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Health Care

New York City Doctors Are Ready To Strike

Nearly 1000 doctors in NYC Health and Hospitals (H+H) are ready to go on strike. They may work at public (H+H) hospitals, but their employers are corporate health systems, such as Mount Sinai, NYU, and PAGNY. The doctors — who are organized with the Doctors Council, an SEIU affiliate (DC-SEIU) — are denouncing chronic understaffing. They understand this problem to be the result of uncompetitive contracts, both in terms of salary and benefits. Since the announcement on January 2, Mayor Eric Adams interceded to ask for a 60-day “cooling-off” period, trying to avert the work stoppage, and negotiations are still underway.

Annual ‘Winners’ For Most Egregious US Healthcare Profiteering Announced

The 2024 “winners” of the annual Shkreli awards, given each year to perpetrators of the most egregious examples of profiteering and dysfunction within the healthcare industry, have been released from the Lown Institute, an independent healthcare thinktank. The recipients are chosen by a panel made up of health policy experts, clinicians, journalists and advocates. The awards are named after Martin Shkreli, the infamous “pharma bro” who rose to international notoriety after increasing the price of lifesaving anti-parasitic drug Daraprim 50-fold.

Philadelphia’s Doctors-In-Training Are Unionizing By The Thousands

I think pretty universally in medical training, there’s an under-appreciation and under-compensation of medical residents. A lot of it comes down to pay, because that’s so fundamental, but other benefits, like time off and parental leave, are certainly a major concern for people, and moonlighting and overtime and things like that generally are under-compensated as well. At my hospital specifically, there are concerns about access to appropriate equipment and basic medical supplies. So, a lot of this becomes very much like logistical issues.

Gaza Health Ministry Warns Of ‘Real Disaster Sweeping Hospitals’

The Health Ministry in Gaza warned on 7 January that the medical sector in the strip is facing a disaster due to crippling shortages of essential supplies and humanitarian aid. The ministry released a statement warning “of a real disaster that is sweeping hospitals, oxygen stations, medicine refrigerators, and nurseries in all health facilities remaining in operation in the Gaza Strip.” “There is no fuel stock in hospitals due to the policy of dripping in fuel that the occupation has been following in bringing in since the beginning of the war on Gaza.

‘Delay, Deny, Defend’ Author: Americans’ Rage At Insurers

My book “Delay, Deny, Defend: Why Insurance Companies Don’t Pay Claims and What You Can Do About It” was thrust into the spotlight recently, after UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was shot and killed in what authorities say was a targeted attack outside the company’s annual investors conference. Investigators at the scene found bullet casings inscribed with the words “delay,” “deny” and “depose.” The unsettling echo of the book’s title struck me and many others. That killing – and the torrent of online outrage that followed – put Americans’ unhappiness with health insurers at the front of the national conversation.

Destruction Of Gaza’s Healthcare Is A Blueprint For Future Wars

“Kamal Adwan Hospital is no more,” stated Dr. Mustafa Barghouti during a webinar organized by the People’s Health Movement (PHM) on December 28, 2024. As he spoke, reports of the latest Israeli attacks on the hospital were still emerging. These included the near-total destruction of its laboratory, storage, surgical units, and other critical facilities, alongside the arbitrary detention of its director, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya. The devastating outcome was all too predictable, given Israel’s systematic assaults on Gaza’s healthcare system during the ongoing genocide.

Psychiatry’s Latest Insane Magic-Bullet Treatment For Depression

Clinics offering ketamine infusions and injections for “treatment-resistant depression” are today claiming 24-48 hours remission, and ketamine is also being marketed for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), obsessive-compulsive disorder, bipolar disorder, and anxiety disorder. “Between 500 and 750 ketamine clinics have cropped up across the United States,” NPR reported early in 2024 (“The Ketamine Economy: New Mental Health Clinics are a ‘Wild West’ with Few Rules”). This may be an underestimation, as Psychiatric News reported later in 2024, “More than 1,500 intravenous (IV) infusion clinics have proliferated nationwide.”

