Paying for Health Care

Republican Party Volunteer Tells People Obama's A Muslim

When you start losing by a landslide, lie. Even before that! A phone message left by a Clay County Florida Republican party volunteer has raised some serious hackles since it was filled with rather calculating distortions. Most notably, it invented a religion for Obama and used it like it's a bad ... More >>

Retirees Strike Back Against Romney's Remarks Over 'Dependent' Seniors

Edward F. Coyle, Executive Director of the Alliance for Retired Americans, has this response to Mitt Romney's views on those who look for government support: "Mitt Romney's offensive comments show his true colors, a callous indifference to millions of hard-working Americans. "No, Mitt Romney, r ... More >>

Paul Ryan Uses His Own Mama to Defuse Medicare Drama

In Rep. Paul Ryan's 'The Path to Prosperity' budget, Medicare, the health insurance program that is loved by older Americans and hated by deficit hawks, will cease to exist some time around 2022. The program - a lasting stipulation of Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society - will be transformed into a vo ... More >>

Free Contraception For All! Obamacare Gets Rid of Co-Pay For Birth Control, and Unsuprisingly Pisses Off The Catholic Church

Today brings free contraception for all (as long as you're one of the millions insured and you don't work for a Catholic organization), under the Affordable Care Act. Effective today, these provisions cover most major preventive services without a co-pay.According to data provided by Planned Parenth ... More >>

ACT UP Did March for Single-Payer Health Care

In this week's Pride Issue feature "Does 'Gay Inc.' Believe in Free Speech?" we report about how the mainstream gay organizations, even the AIDS groups, were largely absent from Zuccotti Park in 2011 and were not advocating a single-payer option during 2010's raging health care debates. Reader Eust ... More >>

Patrick Alcindor Gets 13 Years in the Slammer for Stealing $1.8 Mil from Medicaid

Patrick Alcindor could spend up to 13 years behind bars for scamming $1.8 million from Medicaid -- charging for pricey prescriptions which he never filled, according to the Manhattan District Attorney. Alcindor, who ran the ring out of a Harlem pharmacy, got caught in March 2010 paying an undercov ... More >>

Pillheads: On Contraception Issue, Rightbloggers Baptize Insurers and Defend the Faith

On Friday the Obama Administration revealed its compromise with religious organizations, such as Catholic hospitals, who didn't want to offer birth control in their health insurance plans. The orgs won't have to pay for it if it offends their beliefs, the President said -- the insurers would be obl ... More >>

The First Occupy Wall Street Legislation?

​In the post-occupation hangover, a (or the) big question is whether or not and to what extent Occupy Wall Street's message will have managed to translate into actual policy. OWS itself has strenuously refused to get involved in coming up with any legislation, since the movement wants to esche ... More >>

Armen Kazarian, Armenian Mobster, Guilty of Bilking Medicare With Imaginary Clinics

Forget smuggling, prostitution and extortion; the real money is in Medicare fraud.​Medicare is struggling with serious problems already -- ballooning costs and an ideologically hostile Republican Party, to name just two. But at least for the moment it no longer has to tangle with the Armenian ... More >>

Kathy Hochul Wins Craigslist Congressman Chris Lee's House Seat for Democrats

Disgraced Chris Lee​The special election in upstate New York's 26th District to replace Representative Chris Lee, who resigned after Gawker posted about his shirtless exploits on Craigslist, earning him the nickname the Craigslist Congressman, went to Democrat Kathy Hochul last night. The vict ... More >>

New York Doctors Could Be Banned From Wearing Ties

​A male doctor, in our minds, always wears a white coat over a starched dress shirt and unoffensive tie. Not for long, maybe! The state legislator, led by half of Albany power couple "Klavino," Sen. Diane Savino, is plotting to ban all hospital workers from wearing neckties because they spread ... More >>

Let's Look at Obama's Debt-Reduction Plan!

