Is The American Public Ready For Single-Payer National Health Insurance?
We are not Europe. We are not Canada. We are America. This is not a single pay country. (1)This has been the uncompromising view of Senator Max Baucus (D-MT), who as chairman of the key Senate Finance...
View ArticleMylan’s EpiPen: Poster Child for Corporate Greed
The soaring cost of EpiPens is the latest in a long run of wildly increased costs of prescription drugs that are unaffordable to many, such as Turing’s Daraprim for toxoplasmosis (5,000 percent...
View ArticleGap Insurance for Deductibles: The Insurance Industry’s Latest Profiteering Ploy
As the cost of health insurance and care continues to go up with little restraint by the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the insurance industry is getting ever more creative in finding new revenue streams...
View ArticleElectronic Health Records: Panacea vs. Unintended Consequences
Electronic health records (EHRs) have become adopted for widespread use by a growing majority of U. S. physicians. It has been assumed that the wider adoption of EHRs would improve efficiency and...
View ArticleFuture Physicians’ Demands For National Health Insurance
Medical students are becoming strong advocates all over the country for expanded and improved Medicare for All. Spurred on by their increasing awareness of the restricted access, unaffordability, and...
View ArticleAffordable Care Act: imploding and beyond repair
Originally Published by The Hill, Oct, 21, 2016 thehill.com/... Our experience with the first six and a half years of the Affordable Care Act already tells us whether it will work.Despite the law’s...
View ArticleOur Profiteering Health Insurance Industry: Should The Government Bail It Out...
Backtrack to 2008 to 2010, when the increasing costs and unaffordability of insurance and health care for Americans were a front-burner issue. They remain so today.Soon after coming into office, the...
View ArticleThe Inadequate and Shoddy Debate Over Health Care
Originally published in The Hill 11/30/16What does the recent election cycle portend for health care in America? Not good if we go by the recent and current debate over further reform of our...
View ArticleThe Republican Plan to Repeal and Replace the ACA: Can It Work?
Repeal of the Affordable Care Act is on the front burner for the start of the January congressional session. Mitch McConnell, Senate majority leader, says that it is “the first item up in the new...
View ArticleThe Takeover of U. S. Health Care By Big Money
Donald Trump has blatantly disregarded his supposedly “populist” campaign and promises to “drain the swamp” of money in politics. He has shown himself as a self-promoter, con man, and the most...
View ArticleFatal Flaws of Any Post-ACA Republican Replacement Plan
The recent first step by the Republicans for repeal of the ACA (by a vote of 51-48 in the Senate and 227-198 in the House) (1) opens up an intense debate among Republicans as to how and when to replace...
View ArticleHow the GOP Can Avoid the Trap of Repealing the ACA
The Republicans’ campaign promises are coming back to haunt them as they confront the reality of dealing with a law that is supported by at least half of the population. The debate among Republicans in...
View ArticleNow What, After the Demise of The Republicans’ Health Care Plan?
The death of the “do or die” GOP health care plan, as the bill was pulled from a floor vote in the House on March 24, 2017, comes as no surprise. It was a non-coherent bill that depended entirely on...
View ArticleCrossroads in U. S. Health Care: Which of Three Financing Alternatives?
In this time of bitter partisan debate over the future of U. S. health care, the Republican Party is deeply split within its ranks while the Trump administration gives mixed signals as to its goals. On...
View ArticleThe Trump Administration’s Assault On Medicaid
The just-released Trump fiscal-2018 budget proposal is devastating news for 77 million poor and lower-income Americans. As the third largest domestic program in federal spending (behind Social Security...
View ArticleThe GOP’s Dilemma On Health Care: Political Suicide at Every Turn
Republicans in Congress and the Trump administration have boxed themselves into a corner on health care. Whatever they do, they will be blamed for inevitable increases in costs of health care, growing...
View ArticleTime For The Democratic Platform Committee To Go Bold On Health Care
Just over a year ago, the Democratic Platform Drafting Committee voted on whether or not to endorse single-payer Medicare for All, or national health insurance (NHI). It lost by a narrow vote of 7-6,...
View ArticleThe Cautious and Unwise Division Among Democrats Over Medicare for All
The Democratic Party, as is the case with the Republican Party, has its own civil war going on as it looks to the upcoming election cycles in 2018 and 2020. Its division over how to proceed on health...
View ArticleRegulating U. S. Health Care: How and to What End?
The question of how to regulate U. S. health care and for what purpose remains unanswered in this country. If we believe that the primary goal of regulatory oversight is to protect patients and...
View ArticleThe GOP “Plan” For Medicaid: Why Block Grants To States Are a Bad Idea
An under-appreciated time bomb of block grants to states for Medicaid and other safety net programs is a constant thread within budget plans going forward in Congress and the Trump administration. This...
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