Out of Eden: A Christian Study and Action Guide to Food and the Environment

A practical Study and Action Guide for use by small groups discussion or personal reflection. The guide covers topics that are actionable on the personal and policy levels: sugar’s impact on our bodies and sugar corporations’ truth-telling and accountability, corn and corn subsidies creating over-supply, plastic and its biological impact on animals and humans, the true cost of meat in terms of soil depletion and air pollution, and food waste and the practices which can diminish it.

Toxic Stress: The Facts. Harvard Center on the Developing Child.

National Forum on Early Childhood Policy and Programs. Harvard Center on the Developing Child.

Physicians for a National Health Program. (PNHP website)

David Rosner and Gerald Markowitz, The Struggle over Employee Benefits: The Role of Labor in Influencing Modern Health Policy. Milbank Quarterly, Mar 2003.  Means that striking workers can and do lose their health benefits and even pensions – like the GM worker strike –  means that unions can be pressured to accept less comprehensive health plans (see this); means that union leaders and benefits coordinators make commission money from selling insurance to union members (see this); and why union-funded Senate Democrat Sherrod Brown. D-OH.  opposes Medicaid for All (see this), even though he is otherwise progressive.

Vinod Shah, What Motivated the Early Christian Health Missions? Anatomy of Transformation in India. presentation, May 29, 2005.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, A Goal of Service to Humankind. NPR, Jul 25, 2005.  Dr. Fauci’s recognition that public health is a global health issue, rooted in principles from his Jesuit education, is impressive and corresponds with biological reality over political dynamics.

Marcia Angell, The Truth About the Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What to Do About It. Random House | Amazon page, Aug 9, 2005.

Kip Sullivan, Two-Thirds of Americans Support Medicare for All. Physicians for a National Health Plan, Sep 2009.  Important because the polling includes both education and opinion-taking. “The more they know about single payer, the more they like it”

Josh Eboch, Health Care and the Fallacy of Positive Rights. Tenth Amendment Center, Nov 16, 2009.  A libertarian position.

Aaron Carroll, What Makes the U.S. Health Care System So Expensive - Introduction. Incidental Economist blog, Sep 20, 2010.

Wendell Potter, Deadly Spin: An Insurance Company Insider Speaks Out on How Corporate PR Is Killing Health Care and Deceiving Americans.  Bloomsbury Press | Amazon page, Nov 16, 2010.  

David A. Squires, Explaining High Health Care Spending in the U.S.: An International Comparison of Supply, Utilization, Prices, and Quality. Commonwealth Fund, May 2012.

David Himmelstein and Steffie Woolhandler, A Simpler, Better Solution. New York Times, May 29, 2013.  From the PNHP website, arguing for federal, single-payer health insurance

Trudy Lieberman, 'Bitter Pill' - the Aftereffects - An Interview with Steven Brill. Columbia Journalism Review, Jun 11, 2013.

John Medaille, Distributism and the Health Care System. Distributist Review magazine, Jul 11, 2013.

Bruce Bartlett, The Question of Taxing Employer-Provided Health Insurance. NY Times, Jul 30, 2013.  notes that the health insurance exclusion will cost $248 billion in federal tax revenue foregone in 2013. Aaron E. Carroll, The Real Reason the U.S. Has Employer-Sponsored Health Insurance. NY Times, Sep 5, 2017.  notes that it is $260 billion in 2017.  Tax Policy Center Briefing Book, How Does the Tax Exclusion for Employer-Sponsored Health Insurance Work? Tax Policy Center, Urban Institute & Brookings Institute.  also explains why the deductibles make it a regressive tax.

Alex MacGillis, Obamacare Gets a Bright Spot in a Very Bad Week. New Republic, Oct 22, 2013.

Jonathan Cohn, The Huge Obamacare Story You Aren't Reading. New Republic, Nov 10, 2013.

ManMohan S. Sodhi and Navdeep S. Sodhi, Fix the Handful of U.S. Hospitals Responsible for Out-of-Control Costs. Business Insider, Nov 13, 2013.

Ralph Nader, 21 Ways the Canadian Health Care System is Better Than Obamacare. Common Dreams, Nov 22, 2013.

