By Steven Reinberg
HealthDay Reporter
THURSDAY, Nov. 13 (HealthDay News) — Chronically ill patients in the United States spend more out-of-pocket money, skip needed care, and report more medical errors than patients in seven other industrialized countries, a new survey finds.
“This is a time of economic crisis around the world, but also a time of crisis in [...]

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In a recent letter to President-elect Barack Obama, a coalition of business and labor groups — the Business Roundtable, the National Federation of Independent Businesses, AARP and the Service Employees International Union — argue that “addressing skyrocketing health care costs is a critical component of stabilizing household, national and global economies” and warn that “inaction [...]

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Despite conservative assertions that America is a “center right” country “not ready for a liberal agenda,” Americans loudly rejected the failed conservative ideology of the past eight years and embraced, with equal jubilation, Barack Obama’s progressive policy prescriptions. “Obama ran on the most progressive platform of any presidential candidate in at least 15 years, including [...]

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After arguing that legislation to cut over-payments to private insurers would “harm beneficiaries by taking private health plan options away from them,” President Bush, on Friday, “narrowed the scope of services that can be provided to poor people under Medicaid’s outpatient hospital benefit.”
The new regulation arrives at a time when states are considering limiting Medicaid [...]

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By Julie Appleby, USA TODAY
Economic troubles are forcing states to scale back safety-net health-coverage programs — even as they brace for more residents who will need help paying for care.
Many cuts affect Medicaid, which pays for health coverage for 50 million low-income adults and children nationwide, including nearly half of all nursing home care. The [...]

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From The New York Times:
The nation’s health care system is desperately in need of reform — as far too many Americans know from grim, personal experience. In this election, Barack Obama and John McCain are offering starkly different ideas for how to fix that system.
There is no shortage of problems:

Some 45 million Americans lack health [...]

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May 23, 2008 | EPI Policy Memorandum #126
By L. Josh Bivens and Elise Gould

Senators John McCain and Barack Obama have presented very different plans to reform health care in the United States. Last week, the Urban Institute/Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center (TPC) provided what appears to be the first evaluation of each plan’s effect on costs [...]

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Following the resignation of Dianne Delisi, Jodie Laubenberg has been appointed chair of the Public Health Committee in the Texas House of Representatives.

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In Sick Around the World, FRONTLINE teams up with veteran Washington Post foreign correspondent T.R. Reid to find out how five other capitalist democracies — the United Kingdom, Japan, Germany, Taiwan and Switzerland — deliver health care, and what the United States might learn from their successes and their failures.

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