Health Care

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Wisconsin! in one week, tens of thousands of workers and their families have made history. In the face of the most aggressive anti-worker bill in modern history, teachers, janitors, clerks, plumbers, steelworkers, teamsters and many more have stood together above party lines and pushed union leaders and politicians where they weren’t willing to go. Rank-and-file workers, students and grassroots activists have led the way and the establishment has only moved because we fought to get here. With a vote on the bill coming soon, we have to stick to our guns and keep our eyes on the prize!

The budget crisis is a fraud. As the Cap Times points out, Walker took a $121.4 million surplus and turned it into a deficit with “$140 million in new spending for special-interest groups in January. If the Legislature were simply to rescind Walker’s new spending schemes the ‘crisis’ would not exist.”

We know that when cities and states come up short its because Wall Street banks stole our money, we’re in two trillion-dollar wars and because the wealthy don’t pay their share. Two-thirds of Wisconsin corporations pay zero taxes!

This year, Hampshire College’s annual reproductive justice conference --held from April 9 to 11-- seemed to come at a ripe moment. Just two weeks earlier, President Obama had signed an executive order affirming that the new health insurance exchanges would have to conform to the existing rule prohibiting federal funding from being used for abortion. Feminists -- from those who had advocated compromise to others who were continuing to fight for single payer -- were debating the worth of the healthcare reform bill.

In the opening plenary, Marlene Fried, Director of Hampshire’s Civil Liberties and Public Policy Program, which hosted the conference, called for activists to “demand that President Obama rescind the executive order…[and to] demand that we get a Justice [to replace Supreme Court Justice Stevens] who stands for justice,” but for the most part Obama’s policies and the right in the US figured far less prominently than they might have.

Instead, the conference focused broadly on the ongoing struggles that simultaneously confront intersecting oppressions, such as better treatment for women prisoners, health justice for immigrant communities and reproductive self-determination for teenagers.

Of all the miserable aspects of the healthcare bill – the lack of a public option, the exclusion of undocumented immigrants, and lack of real insurance company regulation – the anti-abortion provision is near the top of the list.

On Sunday the White House released the text of an executive order reaffirming the bill’s consistency with the Hyde Amendment. Hyde, passed in 1976, prohibits federal funding for abortion, thereby preventing Medicaid recipients from accessing this essential service. President Obama’s order satisfied virulent anti-abortion Democrat Bart Stupak and brought 6 more Democrats in line behind the bill, ensuring its passage.

Less than three years ago, in July 2007, Obama shared these words these words with the Planned Parenthood Action Fund:

In my mind, reproductive care is essential care. It is basic care, so it is at the center and at the heart of the plan that I propose. Essentially what we're doing is, we’re going to set up a public plan that all persons and all women can access if they don’t have health insurance.

I recently attended an event at Bluestockings organized by the Rock Dove Collective, which coordinates a network of radical health practitioners who

People before Profits! In the United States, the motto can be seen on signs at protests or health care rallies, though it is a plea historically ignored by lawmakers in Washington.

If you were a member of the House of Representatives voting on the House health care reform bill, then Saturday night the 7th of November was your chance to show appreciation to your sponsors.

Over the past month, there have been 132 people arrested (and hundreds more in supporting protests) in 20 cities around the country, all demanding a single-payer healthcare system, or Medicare for

The US Left has a few different tasks in regards to situations of national political importance; among them are 1) putting out our politics about the situation, including a critique of the current

The cold-blooded murder of Kansas abortion doctor George Tiller on May 31st sent shockwaves across the United States.