Josh Barro, Here's Why Both Parties Lie All the Time About Health Care. Business Insider, Nov 26, 2013.

Paul Krugman, Obamacare's Secret Success. NY Times, Nov 28, 2013.

Jonathan Cohn, Healthcare.gov is not Amazon.com. Should We Care? New Republic, Dec 4, 2013.

Ezra Klein, 93 Percent of Hospital Executives Think Obamacare Will Make Health Care Better. Washington Post, Dec 19, 2013.

Lauren F. Friedman, This $55,000 Bill Is The Perfect Example Of Our Broken Hospital System. Business Insider, Dec 30, 2013.

Sarah Kliff, Think America Has the World’s Best Health Care System? You Won’t After Seeing This Chart. Washington Post wonkblog, Jan 7, 2014.

Ezekiel J. Emanuel, Insurance Companies as We Know Them Are About to Die and Here's What's Going to Replace Them. New Republic, Mar 2, 2014.

Sarah Kliff, Forget Obamacare: Vermont Wants to Bring Single Payer to America. Vox, Apr 9, 2014.

Elisabeth Rosenthal, Medicine's Top Earners Are Not the M.D.'s. NY Times, May 17, 2014.

Dr. Eric Snoey, My State of Emergency: Reflections on Life, Death, and Obamacare inside Oakland's Main Trauma Ward. San Francisco Magazine, Jun 4, 2014.

Melissa Hellman, U.S. Health Care Ranked Worst in the Developed World. Time, Jun 17, 2014.

Rishi Manchanda, What Makes Us Sick? Look Upstream. TED Talk, Aug 2014.  re: poor diet, stress, lack of fresh air

Spiritual Catalyst, The Future of Medicine. Aug 13, 2014. , an interview with my friends Dr. Daniel Cagua-Koo and Dr. Lenore Saulsberry about functional medicine!

Is the Affordable Care Act Working? NY Times, Oct 26, 2014.

Meghan O'Rourke, Doctors Tell All - And It's Bad. The Atlantic, Nov 2014.  doctor-patient relations

Dean Ornish, Hotter Sex, Cooler Planet. Huffington Post, Nov 14, 2014.

Lauren F. Friedman, The Same Surgery in the Same City Can Vary in Price by 313% - And That's a Sign of a Much Larger Problem. Business Insider, Jan 23, 2015.

Molly Worthen, Onward Christian Healthcare? NY Times, Jan 31, 2015.

Congressional Budget Office, Updated Estimates of the Insurance Coverage Provisions of the Affordable Care Act. CBO, Jan 2015.  to be 20% less than expected because of a decline in healthcare inflation

John Oliver, Marketing to Doctors. Last Week Tonight video, Feb 8, 2015.

Reihan Salam, Hospitals Are Robbing Us Blind. Slate, Mar 23, 2015.

Matthew Loftus, MD, Why Christians of All People Should Get Their Vaccine. Christianity Today, May 5, 2015.

Austin Frakt, Obamacare's Big Gamble on Hospital Productivity. NY Times, May 25, 2015.

Jen Hayden, GOP Congresswoman Gets Surprise on Facebook After Asking Constituents for Obamacare Horror Stories. Daily Kos, Mar 26, 2015.

The Lancet, Faith-Based Health Care. The Lancet, Jul 7, 2015.

Zara Zhang, For Cost Effectiveness, Treat Half of U.S. Adults with Statins. Harvard Magazine, Jul 14, 2015.

Philadelphia, Exceptionally Deadly: Death from Childbirth is Unusually Common in the U.S. Economist, Jul 18, 2015.

Mark Dudzic, Why Unions Supported a Single-Payer Bill That Passed New York’s State Assembly. In These Times, Aug 3, 2015.

Kat Ely, The World Is Designed for Men. Medium, Sep 8, 2015. On gender bias. Product designs that are less safe for women: seatbelts; medicine; power tools.

Robert Kennedy Jr., Says CDC Knew Mercury Based Vaccines Give Black Boys Autism and Destroyed Data. Oct 19, 2015.

John Oliver, Medicaid Gap. Last Week Tonight, Nov 1, 2015.

