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Guardian - Blog: Living With Long Covid


10/4/23


Common Dreams: Medicare Advantage Overbills Taxpayers by $140 Billion Per Year - Enough to Wipe Out Medicare Premiums  


6/28/23


ProPublica: How Often Do Health Insurers Say No to Patients? They Won't Say.  


6/16/23


NYTimes: The Moral Crisis of America's Doctors  - Two words: Single Payer


2/5/23


NYTimes: Doctors Aren’t Burned Out From Overwork. We’re Demoralized by Our Health System. - From the article: "The United States is the only large high-income nation that doesn’t provide universal health care‌ to its citizens. Instead, it maintains a lucrative system of for-profit medicine. For decades, ‌at least tens of thousands of preventable deaths have occurred each year because health care here is so expensive."       


2/1/23


Kaiser Health News: Nursing Home Owners Drained Cash During Pandemic While Patients Deteriorated - Wouldn't happen with Single Payer.


1/30/23


JAMA: The Existential Threat of Greed in US Health Care     


National Library of Medicine: Hospital Expenditures Under Global Budgeting and Single-Payer Financing - "We estimate that non-federal hospital operating budgets will total $17.2 trillion between 2021 and 2030 under current law versus $14.7 trillion under single-payer with global budgeting. This difference reflects $520 billion in foregone profits and $1,984 billion in reduced expenditures on hospital administration"


Kaiser Health News: Government Lets Health Plans That Ripped Off Medicare Keep the Money   


1/11/23


Sacramento Bee: At a Time of Inflation, California Should Take a Bold Step to Tame Rising Health Care Costs     


12/14/22


Common Dreams: As Scandals Mount, So Do Calls to Abolish Private Medicare Advantage    


12/9/22


HealthLeaders: Institute for Healthcare Improvement President Emeritus and co-founder calls for single-payer system in United States


11/28/22


New Yorker: How Hospice Became a For-Profit Hustle  


11/23/22


British Medical Journal: Arizon's Debt Collection Reform - A Small Step Towards Health Justice


11/22/22


American Prospect: Hospital Billing is a Crime Against American Patients


11/16/22


ProPublica: What Will United Health's New Trove of Claims Data Mean for Consumers? - From the article: Less choice and higher prices for sick people. Wouldn't happen with Single Payer.


11/15/22


Newsweek: How Medicare Advantage Scams Seniors


11/10/22


Jrnl. of Clinical Oncology: Medicare Advantage: A Disadvantage for Complex Cancer Surgery Patients    


11/3/22


U. S. Senate Finance Committee: Deceptive Marketing Practices Flourish in Medicare Advantage  


10/26/22


Kaiser Health News: How Private Equity Hijacked Health Care  


10/6/22


NPR: Being Sick Ruined Her Credit


8/2/22


Healthy California Now: Calculate How Much Improved Medicare for All Could Save You  


7/15/22


Govt. of Canada: Statement From the Minister of Health on the British Colombia Board of Appeal's Decision in the Cambie Surgeries Case - ...upholding Canada's committment to Single Payer


6/18/22


WashPo: How Cuba Became a Pioneer in Covid-19 Vaccines for Kids  


6/13/22


Proceedings of the National Academy of Science: Universal Health Care as Pandemic Preparedness: The Lives and Costs That Could Have Been Saved -  "Fully one quarter of all Covid deaths are due to the absence of universal insurance."


6/4/22


Health Justice Monitor: What is Single Payer?


4/28/22


NYTimes: Medicare Advantage Plans Often Deny Needed Care, Federal Report Finds  


4/21/22


New England Jrnl of Medicine: A Change in Leading Cause of Death Among US Children - Analogy: Just as the number of deaths of children in car accidents has dramatically decreased with the advent of more and better prevention methods, the same could be true of deaths of children from firearms. That is now the leading cause. Guns don't kill people, people with guns do.


