UHCEF Article of Interest

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Steve Bailey
The Boston Globe (click here for link to original article)
6 December 2006

To appreciate what is happening to healthcare costs, consider this amazing number: $2,228,099.

That is what it will cost the City of Boston, on average, for health insurance alone for a single employee, say a cop or a teacher, over a lifetime, according to Segal Co., the city’s actuarial consultant. That is $2.2 million per employee on a city payroll that currently has 16,400 employees and another 12,600 retirees and their dependents. (more…)

UHCEF Article of Interest

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Steve Bailey
The Boston Globe (click here for a link to the original article)
15 November 2006

Last May the twin 800-pound gorillas of the Massachusetts healthcare industry, Partners HealthCare and Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Massachusetts, helped organize a summit of the industry’s top leaders at the Hotel Commonwealth in Kenmore Square. A who’s who from the teaching hospitals, the insurers, and academia showed up for the start of an ambitious process. The topic: “Potential for Regional Collaboration to Improve Massachusetts Healthcare: The Economic Case.”

For some of those summoned, it was more than they could swallow. Here was Partners, formed more than a decade ago by the merger of Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham & Women’s Hospital, the Coke and Pepsi of the state’s hospital industry, preaching the gospel of collaboration? This from an organization that has grown so large and rich that it has essentially redefined the market as Partners and Everyone Else. Paul Levy, chief executive of Beth Israel Deaconess, and Charlie Baker, chief executive of Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, to name just two, dropped out in short order. (more…)

UHCEF Article of Interest

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Workday Minnesota (click here for link to original article)
3 October 2006

LA CROSSE, Wis. - The Wisconsin State AFL-CIO has become the 12th state labor federation to endorse legislation creating a national single payer health care system.

Acting on a motion submitted by the Western Wisconsin Central Labor Council, the Wisconsin State AFL-CIO endorsed HR 676 at its 24th Biennial Convention, Sept. 25-27 in La Crosse. HR 676, sponsored by Congressman John Conyers, D-Mich., would institute a single payer health care system in the United States by expanding a greatly improved Medicare system to every resident. (more…)

UHCEF Article of Interest

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Jack Dew, Berkshire Eagle Staff
Berkshire Eagle
Friday, September 29

PITTSFIELD — Groundbreaking and historic. Deeply flawed and inadequate.

The new health insurance law that is slowly taking shape in Massachusetts is both, according to a panel of experts and legislators that met last night in Pittsfield.

The law is perhaps best understood as a framework to offer health insurance to most of the state’s uninsured. It requires every resident to have adequate health coverage by July 2007, but it did not create the plans in which people can enroll, nor did it allocate the funds to pay for those plans. (more…)

UHCEF Article of Interest

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Sue Hutchison
San Jose Mercury News (click here for link to original article)

By now you have probably heard the grim statistic that half of the personal bankruptcies in this country are caused by huge hospital bills following a catastrophic health crisis. If you think this could never happen to you, consider the case of Carole Detherage.

Detherage and her husband have emerged only recently from more than a decade of financial hell after they were forced to file for bankruptcy when they were hit with $65,000 in bills for the medical treatment of their infant daughter. And the Detherages had what they thought was a great PPO health plan. (more…)

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…)