single payer health care, national health insurance, universal health care, high cost of medical insurance

American Health Care Reform.org
 National Health Care will Protect our Freedom,
 Boost our Economy and above all, Save Lives.

* * * It's the Right Prescription for America. * * *
 

What YOU can do 

Americans want health care reform NOW, and will elect representatives who deliver it.  Attention Presidential candidates: Make up your mind who you work for. Do you serve the best interests of the American people? Or are you a servant of the insurance and pharmaceutical industries.

Vote for Democratic Party


The private insurance industry is about profits, not patients. Don't allow our politicians to force us into more private, for profit plans!
  

E-mail this site to a friend

"Politically feasible is just another way of saying that folks are scared to stand up to insurance companies."  - - Calif. State Senator Sheila Kuehl author of SB-840
 

RAM

Charity is no substitute for Justice (read about RAM and donate).
  or
Donate to Venice Family Clinics to help the uninsured

Home
Bad Company
Profit on Sick
18 years ago
TAKE ACTION!
National Scene
State-by-state
Beware of ...
   News/Headlines
TV, Radio, etc.
Video Clips-1
Video Clips-2
  Research/Books
Cartoons
Our News Blog
 Archived News
FAQ
Living in Fear
Bankruptcy
Ruined Lives
Your Letters
Why this site?
Commentary
Privacy policy

E-mail


WHY THIS SITE?
Read about the the hideous overcharges
that Cedars-Sinai Medical Center inflicted on me because I was uninsured.

Home

 

 

 


    "Private health plans work for people who do not and never will need health care."
                                                                        
    - - Don McCanne, MD

  • New -10 Myths About Canadian Health Care, Busted
    By Sara Robinson
    "I'm both a health-care-card-carrying Canadian resident and an uninsured American citizen who regularly sees doctors on both sides of the border."
    Full article
     
  • New - Myth busting Canadian Healthcare, Part II: Debunking the Free Marketeers
    By Sara Robinson
    "In the previous post, I looked at ten of the most common myths that get bandied about whenever Americans drag Canada into their ongoing discussions about healthcare. In this follow-up, I'd like to address a few of the larger assumptions that Americans make about health care that are contradicted by the Canadian example; and in the process offer some more general thinking (and perhaps talking) points that may be useful in the debates ahead." 
    Full article
     
  • New - Single Payer: It's Time to Have Hope
    By Sara Rogers, Consultant, Health
    "Politically feasible" is just another way of saying that folks are scared to stand up to insurance companies. I don't accept that. It's time to take a stand for what we really want.  It's time to have hope." - Calif. State Senator Sheila Kuehl 
    Full article
     
  • New - What Government Does Better: Health Care
    By Howard A. Green, MD, FACP, FAAD, FACMS
    "There are some intuitively obvious services that the government runs more productively and efficiently than private for-profit enterprises."
    Full article
     
  • New - Insurers' "innovations" shifts costs to patients -
    The New York Attorney General plans to sue UnitedHealth Group Inc.
    as part of a broader investigation into the way the health-insurance industry sets payment rates for hospitals and doctors outside of their networks. Patients end up paying more.
    Full article
     
  • New - Why We Need to Dump Health Insurance Corporations -
     *
    Investing in Cancer  Private Insurance is Bad for Your Health
        
    By JOHN JONIK  CounterPunch, January 18, 2008
         Also see
    Jonik's health care cartoons (painfully funny)
     
  • "Sick in America - It Can Happen to You"
    Please watch especially if you have health insurance.  (
    September 2007)
     
  • Are you really covered? Consumer Reports on the under insured
    Why 4 in 10 Americans can't depend on their health insurance
    (September 2007)
     
  • Almost 100 years has passed since the first discussion of national health insurance
     
  • The Socialists are Coming!
    Republicans love to scare you with the S-word(September 2007)
     
  • Survey Report: Time May Be Right for a Single-Payer Health Care System
    56% of physicians, nurses, nurse practitioners, physician assistants, pharmacists, health care administrators and patients would like to have a single payer system.
     
