Subjects Archives: Health

  Despite Promises to Facilitate Humanitarian Aid, Policy of Deliberate Obstruction Continues Even after the Ceasefire: The amount of industrial diesel Israel has permitted to enter Gaza is just 64% of the total needed to operate the power station. Since the fighting ended, Israel has totally obstructed the transfer of vital spare parts needed to […]

  I was brought up as an orthodox Jew and a Zionist.  On a shelf in our kitchen, there was a tin box for the Jewish National Fund, into which we put coins to help the pioneers building a Jewish presence in Palestine. I first went to Israel in 1961 and I have been there […]

Over 150 labor leaders from across U.S. kick off coordinated grassroots campaign for single payer healthcare St. Louis – More than 150 union leaders from 31 states gathered in St. Louis last weekend to step up a grassroots campaign to enact comprehensive national healthcare reform.  The group is promoting a single-payer plan, which would work […]

Around 35,000 Cuban health specialists are providing free or paid services in the world. Furthermore, some young doctors from countries such as Haiti and others among the poorest of the Third World are working in their homelands thanks to the assistance provided by Cuba. In Latin America, our main contribution has been the ophthalmologic surgeries that will help to preserve the eyesight of millions of people. In addition, we are assisting in the training of tens of thousands of young medical students from other nations, both in and outside Cuba.

  Working in pairs out of modest, village-based facilities, the Islamic Republic of Iran’s trained community health workers, the behvarzan, provide basic health care to most of the country’s rural population.  Mojgan Tavassoli reports. Ministry of Health of the Islamic Republic of Iran Some primary health care efforts started in the 1970s.  In 1975, latrine […]

  On June 19th, twenty of us from Gainesville, Florida traveled to Jacksonville to protest Blue Cross Blue Shield, my health insurance company.  The effort was part of a nationwide protest of insurance companies, led by the coalition Healthcare NOW: Cigna in Philadelphia, Aetna in Hartford, Humana in Louisville, and many more.  The biggest demonstration […]

The first report I saw came from the Italian news agency ANSA on April 22.

“La Paz, April 22.— A commission of deputies are to investigate the case of Bolivian scholarship student who died in Cuba, and whose body was repatriated without several vital organs, including the brain.

“Do you support national (single-payer) health care insurance?” Click on the chart for a larger view. Sources: U.S. General Public: An AP-Yahoo! News survey of more than 1,800 people conducted Dec.14-20, 2007, by Knowledge Networks. U.S. Physicians: “Support for National Health Insurance among American Physicians: Five Years Later.” A survey of over 2,000 physicians, by […]

One at a time, the teachers came out of the sub-zero January cold and into the lobby of Wayne State University’s McGregor Hall in Detroit.  By the time the board of governors meeting began — where the teachers had three minutes total to detail their concerns — they were together in force. Before they went […]

Written hurriedly in Caracas February 2008 Background These are some brief impressions and reflections in the midst of a short visit to Venezuela.  For 10 days I traveled with a wonderful group of 23, mainly from the New York City area (with delegates from Washington, DC, Washington State, and myself from Vermont).  It was led […]

Nearly seven million Californians lack health insurance, or about every fifth person in the state.  Big papers such as the San Jose Mercury News and the Sacramento Bee are urging the state Senate Health Committee to pass the Núñez-Perata health-care reform bill, ABX1-1.  Gov. Schwarzenegger backs the speaker and senate leader’s bill, which the State […]

On 19 November, the Norwegian Embassy in New Delhi received some unusual visitors.  Even the police and security personnel stationed in the heavily-guarded Chanakyapuri area of Delhi where Norwegian and other embassies are located could not figure out the purpose of these visitors.  Though they were Indian citizens, ethnically they belonged to a distinct tribal […]

A rising chorus of business gurus is singing the praises of a new solution to the U.S. auto industry’s ongoing crisis: one big health care trust for all the Big 3’s workers.  According to the proposal’s cheerleaders, by making giant one-time pay-ins, the Big 3 auto makers can slice off an estimated $116 billion worth […]

I will not refer to Bush’s health and education, but to that of his neighbors. It was not an improvised declaration. The AP agency tells us what his opening words were: “Tenemos corazones grandes en este país” (We have big hearts in this country); he said this in Spanish in front of 250 representatives of […]

Michael Moore’s documentary Sicko indicts private health insurance and calls for its abolition.  Sicko joins an American tradition that includes Lewis Hine‘s photographs of child laborers (1908) and Harriet Beecher Stowe’s antislavery novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852), two examples among many.  But can Moore’s theme change our nation in 2007? Private health insurance, usually obtained […]

I saw Michael Moore’s SICKO last week.  By now who doesn’t know that SICKO is a savage and hilarious demolition job on the US health care insurance corporations and their self-serving myths about the national health care systems of countries like Canada and Cuba? But this is not a review of SICKO.  I’ll just say […]

Auto workers are bracing for a bumpy road ahead at Chrysler, following the May 14 announcement that Daimler-Chrysler (DCX) would sell off 80 percent ownership of the company to Cerberus Capital Management, a private equity firm.  The surprise sale may tip the balance of power further against the United Auto Workers (UAW) as the union […]

  Listen to Steffie Woolhandler on Doug Henwood’s Behind the News radio show (6 April 2006). Read David U. Himmelstein and Steffie Woolhandler, “Mayhem in the Medical Marketplace” (Monthly Review 56.7, December 2004). It’s a stirring scene.  The Governor, legislative leaders and leaders of Health Care for All standing in the State House Rotunda declaring […]

  José Martí and Simón Bolívar, two of Latin America’s most respected independence fighters, recognized nearly a century ago that their homelands would never be free of imperial domination, until Latin America came together in solidarity as a united force. Martí and Bolívar’s insights remain relevant in the age of neo-liberal globalization.  The colonizers of […]

Physicians for a National Health Program held its annual meeting on December 10, 2005. Originally planned for New Orleans, it was relocated to Philadelphia after Hurricane Katrina. Founded in 1987, the organization has over 14,000 members nationally. PNHP advocates and educates for a single national health insurance plan: in the words of PNHP National Coordinator […]