4/12/22


CA Health Line: Babies Die as Congenital Syphilis Continues a Decade Long Surge Across the US - US has one of the highest infant mortality rates among OECD countries. Low income mothers often don't have access to proper prenatal care in our medical industrial complex. Another problem Medicare for All would avoid. Tragic.  


4/10/22


KevenMD: How Much Time Do Physicians Spend in EHR? - About 4.5 hrs. per day.


4/5/22


Commonwealth Fund: Health Care for Women of Reproductive Age - "U.S. women have the highest rates of avoidable death compared to women in other high-income countries; they are also less likely to have a regular doctor and more likely to report problems paying medical bills or to skip or delay needed care because of costs."


4/4/22


Wendell Potter: A Decade Long Look at How Big Insurance Profiteers American Taxpayers and the Sick - ACA was Obama’s gift to insurance corporations. Proponents of Medicare for All did not ‘get a seat at the table.'


News Medical: COVID-19 Study Proves Ivermectrin Ineffective    


3/8/22


WSWS: Omicron BA.2 Subvarient Fuels New Global Surge of the Pandemic


2/28/22


NBER: Is There a VA Advantage? Evidence From Dually Eligible Veterans - "...we find  that the VA reduces 28-day mortality by 46%, and 28 day spending by 21%..."


NYTimes: How Long Covid Exhausts the Body


CNN: As BA.2 Subvarient of Omicron Rises, Lab Studies Point to Signs of Severity


2/18/22


NYTimes: Red Covid, An Update  


2/10/22


Lancet: Public Policy and Health in the Trump Era - "Trump exploited low and middle-income white people's anger over their deteriorating life prospects to mobilise racial animus and xenophobia and enlist their support for policies that benefit high-income people and corporations and threaten health. His signature legislative achievement, a trillion-dollar tax cut for corporations and high-income individuals, opened a budget hole that he used to justify cutting food subsidies and health care. His appeals to racism, nativism, and religious bigotry have emboldened white nationalists and vigilantes, and encouraged police violence and, at the end of his term in office, insurrection."


The peer-reviewed study in the most highly esteemed medical journal in America concluded that his leadership led to 40% of the deaths from covid during his administration. The 'budget hole' mentioned above cost the US Treasury $7.8 trillion.


12/20/21


Socialist Alternative: How Capitalist World Leaders Are to Blame for COVID Nightmare - New York City is the petrie dish for the world.


12/9/21


NYTimes: Children Coping with Loss Are the Pandemic's Forgotten Grievers - About 167,000 children have lost parents or caregivers.


11/8/21


NYTimes: Covid Death Rates Keep Getting Redder


11/3/21


Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine - The Cost vs. Pricing of Coronavirus Vaccines -

Drugs developed with government assistance cost up to 10 X the cost of manufacture. Yep, that's capitalism at its finest.



10/8/21


Natl. Geographic: COVID-19 is Linked to New Diabetes Cases, But Long Term Problems Could Be More Severe


9/30/21


Snopes & Associated Press: Ban on 'Suprise' Medical Bills on Track for Jan. 1 Rollout


PNHP: Direct Contacting Entities: Wall Street Control of Traditional Medicare


9/26/21


United States Covid-19 Statistics: US Covid Deaths Now Exceed Those from the Spanish Flu - As of 9/26/21, 687,984 Americans have died of Covid. Total American deaths from the Spanish Flu of 1918: 675,000.


9/7/21


EAMC: Addressing False Information and Concerns - As a very good friend of mine says: "Science is a journey of discovery, not a path to confirmation."


HJM: Corporate Takeover and 'Value-Based' Care Is Driving Physician Burnout


9/1/21


HJM: Sutter Medicare Advantage Pays $90 Million Due to False Diagnosis Codes


8/28/21


HJM: Learning From Costa Rica


8/27/21


NYTimes: Calls Grow to Discipline Doctors Spreading Virus Misinformation - Daniel Stock, Joseph Mercola, and Here, Christian Elliot, Sherri Tenpenny, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Geert Vanden Bossche, Alex Berenson, America's Frontline Doctors, the Disinformation Dozen are all spreading misinformation for their own personal profit. Evidently they are causing hundreds of thousands of deaths - and they're fine with that.


