Portside

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.

The Labor Campaign for Single Payer held its largest ever strategy conference August 22-24 in Oakland, CA. Over 300 attendees packed the joint session at the historic ILWU Local 6 Hall, which was co-sponsored by Healthcare-NOW! and One-Payer States. Dr. Paul Song gave the keynote address for the workshop on "One Payer States".

Health Affairs study says single-payer reform could save $150 billion annually on hospital overhead

After my breast cancer scare and exemplary care in the UK, I’ve felt a powerful urge to shout at the Brits: Do you know what an extraordinary health system you have?

"Will medicine now become essentially a business, or will it remain a profession?" he asked in a 1991 lecture to the Massachusetts Medical Society later published in the NEJM. "We are not vendors, and we are not merely free economic agents in a free market." The cure he prescribed was a single-payer healthcare system in which physicians abstained from financial conflicts of interest.

Revitalizing labor's commitment for a government healthcare system is essential or we risk the peril of being overwhelmed by an ever increasing cost structure imposed by private insurers "just because they can."

It’s not so much that Obama “sold us out” to a powerful constituency as that he picked the wrong powerful constituency. A quick look at the financial details reveals that health insurance nationalization was always the real “path of least resistance.”

Vermont is the home of Ben and Jerry’s, maple syrup, Bernie Sanders and the first state to pass marriage equality. Now, Vermont will be known for something that will impact every resident in the state -- a single payer health care system.

The for-profit health-insurance industry in the United States is profoundly inefficient and costly, and a sane and sustainable alternative exists—single-payer, otherwise known as expanded and improved Medicare for all. Just change the age of eligibility from 65 to zero.

'... a little breathing room to just be human and deal with human needs.'