Achieving a High-Performance Health Care System with Universal Access:
What the United States Can Learn from Other Countries · American College of Physicians
On December 4, 2007, the prestigious American College of Physicians (ACP), the nation's second largest medical association (124,000 members), endorsed single payer national health insurance as "one pathway" to universal coverage. This is the first time the group has endorsed single payer and represents a huge step forward in the movement for fundamental health care reform.
Sicko 2: The Destruction Of Britain's Health Service · John Pilger
In Michael Moore's Sicko, the socialist Tony Benn predicts a revolution in Britain if the NHS is abolished. But Britain's Health Service is being destroyed by attrition, and if the latest "reforms" are not stopped, it will be too late to erect barricades. On 5 October, the Health Secretary, Alan Johnson, approved a list of fourteen companies that will advise on and take over the "commissioning" of NHS services. They will be given influence, if not eventually control, over which treatments patients receive and who provides them. They are assured multimillions in profits.
They include the US companies UnitedHealth, Aetna and Humana.
July 2005 Town Hall: What Is National Health Care? · Dr. Quentin Young
Bob that was marvelous, I watched the audience's faces get grimmer and grimmer. Our health system is amateur night in the lunatic asylum. We have to emphasize the fact, the utterly crucial fact, that it doesn't have to be this way. My definition of tragedy - it's not mine alone, I've heard it elsewhere - is that it's the failure of what might have been. It isn't when things are bad - things are usually bad; it's when you have the capacity to have it different, that's tragedy, whether it's personal or political, and we are in a colossal political tragedy...
Practices in Health Care and Disability Insurance (pdf) · By Peter Phillips and Bridget Thornton
This study examines the historical circumstances that brought about our private health and disability insurance system in the US. We look at the organizational structures of private-for- profit and “non-profit” insurance companies that dominate the health care industry and the strategies these firms use to delay, diminish, and deny payment for health care and disability benefits for people across the country. We discuss the impact of delays and denials on patients and disabled individuals and the ways insurance companies deliberately create psychological doubt and self-blame among those who are legitimately entitled to benefits. We summarize the results of twenty extensive interviews with people who have experienced major difficulties in receiving payments of benefits and for heath care service they expected from their insurance providers. We further examine the general lack of regulation, enforcement of existing laws and government motivation to meet the health and disability needs of all Americans, and the socio- economic power of the health insurance industry to dominate health care policy...
PNHP · Physicians for a National Health Program
QotD · Don McCanne's ongoing commentary on single-payer in the news