Health care

Service Employees Local 1 kicked off their “Hands Off BadgerCare” campaign Feb. 16 in Milwaukee.... Posted Feb 22, 2012

Women scored a big victory in early February when they pushed back a right-wing attempt to defund a leading organization providing health care to low-income women. ... Posted Feb 8, 2012

With 30 million unemployed or underemployed, the failure of the just-signed health care law to meet the needs and expectations of the population, plus its giveaway to the health care industry, is bound to add to the frustration and alienation of the workers.... Posted Apr 2, 2010

Tens of millions of people in this country were hoping to be delivered from the clutches of the ruthless profiteers who control the health care system and were hoping for universal health care. But the very opposite has happened.... Posted Mar 24, 2010

Shockwaves rippled through California when Anthem Blue Cross, the largest for-profit health insurance company in the state, announced increases in premiums of up to 39 percent. This would affect 800,000 individual policyholders.... Posted Feb 24, 2010

The U.S. Government Accountability Office released a December report highlighting the extraordinary price increases for many brand-name prescription drugs. According to the GAO, prices for many widely used drugs more than doubled between the years 2000 and 2008.... Posted Jan 23, 2010

Rising unemployment and out-of-control insurance premiums have intersected to cause almost 5 million people to lose their health coverage since the beginning of 2008, according to Families USA. This has exacerbated an already dire health care crisis that has left more than 50 million people uninsured and another 25 million underinsured.... Posted Jan 10, 2010

The past decade has seen a flurry of promising breakthroughs in medicine. The HPV vaccine, targeted cancer therapy, human genome mapping, natural orifice surgery, and drug-eluting stents are among the biggest breakthroughs of the 21st century. Many of these developments hold the potential to prolong and improve life.... Posted Dec 23, 2009

Excerpts from a talk given by Ellen Catalinotto at the WWP National Conference, Nov. 14.... Posted Dec 13, 2009

Excerpts are from a talk given by Fight Imperialism, Stand Together organizer, David Hoskins, at the WWP National Conference, Nov. 14.... Posted Nov 24, 2009

Those who a year ago pinned their hopes on putting the Democratic Party back in charge of the White House and the Congress showed their disappointment in the recent election—mostly by not voting. There are many reasons for this. The administration’s continuation of the war in Afghanistan and spreading it to Pakistan is one very big reason, but the health care bill that just passed in the House will only add to the disillusionment. So many compromises were made to get right-wing Democrats on board that what was touted as a huge victory for reform has many elements that are actually a step backward for the working class and especially for women.... Posted Nov 12, 2009

The U.S. remains one of only two developed countries in the world today that do not provide health insurance for all their residents. More than 45,000 deaths in the U.S. each year are due to lack of health insurance. Now the insurance industry giants are doing everything in their power to prevent any genuine health care reform.... Posted Oct 18, 2009

Former President Bill Clinton ran for president in 1992 with health care reform as a key part of his domestic platform. It seemed then that the time was right for comprehensive reform.... Posted Oct 1, 2009

The recent mass mobilization of racists and right-wingers of all stripes in Washington, D.C., and in cities around the country requires the attention of the working class, white workers especially. In the face of mounting racism and efforts to divide the workers during an economic crisis, the struggle for class unity is more pressing than ever. While these right-wing demonstrations are numerically small, and may eventually die down, they are politically significant because they represent a de facto bloc between important sections of big business and the racist ultra-right, based upon an immediate common objective: to push back the program of the Obama administration.... Posted Sep 23, 2009

More than 100 patients, their family members, doctors, other health workers and community activists packed into the board room at Grady Hospital on Sept. 14 to press for the continued operation of the outpatient dialysis clinic, a function of the once-public hospital for 62 years.... Posted Sep 23, 2009

President Barack Obama addressed a joint session of Congress on Sept. 9 in a forceful attempt to revive the Democratic health bill. Obama’s speech came after weeks of racist attacks at town hall forums around the country, combined with demagoguery and distortions from right-wing politicians and commentators, that threatened to entirely sink any reform and forced Democrats to retreat from a “public option.”... Posted Sep 16, 2009

The 1959 Cuban Revolution overturned the U.S.-backed dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista. The revolution ended Cuba’s status as a U.S. neocolony and made possible a complete overhaul and rebuilding of the medical system in that country along socialist lines. In 1960 revolutionary physician Che Guevara formally addressed the Cuban Militia. His speech has since been published as an essay titled “On Revolutionary Medicine,” which outlines the socialist view of the relationship between revolution, private property and medicine.... Posted Sep 13, 2009

More than 3,000 mostly union members marched from different points in New York City and rallied in Times Square on Aug. 29 to support health care reform.... Posted Sep 3, 2009

In 1932 Sir Arthur Newsholme, former principal medical officer of the Local Government Board of England and Wales, and John Adams Kingsbury, former commissioner of public charities for the City of New York, traveled to the Soviet Union to examine firsthand that country’s socialist health care system. Their observations were published in 1933 as “Red Medicine: Socialized Health in Soviet Russia.”... Posted Aug 31, 2009

