health care system – American Delusions

Vicious Republicans Attack Children’s Health Insurance Program

December 12, 2017 Comments Off

CHIP has been defunded by the vicious Republican Party. Nearly 9 million children are loosing their health insurance as states run out of funds. The Congress, controlled by the vicious Republican Party that is more focused on getting a sexual predator elected in Alabama than worrying about mere children, has --->> read more -->>

Trump Republican Policy Crimes (some only attempted at the moment)

November 30, 2017 Comments Off

Trump – Republican Positions and Crimes (some just attempted) against the poor, working and middle class Not to be obsessive, but the current Trump Republicans effort to cram their bill to pay back their corporate and rich supporters with giant tax breaks has me frothing a bit. I wrote down --->> read more -->>

Recently Noted – about healthcare

July 30, 2017 Comments Off

The New York Times has a piece this Sunday (7/30/17) by the well-known former Bush II economics advisor Greg Mankiw, “Why Healthcare Policy Is So Hard”. The article broadly acknowledges what every other developed country has recognized for decades, healthcare is not a good candidate for market control. Interesting that --->> read more -->>

The Next Healthcare Battle

July 20, 2017 Comments Off

Thursday 7/20/2017 – Most people are at the least relieved with the demise of the latest vicious Republican healthcare proposal cooked by old-all-white-all-male-Republican Senators. Obamacare appears to be safe for the moment. But now is the time to double down on the battle for real healthcare reform in this country. --->> read more -->>

Recently Noted – about healthcare – international comparisons

July 17, 2017 Comments Off

Mirror, Mirror 2017:International Comparison Reflects Flaws and Opportunities for Better U.S. Health Care By Eric C. Schneider, Dana O. Sarnak, David Squires, Arnav Shah, and Michelle M. Doty http://www.commonwealthfund.org/interactives/2017/july/mirror-mirror/#

Healthcare and Markets – why don’t they work together?

June 26, 2017 Comments Off

A consistent chattering point in American discussions of healthcare is the claim that if we can only bring transparency and competition to healthcare we will drive prices down and bring sanity to healthcare. The rest of the world knows that this is not the answer but we seem to remain --->> read more -->>

The Democratic Party and Healthcare – Preserving Obamacare Cannot Be The End Game

June 24, 2017 Comments Off

While our current attention is on the Republican Party’s transfer of wealth to the rich and corporations through the charade of a healthcare reform, the Democratic Party needs to face up to its future and the future of our healthcare system in particular. The Global Context The chart shown here --->> read more -->>

The Republican Party – vicious at the edges

June 23, 2017 Comments Off

A brief review of how the so-called moderates and the fundamentalist right wing of the Republican Party are reacting to the Senates healthcare bill demonstrates how fundamentally vicious and immoral the whole party is. Though facts may be out of style lets just take note that we live in one --->> read more -->>

Recently Noted – about healthcare

June 21, 2017 Comments Off

from the New York Times an article that covers some earlier history of the US healthcare industry. How Did Health Care Get to Be Such a Mess? By CHRISTY FORD CHAPIN “The problem with American health care is not the care. It’s the insurance. Both parties have stumbled to enact comprehensive health --->> read more -->>

Naive Talk about Healthcare from Adam Davidson in the New Yorker

May 25, 2017 Comments Off

Adam Davidson writing today in The New Yorker offered us “A BIPARTISAN WAY TO IMPROVE MEDICAL CARE – A straightforward change would save money and improve health. So why isn’t Congress talking about it?” This is an astonishingly naive misleading bit of chatter about healthcare. Davidson summarizes William S. Jevons, --->> read more -->>

The Global Context of the US Healthcare Debate

May 14, 2017 Comments Off

The solution to our healthcare fiasco is first to recognize its true nature and then to face down those who are consuming a fifth of our economic output while producing profoundly bad results. We need to take a much broader view in order to see that, compared to the rest --->> read more -->>

Trump Loves Australia’s Universal Government Paid Healthcare, “Better than ours”

May 6, 2017 Comments Off

Trump loves Australia’s universal healthcare: Speaking to Australian Prime Minster Trumbull, Trump said, “We have a failing healthcare. I shouldn’t say this to our great gentleman and my friend from Australia, because you have better healthcare than we do.” A day later Trump repeated his praise for the Australian healthcare system, “Of --->> read more -->>

Building the New American Economy – Not

April 5, 2017 Comments Off

The title of this short book, only 130 pages, Building the New American Economy: smart, fair, & sustainable by Jeffrey D. Sachs with a foreword by Bernie Sanders (Columbia University Press, 2017) is unfortunately misleading. There is much here about the new economy. The misleading part is that there is --->> read more -->>

Election Results: The Next Ten Years

November 9, 2016 Comments Off

– The Morning After – The election of Trump and the continued Republican control of both Congress and Senate guarantee that the rich will continue to get richer at the expense of the shrinking middle class and further aggravate conditions for the poor. Trickle down economics and tax subsidies will flow --->> read more -->>