Healthcare-NOW

Fool’s Gold: US Healthcare System Cheats Patients

By Donna Smith – In case any one of us needs reminding, the profit-driven healthcare system in America is broken. Driven by its primary motivation to make money, there is little that compels those currently in control to care about patients like you and me. We are most assuredly a necessary component of the healthcare…

Funding a National Single-Payer System

By Gerald Friedman for Dollars and Sense – Download “Funding a National Single-Payer System” here (.pdf). Don’t like the Obamacare (or Romneycare) mandate? Single-payer is a viable—and more redistributive—alternative. “The Expanded & improved Medicare for all act” (hr 676) would establish a single authority responsible for paying for health care for all Americans. Providing universal…

Single-Payer Activists’ Views on the Individual Mandate

The Supreme Court’s Affordable Care Act hearings last month renewed debate over the individual mandate within the single-payer movement. As expected, there are a wide variety of views on this issue. It’s important to take some time to reflect on some of the arguments made about the mandate. This is by no means comprehensive, but…

Conservatives and Liberals Agree: Medicare for All Would Be Constitutional

By Miles Mogulescu for the Huffington Post – Conservatives and liberals may disagree about the constitutionality of the individual mandate requiring all uninsured Americans to buy health insurance from private companies or pay a penalty to the IRS. But there is no debate about whether single-payer Medicare For All would be constitutional. No one —…

Is Single-Payer Inevitable?

You may have seen dozens of articles and news clips claiming that if the Supreme Court strikes down the Affordable Care Act in June, Democrats will have no choice but to turn to single-payer as the necessary alternative to healthcare reform. “It’s inevitable,” they say. It thrills us to see single-payer in the limelight, but…

Partisan Confusion

Outside the Supreme Court While the Mandate is Debated By Kevin Zeese for It’s Our Economy – I was standing outside the U.S. Supreme Court holding a sign that said “Single Payer Now, Strike Down the Obama Mandate.” It was the second day of argument on the Affordable Care Act. As I watched the crowds…

As Supreme Court Hears Landmark Case, Does Law Do Enough to Fix Health Crisis?

By Democracy Now! – As the Supreme Court weighs whether the Affordable Care Act goes too far, we host a debate on whether the law goes far enough. The case is reviving the heated tensions that surrounded the healthcare reform law in the debate leading up to its passage two years ago. Although support for…

Injecting Single-Payer Into the Mandate News Cycle

With the Supreme Court hearings on the individual mandate happening this week, healthcare reform is back in the news. It’s time to send letters to the editor all over the country saying, “Individual mandate or not, we need Medicare-for-all.” The Supreme Court hearings on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate provision to…

The Conservative Case for Single Payer Health Reform

By Dr. Joe Jarvis for Utah Healthcare Initiative Blog – Recently, Charles Krauthammer, conservative Washington Post commentator and Fox News analyst, who is also a physician, spoke to an audience of mostly physicians in San Antonio (find coverage of the speech in the San Antonio press here). Excerpts: If President Barack Obama’s health care reform…

“Because this is Wrong”

John is from Portsmouth, New Hampshire. His son is an X-ray tech, and one day while he was working a woman presented in the ER with a splitting headache. After running scans they discovered she had a brain tumor — but she also had no job and no insurance. The doctors in the ER told…