Pirate Care As A Revolutionary Act

Providing care to people in need is usually seen as supremely humane and ethical. But look more closely and you'll find that "care" is often a vehicle for self-serving social and political control. It's often considered acceptable to withhold care from people who don't have the "right" citizenship, skin color, cultural background, or gender identity, or who don't have money to buy the care they need.  For an illuminating deep dive on the politics of care, check out a new book, Pirate Care: Acts Against the Criminalization of Solidarity (Pluto Press). I interviewed two of the co-authors.

America’s Health Insurance Grinches

In the past two weeks, one thing has become crystal clear in America: the public outrage after the assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson exposed a seething fury over the health insurance racket. No amount of media finger-wagging at public perversity or partisan attempts to frame Luigi Mangione’s act as a statement from the left or right can hide the reality: the people, from all sides, are livid about the healthcare system—and with good reason. In the 21st century, Americans have expressed their view that healthcare is deteriorating, not advancing.

The Cuban Healthcare System And Its Lessons For The US

I was in Cuba (again) during the first week of December. I traveled with a delegation of members of the National Single Payer organization, which is working to achieve a national healthcare system in the US that would fully cover everyone under a single, comprehensive, government-funded program. We visited a variety of healthcare institutions in the cities of Havana and Matanzas, the capital of the province of the same name. One of the most memorable interactions took place at the University of Medical Sciences in Matanzas. After receiving a presentation about the organization and curriculum by one of the leaders of the institution, I asked the assembled academic and clinical professors how many of them had participated in international medical missions.

Capitalists Should Be Removed From All Our Systems

Imagine that your household was regularly broken into by a sadist who systemically beat-up everyone in your home. He’d start by punching folks in the stomach. Then he’d smack people on the both sides of their heads. Then he’d kick your legs out from underneath you and pound you all on your backs and necks before kicking you all in the jaw and punching your noses. In forming a response to this outrageous oppression would you tell this monster that the next time he breaks into your home with his fists balled he’s going to have to forgo one of the shots he takes at people – say, the head smacks.

Ten Inequality Victories In 2024

Volkswagen workers in Chattanooga, Tennessee voted overwhelmingly in April to join the United Auto Workers, a landmark win for labor organizing in the South. The region has suffered deeply because of its low-road, anti-union economic model. Seven out of ten states with the highest levels of poverty are in the South, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Another UAW election, at a Mercedes-Benz facility in Vance, Alabama, where management was more aggressively anti-union, went the other way in May. But the union has vowed to continue organizing in the region.

NYT Panics Over Outrage At Insurance Companies

In the wake of the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson and the arrest of alleged shooter Luigi Mangione, I wrote (FAIR.org, 12/11/24) about how Murdoch outlets like the Wall Street Journal and New York Post, as well as Jeff Bezos’ Washington Post editorial board, not only decried the widespread support for Mangione but fought back against legitimate criticism of the health insurance industry. Now the New York Times is in full-scale panic mode over the widespread boiling anger against the health insurance industry the killing has laid bare.

Kaiser Strikers Say When Therapists Burn Out, Patients Suffer

I work as a medical social worker in the infectious diseases clinic, working primarily with patients who have been diagnosed with HIV and AIDS. I help my patients navigate Kaiser’s complex health care system, get access to needed resources, and figure out how they can afford a life-sustaining medication that often costs thousands of dollars per month. I see firsthand how Kaiser’s mental health system is failing these patients. It’s nearly impossible for them to get access to timely mental health care, and because Kaiser treats its therapists like assembly-line factory workers, so many therapists get burned out and leave.

Insurance Firms Are Hiring Middlemen To Deny Medications

Amid an outpouring of frustration with for-profit health insurance sparked by the assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson on December 4, much of the media coverage has focused on the alleged shooter, 26-year-old Luigi Mangione, and the industry’s nasty habit of maximizing profits by denying claims and leaving sick and vulnerable patients with massive medical bills. There’s plenty of data to back up the anger over private health plans expressed online since the shooting. Insurance costs are far outpacing inflation, leaving patients with soaring out-of-pocket costs.
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