Medicare

Happy Birthday, Medicare

July 30, 2021 F. Douglas Stephenson, PNHP.org. Educate! COVID-19, Health Care, Medicare, Medicare for all

2021 is also a very special year in the history of single-payer health insurance and public health in the U.S. because Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) and Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.) introduced the modern Medicare for All Act of 2021 (H.R. 1976) in Congress. M4A 2021 is new legislation establishing a cutting edge single-payer national health program in the United States that addresses decades of health/mental health-related injustices that have been made even more painfully apparent by the Covid-19 pandemic.

New York City: Closed Door Negotiations Could Privatize Workers’ Medicare

June 4, 2021 Paul Becker, Portside. Resist! Health Care, Medicare, Privatization, Worker Rights and Jobs

A hush-hush operation between New York City and the Municipal Labor Council (MLC) to essentially privatize the health care coverage for thousands of retirees has exploded into public view in the past several weeks. The internet has been buzzing with protests against the closed-door negotiations that would take retirees out of traditional Medicare and place them in a Medicare Advantage program run by private insurers, with all its traps and pitfalls. The MLC is composed of the leadership of about 100 unions with members employed by the city. The city continues to pay for part of their health care coverage, under union negotiated contracts, after they retire. “What they’re doing is using public money to subsidize a private operation,” said Norm Scott, who was an elementary school teacher in Brooklyn for 35 years.

New Report: Private Health Insurers Overpay Hospitals

September 19, 2020 the Rand Corporation. Educate! Health Care, Medicare, Medicare for all, Privatization

Prices paid to hospitals nationally during 2018 by privately insured patients averaged 247% of what Medicare would have paid, with wide variation in prices among states, according to a new RAND Corporation study. Some states (Arkansas, Michigan, and Rhode Island) had relative prices under 200% of Medicare, while other states (Florida, Tennessee, Alaska, West Virginia, and South Carolina) had relative prices that were above 325% of Medicare. The study notes a steady increase in hospital prices, rising to the 2018 average level from an average of 224% of Medicare costs in 2016 and 230% of Medicare costs in 2017.

Trump’s Executive Orders Are Public Relations Stunts

August 10, 2020 Jack Rasmus, Predicting the Global Economic Crisis. Educate! Donald Trump, Economic collapse, Evictions, Finance and the Economy, Medicare, Social Security, Student Debt

Trump, Meadows, Mnuchin and McConnell cleverly set up and sucked in Pelosi and Shumer into negotiations last week, never planning to conclude a deal by Friday, in the process getting them to reveal their priority demands and securing from them major concessions worth $1 trillion—for which the Democrat leaders apparently got nothing in return. A day later, Trump dropped the hammer and issued his EOs, which are designed more as PR for his election campaign. They certainly won’t provide anything remotely necessary as fiscal stimulus to confront the US economy’s emerging fading rebound in recent weeks. Upon close inspection the EOs are therefore mostly smoke and mirrors, designed to produce useful electoral soundbites for his campaign between now and November. The EOs are more PR for public relations purposes, while also serving as FUs (F*** You) to the Democrats.

On Medicare And Medicaid’s 55th Birthday, Let’s Expand Benefits

August 2, 2020 Nancy J. Altman, Economy for All. Create! Congress, Healthcare System, Medicaid, Medicare

On July 30, 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed Medicare and Medicaid into law. This crowning achievement was both the culmination of a decades-long effort to attain guaranteed universal health insurance and the first step in the quest for Medicare for All. In the 55 years since the legislation was signed into law, both programs have proven their worth. Before Medicare, about half of seniors lacked health insurance. They were an illness away from bankruptcy. Today, 99.1 percent of Americans 65 and older are insured, thanks to Medicare.

Guess Who’s Rallying For Medicare For All? Senior Citizens

March 16, 2020 By Taylor Moore, Inthesetimes.com Create! Health Care, Medicare, Reform

Because seniors already have Medicare and may be retired, changing the healthcare system is not typically considered a key issue for their voting demographic. The problem? “No one’s asked us." CHICAGO—What began as back pain ended in a five-month stay at the hospital for an excruciating spinal infection that almost paralyzed Catherine (name changed for privacy).

20 Top Economists Endorse Medicare For All As Best Plan To Cut Costs, Save Tens Of Thousands Of Lives Each Year

March 13, 2020 Jake Johnson, Commondreams.org Create! Health Care, Medicare

Rejecting "loose talk" from corporate Democrats, the media, and insurance industry that a single-payer system would be unaffordable, twenty leading U.S. economists on Tuesday released an open letter endorsing Medicare for All as the best way to reduce soaring national healthcare costs, significantly cut expenses for most U.S. households, and save countless lives.

