NC Could Save $18.7B by Adopting Single-Payer

By Jennifer Thomas for the Charlotte Business Journal – North Carolina could save as much as $18.7 billion next year on health-care costs if it changed the way it finances health care. The catch? That change would require a switch to a single-payer system in which one entity collects all health-care fees and pay related…

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Obamacare Issues Beg the Questions that Single-Payer Answers

By Donna Smith for Common Dreams – In recent days, many of us have read and tried to follow the reports that Congressional offices are engaged in discussions about how to make sure their health insurance coverage available under the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) remains affordable for Congresspersons and their staff members. If you’d like…

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The Unhappy Marriage of Economics and Health Care

By Gerald Friedman – America’s health care system is collapsing, and we can blame the Economics profession. Most economists approach health care in the wrong way, viewing it as a commodity like shoes or the laptop on which I write. Instead, health care is an idiosyncratic commodity, subject to uncertainty and “asymmetric information” leading to…

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Beyond Obamacare

How a Single-Payer System Can Save US Health Care By Dave Dvorak, MD for Common Dreams – As Minnesota’s physicians, health care leaders and legislators grapple with the complex changes brought by the Affordable Care Act (ACA), many are concerned that even after the law is fully implemented, hundreds of thousands of people will remain…

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Health/PAC Bulletins Now Available Online

Searchable and free at www.healthpacbulletin.org. From HealthPACBulletin.org – Before there was an internet, with blogs, listservs and web pages to turn to, there was the Health/PAC Bulletin, the hard-hitting and muckraking journal of health activism and health care system analyses and critiques. A new web site, www.healthpacbulletin.org, is a complete and searchable digital collection of…

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Single-Payer Would Save PA $17 Billion Annually

Health Care for All PA, a statewide non-profit organization today released an economic impact study. The results prove that a single-payer health care plan will save families, businesses and tax payers $17 billion annually while at the same time providing comprehensive health care to all. This study was done by University of Massachusetts – Amherst…

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Horror Care: How Private Health Care Is Shortening Our Lives

By Paul Buchheit for Common Dreams – Steven Brill's article in Time Magazine about the cost of private health care is likely to make most of his readers very angry. Angry about the prices we pay, about the lives that are devastated, and about the fact that we're one of the few developed countries without…

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Winning Medicare for All? “I Like Our Chances”

Despite insights, Time magazine’s cover story falls short on remedy By James Kahn for Common Dreams – In his recent Time magazine article, Steven Brill paints a vivid and rather depressing picture of the perverse malfunctioning of our health care system – overpriced and technology-addicted – and he acknowledges some of the advantages of Medicare.…

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Why Workers Should Be Wary About Corporate Wellness

By Steve Early for the Nation – A growing number of US companies are now urging their employees to slim down, exercise more, reduce their cholesterol and blood pressure levels, or quit smoking—all socially desirable goals. But if these workers fail to cooperate with the new corporate “wellness” regime and adopt a healthier lifestyle (under…

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