8/21/21


Guardian: Tennessee Radio Host Who Criticised Vaccine Efforts Dies of Covid-19


8/18/21


HJM: After 20 Years of 'Quality Improvement', US Health Care Quality Continues to Fall -

US Longevity is down to 78.5 vs other OECD countries 81-84.

Racial disparities in access to health care and health.

US health care spending twice the wealthy country average.

33 million Americans and rising are currently uninsured, about 1/3 the number of insured.

Last among wealthy nations in terms of access and outcomes.

Financial barriers very high for the sick in Medicare Advantage.

Medical debt skyrocketing, impoverishing the sick and imperilling lives.

Insurer profits skyrocketing for years, and even more during Covid.

US ambulance services separate, costly and unreliable.

US doctors burning out from billing-laden EHR.



8/14/21


Guardian: Republican Leaders Fiddle While Covid Burns Through Their Own Voters - “They’ve gone out of their minds. There’s just no other way to describe this. This is about the dumbest thing you could imagine because the only people listening to them are their voters. So this is the first time I’ve ever seen a political party advocating things that would harm their voters, maybe even kill their voters.”


8/13/21


PNHP: Private Equity is Buying Up Health Care; Patients and Doctors Beware - Check out the Comment at the end.


8/11/21


HJM: The Financial and Health Hazards of Medicare Advantage


8/10/21


California Medical Assoc: Aetna Creates New Obstacles to Care for Seniors


8/8/21


Guardian: Rightwing Radio Host and


8/6/21


Guardian: Alarm as US Covid Cases Surge Past 100,000 a Day For First Time Since February


8/4/21


Commonwealth Fund: Health Care in the US Compared to Other High-Income Countries - "The top-performing countries overall are Norway, the Netherlands, and Australia. The United States ranks last overall, despite spending far more of its gross domestic product on health care."


7/28/21


US Govt. Accountability Office: Medicare Advantage Skips Out on End of Live Care


7/24/21


Guardian: Tennessee Radio Host Doubted and Mocked Vaccines - Now He's in Intensive Care with Covid


7/23/21


Guardian: Republican Governor Says 'Time to Start Blaming Unvaccinated' for Rise in Cases


7/21/21


Guardian: 'A Systemic Failure': Vaccine Misinformation Remains Rampant on Facebook - Zuckerburg will allow anything on FB that gets clicks, without regard to the fact that this is killing the stupid knuckleheads that actually believe it.


7/20/21


JAMA: Medical Debt in the US 2009 - 2020 - From the report: Medical debt supasses all other kinds in the US and likely shortens lives.


CBS News: CDC Director: Delta Variant Accounts for 83% of New Covid Cases


7/16/21


NBC News: CDC Warns of a Pandemic of the Unvaccinated


7/15/21


American Hospital Association: UnitedHealth Group Earnings: Mega-Profits by Denying Life-Saving Health Care to Their Customers


7/6/21


Health Justice: Yet Another Medicare Advantage Cheating Scheme


7/2/21


Health Justice: High Deductibles Can Kill Patients, Especially If They Are Poor



6/23/21


New Yorker: The Delta Variant is a Grave Danger to the Unvaccinated


Health Justice: Medicare Advantage Raises Costs MedPac Refutes AHIP


6/4/21


American Public Health Assoc.: Health Care Use and Out-of-Pocket Spending by Persons With Dementia US vs. Europe - Americans spend 50% less time in at home care, much more out-of-pocket, more time in nursing homes and nursing home corporations reap the profits.


6/2/21


National Nurses United: FAQs About M4A - How do we pay for it? Why not just implement the public option? Will I still be able to see my doctor under M4A?


