“The U.S. federal government is on an unsustainable fiscal path. … The thing that drives our single unsustainability is health care spending. “We spend 17 percent of GDP; everyone else spends 10 percent. ... It’s not that benefits themselves are too generous. We deliver them in inefficient ways.” You might guess that Sen. Bernie Sanders said this, but it was … [Read more...]
CMS Office of the Actuary Releases 2017 National Health Expenditures
Overall national health spending grew at a rate of 3.9 percent in 2017, almost 1.0 percentage point slower than growth in 2016, according to a study conducted by the Office of the Actuary at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and published online today ahead of print by Health Affairs. Medicare spending grew at about the same rate in 2017 as in … [Read more...]
FACT CHECK: Trump’s False Claims On ‘Medicare For All’
USA Today published an opinion column by President Trump Wednesday in which the president falsely accused Democrats of trying to "eviscerate" Medicare, while defending his own record of protecting health care coverage for seniors and others. The column — published just weeks ahead of the midterm elections — underscores the political power of health care to energize … [Read more...]
OP-ED Why doesn’t NC’s Opioid Action Plan consider MCD expansion?
BY JESSE BENNETT AND DONALD MCDONALD Read full article here August 24, 2018 12:41 PM The surge in overdose deaths from opioids and other drugs has dominated the local, state and national spotlight for several years now and resulted in task forces, advisory councils, committees, commissions and work groups convened by the General Assembly and elected … [Read more...]
Letter: Medicare (for All) Spending (projections)
Regarding “How a libertarian analyst inadvertently made a good case for Bernie Sanders’ Medicare for All” (July 31): In the moral universe of libertarian thinkers like Charles Blahous, spending private money for goods and services is always better than spending public money. Yet publicly-funded Medicare is hugely more efficient than private insurance . Blahous predicts that, … [Read more...]
1st Opinion: Is this the year the AMA finally joins the single-payer movement?
Fifty years ago this month, at the 1968 meeting of the American Medical Association, a fourth-year medical student named Peter Schnall seized the microphone and scolded several hundred of the most prestigious, highly educated white men in America. “Organized medicine has never felt responsible and accountable to the American people for its actions and continues to deny them … [Read more...]
N&O: States that Expanded MCD have no regrets
Now that Congressional efforts to repeal or replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA) have abated, North Carolina and the other 17 states that have not expanded Medicaid can consider whether to do so going forward. ... With the ACA in its fifth year of full expansion, we now have an established track record in the expanding states to help estimate what the actual costs of … [Read more...]
It’s time for Medicare for all
(Excerpted here, site has subscriber pay-wall) If you wish a manuscript e-mailed to you by the author, click here For more than 100 years, Americans have searched for a cure for health care inequality. Instead, we've been prescribed placebos: watered-down poverty programs and party politics. Despite attempts to ease the pain with reforms like Medicaid … [Read more...]
Raleigh Sat Feb 10: Hundreds of Us Came to “Historic Thousands on Jones St”
Despite the rain, the HKonJ Rally was a success. More than 200 joined us in the WHITE COAT CONTINGENT of the Moral March on Raleigh, Feb 10, 2018. Please enjoy and share these photos. Thanks to Bill Boyarsky and to Jonathan Michels for contributing these. Health professionals and health professions students are invited to wear their white coats or … [Read more...]
Five things to know about Medicaid work requirements
The Trump administration released landmark guidance this week aimed at allowing states to impose work requirements for Medicaid beneficiaries, a major shift in the design of the health insurance program for the poor and disabled. ... No state has ever done it before. ... There are going to be lawsuits. Democrats are gearing up for a … [Read more...]
