During Coronvrius: Cuba to the Rescue, But Don’t Tell the American people

Anti-Cuba zealots in the Trump administration have been enticing Cuban doctors working overseas to defect, paying journalists to write negative stories, slapping sanctions on Cubans in charge of the program, and strong-arming countries to expel Cuban doctors.

Medea Benjamin
By Medea Benjamin

While Bernie Sanders paid a political price for uttering something positive about Cuba’s literacy program, the current pandemic has shown the whole world the heroic side of Cuba’s health care system. I saw this heroism firsthand when I worked with Cuban doctors in poor, remote villages in Africa. It was the 1970s and I was a young woman employed

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Insurance Companies Are Spending Millions on Attack Ads Against Medicare for All

The privatized, for-profit healthcare industry is close to panicking over the prospect of a nationalized system along the lines of other advanced countries.

Alan Macleod
By Alan Macleod
Medicare for All Feature photo

Healthcare corporations are spending millions of dollars on astroturfed attack ads against Medicare for All. The Partnership for America’s Healthcare Future, for example, a coalition of hospitals and insurance companies, has spent $1 million on a television campaign against changes to the current healthcare system they profit from. The

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The Health Catastrophe in Gaza: Our Double Standards Are Killing Palestinians

In 2015 in Gaza neonatal mortality rates were 21 per 1000 compared to 3 in Israel. The statistics are equally grim for maternal deaths.

Neil Serougi
By Neil Serougi
In this Thursday, March 17, 2016 photo, Palestinian clown doctors entertain children in the department of kidney diseases at Al-Rantisi children’s hospital in Gaza City. Clown doctors Majed Kaloub, 24, and Alaa Miqdad, a 33-year-old dwarf, are employed by an international NGO into unusual places: hospitals, especially the pediatric ones; a game-changing shift that granted them steady work at best, but rendered them in need for psychosocial support as a side effect of the job. (AP Photo/Adel Hana)

It is a feature of our political culture that health has become a powerful denominator in how we calculate social justice. The NHS and its challenges make our news almost every day. Providing accessible high quality health services is central to how we see good governance and civic entitlement. It’s a sentiment reinforced by frequent polls showing

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Obamacare Failures Push Patients To Rely On Urgent Care Centers

Urgent care facilities, though they have their benefits, do not rectify the failings of the government to take care of people. In the words of Pete Volk, it is “single-payer or bust.”

Roqayah Chamseddine
By Roqayah Chamseddine
doctors office

In the United States, where health care costs are bankrupting Americans more than any other type of debt, urgent care centers (UCC) are on the rise, and more Americans are leaving their primary care physicians behind in favor of them. At John Peter Smith Hospital (JPS) in Fort Worth, Texas, there’s a program for low-income residents called JPS

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Why Did Bush Reject Aid Offers From Cuba After Hurricane Katrina?

Hurricane Harvey brings to mind the devastation of predecessors like Katrina, whose death toll would have been reduced had the Bush administration accepted Cuban doctors.

Shane Quinn
By Shane Quinn
A New Orleans family tries to make their way through floodwaters in the downtown area of the Crescent City on Aug. 30, 2005. The water continued to rise after Hurricane Katrina pounded the area. (AP/Bill Haber)

Of the many stories written about Hurricane Katrina in autumn 2005 and its devastating consequences, one crucial element is virtually overlooked. During the all-important hours after the tropical cyclone laid waste to sections of south-eastern United States, the Bush administration ignored the aid of its Cuban neighbor. Cuban leader Fidel

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Trump Budget Includes Huge Cuts To Food Stamps & Billions For Border Wall

Trump’s budget includes $1.7 trillion over 10 years in cuts from programs such as Medicaid, federal employee pensions, welfare benefits and farm subsidies.

Associated Press
By Associated Press
In this May 4, 2017, photo, President Donald Trump talks to House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wis. in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, after the House pushed through a health care bill. (AP/Evan Vucci)

President Donald Trump's budget would drive millions of people off of food stamps, part of a new wave of spending cut proposals that already are getting panned by lawmakers in both parties on Capitol Hill. Trump's blueprint for the 2018 budget year comes out Tuesday. It includes a wave of cuts to benefit programs such as Medicaid, federal

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