Twenty Top Economists Conclude Medicare For All Saves Money And Lives

March 13, 2020 Staff, Hopbrook-institute.org Create! Finance and the Economy, Health Care, Medicare

We are economists interested in public policy and healthcare. Some of us have worked to estimate the cost of alternative healthcare programs. Others have reviewed such estimates. We believe the available research supports the conclusion that a program of Medicare for All (M4A) could be considerably less expensive than the current system...

Employment-Based Health Care Is An Anchor Around The Neck Of The U.S. Working Class

February 19, 2020 Mark Dudzic, Labornotes.org Educate! Health Care, Medicare, Reform, Workers Rights and Jobs

Last June at the House Ways and Means Committee Hearing on Medicare for All, Rep. Kevin Brady of Texas lamented, “That great health care plan that your union negotiated for you? It’s gone. Banned under Medicare for All.” A right-wing congressman with a 7 percent lifetime voting score from the AFL-CIO crying crocodile tears for union health care plans can easily be dismissed as just another absurdity of America’s political dysfunction.

Medicare For All Would Save More Than 68,000 Lives And $450 Billion Every Year, According To New Study

February 19, 2020 Katy Pallister, Iflscience.com Educate! health, Medicare

Epidemiologists from the Yale School of Public Health, University of Florida, and University of Maryland School of Medicine, have calculated that a single-payer universal health-care system in the US would likely lead to a 13 percent saving in national health-care expenditure and prevent more than 68,000 unnecessary deaths. By replacing premiums, deductibles, co-payments and out-of-pocket costs with a progressive tax system...

In Historic Shift, Second Largest Physicians Group In US Has New Prescription: It’s Medicare for All

January 22, 2020 By Jon Queally, Commondreams.org Educate! Doctors, Health Care, Medicare, Physicians

"Major changes are needed," declares the 159,000-member American College of Physicians, "to a system that costs too much, leaves too many behind, and delivers too little." The fight for Medicare for All received a two-handed boost from tens of thousands of doctors on Monday when the American College of Physicians—in a move described as a "seachange for the medical professions"—officially endorsed a single-payer system as among only one of two possible ways to improve the nation's healthcare woes.

Over 10 Percent Of People In US Know Someone Who Died Due To Lack Of Healthcare

November 20, 2019 Dan Witters, News.gallup.com Educate! Health Care, Medicare, Reform

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- More than 13% of American adults -- or about 34 million people -- report knowing of at least one friend or family member in the past five years who died after not receiving needed medical treatment because they were unable to pay for it, based on a new study by Gallup and West Health. Nonwhites, those in lower-income households, those younger than 45, and political independents and Democrats are all more likely to know someone who has died under these circumstances.

Union Opponents Of Medicare For All Don’t Speak For Labor’s Most Vulnerable Members

November 15, 2019 Alexandra Early, Beyondchron.org Create! Health Care, Insurance, Medicare, Reform

As popular support grows for replacing private insurance plans with Medicare for All, critics of the single-payer approach have been playing up the fact that some top union officials, and their political allies, don’t want to do away with job-based medical coverage. “There’s no question that ultimately we need to establish a single payer system,” says national AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka. “But there has to be a role for those hard-fought-for, high-quality plans that we’ve negotiated.”

How To Approach Medicare For All Financing

October 31, 2019 Matt Bruenig, Peoplespolicyproject.org Educate! Health Care, Medicare, Reform

One of the big impediments to putting out a plan for financing Medicare for All is not so much that it is very difficult to come up with one, but rather that there are so many ways to do it that it is hard for any one particular idea to get consensus and therefore traction. I don’t have a solution to that problem unfortunately and, paradoxically, efforts to solve it by putting out my own ideas actually make the problem worse. But, nonetheless, I am going to lay out in this piece the way I would approach the M4A financing question.

Excluding Civic Community Warps Discussion Of Improved Medicare For All

October 29, 2019 Ralph Nader, Nader.org Educate! Health Care, Medicare, Reform

The lawmakers are doing it. The candidates are doing it. The mass media are doing it. All are excluding from their arenas the leading citizen groups as never before, since the early nineteen sixties. The nonprofit national advocacy/research organizations that led the way for social reforms are being shut out of the political process. These groups were pioneers in consumer rights, environmental protections, labor rights, and whistle-blower protections. These groups fought for freedom of information laws and practices and access to justice in ways that have made our country better in so many ways.

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