Public Health

Celebrate Medicare’s Anniversary By Improving & Expanding To All

July 31, 2015 Robert Zarr, www.pnhp.org Educate! Health Care, Medicare, Public Health

By Robert Zarr in PNHP - Medicare was originally conceived as a first step toward covering everyone in our society under a national health insurance program. We need to fulfill Medicare’s promise. We need an improved Medicare for All, a national single-payer health care system, to efficiently and equitably cover everyone in the United States. Today the original Medicare program stands like a rock in a troubled sea of waste, inefficiency and profiteering in the rest of our health care system, dominated as it is by big private insurers whose paramount goal is to maximize their bottom lines. Commercial insurers increase their bottom lines by enrolling the healthy, avoiding the sick, denying claims, increasing premiums, and erecting barriers to care like co-pays, high deductibles, bureaucratic thickets, and narrow networks.

Medicare’s 50th Birthday Celebrated Across Nation

July 31, 2015 Sarah Lazare, www.commondreams.org Create! Health Care, Medicare, Public Health

By Sarah Lazare in Common Dreams - From California to Florida to Maine, communities in 25 cities across the United States are staging rallies, picnics, and flash mobs this week to celebrate Thursday's 50th anniversary of Medicare—and call for its expansion into a system that provides publicly-funded healthcare for all. "It is urgent that we continue organizing for the right to healthcare by fighting efforts to roll back or privatize Medicare and joining with movements around the country to establish a publicly-financed healthcare system that includes all people," Ellen Schwartz, president of the Vermont Workers' Center, told Common Dreams. The nationwide actions marking President Lyndon B. Johnson's July 30, 1965 signing of the bill that created Medicare were organized by a broad array5 of organizations including Physicians for a National Health Program, Alliance for Retired Americans, National Nurses United (NNU), and Public Citizen.

Celebrate Medicare’s 50th Birthday By Expanding It To All

July 30, 2015 Garrett Adams, www.pnhp.org Educate! Medicare, Physicians, Public Health

By Garrett Adams in PNHP - The nation has a lot to celebrate when Medicare turns 50 on July 30. Medicare has brought care and dignity to millions of seniors, relieving their suffering and extending their lives. Before President Lyndon Johnson signed Medicare into law in Independence, Missouri, in 1965, only about half of those over 65 had health insurance. In the 50 years since then, life expectancy has risen by more than nine years to a little over 79 years. Medicare ended segregation in our country’s hospitals when federal reimbursements for patient care were made contingent on ending discrimination. Within a few months the walls tumbled in the face of sound public policy and financing based on social justice. Today, Medicare covers about 17 percent of our population, over 55 million people, including those other than the elderly whom the private insurance industry has abandoned – the permanently disabled and those on dialysis from kidney failure.

Obamacare? Wall St. Suddenly Scrambles To Buy Doctors

July 29, 2015 Wolf Ritcher, www.wolfstreet.com Educate! ACA, Capitalism, Insurance, Medicine, Obamacare, Public Health

By Wolf Ritcher in Wolf Street - For PE firms, the fracking boom was nirvana. An eternal-growth industry. A big part of the money they poured into the scrappy oil & gas companies is now going up in smoke. Other industries are mired in a no-growth or shrinking environment. Chaos keeps breaking out in the international markets, most recently over Greece and China. So, healthcare, which accounts for nearly one-fifth of US GDP, “is really the growth opportunity,” Tom Banning, CEO of the Texas Academy of Family Physicians, told The Texas Tribune: “The forces are aligned to force consolidation, and frankly, how those independent doctors are able to compete against well-heeled, deep-pocketed systems or networks is going to be a problem,” Banning said. “

How The Criminalization Of The Queer Community Affects Us All

July 29, 2015 Andrew Extein, www.centerforsexualjustice.org Educate! Criminal Justice, Law, police brutality, Public Health, Queer, Sexual Violence

By Andrew Extein in Center For Sexual Justice - Sexual minorities, including queer and LGBT people, face many obstacles when navigating the criminal justice system. One especially difficult challenge is the treatment of sex within the legal system. Sex crimes and sex laws have had far-reaching repercussions, and queer people often find themselves targeted. There is a long, well-documented history of law enforcement entrapping queer people in prostitution busts and gay cruising stings. HIV status is increasingly criminalized nationwide. Trans* folk are harassed and singled out by law enforcement. Queer people are more likely to be targeted for civil commitment. Current sex laws ignore the needs and realities of queer youth, while seeking to criminalize their unique experiences. In jails and prisons, queer people, especially youth, are extremely vulnerable, often the focus of sexual and physical abuse by inmates, guards, and staff.

