Gains for Healthcare, Despite Obama (tags)
The movement for single-payer achieved its first major victory in the United States in 2011 when the Governor of Vermont signed a single-payer bill into law. Under rules of the Obama-care bill, however, Vermont will not be able to enact the legislation until 2017, but Vermont is seeking waivers to enact the bill in 2014. Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer is also asking for a waiver from the federal government to set-up single payer health care in Montana.
The Case for Socialized Medicine in the United States, and the Struggle to Achieve It (tags)
The California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee blasted insurance giant CIGNA for failing to approve a liver transplant one week earlier for 17-year-old Nataline Sarkisyan, who tragically died just hours after CIGNA relented and agreed to the procedure following a massive national outcry. “CNA/NNOC Executive Director Rose Ann DeMoro called the final outcome ‘a horrific tragedy that demonstrates what is so fundamentally wrong with our health care system today. Insurance companies have a stranglehold on our health. Their first priority is to make profits for their shareholders – and the way they do that is by denying care." "It is simply not possible to organize major protests every time a multi-billion corporation like CIGNA denies care that has been recommended by a physician," DeMoro said. “Having insurance is not the same as receiving needed care. We need a fundamental change in our healthcare system that takes control away from the insurance giants and places it where it belongs – in the hands of the medical professionals, the patients, and their families."