Three new articles on the PNHP website regarding our health care

[Cleita]

problems today.

http://www.pnhp.org/news/2007/january/singlepayer_health_.php

Posted on January 29, 2007
Single-Payer Health Care Advocates Bring Campaign to D.C.

By Mark Gruenberg
PAI Staff Writer
1/29/2007

PHILADELPHIA (PAI)—At Temple University Hospital in Philadelphia, a 60-year-old woman has been hospitalized for weeks suffering from heart failure. Patricia Eakin says she should not have been in the hospital in the first place.

But the woman is there, at great expense to the hospital and—because she lacked health insurance—ultimately to taxpayers. That’s because with no insurance, she did not have enough money to buy enough medicine to prevent or slow the heart disease.

“She had to take it every other day, and not every day, as the prescription said,” said Eakin, who is also president of the Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses and Allied Professionals, an independent statewide nurses union. “Now she’s in the hospital and it’ll cost thousands of dollars.”

It’s cases like that of the woman in Philadelphia, or a 3-year-old hemophiliac child in Colorado whose medical bills are approaching his father’s company’s lifetime limits on health care coverage, that sent advocates of government-run single-payer health care coverage to Washington in late January to raise the visibility of their cause. More….

http://www.pnhp.org/news/2007/january/fix_the_system_with_.php

Posted on January 29, 2007
Fix the system with Medicare for all

By Marcia Angell
Guest Columnist
Boston Globe
January 29, 2007

Today the Globe launches a rotating seat on the op-ed page. Each guest columnist will appear each Monday for six weeks, before the next columnist takes over.

THE GREATEST source of insecurity for many Americans is the soaring cost of health care. Leaving jobs can mean losing health insurance, and even when insurance is offered, many workers turn it down because they can’t afford their growing share of the premiums.

Businesses are having trouble, too. Those that provide good health benefits see more of their revenues siphoned off by the health insurance industry, with a resulting loss of competitiveness (General Motors spends far more on health benefits than Toyota).
Insurance is not the same thing as health care — not by a long shot. Private insurers maximize profits mainly by limiting benefits or by not covering people with health problems. The United States is the only advanced country in the world with a health care system based on avoiding sick people.

It’s not surprising, then, that health care reform is at the top of the political agenda. Most current proposals de-couple health benefits from employment and encourage individuals to buy their own insurance. The fact that they were ever coupled is a historical accident; there is no logical reason for it. Yet, employment-based insurance has been the only practical option for people not old enough for Medicare or poor enough for Medicaid, since the individual insurance market is notoriously treacherous.
More…

http://www.pnhp.org/news/2007/january/like_hospitals_insu.php

Posted on January 29, 2007
Like hospitals, insurance system is also in crisis

Another voice /Health care

By DAVID DYSSEGAARD KALLICK
The Buffalo News
1/29/2007

Tuesday, prominent community leaders in Buffalo will hold a public hearing on the Berger Commission’s proposals to close hospitals as a way to reduce health care spending. The hearing will help sort out what savings are realistic, and at what cost to workers, patients and communities. More important still, the hearing, organized by the Coalition for Economic Justice, will focus attention on solutions to the broader health care crisis.

The current insurance system just isn’t working. There are 2.8 million New Yorkers who don’t have insurance. For people who do have insurance, health care is too expensive; no item in the family budget is rising faster.

As important as the effect on families, though, is the effect on economic growth. The convoluted way we finance health care is one of our nation’s biggest job-killers. Responsible companies that pay for health care are being crushed by the rising cost of insurance.

The best solution would be a national single-payer plan. But if Washington doesn’t move, New York should look into a state-based single-payer system.

Virtually all of the world’s advanced economies have universal coverage. There are models that integrate choice of doctor, private insurance on top of the basic government plan and the ability to pay to skip ahead of a queue.
More…

We here at DU have been kicking around the extending of Medicare for all.