Portside

The most successful health insurance program, Medicare, was enacted in July,1965 to provide health insurance for people ages 65 and older and disabled regardless of income or medical history. Medicare is more efficient than private health insurance

Jelly Roll Morton's hit single in 1923. Women's Rights Convention in 1848. Disability rights a winner in 1968. Prepaid comprehensive healthcare in 1945. Investigation smoke and mirrors in 2004. Prisoner abuse in 2006. Civil disobedience in 1846.

Last year, the federal government spent $20.5 billion overpaying private insurers for Medicare Advantage plans — and the industry’s aggressive lobbying campaign is kneecapping efforts by lawmakers to stop the scheme.

Sanders Introduces Medicare for All with 14 Colleagues in the Senate

New York City’s Municipal Labor Committee voted March 9 to scrap some of the best retiree health care coverage in the country. The change would put 250,000 city retirees into a for-profit Medicare Advantage plan run by Aetna.

Our current system defines health as the ability to work. Those who can’t are abandoned and exploited. If you’re too sick to work, you will be forced into poverty twice over: First by the loss of wages, and second, if lucky, by SSDI, or poverty.

The Jeff Bezos-owned newspaper sprinkled its coverage of an intensifying fight over Medicare with ads purchased by an organization that promotes private Medicare Advantage plans.

The Medicare privatization program "presents a threat to the integrity of traditional Medicare, and an opportunity for corporations to take money from taxpayers while denying care to beneficiaries," said Physicians for a National Health Program.

As yet another scandal involving Medicare Advantage made headlines this week, progressive U.S. lawmakers and advocates renewed calls to abolish the private health insurance program.