Benedict Carey, Those With Multiple Tours of Duty Overseas Struggle at Home. NY Times, May 29, 2016.

Vann R. Newkirk, Can Free Markets Keep People Healthy? The Atlantic, Aug 10, 2016.

David Lazarus, How a Bite from a Stray Dog Shows the Sick State of U.S. Health Care Los Angeles Times, Sep 6, 2016.

Michael Hiltzik, The Truth About Health Care Premiums: They'd Be a Lot Higher Without Obamacare Los Angeles Times, Sep 21, 2016.

Michael McIntee, EpiPen Maker CEO Grilled in Congress. Michael McIntee, Sep 21, 2016.  Price increase of 500% since Mylan took over in 2007; no shame because of money?

Gina Kolata, Why Do Obese Patients Get Worse Care? Many Doctors Don’t See Past the Fat. NY Times, Sep 25, 2016.

Michael Alison Chandler, This Doctor Pioneered a Way to Treat Stress in Children, a Startling Source of Future Disease. Washington Post, Oct 6, 2016.

Jonathan Chait, Obamacare Isn’t ‘Crazy,’ and It’s Not Dying. New York Magazine, Oct 7, 2016.

Gareth Cook, Big Pharma’s Manufactured Epidemic: The Misdiagnosis of ADHD. Scientific American, Oct 11, 2016.

David Dayen, The Next Phase in Bernie’s Revolution Has Already Begun. New Republic, Oct 19, 2016.  about California's Prop 61 and big pharma

Margot Sanger-Katz, Quoctrung Bui, The Impact of Obamacare, in Four Maps. NY Times, Oct 31, 2016.

Kirk G. Morrison, The Aches and Pains of Obamacare. Christian Democracy Magazine, Nov 2016.  As interpreted by Catholic social teaching

Margaret Chan, Director-General of the World Health Organization, China's Growing Contribution to Health at Home and on the Global Stage. Lecture at the Chinese Academy of Governance, Nov 18, 2016.  Remarks about government-led economic development, disease prevention, and public health; market liberalization happened in China only after adequate protectionism

Grist, The Poverty Solution: Put People First. Grist, Dec 2016.  A series on lifting people from poverty while respecting the environment

Michael Hiltzik, Republicans Call Obamacare a Failure - These 7 Charts Show They Couldn't Be More Wrong. Los Angeles Times, Jan 4, 2017.

Marie Solis, Judge Rules Doctors Can Refuse Trans Patients and Women Who Have Had Abortions. Policy Mic, Jan 4, 2017.

Michael Hiltzik, Here Are the Lies Paul Ryan Told About Obamacare During His Town Hall Meeting. Los Angeles Times, Jan 13, 2017.

Andrew Flynn, Obamacare Hasn't Just Made People Healthier, but More Financially Secure. The Atlantic, Jan 17, 2017.

David Himmelstein and Steffie Woolhandler, Repealing the Affordable Care Act Will Kill More Than 43,000 People Annually. Washington Post, Jan 23, 2017.

Michael Hiltzik, US Judge Finds That Aetna Deceived the Public About Its Reasons for Quitting Obamacare. Los Angeles Times, Jan 24, 2017.

Josh Bivens, Repealing the Affordable Care Act Would Cost Jobs in Every State. Economic Policy Institute, Jan 31, 2017.

Michael Hiltzik, With Billions at Stake, a Federal Judge Just Nullified the GOP's Most Cynical Attack on Obamacare. Los Angeles Times, Feb 10, 2017.

David Epstein, When Evidence Says No, But Doctors Say Yes. ProPublica, Feb 22, 2017.

Michael Corcoran, Media Find Room for ‘Trumpcare Too Progressive,’ but Not for Single-Payer. FAIR, Mar 15, 2017.

Jonathan Chait, Why Obamacare Defeated Trumpcare. New York Magazine, Mar 24, 2017.

Eric Fox, How Pharma Companies Game the System to Keep Drugs Expensive. Harvard Business Review, Apr 6, 2017.

Catherine Rampell, Sorry, Republicans, But Most People Support Single-Payer Health Care. Washington Post, Apr 17, 2017.

Matthew Winkler, California Leads U.S. Economy, Away From Trump. Bloomberg, May 10, 2017.