100+ Doctors Tell Big Pharma To Not Make Cancer Drugs So Expensive

July 28, 2015 Tara Culp-Ressler, www.thinkprogress.org Educate! Cancer, Inequality, Medicine, Public Health

By Tara Culp-Ressler in Think Progress - The pressure is mounting on pharmaceutical companies to lower their prices for lifesaving drugs, as a group of more than 100 prominent oncologists is calling for grassroots solutions to the skyrocketing cost of cancer treatment. In an editorial published on Thursday in the journal Mayo Clinic Proceedings, 118 doctors from top hospitals around the country argue that up to 20 percent of cancer patients don’t follow their recommended treatment regimen because they’re being priced out of the drugs they need. The oncologists say this financial burden puts sick Americans in an untenable situation as they’re fighting for their lives. “It’s time for patients and their physicians to call for change,” Dr. Ayalew Tefferi, a doctor at the Mayo Clinic and the lead author of the paper, concluded.

Chicago Activists Fight For Survival

July 23, 2015 Maya Dukmasova, www.truth-out.org Resist! Inequality, Poverty, Public Health, University, Violence

By Maya Dukmasova in Truthout - On the first Wednesday in June, nine Chicago activists were arrested for occupying an administration building at the University of Chicago during an annual alumni reunion. They demanded to meet with Rob Zimmer, the president of the university, to discuss the lack of a Level 1 trauma center on the South Side, as hundreds of big donors were poised to arrive on campus. Two and a half hours later, firefighters cut a hole through the wall and the nine were detained by university police. In the previous month, nine other demonstrators for a South Side trauma center had been arrested during a march on Michigan Avenue. Currently, all four of Chicago's adult trauma centers are located on the North and West sides of the city, leaving almost a fifth of city residents and large swaths of the South Side without a trauma center within a 5-mile radius.

3 Senior Officials Lose Their Jobs After Torture Scandal

July 16, 2015 Spencer Ackerman, www.theguardian.com Resist! American Psychological Association, Criminal Justice, Law, Psychology, Public Health, Torture

By Spencer Ackerman in The Guardian - The torture scandal consuming the US’s premiere professional association of psychologists has cost three senior officials their jobs, part of a reckoning that reformers hope will lead to criminal prosecutions. As the American Psychological Association copes with the damage reaped by an independent investigation that found it complicit in US torture, the group announced on Tuesday that its chief executive officer, its deputy CEO and its communications chief are no longer with the APA. All three were implicated in the 542-page report issued this month by former federal prosecutor David Hoffman, who concluded that APA leaders “colluded” with the US department of defense and aided the CIA in loosening professional ethics and other guidelines to permit psychologist participation in torture.

Book Review: A Practical Guide To Tackling Factory Hazards

July 13, 2015 Kim Scipes, www.labornotes.org Create! Book Review, Public Health, Worker Rights and Jobs

By Kim Scipes in Labor Notes - For plenty of workers, health and safety is about as boring a subject as there is. They don’t want to hear about this “crap,” many will say—they just want to get the job done. Yet health and safety issues are as important as it gets, and a new book argues that organizers can use them to build power on the shop floor to “encourage” bosses to do the right thing. “The most important product of any factory,” the authors argue, “is the health and safety of its workers.” Production schedules and profits should come second. The comprehensive Workers’ Guide to Health and Safety, published in May, is based on 10 years of work. It’s been field-tested by workers in a number of countries. This book shows how to advance workplace health and safety from a worker-centered, pro-union, organizing perspective.

Blood & Fog: The Military’s Germ Warfare Tests In SF

July 13, 2015 Rebecca Kreston, www.blogs.discovermagazine.com Educate! Criminal Justice, History, Medicine, Public Health

By Rebecca Kreston in Discover Magazine - Over a period of six days in September 1950, members of the US Navy sprayed clouds of Serratia from giant hoses aboard a Navy minesweeper drifting two miles along the San Francisco coastline, a bacterial fog quickly enveloped and disguised by the region’s own mist. By monitoring the air at 43 scattered sites throughout the region, the Navy found Serratia bacteria blown throughout San Francisco and extending to the adjacent communities of Albany, Berkeley, Daly City, Colma, Oakland, San Leandro, and Sausalito (3). In this regard, the experiment was a success: the San Francisco Bay was identified as a highly susceptible site for a germ warfare attack and a quantifiable range for the airborne dispersal of microbes was established.

