Health Care

Judge Blocks Medicare Advantage Switch For 250,000 Retirees

July 8, 2023 Caroline Lewis, Gothamist. Resist! Health Care, Medicare, New York City (NYC), Retirees

A Manhattan judge is pressing pause on a controversial plan to push New York City government retirees onto a new privatized version of Medicare this fall – a major victory for critics of the switch. In a plan that city officials said would save some $600 million a year, municipal retirees were supposed to be moved from their existing coverage – a combination of traditional Medicare with supplemental coverage paid for by the city – onto a private Medicare Advantage plan run by Aetna this fall. City officials had scheduled the deadline to opt out for this coming Monday, but seniors who decided to stay on traditional Medicare would have had to waive their city benefits and pay for their health coverage themselves.

Nurses Say Illinois Hospital Plagued With Unsafe Staffing

July 4, 2023 Amie Stager, The Real News Network. Resist! Health Care, Illinois, Nurses, Strikes, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

Tania is a mother of four and a new registered nurse in the intensive care unit at Ascension St. Joseph Medical Center in Joliet, Illinois, also known as St. Joe’s. On May 30, at a bargaining meeting with management to negotiate for the union’s next contract, she gave testimony about how her employer allegedly treated her for bringing up safety issues. “I was two weeks off orientation and I was given four acute care patients. I texted our manager… and said ‘this is a recipe for disaster. I can’t handle this,’” she said in her testimony, which was emailed to Workday Magazine by her union, Illinois Nurses Association (INA).

No One Knows How Often Health Insurers Say No To Patients

July 4, 2023 Robin Fields, ProPublica. Educate! Denials, Health Care, Insurance Companies, Transparency

It’s one of the most crucial questions people have when deciding which health plan to choose: If my doctor orders a test or treatment, will my insurer refuse to pay for it? After all, an insurance company that routinely rejects recommended care could damage both your health and your finances. The question becomes ever more pressing as many working Americans see their premiums rise as their benefits shrink. Yet, how often insurance companies say no is a closely held secret. There’s nowhere that a consumer or an employer can go to look up all insurers’ denial rates — let alone whether a particular company is likely to decline to pay for procedures or drugs that its plans appear to cover.

Loma Linda University Medical Residents Vote Yes On Union

June 29, 2023 Alex Aamodt, Portside. Organize! Doctors, Health Care, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

In the culmination of a months-long organizing effort, resident physicians at Loma Linda University Health voted to unionize on June 22. The historic vote is the latest chapter in the most prominent recent showdown between a Seventh-day Adventist health care institution and organized labor. According to the National Labor Relations Board, which held the election, the final margin was 361 in favor of joining the Union of American Physicians and Dentists, 144 against. Approximately two-thirds of the 805 eligible resident physicians submitted a ballot. “We won,” the resident organizing committee wrote on Instagram. “After years of hard work we finally did it.”

Health Care Discrimination Still Rampant

June 29, 2023 Mark Kreidler, LA Progressive. Educate! Health Care, health disparities, Racial inequality, Systemic Racism

Since before the country’s formation, unequal health based on race, from inferior care and treatment to shorter life spans, has been part and parcel of American history. Surveys in recent decades have enabled researchers to bring those disparities into sharper and sometimes harrowing focus. But identifying these issues hasn’t brought the country much closer to resolving them. And a new report underscores how truly intractable those problems are — because it brings race-based disparities right into the safest hospitals in the United States. According to the report, which was released this month by the Leapfrog Group, America’s A-graded hospitals do no better at reducing racial health disparities than hospitals at the bottom of the scale.

Care Denied: The Dirty Secret Behind Medicare Advantage

June 28, 2023 Matthew Cunningham-Cook, The Lever. Educate! Health Care, Insurance Companies, Medicare Advantage, Medicare forAll

Jenn Coffey was so tired of having her care denied by her Medicare Advantage insurer that she signed a do-not-resuscitate order. “There was no more hope,” she said. “There was nothing left for me to hope for.” Coffey, a former EMT from Manchester, New Hampshire, went on Medicare, the government health insurance program for seniors and others with disabilities, after a breast cancer diagnosis left her unable to work. Like an increasing number of Medicare beneficiaries, she ended up on a for-profit Medicare Advantage plan; a marketer directed her to an option administered by UnitedHealth Group, a $450 billion insurer.

Alberta Must Do More To Address Rising Drug Poisonings

June 28, 2023 Anna Junker, Edmonton Journal. Resist! Canada, Drug War, Harm Reduction, Health Care

There is a sense of desperation on Edmonton streets as outreach workers battle drug poisonings while Alberta recorded its highest-ever number of opioid fatalities in a single month. In an update to the province’s Substance Use Surveillance Data this week, Alberta recorded 179 opioid deaths in April, the highest number of opioid fatalities recorded in a single month since 175 deaths were reported in December 2021. In total, 613 Albertans died from an opioid poisoning between January and April this year. Data for May has not been released. February saw 151 opioid deaths, up from the 115 recorded in January.

Texas And Kansas: Nurses Move Forward With Historic Strikes

June 27, 2023 National Nurses United. Resist! Health Care, Kansas, Nurses, Strikes, Texas, union busting, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

Registered nurses in Texas and Kansas at three Ascension hospitals are moving forward with historic one-day strikes on Tuesday, June 27, to protest management’s resistance to bargain in good faith with RNs for union contracts that would help correct the endemic staffing crisis, announced National Nurses Organizing Committee/National Nurses United (NNOC/NNU). Driven by their concerns about patient safety, these will be the largest nurse strikes in Texas and Kansas history. Ascension management’s punitive three-day lockout of nurses who go on strike has failed to intimidate them.