Some 50 million people in the U.S. have no health care insurance and 25 million more are underinsured. Existing programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and Children’s Insurance, each state administered, are under attack. In California, where budget cuts have drastically reduced access, 8,000 people lined up when a volunteer health group recently offered free service. WW reporter Gavrielle Gemma interviewed Ajamu Sankofa a Harlem attorney who is also former national organizer for Healthcare-NOW.... Posted Aug 21, 2009

When a man dropped his gun at a town hall forum in Arizona, it was a sign that the town hall disruptions around the country were about much more than health care reform. Just a few days after the Arizona incident, a man bearing a sidearm appeared outside President Barack Obama’s Aug. 11 town hall meeting in Portsmouth, N.H. He was holding a sign stating, “It is time to water the tree of liberty.” It was a reference to Thomas Jefferson’s famous statement, “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” It represented a clear threat to the life of President Obama.... Posted Aug 19, 2009

On Nov. 19, 1945—just three months after the brutal atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan—President Harry Truman became the first sitting U.S. president to propose a national health insurance program. Truman unveiled his five-point plan for universal health care in a special message to Congress. He emphasized that “everyone should have ready access to all necessary medical, hospital and related services.”... Posted Aug 19, 2009

The push for meaningful health care reform is in peril. Congressional Democrats have advanced flawed legislation that fails to live up to their campaign pledge of universal health care reform. Republicans allied with right-wing “Blue Dog” Democrats have worked overtime to derail any attempt at reform.
Congress adjourned for the August recess without a floor vote on health reform, leaving many observers to speculate that the plan is doomed to repeat past failed health-reform attempts....
Posted Aug 6, 2009

Newspaper headlines, radio talk show hosts and cable news commentators have all spent the better part of the last month warning the Obama administration of a possible repeat of the 1993 failed Clinton health care proposal. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid bolstered this sentiment when he announced that the Senate would not vote on the bill before the August recess as President Obama had initially requested.... Posted Jul 30, 2009

Fighting the insurance companies and their moves to buy off Congress and the Obama administration, 5,000 to 10,000 people marched in a Seattle rally demanding health care for all.... Posted Jun 13, 2009

Thirteen doctors, nurses and activists were arrested in Washington, D.C., throughout the month of May. The protesters were detained on different days for interrupting the Senate Finance Committee roundtable on health care to protest the exclusion of single-payer advocates from the hearings on reform.... Posted May 31, 2009

An effort to tank any attempts at health care reform under consideration in Congress was recently launched by Richard Scott, the disgraced former CEO of Columbia/HCA. Scott has been making his rounds with lawmakers, and formed a new group to oppose changes in the country’s broken health care system.... Posted Apr 12, 2009

The Illinois budget is in a shambles, both because of the recession and because lawmakers are never willing to tax the rich. Meanwhile, the city government’s priorities are entirely focused on attracting the 2016 Olympic games, which would mean a bonanza for whichever well-connected land speculators have managed to displace the residents from the parts of the South Side that would be developed for the events.... Posted Mar 26, 2009

The health care crisis facing workers in the U.S. is severe. Fifty million people lack health insurance and another 25 million are underinsured.... Posted Mar 14, 2009

When the House version of the $819-billion economic stimulus plan passed on Jan. 28, one important section was missing. It pertained to expansion of health care services for low-income women.... Posted Feb 8, 2009

Excerpts from a talk given by Bev Hiestand at the WWP National Conference, Nov. 15-16.... Posted Dec 21, 2008

Sharply higher food prices are not making headlines as much as the high price of gas and oil, but are squeezing working people’s budgets all the same.... Posted Aug 24, 2008

More than 150 chanting protesters took over the sidewalk in front of the entrance to the downtown Atlanta Marriott Marquis on Aug. 18.... Posted Aug 21, 2008

Workers inside the United States are suffering at the hands of a capitalist health-care system.... Posted Jul 13, 2008

On June 19, thousands of activists rallied in San Francisco and New York City to demand a universal single-payer health system.... Posted Jul 2, 2008

Voters will go to the polls in November desperate for change and with high hopes that the next president will pass and sign universal health care for everyone living in the United States.... Posted Jun 29, 2008

On June 19, several thousand universal health-care advocates, activists and supporters rallied and picketed in front of the American Health Insurance Plans convention taking place in San Francisco.... Posted Jun 29, 2008

A little over one year ago 12-year-old Deamonte Driver died in Maryland after infection from an abscessed tooth spread to his brain. His mother, Alyce Driver, had spent a considerable amount of time prior to his death trying to find dental care for her children. Although Alyce was a working mother, none of her jobs in a bakery, construction or home health care provided the insurance she needed to care for her children.... Posted Jun 19, 2008

Workers at the Dorothea Dix mental health hospital in Raleigh, N.C., have staged weekly rallies involving more than 150 workers to prevent the closing of their hospital.... Posted Jun 19, 2008

The mental health care system in North Carolina is in a state of crisis.... Posted Jun 14, 2008


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