6/1/21


JAMA: Access to Care, Cost of Care, and Satisfaction With Care Among Adults With Private and Public Health Insurance in the US


5/31/21


Health Affairs: Cancer Oucomes Among Medicare Beneficiaries and Their Younger Uninsured Counterparts


5/30/21


Guardian: Kumbh Mela: How a Superspreader Festival Seeded Covid Across India


5/22/21


NYTimes: Covid Killed His Father, Then Came $1 Million in Medical Bills


5/14/21


JAMA: Time and Financial Costs for Physician Practices to Participate in Medicare Merit-Based Incentive Payment Systems - P4P 'merit based' systems are costly to health care providers who participate in them and there is no evidence that sick people benefit in any way. They only add more to the already bloated administrative overhead of our current healtcare systems.


5/10/21


Corporate Crime Reporter: Sanders, Jayapal Put Single Payer on the Back Burner - Typical Democrat negotiation procedure: Concede your main point before bargaining even begins. Exactly how Obamacare was handcrafted by AHIP, the lobbying group for health insurance corporations.


5/4/21


New Yorker: Inside India's Covid-19 Surge


4/23/21


New Republic: What Did the Sacklers Know?


4/6/21


Washington Post: Drug Companies Keep Merging. Why That's Bad for Consumers and Innovation.


New Yorker: Sweden's Pandemic Experiment


4/5/21


American Prospect: The Big Tech of Health Care


3/31/21


Gallup: 46 Million Americans Cannot Afford Healthcare


3/22/21


Chris Hedges: The Evil Within Us - "Millions of largely white Americans, hermetically sealed within the ideology of the Christian Right, yearn to destroy the 'Satanic' forces they blame for the debacle of their lives. And one such evangelical just killed eight people in Atlanta."


3/8/21


Fresh Air: Walter Isaacson on CRISPR and the Scientist Who Won Nobel Prize For Her Part in Developing the COVID Vaccine - Dr. Jennifer Doudna. See entry of 10/7/20 below.


3/5/21


NYTimes: Private Insurance Wins in Democrats' First Try at Expanding Health Coverage - Dems' approach to reform: throw more money at health insurance corporations. PNHP response.


2/19/21


MedPage Today: Why Haven's Encounter With Reality Proved Fatal - Back in mid-2018 Warren Buffett, Jeff Bezos and Jamie Dimon, the highly acclaimed 'thought leaders' decided they could solve the health care crisis in the US without the need for government. Did not work out well.

Their conclusion: "We have an employer-based system. A job-based system is a broken system in a world where people are moving every couple of years to different roles and many, many, kinds of jobs." Wonder what they paid in consulting fees to reach this obvious analysis.

Our solution: M4A.


Don McCanne (PNHP):

"I contend that the Haven health reform effort of Warren Buffett, Jeff Bezos and Jamie Dimon, along with Atul Gawande, was a spectacular success, as an experiment in health policy. They proved beyond any reasonable doubt that the private sector is incapable of fixing our highly dysfunctional health care financing system. The only model that has shown promise is a single payer Medicare for All system. But you cannot set that up as an employer-sponsored system; it will have to be a public system for all the people."


2/13/21


Corporate Crime Reporter: SEIU Aetna Medicare Advantage and the Attack on Traditional Medicare - A concise explanation of how Medicare Advantage allows health insurance corporations to make huge profits on healthy people at the expense of American taxpayers, and then abandon those people when they become really sick.


2/9/21


National Bureau of Economic Research: The Health Costs of Cost-Sharing - We know that about 45,000 Americans die every year from lack of any heath insurance, and more die from being under-insurance. Cost-sharing is a barrier to care. Cost-sharing kills people. M4A would save $450 Billion and 68,000 lives per year.


CBS News: Child Hunger Has Doubled During the Pandemic


1/29/21


FAIR: NYT's China Syndrome - NYT seems to be on some kind of vendetta to portray China as a big scary place and we should be afraid of them. The truth is that China has and continues have a far greater success rate with Covid than the US. Cases like this show what a propaganda rag the NYT can be sometimes. Details in the article. Is this newspaper trying to cook up an eventual confrontation with China similar to the one they are currently (Feb., 2022) working on with Russia? Or is the eventual strategy to make the BRIC nations our next big enemy?