Justice Dep’t Must Investigate APA’s Role in U.S. Torture Program

July 13, 2015 Physicians for Human Rights, www.physiciansforhumanrights.org Resist! Criminal Justice, Human Rights, Psychology, Public Health, Torture

By Physicians for Human Rights - Physicians for Human Rights today called for a federal criminal probe into the American Psychological Association's (APA) role in the U.S. torture program following the release of a damning new report that confirms the APA colluded with the Bush administration to enable psychologists to design, implement, and defend a program of torture. In light of the 542-page independent report first reported by The New York Times, PHR again called for a full investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice. “The corruption of a health professional organization at this level is an extraordinary betrayal of both ethics and the law, and demands an investigation and appropriate prosecutions,” said Donna McKay, PHR’s executive director. “Rather than uphold the principle of ‘do no harm,’ APA leadership subverted its own ethics policies and sabotaged all efforts at enforcement.”

Ten One Medicare For All National Day Of Action

July 11, 2015 Vanessa Doren, www.student.pnhp.org Organize! Medicine, Public Health, Student Activism

By Vanessa Doren in Student PNHP - For most of us in medicine, helping people live healthy, happy lives is at the heart of why we chose this career. We expound upon this in application essays, talk about it during interviews, and start medical school with this “calling” fresh in our minds. Very early in our medical careers – on the wards and in the classroom – we learn that inequality, preventable illness, and death are an inherent part of our current private, for-profit-oriented health insurance system. We see patients receive preventable amputations due to untreated diabetes. We see people permanently disabled by stroke because they were unable to afford their medications. College funds emptied out to pay for $100,000-a-year cancer treatments. Families bankrupted and lives destroyed.

History’s Teachable Moments On Pipelines

July 6, 2015 H. Patricia Hynes, www.recorder.com Educate! Oil & Gas, Oil Pipelines, Public Health

By H. Patricia Hynes in The Recorder - The dominant industry argument for the Tennessee Gas Co.’s proposed pipeline through western Massachusetts is that it will provide gas for Boston on peak demand winter days and smaller-scale gas needs in western Massachusetts. If we assume, for the sake of argument, that this is its true intent, then past history offers some lessons for the contested pipeline proposal. In the mid 1960s, Massachusetts set out to solve metropolitan Boston’s projected drinking water shortage with a plan to divert water from the Connecticut River, channeling it through an aqueduct to Quabbin Reservoir (site of an earlier water diversion project for Boston that sacrificed the life of four towns). The Massachusetts Legislature approved the diversion plan in the late ’60s, with little focused opposition.

Leaked: What’s In Obama’s TPP Trade Deal

July 2, 2015 Michael Grunwald, www.politico.com Educate! Big Pharma, Capitalism, Public Health, TPP

By Michael Grunwald in Politico - A recent draft of the Trans-Pacific Partnership free-trade deal would give U.S. pharmaceutical firms unprecedented protections against competition from cheaper generic drugs, possibly transcending the patent protections in U.S. law. The draft text includes provisions that could make it extremely tough for generics to challenge brand-name pharmaceuticals abroad. Those provisions could also help block copycats from selling cheaper versions of the expensive cutting-edge drugs known as “biologics” inside the U.S., restricting treatment for American patients while jacking up Medicare and Medicaid costs for American taxpayers. “There’s very little distance between what Pharma wants and what the U.S. is demanding,” said Rohit Malpini, director of policy for Doctors Without Borders.

Supreme Court Mercury Decision Threatens Public Health

July 1, 2015 Mary Anne Hitt, www.sierraclub.org Educate! Coal, Environment, Law, Public Health, SCOTUS

By Mary Anne Hitt in Sierra Club - Today's ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court to send the Mercury and Air Toxics Standard (MATS) back to the EPA for further proceedings is a decision that endangers public health, but it won't revive the fortunes of Big Coal. These standards were designed to safeguard local communities against dangerous pollution from power plants. Unfortunately, today millions of Americans won't yet be able to breathe more easily. Practically speaking, today's decision won't revive the fortunes of Big Coal or slow down our nation's transition to clean energy. Most utilities have long since made decisions about how to meet the standard, since the compliance deadline was April 2015. Only a few dozen coal plants are still operating today with no pollution controls for mercury and air toxics and no clear plans to install them.

«1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 »

Daily movement news and resources