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Massachusetts Health Reform Bill: A False Promise of Universal Coverage
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 […]
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Cuba and Venezuela: A Bolivarian Partnership
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 […]
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“We Will Educate Our Colleagues, the Policy Community, the Media, and Our Patients”: Physicians for a National Health Program Meet in Philadelphia
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 […]
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“Airline Workers United” Forms to Fight Concessions Industrywide
Things seem to keep going from bad to worse for workers at Northwest Airlines (NWA). While striking mechanics and cleaners face a bitter winter after more than four months on the picket line, pilots, flight attendants, gate/ramp agents, baggage handlers, customer service reps, and other union workers face a fresh round of givebacks against […]
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Note to Health Care Reform Activists: Public Employee Health Benefits to Evaporate
According to two recent articles, one in the New York Times and one in the Wall Street Journal, the federal Governmental Accounting Standards Board has begun to require municipalities — states, counties, cities — to account for how much it will cost them to provide all the health care promised to present and retired public […]
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Seattle Votes for a Right to Health Care
Measure No. 1, as it appeared on the ballot: Advisory ballot measure No. 1 concerns the right to health care. If approved, the measure would advise the mayor and the city council that every person in the US should have an equal right to quality health care, and that Congress should implement that right. The […]
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New Orleans:
The world watched as people of New Orleans were herded into the Superdome, only to find themselves in a wretched and unsanitary place with no food, water, or proper medical care. Those in areas of high flooding fled to their rooftops, begging rescue helicopters to airlift them to safety. Many died trapped in their […]
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GM, the UAW, and U.S. Health Care
General Motors Corp. is losing market share and money. Basically, GM’s business downturn is being driven by UAW members having made more cars and trucks than can be sold in the marketplace. Thus, the company wants to re-open its four-year labor contract with the UAW to cut employee health-care costs, unilaterally if need be. GM […]
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Social Medicine 101
Bastille Day 2005 inaugurates the new Monthly Review Webzine. Paris is also an excellent place to begin a series on social medicine. For it was in Paris, in 1830, that one of the seminal papers in social medicine appeared. While the Parisian workers overthrew Charles X, the last of the Bourbons, a French physician, Louis Rene Villerme published a paper examining mortality patterns in different Parisian arrondissements (districts).