Robert H. Frank, Why Single-Payer Health Care Saves Money. NY Times, Jul 7, 2017.

Andrew Sullivan, The Triumph of Obama’s Long Game. NY Magazine, Jul 21 2017.  refers to Reagan's 1986 Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act requiring Medicare recipient – i.e. almost all – hospital emergency rooms to receive patients without ability to pay.

Chase Madar, The Conservative Case for Universal Health Care. The American Conservative, Jul 25, 2017.  Believes that the right will embrace it in 5 years.

Joshua Holland, Medicare-for-All Isn’t the Solution for Universal Health Care. The Nation, Aug 2, 2017.  Careful distinction, important for progressives.

German Lopez, How to Stop the Deadliest Drug Overdose Crisis in American History. Vox, Oct 26, 2017.

Vox and Propublica, The U.S. Medical System is Still Haunted by Slavery. Vox, Dec 7, 2017.  an 8 minute video

Dylan Walsh, The Workplace Is Killing People and Nobody Cares. Stanford Business, Mar 15, 2018.

Sarah Kliff, Iowa's Found a New, Likely Legal Way to Ignore Obamacare. Vox, Apr 4, 2018.  also mentions Tennessee and the low levels of health, correlated to their health care system

Dylan Scott, After One Year of Trump, Obamacare is Actually Doing Fine. Vox, Apr 5, 2018.  features State-level countermeasures to Trump's federal changes in policy

Alan Rappeport, Trump Says He Got Rid of Obamacare. The I.R.S. Doesn’t Agree. NY Times, May 6, 2018.

Alice Ollstein, Trump Admin Poised To Give Rural Whites A Carve-Out On Medicaid Work Rules. Talking Points Memo, May 14, 2018.

Austin Frakt, Medical Mystery: Something Happened to U.S. Health Spending After 1980. NY Times, May 14, 2018.  spending began soaring above that of other nations, but without the same benefits in life expectancy

Marilyn R. Gardner, Repenting for Healthcare Inequality: A Christian Response. Plough, Jun 2018.

The Atlantic, Healing the Divide: An Atlantic Forum on Health Equity. The Atlantic, Jun 13, 2018.   

Olga Khazan, The 3 Reasons the U.S. Health-Care System Is the Worst. (The Atlantic, Jun 22, 2018.  1. lack of insurance; 2. administrative inefficiency; 3. underperforming primary care

Dylan Scott, How Republican Medicaid Proposals Restrict Access, in One Chart. Vox, Jun 22, 2018.  comparison between Kansas, Indiana, Ohio

PBS News Hour, The Story of American Poverty, As Told By One Alabama County. PBS News Hour, Jul 7, 2018.  More than 18 million Americans live in “extreme poverty,” according to a report from the United Nations, which ranked poverty in the U.S. alongside some of the poorest areas in the world. The UN Special Rapporteur for Extreme Poverty paid a visit to the U.S. last year, drawing worldwide attention to his findings. This Alabama African American community lacks clean sewage water treatment because the State of Alabama has opposed extending public infrastructure there. This is a case study of how most Americans have benefited from massive public investment yet insist that American society is an “meritocracy of individual achievement,” and why “small government conservatism” is often a smokescreen for “prejudice and systemic racial injustice.”

Ed Yong, The Next Plague Is Coming. Is America Ready? The Atlantic, Jul-Aug 2018.  The epidemics of the early 21st century revealed a world unprepared, even as the risks continue to multiply. Much worse is coming.

Nick Surgey, Zaid Jilani, The Koch Brothers Commissioned a Survey of Americans and Found Most Like a $15 Minimum Wage, Free College, and Universal Health Care. The Intercept, Aug 9, 2018.

Dylan Scott, Medicaid Expansion's Private Option Is Nearly Gone. Vox, Sep 2, 2018.  Being replaced by work requirements.

Mark Flatten, To Help Fix American Mental-Health Care, Reform Certificate-of-Need Laws. National Review, Oct 8, 2018.

Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, U.S. Health Care Spending Highest Among Developed Countries. Johns Hopkins University, Jan 7, 2019.  We pay more for worse outcomes

Hasan Minhaj, Drug Pricing. Patriot Act, Feb 17, 2019.  Features epi-pens and insulin, patent law and PBM's

Kyle Kulinsky, Doctor Pummels Fox Hosts Into Submission On Medicare For All. Secular Talk, Mar 9, 2019.  Dr. Adam Gaffney from Harvard Medical School corrects Fox News hosts. Discusses why the American health care industry can save on costs through single-payer insurance. cutting out administrative and marketing; lowering drug costs through bargaining with pharma companies. , cross-country comparisons showing the same, why the free market does not work with health care. This is a valuable 13 minute video clip.

Jonathan Chait, Republican Blurts Out That Sick People Don’t Deserve Affordable Care. New York Magazine, May 1, 2017.  “In a CNN interview, Representative Mo Brooks, an Alabama Republican, makes the case for Trumpcare in much starker terms: It will free healthy people from having to pay the cost of the sick.”

T. Colin Campbell, Why is the Science of Nutrition Ignored in Medicine? TEDxCornellUniversity, Dec 3, 2018. An excellent 17 minute video on how proteins contribute to cancer, and how healthy nutrition could create more health than all other drugs combined.

Andrew Buncombe, AOC Asks Pharma CEO Why $2,000 HIV Drug Costs Just $8 in Australia: 'People Are Dying For No Reason'. Independent, May 17, 2019.  

CNBC, How French Health Care Compares to the U.S. System. CNBC, May 18, 2019.

CNBC, How Medicare-for-All Works in Australia. CNBC, Sep 2, 2019.

Christopher Willoughby, How Black Activists Sought Healthcare Reform: A New Documentary. Black Perspectives | African American Intellectual History Society, Sep 5, 2019.

Austin Frakt, The Huge Waste in the U.S. Health System. New York Times, Oct 7, 2019.  “A study finds evidence for how to reduce some of it, but also a large blind spot on how to remove the rest.”

Michael Brooks, Ben Burgis Debunks The "Strongest" Argument Against Medicare For All, featuring Harvey Kaye. The Michael Brooks Show, Nov 4, 2019.  single-payer universal health care was not actually tried in Vermont

Sean Masaki Flynn, The U.S. Can Slash Health-Care Costs 75% with 2 Fundamental Changes - and Without Medicare for All. MarketWatch, Nov 9, 2019.

CNBC, How Germany's Universal Health-Care System Works. CNBC, Nov 24, 2019.  

Michal Rozworski, The NHS Shows What Life Outside the Market Could Look Like. Jacobin Magazine, Dec 7, 2019.

Kyle Kulinksy, Trump Betrays Voters, Opposes Bill To Cut Pharma Prices! Secular Talk, Dec 9, 2019.

John Iadarola, Healthcare Costs Ravage America Now More Than Ever The Damage Report, Dec 24, 2019.

Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti, Former Healthcare Exec Wendell Potter Rips and Answers CNN’s Industry Talking Points. Rising | The Hill, Jan 16, 2020.  and continued interview Former Health Care Exec Backs Up Bernie: It’s Our Current System That’s Bankrupting Us. Rising | The Hill, Jan 20, 2020.

ASteffie Woolhander, Adam Gaffney, Clare Fauke, Doctors “Prescribe” Medicare For All: Single Payer Reform Endorsed by America’s Largest Medical Specialty Society and Recommended in Open Letter from Thousands of Physicians. Physicians for a National Health Program, Jan 21, 2020.  

Christopher Ingraham, Here’s That Medicare-For-All Study Bernie Sanders Keeps Bringing Up. Washington Post, Feb 20, 2020.  “A single-payer health-care system would save more than 68,000 lives and $450 billion a year, new research shows” see also Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez, Yale Study Says Medicare for All Would Save U.S. $450 Billion, Prevent Nearly 70,000 Deaths a Year. Democracy Now, Feb 19, 2020.  Interviews Alison Galvani, the Yale epidemiology researcher who directed the study, who covers more details about cost savings, such as the fact that Medicare spends 2% of its budget on administration. no marketing. , and private health insurers spend 12%.

