Gainesville, Florida (Special to Informed Comment) – The highly respected British medical journal, “The Lancet”, recently summarized the health insurance situation in the USA: “Although health care expenditure per capita is higher in the USA than in any other country, more than 37 million Americans do not have health insurance, and 41 million more have […]
Is it Time to end Profiteering on Public Health and Nationalize Big Pharma?
Gainesville, Florida (Special to Informed Comment) — Over forty years of profiteering by Big Pharma and oligarch control of our economy has left the public totally exposed and ill-prepared to face the public health crisis of COVID-19. Because Big Pharma rarely invests in prevention, it has very little motivation to invest in preparedness for a […]
Stop Profiteering on Misery: Private Prisons must be ended Now
Gainesville, Florida (Special to Informed Comment) – Every state should follow California’s outstanding example by ending the obscene system of private prisons and privately-run immigration detention facilities. California will phase out the use of these for-profit, private detention facilities by 2028. The state prohibited renewing contracts or signing new contracts with a private prison company […]
De-Privatize and Expand Medicaid, NOW!
Gainesville, Florida– (Special to Informed Comment) – The COVID-19 pandemic shows the urgent need for expansion of the Medicaid health insurance program. In too many states, political decisions by state legislators to deny health insurance to thousands of their citizens has resulted in an almost non-existent social and health safety net. Decisions in 2016/2017 by […]
How Trump’s Expansion of Junk Short-Term Health Insurance Plans Puts Americans at Risk
Gainesville, Florida (Special to Informed Comment) – The U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce, Subcommittee on Health, and Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, recently concluded that the latest GOP/Trump Short Term Limited Duration Insurance (STLDI) plans present a significant threat to the health and financial well-being of American families. STLDI plans involve […]
Medicare Turns 55: Let’s Celebrate by Covering Everyone!
Gainesville, Florida (Special to Informed Comment) — Congress enacted Medicare in July,1965, to provide health insurance for people ages 65 and older and the disabled regardless of income or medical history. In the 55 years since, Medicare has become living proof that public, universal health insurance is superior to private insurance in every way. Medicare […]
Can we afford Medicare for All? The Truth is, we can’t afford not to have it
Gainesville, Florida — In the US, 30 million people have no health insurance, and the per capita cost of health care is far higher than it is in other countries. On top of this, the recent COVID-19 pandemic and its economic consequences have caused the greatest losses in health insurance enrollment in U.S. history: 5.4 […]
The End of Private Health Insurance? Covid Crash shows Why we Need Medicare for All
Gainesville, Florida: The COVID-19 pandemic and its economic consequences have caused the greatest losses in health insurance enrollment in U.S. history: 5.4 million laid-off workers have become uninsured. However, it is important to understand that all was not well before the pandemic. Nearly 28 million people were already uninsured and tens of millions more were […]
Is Big Pharma more Interested in Profiteering than Protecting us from Coronavirus?
Gainesville, Florida (Special to Informed Comment) – April 12, 1955 stands out as the brightest day in the history of vaccine development and public health when news of the discovery by Jonas Salk of a vaccine for the polio virus was made public. The most venerated medical scientist of the 20th century, Jonas Salk, M.D., […]