Healthcare-NOW

Canada’s Health Care: An Alternate Universe

By Elizabeth Rosenthal – I recently returned from a visit of several days to an alternate universe: Canadian health care. As a physician who has practiced in the United States for 44 years, I have experienced many aspects of our health care system, including its terrible inequities. Although some Americans get very good health care,…

Action Alert: Demand Pres. Obama Save Medicare

Republicans want to privatize Medicare and slash Medicaid to reduce the nation’s deficit. President Obama says he wants to preserve Medicare and Medicaid, but his budget proposal looks to those programs to find savings. We agree that healthcare costs are a serious problem, but cutting Medicare and Medicaid won’t help. Instead, we need to take…

May 1st: Healthcare is a Human Right Rally in VT

Healthcare-NOW! has endorsed the Healthcare is a Human Right Campaign (HCHR) March on Montpelier, Vermont on May 1st. The HCHR Campaign has built a statewide grassroots movement to make healthcare reform a political inevitability in Vermont. Supporters of the right to healthcare and single-payer are traveling in from across the country to attend this important…

Listen: The Threats to Dismantle Medicare and Medicaid

Thanks to everyone who participated in the national discussion on the threats to privatize Medicare and Medicaid on Monday, April 11th. If you missed the call, you can listen to it here. [audio:https://www.healthcare-now.org/wp-content/uploads/mp3/privatizemedicare.mp3] Or download an MP3 file of the call here (right click and save as). Featured speakers included: DeAnn McEwen, California Nurses Association/National…

Ryan Turns Knife on Medicare, Medicaid

By Margaret Flowers – Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, the Republican chairman of the U.S. House Budget Committee, unveiled two proposals this week which if enacted would constitute a mortal threat to our nation’s health – particularly to the health of our seniors and our most vulnerable populations. The first proposal, Senate Joint Resolution 10,…

Riding the Wave

Why the HIV community (and everybody else) should support single-payer health care. By Sue Saltmarsh for Positively Aware – As a peer-led agency, the Test Positive Aware Network (TPAN) has always been staffed by many HIV-positive people, as well as others who have diabetes, heart problems, sleep disorders, cancer, and a variety of other ills…

The Budget Battles: The Threat to Medicaid and Medicare

A New York Times Editorial – Representative Paul Ryan’s proposals to reform Medicare and Medicaid are mostly an effort to shift the burden to beneficiaries and the states. They have very little reform in them. Related in Opinion They certainly won’t solve the two most pressing problems in the nation’s health care system: the relentlessly…

House Republicans Propose $4 Trillion in Cuts Over Decade

By Carl Hulse for the New York Times – House Republicans plan this week to propose more than $4 trillion in federal spending reductions over the next decade by reshaping popular programs like Medicare, the Budget Committee chairman said Sunday in opening a new front in the intensifying budget wars. Appearing on “Fox News Sunday,”…

Video of the Student Rally in Vermont for Single Payer

By PNHP NY Metro Chapter – Medical, nursing, and public health students from around the country organized a rally to support universal, single-payer health care in Vermont. The March 26, 2011 event was led by student members of Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP) and co-sponsored by the American Medical Student Association (AMSA).

GAO Examines Individual Mandate Alternatives – Well, Some of Them

By Jon Walker for FireDogLake – At the request of Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE), the Government Accountability Office put out a report examining several alternatives to the individual mandate that could be used alone or in combination to increase the number of insured if there were no mandate. Nine of the possibilities looked at by…