  • How do consumers rate their insurance company? What are their horror stories? Here's an excerpt from Susan, a medical biller:
    "Working as a medical biller, I can warn all that when it comes to choosing a competent doctor,,,do not go by United Healthcare's so called "Quality & Excellence" ratings that they give to Dr.'s…  Dr.s are given one star, two stars, three,,etc. Based NOT on their qualifications but on how much they save UH on costs."
     
  • What country puts the U.S. to shame?
     
  • Beware of Trojan Horses  - The organizations who say they are for "universal health care" but will not support single-payer or National Health Insurance are usually backed with big bucks by 'big insurance'. Don't be fooled!  Check our Trojan Horse page.
     
  • Here's a great California advocacy page promoting Calif. SB-840 and OneCareNow.org
     
  • Consumer Reports on the underinsured - Are you really covered?
    Why 4 in 10 Americans can't depend on their health insurance September 2007
  • The momentum for national health insurance is spreading like wildfire! Thanks to Michael Moore's new film SICKO, (opened June 29) many more Americans now understand that our country's biggest cancer is how we finance and deliver health care. View his Oprah! video clips here. (August 2007)

    The lies about single payer insurance are no longer effective as "We the People" are fed up with high premiums and low coverage; are sick of being ripped off by the pharmaceutical industry and living in fear of medical bankruptcy.
    We the People are already paying for national health insurance but not getting it.

    Read the chilling
    1996 public testimony given by Dr. Linda Peeno to the U.S. House of Representatives concerning the lack of ethics in the Managed Healthcare Industry. In her summary provided 17 months later she said, "The real care of patients is difficult enough without the menace of an industry who eludes its responsibilities through avoidance, denial and unconscionable controls. We should be rightly worried."

    When can we say goodbye private health insurance middlemen? They add NO VALUE to health care. We won't miss you or your coverage denials.  When can we say goodbye to over-priced drugs? The pharmaceutical industry pays 1,000 lobbyists to assure we must overpay for drugs. 

    We are angry at health profiteers who dig deeper into our pockets to deliver less and use our money to lobby against us. WE ARE ANGRY at insurance and pharmaceutical profiteers who are making us health care beggars.

    Big business and the labor unions are now telling politicians to get the health insurance monkey off their backs. It was, after all, just an unusual accident during WWII that employers became health insurance providers.

    Why put up with a complicated, expensive and broken system when we can do so much better?  PLEASE GET INVOLVED even if it means that you can only
    send a link to a friend.

    OUR NEWS BLOG -
    The Health Reform Underground

    We're getting this done. 2007 is going to be a year we can all be proud of.

     
    California Governor "works for" insurance companies
     

    "I have a dream..."
    and it's H.R.676,
    the United States National Health Insurance Act (or the Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act) - Establishes the United States National Health Insurance Program (the Program) to provide all individuals residing in the United States and in U.S. territories with free health care that includes all medically necessary care, such as primary care and prevention, prescription drugs, emergency care, and mental health services.
    http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquer y/z?d109:HR00676:@@@L&summ2=m &

An alternate to H.R. 676 is state-based reform under H.R. 1200. Entitled the American Health Security Act of 2005, this would establish the State-Based American Health Security Program to provide every U.S. resident who is a U.S. citizen, national, or lawful resident alien with health care services. Requires each participating State to establish a State health security program. More on H.R. 1200 here:
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d109:H R01200:@@@L&summ2=m&

    President G.W. Bush has not taken any meaningful action to eliminate the uninsured problem or to relieve us from skyrocketing costs for healthcare. General Motors and Ford complained for several years about their unsustainable health insurance costs for their employees and retirees. Has President Bush addressed this problem? Not to our knowledge  - - with the exception of "Health Savings Accounts (HSA'S), and these two automakers have recently announced they will each lay off 30,000 workers (that's a total of 60,000 layoffs) in the coming years.
    Listen to a good radio debate on HSA's.