The Unfolding Medicaid Disaster

June 26, 2023 Andrew Perez and Nick Byron Campbell, The Lever. Educate! COVID-19, Health Care, Human Rights, Joe Biden, Medicaid

As states have begun clearing out their Medicaid rolls for the first time since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, nearly three quarters of the Americans who’ve lost coverage have been terminated not because they’re ineligible for the low-income health insurance program, but due to administrative reasons, such as failing to quickly respond to a piece of mail. In February, President Joe Biden bragged in his State of the Union speech that “more Americans have health insurance now than ever in history.” Biden made that comment six weeks after he set the stage to massively increase the United States’ uninsured population, when he signed legislation from Congress ending the pandemic-era requirement that states maintain Medicaid beneficiaries’ coverage in exchange for extra federal funding.

How Hospitals Betray The Public Trust With Fossil Fuel Pension Investments

June 26, 2023 Climate Safe Pensions Network and First Do No Harm Campaign, Stand.earth Educate! climate crisis, Divestment, Fossil Fuels, Health Care

The report focuses on fossil fuel investments in direct contradiction to the health sector leadership’s calls for decarbonizing the health sector, including a well-publicized “Call to Action” by the President of the National Academy of Medicine; to, widespread ‘sustainability’ commitments made across the sector’s 1,200 private hospital systems; and, to the voluminous body of research confirming a range of serious threats to public health from fossil fuel pollution and climate change. Healthcare pensions can and must divest from fossil fuels to protect our health and our frontline communities that are so disproportionately affected by the fossil fuel industry.

Hospital Doctors In England Plan To Go On Strike In July

June 25, 2023 Alex/Rose Cocker, The Canary. Resist! Health Care, NHS, Strikes, United Kingdom (UK), Worker Rights and Jobs

On 23 June, hospital doctors in England announced the longest strike in the 75-year history of the NHS. As ever, it’s part of the ongoing row over pay and working conditions. The British Medical Association (BMA) stated that Junior doctors – those below consultant level – will stage a walkout. They’ll start on 7:00 on July 13, and continue until the same time on July 18. The stoppage follows a 72-hour strike earlier this same month. It was in opposition to the government’s refusal to budge on its offer of just a 5% pay increase.

Judge Blocks Arkansas’ Blanket Ban On Gender-Affirming Care For Minors

June 21, 2023 Orion Rummler, Scheer Post. Resist! Arkansas, Health Care, Legal System, LGBTQ, Transgender Rights

A federal judge on Tuesday struck down an Arkansas law that would have prevented doctors from providing gender-affirming care to transgender youth or referring them to any other health care worker. The state is “permanently enjoined” from enforcing the law, U.S. District Judge James Moody Jr. wrote in his decision. The decision marks the end of the first full trial for such a ban. LGBTQ+ legal experts and advocates believe that the decision in Arkansas, which has blocked the first gender-affirming care ban to become law, will set precedent for other lawsuits in states restricting gender-affirming care.

Capitalist Hegemony In Psychedelic Medicine

June 21, 2023 Mike Pappas and Dimitri Mugianis , Left Voice. Educate! Capitalism, Health Care, Medicine, Psychedelics

Today, in the effort to win mainstream acceptance of psychedelics, there are a number of voices in the room. Among them, the loudest are the ones who individualize illness through the medical lens while seeking legitimacy through access to powerful medical institutions, civil society, and the corporation in a proclaimed quest to “heal” those suffering in our society. We see anything from features in Forbes about 20-something tech billionaires microdosing to increase productivity, to 60 Minutes interviews with U.S. Iraq war veterans who report to be cured from PTSD, to miracle stories of ketamine working with the poor and formerly incarcerated.

Millions Of People In The US Ration Medicine

June 18, 2023 Natalia Marques, People's Dispatch. Educate! Big Pharma, Capitalism, Finance and the Economy, Health Care

A new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report published this month reveals that approximately 9.2 million people in the US try to save money by rationing their medication. Most adults between the ages of 18 and 64 take at least one prescription medication, but 8% of them—9.2 million people—ration medicine by skipping doses, taking less than instructed, or delaying a refill. Meanwhile, pharmaceutical giants like Merck are fighting tooth and nail against President Biden’s limited checks on astronomical medication prices. Giving the government power to negotiate medicine prices with companies is “tantamount to extortion,” Merck argues in a recent lawsuit.

Polycrisis, Unraveling, Simplification, Or Collapse

June 18, 2023 Richard Heinberg, Resilience. Strategize! climate crisis, Environment, Finance and the Economy, Health Care, Polycrisis

Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the resulting disruption of multiple global supply chains, policy think tanks have increasingly adopted the term polycrisis to signify humanity’s destabilized status quo. The World Economic Forum’s 2023 Global Risk Report uses the newish word 13 times in 90 pages. Scholars from a range of disciplines (including Columbia University historian Adam Tooze) have written about the polycrisis, and both Cascade Institute and Omega Institute have published papers and reports on it. The Cascade Institute notes that “a global polycrisis occurs when crises in multiple global systems become causally entangled in ways that significantly degrade humanity’s prospects.

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