairman, members of the Committee. My name is David Himmelstein. I am a primary care doctor in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and associate professor of medicine at Harvard. I also serve as national spokesperson for Physicians for a National Health Program. Our 16,000 physician members support nonprofit, single-payer national health…

Healthcare Lifeboats

By David U. Himmelstein & Steffie Woolhandler— Massachusetts’s 2006 healthcare reform plan, often cited as a model for the nation, is sailing through choppy waters. Governor Deval Patrick is keeping it afloat by throwing away the lifeboats: public hospitals and clinics. Freighted with tax-funded windfalls that brought private insurers and hospitals on board, the reform…

Interview: Robert Kuttner on single-payer health care

By Vermont Public Radio— Two nationally known health care policy thinkers will be in Vermont this week, engaging in a debate over health care organized by the Janus forum at UVM. Yesterday we heard from Arnold Kling of the Cato Institute, who argues that while our current system of health insurance is broken, a universal…

USW and CWA Locals Endorse Single-Payer, HR 676

Two more local unions in Oregon have endorsed HR 676, single payer healthcare legislation introduced by Congressman John Conyers (D-MI). In McMinnville, Steelworkers Local 8378 endorsed HR 676 and submitted its resolution to the Marion, Polk and Yamhill Counties Central Labor Council for consideration, reports Joseph Munger, President of the USW Local. In Portland, Communications…

TNRtv: The Case for Single-Payer Health Care

From the New Republic— At the 2009 World Health Care Congress, TNR senior editor Jonathan Cohn sat down with Dr. Michael Chen, Vice President and CFO of Taiwan’s National Health Insurance Bureau, to discuss the results of Taiwan’s switch to a universal health care system.