    While President Bush says, "A government-run health care system is the wrong prescription" (for America) he made sure that Iraq would get one. Article 30, Paragraph 1 of the new Iraqi constitution - -which the United States helped write - - says, "The state guarantees social and health insurance, the basics for a free and honorable life for the individual and the family. . . ." Read the U.S. House of Representatives News Release here:
    Bush Administration Ignores 44 Million Uninsured in U.S as it Awards Contract for Universal Health Care in Iraq

    A universal health insurance system that works well for the major industrial nations in the world (and keeps them competitive in the global market place) is scoffed at by the Republican Party, the AMA, the pharmaceutical and private health insurance industry. And why?   P R O F I T S   $$$$  of course! This is splitting America in half.  These special interest groups, vested corporations and the political party for the rich believes only in the virtues of private-for-profit industries.  They are holding America (and Americans) hostage by lying to us and demanding we keep the status-quo,  even though study-after-study shows America will save billions of dollars and be able to insure everyone with a universal (national) health insurance system.

    Half of the Americans who file for bankruptcy do so because of medical bills. Three-quarters of the medically bankrupt had health insurance! (Study at
    Harvard University). n We believe that in the richest, free nation in the world, everyone should have access to quality health care.

    This site is an overview of the National and State "grass-roots movements" that are crying out for health care reform. Why? Because America's healthcare system is the most inequitable, inefficient, and costly systems among industrialized nations. It's driven by embedded vested interests who continue to feather their own beds while it
    wrecks the lives of millions and squanders our money. Since 1945 special interest groups such as the American Medical Association (AMA), the Insurance industry and the Pharmaceutical industry have wielded their political power to protect their turf at the great expense of the American People.

    They have spent and continue to spend millions of dollars to gain political influence and spread fearful rumors that
    national heath insurance would introduce the evils of "socialized medicine"; or we'll lose drug research & development; or we'll have medical rationing with long waits; or we'll have higher taxes.

    These groups have fed well from the trough long enough. IT'S TIME FOR THE AMERICAN PEOPLE to get what they have paid for - - to get what they deserve - - to have the right to health care and have it guaranteed to us in our Constitution.

                                 "
    When you grow up, your heart dies."
                                  
                              - - Allison, The Breakfast Club



     Ouch! My insurance rate went up 27.68%!


    Hard-working Americans are
    living in fear much more by lack of healthcare than by the threat of terrorism. Our health care system is getting worse day-by-day. Read the news.

    2004: The Institute of Medicine recommends the United States guarantee health insurance for every citizen.

    "The lack of health insurance for tens of millions of Americans has serious negative consequences and economic costs not only for the uninsured themselves but also for their families, the communities they live in, and the whole country. The situation is dire and expected to worsen."

    The Committee urged Congress and the Administration to act immediately to eliminate this long-standing problem. Read the Institute of Medicine report.

    Health care reform is now a bipartisan issue because America is in crisis. Suddenly, it's not "socialism" anymore when some of America's LARGEST corporations are
    calling on the Gov't. for HELP Even former Republican Senator and Presidential Candidate Bob Dole agreed it was time for some form of universal health care.

    Coast-to-coast, small business owners, middle-class citizens, healthcare workers, labor unions, corporation CEO's, religious groups, educators, and politicians want effective and solid healthcare reform - - NOT a patched system of  tax credits or medical savings accounts that only benefit the very wealthy.

    This site  advocates single-payer, universal health care, national health insurance, whatever the name, our healthcare system is broken and a national disgrace.

    In a recent commentary in
    The Washington Times, David Gerber wrote: "What is needed now is a comprehensive Universal Health Insurance plan that:

    · is not commercially oriented
    · does not spend millions marketing its product
    · does not deny health insurance because of preexisting medical conditions
    · does not cherry-pick its subscribers to winnow out the unhealthiest."

    We couldn't agree more.  Under a single-payer system (like Medicare) everyone would have access to basic, quality healthcare.  The idea isn't new, in fact, the United States is the ONLY industrialized developed country that doesn't have universal coverage. Have questions?  Check out our FAQ

    We dedicate this site to the late Bob LeBow,M.D.,  author of
    "Health Care Meltdown", and to the American people, our nation's most precious asset.

    WE LOVE PNHP; Health Care for All California; OneCareNow and AMSA
     

   Home   Bad Company   18-years-ago   TAKE ACTION!   National Scene   State-by-state   News/Headlines   Film/ TV / Web   Video-Clips-1   Video Clips-2   Research/Books   Cartoons   Archived News   Your Letters   Living in Fear   Ruined Lives   FAQ   Why this site?   Commentary   Privacy policy

©2003-2008 AmericanHealthCareReform.org