Health Care

Whipping Egg-Whips: Retirees Win Battles Against Medicare Advantage

August 26, 2023 Kay Tillow, Common Dreams. Resist! Health Care, Medicare, Medicare Advantage, Retirees

An Egg-Whip sounds like a festive, holiday drink or a merengue dessert. It is anything but a delightful treat. Egg-Whip is the healthcare industry’s name for Employer Group Waiver Plans (EGWP), a provision for privatization of employer-based, retiree Medicare benefits that was written into the Medicare Modernization Act (MMA) of 2003. That law, which House Energy and Commerce Chair Billy Tauzin twisted arms to pass, added a drug plan to Medicare, not by including drugs as covered Medicare benefits, but by compelling seniors to purchase private drug plans. Big Pharma gained a massive influx of government money into its coffers and rewarded Tauzin with a $2-million-a-year job.

‘Something Must Change’: New Jersey Nurses Strike For Safe Staffing

August 24, 2023 Kelsey Khan, Labor Notes. Resist! Health Care, New Jersey (NJ), Nurses, Strike, Worker Rights and Jobs

I am one of 1,700 nurses on strike at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick, New Jersey. We are members of United Steel Workers Local 4-200. The hospital administration has used intimidation, scare tactics, and lies to convince the public that patient care is at the top of their priority list and at the bottom of ours. We have had enough. We are on day 20 of our strike, and nurses are beginning to feel the pressure. Our health insurance ends at the end of this month, and the financial strains of supporting our families on unemployment are growing. We are standing outside of the hospital day and night to show our dedication to achieving a fair contract that benefits us and, most importantly, our patients.

West Virginia Hearing: Don’t Cut Corners With Miners’ Safety

August 22, 2023 Kim Kelly, In These Times. Create! Black Lung, Health Care, Miners, Mining, West Virginia, Workplace Safety

West Virginia - At 9:00 A.M. sharp on August 10, a small phalanx of smiling, well-coiffed elderly women began herding a crowd of several dozen people into the auditorium of the National Mine Health and Safety Academy in Beckley, West Virginia. Among the crowd were former coal miners and their spouses, lawyers, pulmonologists, black lung clinic staff, environmental activists, local media, union representatives, and concerned citizens — all there to attend a public hearing for a new proposed rule from the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) that seeks to limit silica exposure in the nation’s coal mines to 50 micrograms per cubic meter, down from 100.

Workers At A Chicago Safety-Net Hospital Went On Strike

August 16, 2023 Jeff Schuhrke, In These Times. Resist! Chicago, Health Care, Healthcare workers, Illinois, Strikes, Victory, Worker Rights and Jobs

Chicago, Illinois - Following an 11-day strike that galvanized a Chicago West Side neighborhood, around 200 hospital workers treating uninsured and underinsured patients have won and ratified a new contract they believe will help them better serve the community. Members of SEIU Healthcare, the mostly Black employees include nursing assistants, emergency room technicians, mental health workers and janitorial staff at Loretto Hospital, a 122-bed medical facility in the Austin neighborhood. Loretto is a privately run but publicly funded “safety-net” hospital, treating low-income patients regardless of their insurance, especially around issues such as addiction and mental health.

Drug Patents Are Stifling Progress And Making Us Sicker

August 16, 2023 Mike Pappas, Left Voice. Educate! Big Pharma, Capitalism, Health Care, Patents

The healthcare system in the U.S. shows time and time again that under capitalism, profit maximization trumps individual and societal well-being. We saw a recent example from Gilead Sciences manipulating patent laws to extend the life of one of their drugs and delay the release of another, potentially safer option. Gilead’s efforts serve as just one example of how under capitalism patent laws are used to maximize profits at the expense of public well-being. In the world of HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention, many of the more recent treatments center on using a combination of different drugs that target different parts of HIV’s replication cycle.

My Life In Corporate Medicine

August 16, 2023 Stephanie Arnold and Maureen Tkacik, The American Prospect. Educate! Corporatism, Doctors, Health Care, Private Equity

I started medical school in 2011, full of idealism and optimism over the promise of Obamacare. But the health care system has gotten progressively worse every year that I’ve worked in it, probably because private equity firms keep acquiring new corners. The urgent care was an exception, it was part of a family business, founded by an emergency physician who actually cares about employees. When COVID came, they didn’t lay off a single full-timer even when volume fell off a cliff, probably in part because he was a big Trumper and was convinced the pandemic would “blow over” by the summer of 2020.

Public Pharma Is The Best Solution To The Problem Of Drug Shortages

August 13, 2023 Dana Brown and Christopher Morten, STAT. Create! Big Pharma, Health Care, Medications, Public ownership

Drug shortages in the United States are at a record high. At least 14 essential generic cancer drugs are currently in shortage, forcing patients and doctors to make difficult decisions to delay or ration first-line treatments, or accept second-best treatments. ADHD treatments, antibiotics, children’s acetaminophen, and many other critical medicines are also in short supply. But most of the solutions being discussed are just Band-Aids on a broken system. They would do nothing to transform the incentives that routinely produce shortages and other market failures. What we really need — for the health of our economy and society — is a robust public option in pharmaceuticals that produces and distributes essential medicines, such as cancer treatments.

