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Health care
Service Employees Local 1 kicked off their “Hands Off BadgerCare” campaign Feb. 16 in Milwaukee....
Posted Feb 22, 2012
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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Excerpts from a talk given by Ellen Catalinotto at the WWP National
Conference, Nov. 14....
Posted Dec 13, 2009
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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Excerpts from a talk given by Bev Hiestand at the WWP National
Conference, Nov. 15-16....
Posted Dec 21, 2008
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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
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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
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Workers inside the United States are suffering at the hands of a capitalist
health-care system....
Posted Jul 13, 2008
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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The mental health care system in North Carolina is in a state of crisis....
Posted Jun 14, 2008
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