Single-Payer

Hospitals Mark Up Prices More Than 1,000 Percent

June 21, 2015 Staff, www.jhsph.edu Educate! Corporatism, health, Health Care, Single-Payer

By Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. The 50 hospitals in the United States with the highest markup of prices over their actual costs are charging out-of-network patients and the uninsured, as well as auto and workers’ compensation insurers, more than 10 times the costs allowed by Medicare, new research suggests. It’s a markup of more than 1,000 percent for the same medical services. “There is no justification for these outrageous rates, but no one tells hospitals they can’t charge them,” says Anderson, a professor in the Bloomberg School’s Department of Health Policy and Management. “For the most part, there is no regulation of hospital rates and there are no market forces that force hospitals to lower their rates. They charge these prices simply because they can.”

Majority Still Support Single-Payer Health Care

January 20, 2015 Sarah Ferris, www.thehill.com Create! Health Care, Single-Payer

More than five years after the single-payer system was scrapped from ObamaCare policy debates, just over 50 percent of people say they still support the idea, including one-quarter of Republicans, according to a new poll. The single-payer option – also known as Medicare for all – would create a new, government-run insurance program to replace private coverage. The system, once backed by President Obama, became one of the biggest casualties of the divisive healthcare debates of 2009. The idea remains extremely popular among Democrats, with nearly 80 percent in support, according to the poll, which was shared first with The Hill by the Progressive Change Institute.

Privatization Of British Health System Fuels Scottish Independence

September 14, 2014 Staff, www.rt.com Organize! Britain, Healthcare, Scotland, Single-Payer, United Kingdom (UK)

Politicians clashed over the NHS at a Scottish independence debate. “Yes” supporters say independence could save the health service from privatization, while “No” advocates say Scotland can’t afford it alone. Independence is needed to protect against a “nasty, competitive, profit-driven motive” towards the NHS, Scottish Green Party MSP Patrick Harvie said Thursday. Respect MP George Galloway, who is calling for a “No” vote, however, says there would not be an NHS without “a country big enough” to share resources. The debate was held at Glasgow’s SSE Hydro arena before an audience of around 7,500 young people, drawn from secondary schools across Scotland. The 18th September referendum will be the first time 16 and 17 year olds have been entitled to vote. Support for independence is highest among the younger population. Both sides in the referendum race hold strong emotional attachments to the NHS.

Single Payer Advocates Should Bring Constant Pressure On Dems

July 26, 2014 Ted Van Dyk, www.crosscut.com Organize! Democrats, health, Obamacare, Politics, Single-Payer

The Western Washington Chapter of Physicians for a National Health Program, which advocates for a universal, comprehensive single-payer national health program, held its annual public meeting last Saturday evening at Kane Hall on the University of Washington campus. The event provided a useful snapshot of things to come in healthcare politics nationally, but also here in Washington State. The meeting, held before a nearly full house that included numerous practicing doctors and nurses, also provided its share of surprises. Here are some highlights: There was consensus that a single-payer plan is at least several years away and that state- rather than national-level organizing efforts to institute one would bear the most fruit over the next two years. The Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. Obamacare) allows states, beginning in 2017, to seek exemptions from its provisions provided they present a credible alternative plan to the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services. The meeting’s speakers agreed that between now and 2017 lobbying efforts to enact single-payer alternatives should focus on governors and state legislators. (Such HHS approvals, Rep. Jim McDermott pointed out, would likely occur only during the administration of a President sympathetic to the idea).

Continuity of Health Care: Going, Going… Almost Gone!

June 4, 2014 John Geyman, www.huffingtonpost.com Educate! ACA, Health Care, Single-Payer

We have heard the promises as the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was being sold to the public, including -- you can keep your doctor and insurance if you like it. We now know those promises to be mostly false as the ACA enters its fifth year of implementation. Under the guise of "competition" and "efficiency," the ACA has unleashed a new round of disruption throughout the health care system. We are seeing further fragmentation of care, with less continuity of care with patients' physicians. The physician-patient relationship itself is at risk in a "system" increasingly headed for strangers taking care of strangers. More than one-half of U.S. physicians are no longer self-employed and now work for organizations, mostly growing hospital systems but also some insurers that are moving into the delivery side of health care. Two examples illustrate the new landscape: • Several hundred patients at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) recently received certified letters informing them that they could no longer see their physicians. The reason: their insurance, Community Blue, sold by Highmark, is now both a rival hospital system and an insurer. Patients were cut off from their UPMC physicians even in the middle of cancer therapy. (1)

National Strategy Meeting For Single Payer Health System

May 21, 2014 Dr. Don McCanne, www.pnhp.org Strategize! health, Health Care, Single-Payer

In a modern democracy, it seems to me that it’s a responsibility of the government to guarantee all necessary care to everyone in the democracy, and also to protect the privacy of the decision making between the patient and his or her caregiver. And if you think about that a little bit further, what would it mean if we had national health insurance? What would it mean if we had access to all necessary care? - we didn’t have to worry when our mother needed to make a transition to a nursing home.; we didn’t have to worry when our child got leukemia; we didn’t have to worry… like all of my patients - every patient I have in the hospital is worried about the money problems that are going to follow their illness. And it is an absolute national disgrace - Yes, we can indict that, but let’s think about that the other way. What kind of freedom would we have if we could travel anywhere we wanted and know that there would be an adequate health care infrastructure?

