The Highmark-UPMC battle shows how private insurers serve no useful purpose

By Ed Grystar, Chuck Pennacchio and Tony Buba for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette – The current contract disagreement between Highmark and UPMC provides a clear example of why the free-market health care system has failed. When profit is the primary motive, patient needs get short shrift. Health care is not a commodity, but a human right.…

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Sponsor a Single-Payer Activist

Healthcare-NOW!’s Annual Strategy Conference on Saturday, January 28th and Sunday, January 29th in Houston, TX is fast approaching. This is our opportunity for people across the nation to come together to share experiences and ideas, and develop a concrete plan to organize for single-payer improved Medicare-for-all in the year ahead. We will discuss how to…

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Hundreds Join Occupy Portland on Peaceful March for Universal Healthcare

From Oregon Single Payer Campaign and the Portland Occupier – Hundreds of protesters attended a rally on November 19 in Portland after which they planted 558 crosses, representing the 558 uninsured Oregonians who die each year because they lack healthcare. According to Dr. Paul N. Gorman, specialist in geriatric and internal medicine, who was one…

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Occupy Protesters Interrupt COC Healthcare Event

From Think Progress – Protesters disrupted a U.S. Chamber of Commerce event on healthcare yesterday, interrupting speaker Scott Serota, the CEO of Blue Cross & Blue Shield. Chanting “we are the 99 percent,” the protesters stood at the luncheon event and used a “human microphone” technique to read a statement about how the “the one…

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Teaneck, NJ Endorses Single-Payer, HR 676

As part of our Win-Win Campaign, Teaneck, NJ passed a resolution supporting HR 676 on October, 11, 2011. Paula Freidman, a single-Payer activist in New Jersey, sent us this report: I am chairperson of the Bergen County Central Trades & Labor Council Retirees. We set out to target towns in which we live to seek…

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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…

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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…

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Occupy Wall St. Single-Payer March Roundup

Healthcare-NOW! NYC Organizer Katie Robbins address the crowed at the Occupy Wall Street universal, single-payer healthcare march on October 26th. Here’s the press release about the march: Wall Street’s control of health care is exposed in a march/speak-out today that starts at the offices of Empire Blue Cross/Blue Shield, a subsidiary of WellPoint, the largest…

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