A comprehensive new study that reviewed nearly three decades of existing analyses shows implementation of a single-payer healthcare system like Medicare for All could dramatically reduce costs in the United States, with savings likely experienced in the first year and definitely over the longer term. Continue reading
Insurers and healthcare providers in the United States spent a staggering $812 billion on paperwork and other administrative burdens in 2017 alone, bureaucratic costs that could be dramatically reduced by switching to a single-payer system like Medicare for All. Continue reading
There’s a lot the industrial factory farm industry prefers to keep consumers in the dark about, including what happens when millions of confined, stressed out animals with weakened immune systems are exposed to disease. Continue reading
It is a fluke of the news cycle that if we don’t hear a product warning frequently, we can “forgive” that product and think it has somehow become safe. While no one would “forgive” cigarettes, lead in drinking water or mercury in tuna, the public has definitely softened on the danger of hormone replacement therapy (HRT) for menopause. So it is noteworthy that a recently released follow-up of subjects in the federal Women’s Health Initiative found that “breast cancer risk from menopause hormones may last decades.” Specifically, women prescribed HRT had a 29% greater incidence of breast cancer 19 years after using the drugs than those who never used the drugs, said the analysis. Continue reading
Our Reps Will Wait Their Turn to See the Doctor
They will not be dressed to star in music videos. Prior experience at Hooters or Work Out World will not be sufficient for hiring. They will not call the doctor dude. We understand others waiting to see the doctor are sick.
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With the holidays approaching, few want to think about their weight. It will certainly go up not down before 2020 arrives. People will probably start thinking about their weight on January 2—and joining gyms. Continue reading
Pharma is one of the public’s most detested industries. But despite its low approval ratings and a plethora of government lawsuits, Pharma continues to thrive. Here are some of the tricks up its sleeve that enable its continued profiteering. Continue reading
We might expect that corporate billionaires and Koch-funded Republican right-wingers would be howl-at-the-moon opponents of a wealth tax, Medicare-for-All, and other big progressive ideas to help improve the circumstances of America’s workaday majority. Continue reading
Healthcare corporations are spending millions of dollars on astroturfed attack ads against Medicare for All. The Partnership for America’s Healthcare Future, for example, a coalition of hospitals and insurance companies, has spent $1 million on a television campaign against changes to the current healthcare system they profit from. Continue reading
“I don’t want my taxes to increase”; “I don’t want to lose my current insurance”; “I don’t want the government involved in or interfering in my health care”. Continue reading
Corporations’ quest for profits is what “is driving up drug prices and nothing more.” Continue reading
While the Democratic presidential candidates are debating full Medicare for All, giant insurance companies like UnitedHealthcare are advertising to the elderly in an attempt to lure them from Traditional Medicare (TM) to the so-called Medicare Advantage (MA)—a corporate plan that UnitedHealthcare promotes to turn a profit at the expense of enrollees. Continue reading
Republicans and even some Democrats are out to scare you about Medicare for All. They say it’s going to dismantle health care as we know it and it will cost way too much. Continue reading
The Washington Post, owned by world’s richest man Jeff Bezos, is reportedly moving most of its staff onto what one Post journalist described as “high-deductible health insurance plans that shift significant costs and risks onto employees,” a decision Medicare for All proponents highlighted as a prime example of the instability and injustice of the employer-sponsored healthcare system that is frequently praised by centrist Democratic presidential candidates. Continue reading
Speaking to reporters during a campaign event in Ohio last Wednesday, former Vice President Joe Biden accused Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren—his two top rivals for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination—of “playing Trump’s game and trying to con the American people” by supporting Medicare for All. Continue reading
Once again, the Democratic primary debate on October 15 devoted considerable time to candidates’ competing proposals for expanding access to Medicare. But once again, the debate failed to address one of Medicare’s biggest flaws—the lack of long-term care coverage for our country’s rapidly growing elderly population. Continue reading
Trump is an imperial/corporate tool—hostile to ordinary people everywhere, notably malicious toward aliens of the wrong color from the wrong countries. Continue reading
Do you have gas, bloating and frequent diarrhea? Pharma hopes so. If you have the rare digestive/intestinal condition exocrine pancreatic insufficiency (EPI)—mostly limited to those with chronic pancreatitis, cystic fibrosis and diabetes—AbbVie can sell you its expensive drug Creon. Pharma wants you to be sick. Continue reading
Sen. Bernie Sanders hit back Monday after news broke that the centrist group Third Way is focus-testing attacks on Medicare for All to see what will stick, using a firm with close ties to former Vice President Joe Biden’s 2020 Democratic presidential campaign. Continue reading
Dear America: Costly complexity is baked into Obamacare, and although it has improved access to healthcare for some, tens of millions of Americans still cannot afford basic medical care for their family. No healthcare system is without problems but Canadian-style single-payer—full Medicare for all—is simple, affordable, comprehensive and universal for all basic and emergency medical and hospital services. Continue reading
You probably haven’t heard about it, but there’s another mass migration coming across the U.S.-Mexico border. Continue reading
Ninety-one people a day die from opioids and 1,000 visit ERs in the US, according to the CDC. How did opioid makers get such a deathly grip on the US population? Recently, the New York Times reported that the global consulting firm McKinsey & Company had a big hand in these morbid figures. Continue reading
While Donald Trump fans the embers of xenophobia in our country by demonizing caravans of desperate Central Americans headed north, there are other northern-bound caravans he doesn’t mention. Continue reading
It is no secret that many bacteria causing human infections are developing resistance to the antibiotics that used to kill them. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) calls antibiotic resistance “one of the biggest public health challenges of our time.” In the U.S., at least 2 million people get an antibiotic-resistant infection every year, and at least 23,000 of those people die. Continue reading
The Center for Reproductive Rights on Friday announced its intention to keep fighting after an Oklahoma court upheld a ban on a common abortion procedure. Continue reading
Millions of kids today are on meds for conduct disorders, depression, bipolar disorder, oppositional defiant disorder, mood disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorders, mixed manias, social phobia and, of course, ADHD. Continue reading
A new survey out this week is an important step forward to demolishing one of the principle talking points against Medicare for All. Continue reading
For $3.5 trillion a year, shouldn’t we Americans have a world-class health care system? Yet while we spend the most of any advanced nation in the world to get care—more than $10,000 a year per person—we get the worst results. Continue reading
Farmers continue to use antibiotics on animals, which is not good for people who eat that meat. A war is in progress, and consumers are losing the war against meat antibiotics. Continue reading
Universal healthcare for all Americans is a major cutting-edge issue of our time about a fundamental human right, along with food, shelter, and clothing. Continue reading
Food is not a commodity, it is not “stuff” put together mechanically and artificially in labs and factories. Food is life. Food holds the contributions of all beings that make the food web, and it holds the potential of maintaining and regenerating the web of life. Food also holds the potential for health and disease, depending on how it was grown and processed. Food is therefore the living currency of the web of life. Continue reading
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Drug makers discover profit in a new disease
Posted on December 13, 2019 by Martha Rosenberg
Before direct-to-consumer ads, physicians tried to reassure patients they were probably fine. Today, drug ads and online symptom checkers do just the opposite. The most insidious are “unbranded” ads that scare people about a disease without mentioning the drug they are trying to sell. Notable unbranded disease campaigns sell the obscure exocrine pancreatic insufficiency, shift work sleep disorder, and non-24-hour sleep-wake disorder. Unbranded advertising is designed to appear like a public health message from the CDC and some even run free on TV and radio as “public service announcements.” Continue reading →