US Physician Practices Spend 4 Times Canadian Practices

Physicians in the United States spend nearly four times as much dealing with health insurers and payers compared with doctors in Canada. Most of the difference stems from the fact that Canadian physicians deal with a single payer, in contrast to the multiple...

Call for New Government in Myanmar to Boost Health Spending

With a new government recently sworn in, a former Myanmar health official is calling on leaders to invest more in healthcare for the country’s poorest.

Inconvenient Truths About Health Care As Industry

As I continue to argue that one of the most significant impediments to serious health care reform has been the efforts of a “consciousness industry” to induce a general acceptance of the phrase “health care industry” and thus...

Reinforcing the Progressives

Yesterday I used my Chutzpah of the Week award to call attention to the nine Democrats in the House of Representatives who voted against health care reform in betrayal of their representation of a sizable portion of their electorate currently without...

Betrayal CHUTZPAH

I was wondering whether or not news behind this weekend’s vote on health care reform in the House of Representatives would lead to an early Chutzpah of the Week award. The good news is that I was right: It was pretty easy for find grounds for...

Kucinich Confronts His Speaker (again?)

When it comes to the chutzpah of standing up to the rich and mighty (and those who act on their behalf), Dennis Kucinich has a good track record of Chutzpah of the Week awards. By my records he has accumulated three of his own and one shared with...

Confronting the Consequences of ‘Industrial’ Health Care

Last August, when it seemed as if the very concept of a public debate over health care reform was being reduced to one aggressive shout-fest after another, I raised the following question: Is there any country other than the United States that classifies...

Fighting the Good Fight for Health Care Reform

I sometimes wonder if John Nichols is the only one out there consistently reporting (primarily through The Beat, his blog for The Nation) on health care reform in terms of whether or not any real reform is likely to happen. He may have missed this...

How the United States has Perverted the Concept of Health Care

Apparently, Eyal Press, one of the contributors to The Notion on the Web site for The Nation, had to go to Europe to grasp the extent to which the American concept of health care has gone fubar: I’ve just come back from Europe, where citizens...