Obamacare’s Empty Victory

May 5, 2014 Margaret Flowers, www.indypendent.org Organize! Barack Obama, Health Care, Single-Payer

It feels truly Orwellian that progressives are applauding the forced purchase of private health insurance — one of the most hated industries in the United States — while the right is opposing a model that originated from their political leaders. The Affordable Care Act (ACA) is a step farther on the path to total privatization of our health care system, not towards the health care system that most Americans support: single payer Medicare for all. In the months leading up to the March 31 deadline to obtain health insurance, ACA supporters united around their mission to enroll people. Volunteers knocked on doors and tabled in their communities. Celebrities and athletes tweeted and labor unions ran robocalls. The media buzzed with speculation about whether the ACA would succeed or fail. March 31 felt like election night. And after it was over, ACA supporters clapped each other on the back and celebrated. Obamacare survived. But now that the law is implemented and the dust is settling, it’s time to question what this actually means for health care and what we should do now.

Full Show: Climate Catastrophe And Obamacare {aTV 001}

April 19, 2014 Dennis Trainor Jr, www.PopularResistance.org Resistance Report Climate Change, Climate Justice, Healthcare, Single-Payer

“The IPCC has finally stepped up to the plate in saying what we are up against,” says Dr. Stein, “but they have not begin to step up to the plate, in fact they are really not qualified to say how we fix this. The IPCC is not calling for radical transformation. They have yelled, ‘fire!’ and come out with a squirt gun. What they are calling for is not what we need.” In the second half of the show, Dennis sits down with Dr. Margret Flowers. Recently, Dr. Flowers initiated an online petition declaring herself a consciences objector to the Affordable Care Act and asking others to send a message to President Obama that the ACA is a scam. “The most important conversation we should be having right now in the United States is not how many people are insured,” says Dr. Flowers “knowing that insurance is not protective, it’s: do we want to continue to treat healthcare as a commodity where people only get what they can afford, or do we want to join the rest of the industrialized nations in the world and treat healthcare as a public good and create a system where people can get what they need.”

Med Students Want Truly Just Healthcare System

April 18, 2014 James Besante, www.commondreams.org Resist! Healthcare, Single-Payer, Student Activism, Youth

Cardinal Bernardin said, “Health care is an essential safeguard of human life and dignity, and there is an obligation for society to ensure that every person be able to realize this right.” But nearly two decades later, the realization of the “right to health care” remains elusive...The ACA doesn’t change this picture as much as some might think. People who signed up for private coverage in the exchanges are finding they have substantial cost-sharing, i.e. high deductibles and copayments, proven barriers to seeking care. Patients are also finding themselves squeezed into “narrow networks,” which significantly limit their choice of doctors and hospitals. Accidentally step out-of-network, and your costs soar. The sad truth is that for many health insurance is an umbrella that melts in the rain—when you need it most, it isn’t there. ... the business of corporate medicine is doing very well under the ACA. Health insurer profits, stock value, and CEO salaries are all up. In fact, the entire law was written around preserving the gluttonous bottom lines in American health care. The ACA handed private insurers $500 billion in taxpayer subsidies to continue profiteering off illness in our country.

Obama on Between Two Ferns: Did He Get Across To The Young ‘Invincibles’?

March 12, 2014 Dennis Trainor Jr, www.PopularResistance.org Resistance Report Barack Obama, Health Care, Single-Payer

Young people do not want to pay for health insurance. Whether it is because they have better things to do with their disposable income or because, even after deferring on those student loans again, they do not have any disposable income because their McJob in this McConomy sucks, or whether it is because in their youth they feel invincible (or some combination of these reasons) young people are just not signing up. Which, in an insurance system that requires many people paying into the system who will not in fact use the system, is a major problem. Baby Boomers, many of whom have long since left behind their bra burning days and traded in their revolutionary worldview for a hummer and a 3 car garage McMansion lifestyle, need to go to the doctor a lot more than the young invincibles, and need the young invincibles- whose suffering in the McConomy is a result, in large part, to the globalization the once revolutionary and now much more comfortable Baby boomers have by and large embraced, are not buying.

Testimony by Experts – Single-Payer Healthcare is the Best

March 12, 2014 Staff www.citizen.org Educate! Health Care, Single-Payer

Several witnesses discussed their countries’ goals of equity and how universal access to care was well-regarded by citizens. Dr. Ching-chuan Yeh of Taiwan, former health minister of Taiwan and professor at the School of Public Health, College of Medicine at Tzu Chi University, explained how the nation has achieved 99.6 percent coverage for the population and subsequently has seen increases in life expectancy and a drop in the infant mortality rate. “Today’s panel was a good first step that will hopefully inspire a real discussion about the benefits of single-payer health care in the United States,” said Susan Harley, deputy director of Public Citizen’s Congress Watch division. “A single-payer, or Medicare-for-all, system would eliminate health insurance companies from the equation, ensuring that only patients and their doctors make decisions about care options.”

Oncologists Call for a Single-Payer Healthcare System

January 30, 2014 Charles Bankhead, www.medpagetoday.com Educate! Health Care, Single-Payer

Oncologists have a "moral and ethical obligation" to their patients to advocate for a single-payer universal health insurance program, according to two oncologists who stated their case in an editorial. A single-payer system would simplify healthcare delivery for patients and providers without sacrificing quality of care, said Ray Derasga, MD, and Lawrence Einhorn, MD, in an editorial published online in the Journal of Oncology Practice, a journal of the American Society of Clinical Oncology. The switch to such a national system would face huge and innumerable challenges, but gradual implementation, perhaps even on a state-by-state basis, would reduce the administrative burdens, they wrote.

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