News

Check this out! Courtesy of Nancy Gomez, Health Access-CA.

Citizens in any other industrialized country have permanent, portable insurance not tied to a particular job in a particular country.

Andy Coates, MD, a former union activist and elected member of the statewide executive board of his union, the 58,000 member New York State Public Employees Federation, AFL-CIO, recently spoke in Chicago where his presentation appeared on Labor Beat, a Chicago area Cable TV program.

Disputes between unions and employers over paying for new costs associated with the Affordable Care Act are roiling labor talks nationwide.

At the margins of poverty, even committing to premiums, co-payments and other new medical expenses of hundreds or a few thousand dollars a year can be difficult to manage, according to researchers and groups working with the low-income patients now required by federal law to buy insurance.

As anyone who’s ever paid a health insurance premium or a hospital bill knows, medical care is expensive. What Americans may not know is that residents of other countries don’t pay nearly as much for the same things.

On March 11, 2014, Senator Bernie Sanders convened the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Primary Health and Aging to address the question “What can the U.S. learn about health care from other countries?”

Check out Undocumented and Uninsured, a project of the Dream Resource Center at the UCLA Labor Center.

In a letter sent to the White House earlier this week, several labor leaders voiced criticisms regarding proposed regulations to the ACA. The presidents of LIUNA and UNITE HERE stated “if the Administration thinks the new regulations address our concerns, they are not listening, or simply do not care.”

A Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP) report published on the Health Affairs Blog shows the number of lives that may be impacted by states opting out of Medicaid expansion.