UHCEF Article of Interest

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Nathan Shinagawa
The Ithaca Journal (click here for link to the original article)

In 1932, Governor of New York Franklin Delano Roosevelt won the presidency with 57 percent of the vote and the electorate of all but six states. Voters and lawmakers alike united behind his leadership. Within the first 100 days of office, Roosevelt enacted sweeping legislation that reformed Wall Street, provided jobs and brought electricity to millions of Americans. Two years later came FDR’s greatest policy achievement and the creation of our country’s most vital social program: Social Security. His legacy lives on today.

New Yorkers are now struggling with strained communities, a lack of good jobs and the weariness of being without health insurance. They hope that a government of and for the people will wake up from its sleepy inattentiveness, in this second Gilded Age of America, and once again rise by providing the safety nets and opportunities that make a decent life in this country possible. I and many others believe that the next governor, like FDR in his first 100 days, can make this kind of government a reality and work swiftly to alleviate the daily hardships that burden the people of New York. (more…)

UHCEF Article of Interest

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Taming a Medical Monster: Rising Cealth-Care Costs Force Illinois to Reckon with Future
William H. Albers (click here for link to original article)
Sunday, September 24, 2006

There is some bad news about health care in the recent Census Bureau report. The number of Americans without health insurance has risen to 46.6 million, up 1.3 million in the past year. Costs continue to escalate at a rate three times that of inflation. Employers are shifting more costs to employees, dropping coverage for retirees or going out of business altogether. Large manufacturers continue to struggle to compete in the global marketplace, since only the U.S. burdens its employers with the cost of health insurance. (more…)

UHCEF Article of Interest

The Fall 2006 edition of Yes! Magazine is devoted to Health Care For All - and that means single payer! Click here to view the whole magazine online.
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Doug Pibel and Sarah van Gelder
Yes! Magazine (click here for link to original article)

For Joel Segal, it was the day he was kicked out of George Washington Hospital, still on an IV after knee surgery, without insurance, and with $100,000 in medical debt. For Kiki Peppard, it was having to postpone needed surgery until she could find a job with insurance — it took her two years. People all over the United States are waking up to the fact that our system of providing health care is a disaster. (more…)

UHCEF Article of Interest

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Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent
Reuters (click here for link to original article)
Wed Sep 20, 2006 1:19 PM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States spends far more on health care than any other country but gets only mediocre care in return for its investment, according to a report released on Wednesday.

The U.S. national average score on 37 separate measures of health care falls far short when compared either to a few centers of excellence within the country, or to other countries, the report from the Commonwealth Fund found. (more…)

UHCEF Article of Interest

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Michael Mandel, with Joseph Weber in Chicago
Business Week (click here for link to original article)
SEPTEMBER 25, 2006

If you really want to understand what makes the U.S. economy tick these days, don’t go to Silicon Valley, Wall Street, or Washington. Just take a short trip to your local hospital. Park where you don’t block the ambulances, and watch the unending flow of doctors, nurses, technicians, and support personnel. You’ll have a front-row seat at the health-care economy. (more…)

Dear single-payer supporters - As you may have heard, in an astounding first for all of us, a single-payer bill has passed both the Assembly (House) and the Senate in California; only to be vetoed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. (See our new web-site’s news page for articles covering passage of the California bill.)

The Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights and animators at the Rythm and Hues Studio have developed an online game, “Nurse Avenger,” to educate citizens about our health care system and the potential savings and universal coverage that could be gained by a single-payer plan in California. (more…)

UHCEF Article of Interest

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Jim O’Sullivan
STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE

STATE HOUSE, BOSTON, SEPT. 11, 2006….Pat Walrath and Dick Moore were far apart for much of the end of last year and the beginning of this year, chief negotiators in the Legislature’s painstaking authoring of the new law aimed at bringing health insurance to nearly all Massachusetts residents.

Walrath, a Stow Democrat, pushed the House’s hopes for a broader bill with more coverage and a higher burden on businesses. Moore, an Uxbridge Democrat, carried the Senate plan for a bill passed quickly and with more emphasis on individual contributions.

Now the two chairs of the Joint Committee on Health Care Financing are, once again, far apart on paper. In the first eight months of this year, both unopposed in their bids for re-election, Walrath raised less than 5 percent of Moore’s $63,862 haul, according to state campaign finance records.

About half the campaign contributions Moore collected, more than $25,000, sprang from the pockets of health care professionals, lobbyists, and hospital executives, all of whom had large stakes in the oft-tortuous formulation of the health care reform law that Gov. Mitt Romney signed in April. (more…)

UHCEF Article of Interest

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Merrill Goozner
Huffington Post (click here for link to article)
09.06.2006

Gov. Arnold Schwartzenegger positioning himself as a pseudo-liberal (a girlie-man?) to resuscitate his comatose poll ratings? Maybe on some issues, but not if we’re to judge from the governator’s veto yesterday of the single-payer health insurance bill passed by the Democratically-controlled Sacramento legislature last month.

The text of the veto message was instructive because it uses every Big Lie that is thrown against progressives when they point out that a national single-payer plan as the only real solution to the U.S. health care financing crisis. (more…)

Mass-Care will be holding its monthly Coordinating Committee meeting this coming Saturday, September 9th, at 10AM on the Clark University campus in Worcester.. We will meet in Room J321A on the third floor of the Sackler Sciences Building. Directions to Clark and the room on campus are below. (more…)

UHCEF Article of Interest

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Susanne L. King, M.D.
Berkshire Eagle (click here for link to article)
Thursday, August 31

LENOX - POWERFUL FORCES have been shaping the new mandated health care insurance bill being developed in the Statehouse in Massachusetts. I was reading a news article this week about health care lobbying in our state legislature, and was astounded by the sums of money being spent by special interest groups to ensure that the new bill will protect their specific interests; i.e. their profits. (more…)