The people of Braddock are fighting to save their hospital from the wrecker’s ball. UPMC, an $8 billion dollar corporation, wants to demolish the Braddock Hospital while building hospitals in wealthy areas. With the help of single payer advocates, Braddock is fighting back with daily vigils at the hospital to stop the demolition.

The new law in CA

At its Metropolis, Illinois, plant, Honeywell wants to do away with retiree health care and raise annual out-of-pocket expenses for workers to $8,500. When the union said no the company locked them out. Across the border in Canada, the sister USW local that makes the same product signed their new contract with no problem over health care. The Metropolis local, USW 7-669, is fighting back.

Everyone loves to pick on the Affordable Care Act (ACA), and well they should, having been written by and for the health care industry. We must keep the pressure up on the health care industry as long as its fiduciary responsibility to investors requires finding ways to avoid caring for the sick while sucking billions out of taxpayers’ pockets.

Natasha McShane, a student from Ireland, was brutally beaten with a bat in Chicago. In the hospital for 3 months, the medical bills added up to hundreds of thousands of dollars. If the assault had happened in Ireland she wouldn’t have received one bill because they have a national health care system that covers everyone and is funded by taxes. For the Irish, health care is a human right. It is not so in the United States. An assault like the one Natasha survived would result in medical bankruptcy for thousands of Americans, even those with health insurance.

On Wednesday, Representative Lynn Woolsey (D-CA) introduced H.R. 5808. The text of the bill can be read here on Thomas. The bill is titled “To amend the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act to establish a public health insurance option.” Woolsey has procured 128 co-sponsors for the bill.

But the Los Angeles Times “reassures” us the bill has little chance of passing and is just a back door attempt at getting single payer.

The Republican Party recently told its leaders to call the Obama administration’s new health law “Exhibit A” of a “runaway Washington government.” But that’s not how longtime GOP health expert Thomas Scully sees it.

Million in Mass Lose Medicare this Month: Healthcare Bill Makes New England’s Teeth Like England’s — by NormanB (“Deviations from the Norm”)

On March 1, California OneCare launched its 365-day ad campaign on the Internet featuring health care professionals, celebrities and ordinary people speaking out about the benefits of having a Single Payer system in California. From June 1 to the critical November 2010 elections, the campaign will kick off its next important phase: a cable TV blitz in key swing districts to educate likely voters about the legislation that could bring about true health care reform – Senate Bill 810. With just a few votes shy of a veto-proof, two-thirds supermajority in each house of the state Legislature, getting elected more representatives who will support SB 810 is crucial.

The first step in the California OneCare ad blitz starts in Modesto with multiple daily spots from June 1 through June 8 in the top cable news stations, CNN, MSNBC, FOX News and CNBC. Step 2 occurs in August, when the campaign will run ads in Sacramento as SB 810 goes to a final Assembly vote. Finally, Step 3 will feature more ads in five key California districts leading up to election day.

But none of this can happen without financial support.

If the Grayson Bill HR 4789 is able to get past the corporatists in Congress – it will be a major improvement to this effectiveness of the current bill HR 4872. First thing it will do is to allow an early availability to the preex less coverage in short order instead of waiting for 2014, by which time 200,000 more would have died.