Portside

The Affordable Care Act never really solved the healthcare crisis. It treated healthcare as a commodity allocated through market forces rather than as a public good and failed to address the profiteering at the core of our healthcare system, forcing it to use a series of confusing and convoluted mechanisms to expand heath insurance coverage and regulate health insurance providers.

The Trump-induced health crisis could become an unforeseen opportunity for single-payer advocates: it just might spur a mass movement for a comprehensive government-run plan liberated from insurance markets and providing free, equal access, regardless of health or economic status.

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The critics of Bernie Sanders' economic plan fail to reckon with the long-term benefits of a single-payer health care system.

Bernie’s plan will cover the entire continuum of health care, from inpatient to outpatient care; preventive to emergency care; primary care to specialty care, including long-term and palliative care; vision, hearing and oral health care; mental health and substance abuse services; as well as prescription medications, medical equipment, supplies, diagnostics and treatments. As a patient, all you need to do is go to the doctor and show your insurance card-you'll save $$$$$

As polls show Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) erasing Hillary Clinton's lead in Iowa and maintaining a healthy edge in New Hampshire, the former secretary of state is slamming Sanders from the right over his plan for a government-funded universal health care system.

As part of the National Single Payer Strategy Conference in Chicago, the Labor Campaign for Single Payer has released an important new briefing paper "Turning Chevys into Cadillacs: The ACA Excise Tax and the Future of Healthcare Bargaining". The conference was the biggest convening of Single Payer advocates ever in Chicago described as very exciting, great turnout and energy from union activists and leaders across the country.

The explanations being promoted in some media are more based on ideology than fact.

Yesterday Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin declared "now is not the right time" to proceed with any fundamental overhaul of health care financing and delivery in Vermont. He claimed the latest cost estimates for what's known locally as Green Mountain Care (GMC) were higher than originally projected, in a period when "slower recovery from the great recession has tightened the state budget. What Shumlin has championed for nearly five years was "just not affordable" anymore.