1/25/21


BBC: Moderna Vaccine Appears to Work Against Variants


1/21/21


Guardian: Fauci: US to Repeal Anti-Abortion Rule on Aid and join Coax Vaccine Scheme


1/19/21


Jacobin: Joe Biden Lifted His Healthcare Plan from Insurance Industry Lobbyists - In one sentence Biden/Harris have wiped out any chance for M4A for four more years and guaranteed continuing record profits for insurance corporations. That is lobbyist money talking. Very Neo-Liberal.


1/15/21


Vox: Still Going to the Grocery Store? With New Virus Variants Spreading, It's Probably Time to Stop - Very important article. “The fact that [the variants] are so infectious suggests to me having a better mask is a good idea,” Frieden said. When it comes to avoiding an infection, “a surgical mask is better than a cloth mask, a tight-fitting surgical mask is better than a loose-fitting mask, and an N95 is better than a surgical mask.”


1/8/21


Sanjay Gupta: Memory Doesn't Have to Fade as We Age - "Exercise wouldn't necessarily be thought of as the cure, but rather inactivity as the disease. Just move...follow the SHARP dietary protocol: Slash sugar; Hydrate (even being dehydrated a few ounces can affect cognition); Add more omega-3 fatty acids from foods like cold-water fish, nuts, and seeds; Reduce portion; and Plan ahead...Restorative sleep and exercise are antidotes to mental decline...the strength of our relationships is much more essential to our health...focus on eye contact...Do not accept the false idea that brain decline is unavoidable."


1/7/21


JAMA: SARS-CoV-2 Transmission From People Without COVID-19 Symptoms - Most transmissions occur from an asymptomatic person.


1/5/21


Health Affairs: Pricing Universal Health Care: How Much Would the Use of Medical Care Rise? - Report Conclusion: "The supply-focused framework advanced in this article challenges the long-dominant paradigm among US health economists that health care demand (and costs) must be curbed by forcing patients to have “skin in the game.” Many health care systems have constrained utilization and cost growth without resorting to cost barriers while achieving universal coverage and a more equitable distribution of care. The US can do the same."


PNHP: Universal Healthcare Less Costly Than Previously Projected: Harvard/UCSF Study


NYTimes: One Hospital System Sued 2,500 Patients After Pandemic Hit - Is this any way to finance our health care system?


1/4/21


Reuters: Most US Covid Vaccines Go Idle


1/2/21


MedPage Today: Beware of Health Insurance Brokers


12/29/20


Reuters: Wealthy Hospitals Rake in US Disaster Aid


meanwhile...


GAO: Rural Hospital Closures - This is one of several access-to-healthcare issues that would be addressed by 'Improved M4A'.


12/27/20


Intercept: Hiding Covid-19: How Trump Suppresses Photography of the Pandemic


12/22/20


ThinkAdvisor: Senate Approves Repeal of Health Insurers' Antitrust Exemption - The Bill   Now that Congress acknowledges the industry for what it is, perhaps soon they'll be ready to take the next step.


12/21/20


Reuters: US Loses One Life to Covid Every 33 Seconds


MSN: Surprise Medical Bills Cost Americans Millions. Congress is Finally Set to Ban Most of Them.


12/17/20


New Yorker: Recontructing a Pandemic


12/15/20


NYTimes: How Full Are Hospital ICUs Near You?


12/9/20


Commonwealth Fund: Income Related Inequalities, Affordability, and Access to Primary Care in Eleven High-Income Countries - Once again, USA comes in dead last. The top 10 all have some form of government subsidized basic healthcare for all. We don’t.


12/8/20


Wharton School of Economics: Does the US Need Universal Health Care?


12/7/20


Guardian: Covid Blood Test Can Predict Patient Survival Chances


11/27/20


NYTimes: Covid Overload: US Hospitals Are Running Out of Beds


11/26/20


MSN: Fact Check: Moderna Vaccine Funded by Government Spending, and Dolly Parton - All government funding totalled about $2.5 Billion, plus $1M from Dolly Parton (0.04%). Moderna spent nothing on it.


