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Why Are American Health Care Costs So High?

Why the United States spends so much more on health care than any other country in the world, including spending more tax dollars on health care than Canada, the UK, or Australia.

My Family, Our Cancer, and the Murderous Cruelty of Conservatives

Kurt Eichenwald Vanity Fair
Women’s-health clinics have been under assault for years. Abortions make up just 3 percent of the services Planned Parenthood performs. Planned Parenthood estimates that 130,000 women in Texas go without preventive health care, like breast-cancer screenings, due to Texas' anti-abortion cuts to women’s-health-care funding, and a lot of those women will die as a result.

Fairness at Peabody Coal - Deadline Coming Up

Laura Flanders Grit TV
Remember the phrase "good union job"? Living wages, basic safety protections, and guaranteed quality healthcare for life. Today Peabody Coal is taking away retiree health care and pensions, yet they have record profits. Why the fight for retiree pensions at Peabody Coal is in everyone's interest.

labor

University of California Hospital Workers Strike Today, Demand Safer Staffing, Pensions

Samantha Winslow Labor Notes
The UC health-care system boasts nearly $7 billion in operating revenue, but management wants to create a two-tier pension system for workers, while executives get yearly pension payouts of as much as $300,000. The union is demanding stronger protection against subcontracting. Workers also want more of a voice in staffing and patient care matters.

Health Care Cost Increases May Be Slowing . . .

John Iglehart et al. Health Affairs
Researchers are cautiously optimistic that the slowdown in health care spending is here to stay. Two factors potentially contributing to the record slowdown in growth to 3.1 percent during 2007-11: job loss and benefit changes shifting costs to the insured. Other fundamental changes, including less-rapid development of imaging technology and new pharmaceuticals may have led to the majority of the slowdown: 10 year savings may equal $770 billion.

Tidbits - May 9, 2013

Portside
Reader's Comments - End of the War in Viet Nam; Paid Sick Leave Law in New York; Guantanamo; Dodging Corporate Taxes; Working Class; Education; Health Care; Songs for May Day; Interview with Rene Gonzalez; What Can I Do - Portside emails have suddenly stopped? Alert for Earthlink, Mindspring, IGC PeoplePC readers Announcement - New York City Troublemakers School, May 18; International Forum on Globalization - Peoples of the Pacific - Berkeley Teach-In - June 1 & 2

labor

Unions Battle to Represent 45,000 Kaiser Permanente Workers

Clint Swett Sacramento Bee
A high-stakes fight between one of the nation's largest unions and an upstart, homegrown rival over which one should get to represent thousands of Kaiser Permanente workers in California entered Round 2 this month. NUHW-CNA face off against SEIU. Mail-in voting concludes Monday, and a final tally is expected by Friday.

'Chained CPI' Would Cut Social Security

The Chained CPI, deceptively portrayed as a reasonable cost of living adjustment, is a cut to Social Security that would hurt seniors. Watch Robert Reich explain why Chained CPI is so stingy in this video, and then sign his SignOn.org petition to President Obama here.

This video is a MoveOn original.

As OSHA Emphasizes Safety, Long-Term Health Risks Fester

Ian Urbina The New York Times
“If the cost of compliance to our rules outweighs the penalties for breaking them, companies just take a ‘catch me if you can’ approach to worker safety and health,” he said. And serious violations of the rules should not be misdemeanors, he said, but felonies, much like insider trading, tax crimes and antitrust violations. -- David Michaels, OSHA director
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