Portside

Hundreds of thousands of kids are dying every year because pharmaceutical companies are making record profits off a life-saving vaccine.

Unfortunately for veterans, McCain’s captivity to conservative ideology has far out-trumped his past solicitude for fellow “wounded warriors.” On August 5th, McCain introduced legislation –The Permanent VA Choice Card Act -- that would seriously undermine the quality of care received by VHA patients of all kinds.

Millions of California workers will see wage increases in the coming years as a result of recently-enacted state and local minimum wage policies. These minimum wage policies will reduce poverty, reduce employee turnover and improve the health of affected workers and their families. Less often discussed is that these wage increases will also reduce state health care spending.

For 40 years, many economists' have promoted increasing cost sharing through higher copayments and deductibles, the replacement of fee-for-service payment systems with capitation as in Health Maintenance Organizations, and competition where multiple insurers offer a variety of plans catered to individual consumer's interests and in competition with each other. These practices have produced the worst of all worlds, rising costs along with restrictions on access.