11/25/20


NYTimes: Covid Combat Fatigue: 'I Would Come Home With Tears in My Eyes'


11/23/20


PNHP: Vermont Medical Society Endorses Single-Payer Health Care Reform - Joining American College of Physicians and Society of General Internal Medicine.


11/21/20


Current Affairs: Why Private Health Insurance Makes No Sense - Lays out a very simple explanation for why this is true.


11/16/20


AMA: Racism Is A Threat to Public Health - And a historic day for black women in America.


11/13/20


The Atlantic: 'No One is Listening to Us' - Health Workers Can't Go On Like This


11/10/20


Medscape: US to Start Distributing Lilly Covid-19 Antibody - This is great news for anyone in a Covid risk group. If administered within 10 days of the first symptoms, it has been shown to reduce disease progression and the need for hospitalization.


10/7/20


NYTimes: Dr.s Charpentier and Doudna Share the Nobel Prize in Chemistry - These two scientists have develped the Crispr technique which is an easy way to edit DNA. It was instrumental in developing the mRNA technique for spurring the production of the CAS -13a spiked protein and the antibodies specific to it.


7/7/20


Reuters: US Govt. Awards Novamax $1.6 Billion For Corona Virus - From the article: In addition: $456M to Johnson & Johnson, $486M to Moderna, $1.2B to AstraZeneca, $628M to Emergent Biosolutions.  No mention of any sort of accounting oversight as to how these companies use the money, or what the vaccine will finally cost the taxpayers per dose.


5/12/20


PNHP: A Review of Reports on the Cost and Funding of M4A


2/22/20


Salon: Multiple Studies Show M4A Would be Cheaper Than Public Option Pushed by Moderates


2/18/20


Newsweek: M4A Would Save $450 Billion Annually and Prevent 68,000 Deaths


2/15/20


The Lancet: Improving the Prognosishttps://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(19)33019-3/fulltext of Health Care In the USA - This study, from Yale University, concludes that Medicare For All would save $450 Billion and 68,000 lives per year. Discussion on Democracy-NOW, and Here. Currently the US pays more than twice the average per-capita and %GNP costs of all other developed countries, we have some of the worst medical outcomes (longevity, child mortality, obesity, etc.), and we pay 50% more then the next most expensive countries - Switzerland, Norway. The majority of Americans are in favor of Medicare For All. Polls: Kaiser 1/30/20, CBS 10/15/19, Kaiser 1/23/19, Hill/Harris 10/22/18, Pew-Ipsos 8/23/18,  Economist (item 81) 4/4/17, Pew 1/13/17, Gallup 5/16/16. But America is not a democracy, it’s an oligarchy. So the majority doesn’t matter anymore.



1/14/20


Truth or Fiction?: 500,000 Will Go Bankrupt This Year From Medical Bills? True


Truth or Fiction? Did a Study Find US Healthcare System Costs 4 Times More to Run Than Canada’s Single-Payer System? True


1/7/20


Guardian: The Americans Dying Because They Can't Afford Health Insurance


1/5/20


Public Library of Science: Projected Costs of Single-Payer Financing - Simplified billing, negotiated drug pricing, and global budgets for hospitals (just like police and fire departments) are the main drivers of the $500 billion yearly savings.


10/22/19


USA Today: M4A Would Make Health Care Cheaper and Simple


8/29/19


Pew Research: Public Opinion on Abortion - About 60% of Americans are in favor of safe and legal abortion. That number has remained fairly stable for a very long time.


5/15/19


NBC News: Alabama Governor Signs Controversial Abortion Ban Bill Into Law


4/29/19


NYTimes: Universal Health Care Might Cost You Less than You Think


5/10/17


HuffPo: The Urban Institute's Attack on Single Payer: Ridiculous Assumptions Yield Ridiculous Estimates


4/18/17


Annals of Internal Medicine: Single Payer Reform: The Only Way to Fulfill the President's Pledge of More Coverage, Better Benefits and Lower Costs


Health Care Reform