‘American Amnesia,’ by Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson
AMERICAN AMNESIA
How the War on Government Led Us to Forget What Made America Prosper
By Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson
455 pp. Simon & Schuster. $28.
If Bernie Sanders were a book by two leading politics professors, it would be “American Amnesia.” This is the story of how government helped make America great, how the enthusiasm for bashing government is behind its current malaise and how a return to effective government is the answer the nation is looking for.
How America came to forget about the merits of good government, and the price now being paid, is the meat of “American Amnesia,” the third book by Jacob S. Hacker (Yale) and Paul Pierson (Berkeley), whom Bill Moyers calls the “Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson of political science.” According to these academic detectives, America’s amnesia is no accident. The country has been brainwashed by a powerful alliance of forces hostile to government: big business, especially Wall Street, spending unparalleled lobbying dollars to advance its narrow self-interest; a new wealthy elite propagating wrongheaded Ayn Randian notions that free markets are always good and government always bad; and a Republican Party using a strategy of attacking and weakening government as a way to win more power for itself.
Medical Students Call for Single-Payer Health Insurance
By Mark Chee, Rebecca Gieseker and Rachel Stones
Chicago Maroon, March 31, 2016
As medical students, we have chosen a profession dedicated to treating illness and helping people live healthy lives.
Yet, early on during our training, we learn about the unequal access to care, unaffordable treatments, and medical debt that patients face because of our current private, for-profit health insurance system. We hear about physicians who are increasingly burdened with paperwork and frustrated by a system that does not serve their patients. We discover that despite spending more per capita on health care than other developed countries, the U.S. population has a shorter life expectancy, higher infant mortality, and worse overall health.
While the implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) has expanded coverage, it fails to sufficiently address the problems our health care system faces. Around 33 million Americans remain uninsured, some indefinitely. These individuals are immigrants, who still cannot afford health insurance or live in states that have blocked Medicaid expansion. In addition to this remaining lack of coverage, increasing deductibles and cost sharing are also being used to shift the financial burden from insurers to patients. Over 50 percent of bankruptcy filings in the U.S. are due to illness and medical debt, even though the majority of individuals in this group has some form of coverage when they file for bankruptcy. Expanding insurance coverage that leaves patients vulnerable to the financial burden of illness is not the answer. Furthermore, narrow network health plans prevent patients from having continuity of care with their physicians and expose them to exorbitant (and often unexpected) out-of-network costs.
http://www.pnhp.org/print/news/2016/april/medical-students-call-for-single-payer-health-insurance
Chicago Maroon, March 31, 2016
As medical students, we have chosen a profession dedicated to treating illness and helping people live healthy lives.
Yet, early on during our training, we learn about the unequal access to care, unaffordable treatments, and medical debt that patients face because of our current private, for-profit health insurance system. We hear about physicians who are increasingly burdened with paperwork and frustrated by a system that does not serve their patients. We discover that despite spending more per capita on health care than other developed countries, the U.S. population has a shorter life expectancy, higher infant mortality, and worse overall health.
While the implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) has expanded coverage, it fails to sufficiently address the problems our health care system faces. Around 33 million Americans remain uninsured, some indefinitely. These individuals are immigrants, who still cannot afford health insurance or live in states that have blocked Medicaid expansion. In addition to this remaining lack of coverage, increasing deductibles and cost sharing are also being used to shift the financial burden from insurers to patients. Over 50 percent of bankruptcy filings in the U.S. are due to illness and medical debt, even though the majority of individuals in this group has some form of coverage when they file for bankruptcy. Expanding insurance coverage that leaves patients vulnerable to the financial burden of illness is not the answer. Furthermore, narrow network health plans prevent patients from having continuity of care with their physicians and expose them to exorbitant (and often unexpected) out-of-network costs.
http://www.pnhp.org/print/news/2016/april/medical-students-call-for-single-payer-health-insurance
VIP’s princely care brings scrutiny to the Brigham
By Liz Kowalczyk GLOBE STAFF
He wanted the best medical care and came to the posh Pavilion at Brigham and Women’s Hospital to get it, taking over two penthouse rooms with sweeping views for a seven-month stay.
The new patient had apparent ties to Middle Eastern royalty, and brought along a personal chef and an entourage of seven attendants. This, by itself, is not unheard of in the cost-is-no-object world of VIP medicine, in which elite hospitals in Boston and other cities accommodate wealthy patients, some from distant lands, who can afford the full tab for care — and for premium amenities like deluxe rooms that cost up to $800 a day more than regular ones.
Despite Fears, Affordable Care Act Has Not Uprooted Employer Coverage
by Reed Abelson - NYT
The Affordable Care Act was aimed mainly at giving people better options for buying health insurance on their own. There were widespread predictions that employers would leap at the chance to drop coverage and send workers to fend for themselves.
But those predictions were largely wrong. Most companies, and particularly large employers, that offered coverage before the law have stayed committed to providing health insurance.
As it turns out, health care remains an important recruitment and retention tool as the labor market has tightened in recent years. Desirable employees still expect health benefits, and companies are responding, new analyses of federal data show.
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