​Hey American, did you do the assigned homework for today? You were supposed to watch Obama's big debt-reduction speech! People are going to try to talk to you about it, what are you going to say? Sure, whether you saw it or not won't affect your response to the plan or the president; our smal ... More >>

Sidebar: Whose Dole Is It Anyway?

Peppy Grannies Dance to the Supremes Against Healthcare Cuts -- Best Protest Ever (Video)

​"Stop! In the name of health, Don't cut my Medicare, Think it o-o-ver." Bryant Park's lunch crowd got quite a show today as a troupe of grannies and their supporters adapted The Supremes to draw attention (and a crowd of about 100) to stopping government cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Sec ... More >>

Poll: Americans Like Barack Obama, Disapprove of Barack Obama; Want Health Care Reform, Disapprove of Health Care Reform, Etc.

​In a new Washington Post-ABC News poll, President Obama has a 51 percent approval rating, and the same respondents disapprove of his handling of the economy (53 percent), the deficit (56 percent), and health care (53 percent). They approve of the way he handles terrorism (56 percent), and p ... More >>

Staten Island Town Brawl Goes Pretty Much As You Would Expect

Local tea party people warned in advance that Monday's Staten Island health care town brawl with Congressman Michael McMahon would be lively. And voila -- "Health care reform foes dominate meeting with Staten Island congressman," writes the Staten Island Advance. The peeps seem to have gone for the ... More >>

Dr. Feelgood

Michael Moore’s pill goes down easy, but his diagnosis of U.S. health care still devastates

Some Kids Left Behind

Stuyvesant alums finally join the fight for 9-11 health benefits

The Adult Children of New Jersey

Garden State tries novel way to keep young people insured

State of the Union Not Looking So Stately

Big Bush speech creates campaign atmosphere in D.C.

Bush's Speech Today Ignores Cold Winter

Touting more tax cuts, President ignores bitter situation for most Americans

Unfucking the Donkey

Advice for weary, wandering Democrats

Rad Medicine

City council wades into the middle of the nation's health care crisis

No Trust Fund? Try Food Stamps

Down and out in Brooklyn, young artists turn to public assistance

One Sick Fall

With health insurance out of reach, a generation braces itself for the worst

Free and Low-Cost Health Care

Speaking Ill

Congress's Dubious Medicare Reform

How a New Prescription-Drug Plan Could Drive Up Prices for the Elderly

State of the Unions

What Domestic Partnership Gets You

Labor's Cheap Date With Pataki

It's Solidarity—For the Time Being, Anyway

Move to Sweden

Freelancers' Best Hope for Affordable Insurance?

Blue Cross Hijacked

How the Governor and the State's Most Powerful Union Shortchanged Health Consumers

Writers Union Hit by Insurance ‘Scam’

Tasini on a Tightrope

Between a Rock and a Hard Place

Nation

Pinching Pennies

City Agency Targets Elderly for Payback

Platform to Nowhere

Democrats Offer Few Specifics on Major Issues

A 'New Rudy' Health Plan

Can Hizzoner Solve a Problem He Helped Create?

Presidential Prescriptions

Gore and Bradley on Health Care: The Differences Are in the Details

A Question of Privacy

Medicaid Records Dispute Plagues City’s Workfare Program

Pataki May End Your Life Early

A Grave Threat to Our Hospitals

Managed Care Changeover: Bad Rx?

Care for Thousands of Patients Threatened

No Relief

Giuliani's New York: The View from Below

Taking Care of Business

Senate Fails to Close Loopholes Protecting Insurers

Tragedy of Errors

How Bureaucracy May Have Helped Starve Tyler Walrond

Raising Canes

Medicare's elderly defenders take to the streets

Clinic Depression

Wham Bam

As the money dries up, HMOs kiss Medicaid patients goodbye

The Church's HMO

Fighting for Reproductive Choice for Medicaid Patients

Numbers Game

HMO penny-pinching threatens a long-term romance

Starve and Sever

Is the Mayor Trying To Get Out of the Hospital Business?