Activating The Unrealised Potential Of Care Networks

August 12, 2023 Luke Tanner, Grassroots Economic Organizing. Create! Community, Health Care, Pandemic, The Commons

Most care services use a ‘Deliveroo’ service model: Individual care workers deliver care as if it were a package to another individual's home. These care workers have no connection to that person's wider support network, their neighbourhood or community. They also have no freedom or control over their day-to-day work. This amounts to a service that provides care independently from the support networks embedded in people’s local communities; any collaboration with these support networks in service delivery is generally incidental to a services organisation rather than a direct consequence of it. This is OK if you really are delivering a package, as all you need is a postcode; it is not OK when you are providing care.

More People Die Young In US Due To Health Care And Welfare Cuts

August 9, 2023 Mike Ludwig, Truthout. Educate! Health Care, Life Expectancy, Welfare, Youth

From 1930 through the middle of the last century, the mortality rate in the United States was lower or commensurate with the mortality rates of other wealthy nations, such as Canada, France and Britain. However, in the late 1970s through the 1980s, U.S. health outcomes and mortality rates began to diverge from those of its peers. By 2021, about half of all U.S. deaths under the age of 65 would have been avoided if the U.S. mortality rates were on par with those of other countries, according to a new study published by the National Academy of Sciences. In other words, on average one out of every two deaths under the age of 65 in the U.S. would be averted in countries like Australia, Germany, Japan or Portugal.

Striking Nurses Picket Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital

August 8, 2023 Nick Caloway, CBS. Resist! Health Care, New Jersey (NJ), Nurses, Robert Wood Johnson, Strikes, Worker Rights and Jobs

New Brunswick, New Jersey - Nurses at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick were on strike for a fourth day Monday. Staffing levels are a sticking point between the United Steelworkers Local 4-200 and the hospital. After contract talks stalled, more than 1,700 nurses walked off the job Friday. But passion on the picket line is not waning. "Clearly, we're all united for a common purpose here," said Jennifer Kwock. Kwock, who works in the neonatal ICU, said depleted staffing levels create dangerous conditions for patients and cause nurses burnout.

Building Grassroots Power For National Universal Health Care

August 7, 2023 Margaret Flowers, Clearing the FOG. Podcast - Clearing The FOG Congress, Health Care, Medicare for all, Private Equity

Profiteers are taking over health care in the United States and running it into the ground - firing health professionals and closing hospitals. Dr. Ana Malinow, a lead organizer of the group, National Single Payer, fears we are witnessing the demise of a model national insurance, Medicare, as the 58th anniversary of its passage was celebrated on July 31. Dr. Malinow joins Clearing the FOG to discuss the state of health care in the US. She provides a strong critique of state legislative efforts and the two Medicare for All bills in the House and Senate, HR 3421 and S 1655. Dr. Malinow outlines what people are doing across the country to build grassroots power to win a national health insurance, Medicare for All, or a national health system.

New Study Finds Police Drug Seizures Increase The Risk Of Overdose

August 6, 2023 Mike Pappas, Left Voice. Educate! Drug War, Health Care, Overdoses, Police

A recent study, funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and published in the American Journal of Public Health, focused on two years of opioid and stimulant seizure data from the Indianapolis police. The researchers examined how these seizures impacted fatal and non-fatal overdoses in the areas where the seizures took place within specific time frames. The results found fatal overdoses doubled in the week following an opioid seizure within approximately 500 meters of the seizure location. Additionally, the distribution of naloxone, the opioid overdose reversal drug, by paramedics doubled in the two weeks following an opioid-related drug seizure within the same radius.

Healthcare Workers Picket At 50 Facilities In Fight For New Contracts

August 6, 2023 Michael Sainato, The Guardian. Resist! California, Colorado, Health Care, Kaiser Permanente, Oregon, Pickets, Unions, Washington, Worker Rights and Jobs

Unions representing more than 85,000 healthcare workers have held pickets at 50 facilities across California, Washington, Oregon and Colorado amid new contract negotiations as their current union contracts are set to expire on 30 September. The negotiations at Kaiser Permanente are the third largest set of contract negotiations in the US in 2023, behind the 340,000 workers at UPS who will be voting on a tentative agreement this month that was reached days before planned strike action, and 150,000 autoworkers at Ford, General Motors and Stellantis whose contracts are set to expire on 14 September.

Chris Hedges: Nurses Fight Godzilla

August 5, 2023 Chris Hedges, Scheer Post. Resist! Health Care, Medicare for all, New Jersey (NJ), Nurses, Strikes, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

New Brunswick, New Jersey - Judy Danella, president of United Steel Workers Local 4-200 — the union that represents Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital’s more than 1,700 nurses — stands in a church basement before a room full of her union members. Her voice quavers slightly as she delivers grim news. The hospital management, whose top administrators earn salaries in the millions of dollars, has refused to concede to any of the nurse’s core demands. Friday at 7:00 a.m. they will be locked out of the hospital and on strike. But it is not only the strike that concerns Danella, who is wearing a blue T-shirt that reads: “Safe Staffing Saves Lives.”

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