Jake Miller, Paying the Price. Harvard Medical School, Mar 3, 2020.  “Health care spending for homeless population 2.5 times more than nonhomeless population”

Naomi Schalit, Why So Many Epidemics Originate in Asia and Africa - and Why We Can Expect More. The Conversation, Mar 4, 2020.

Josh Bivens, Fundamental Health Reform Like ‘Medicare for All’ Would Help the Labor Market. Economic Policy Institute, Mar 5, 2020.  “Job loss claims are misleading, and substantial boosts to job quality are often overlooked”

Ben Burgis, Cuba’s Coronavirus Response Is Putting Other Countries to Shame. Jacobin Magazine, Mar 23, 2020.  and Helen Yaffe, Cuba and Coronavirus: How Cuban Biotech Came to Combat COVID-19. LSE, Mar 18, 2020.

Gracy Olstead, Our Monoculture Food Supply Is A Potential Coronavirus Calamity. The American Conservative, Mar 25, 2020.  “The highly consolidated system is fragile, and this is where local farming can step in.”

Anna Sauerbrey, Germany Has Relatively Few Deaths From Coronavirus. Why?. NY Times, Mar 28, 2020.  an effective health care system and coordinated response

John Iadarola, Insulin Price Drop Exposes Pharmaceutical Scam. The Damage Report, Apr 11, 2020.  insulin prices went up 100% from 2012 - 2016

Sarah Mervosh, ‘It’s Not in My Head’: They Survived the Coronavirus, but They Never Got Well. NY Times, Sep 28, 2020.  “With seven million known cases of the coronavirus across the country, more people are suffering from symptoms that go on and on.” “By some estimates, as many as one in three Covid-19 patients will develop symptoms that linger. The symptoms can span a wide range — piercing chest pain, deep exhaustion, a racing heart.”

David Doel, Whistleblower Shares How Private Insurance Will Screw COVID Survivors. The Rational National, Oct 4, 2020.  compares remdesivir across countries; implications of SCOTUS overturning the ACA

Krystal Ball, Healthcare CRIMINALS Are Gouging Covid Patients. Rising | The Hill, Nov 24, 2020.  References National Nurses United, Fleecing Patients Hospitals Charge Patients More Than Four Times the Cost of Care. National Nurses United, Nov 2020.  and David Dayen, How Biden Could Give Everyone Medicare on His Own. The American Prospect, Nov 17, 2020.  on the legal path to doing it

David Doel, Secret Recordings Reveal Alberta's Conservatives Overruled Top Doctors. The Rational National, Nov 28, 2020.  shows how conservative elevation of “personal freedom” failed in Alberta, Canada especially when compared with other provinces, showing that the ideology of personal freedom has the same results in Canada as in the U.S.

Ian Milhiser, There’s a New Lawsuit Attacking Obamacare — And It’s a Serious Threat. Vox, Apr 2, 2021. “The legal arguments in Kelley v. Becerra aren’t exactly good arguments, but five justices have signaled that they agree with them.” Ian Milhiser, Obamacare Is Under Attack by Republican Judges Again. Here’s What’s at Stake. Vox, Sep 7, 2022. “Judge Reed O’Connor’s latest decision is more nuanced than his previous work, but it is still a disaster for public health.” See the actual decision Braidwood Management Inc. et al., Plaintiffs, v. Xavier Becerra et al., Defendants. Sep 7, 2022. See Briahna Joy Gray and Robby Soave, Religious Employers Not Required To Cover HIV Prevention Drugs: Judge. Bri & Robby Debate. Rising | The Hill, Sep 8, 2022. An excellent debate; Briahna Gray has far more robust arguments than the libertarian Soave “A U.S. district judge in Texas ruled this week that workplace healthcare plans do not need to cover HIV prevention drugs if it violates an employer's religious beliefs.”

Amy Goodman, Meet the Texas Doctor Developing a "People's Vaccine" to Help Inoculate Billions Around the World. Democracy Now!, Apr 22, 2021.  re: Dr. Peter Hotez, infectious disease expert; capitalism’s shortcoming: not enough money goes to poor people’s diseases.

Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti, Panel: Is Bill Gates Turning Into Biggest Villain of Vaccine Distribution? Rising | The Hill, Apr 27, 2021.  highlights the role of patents and intellectual property; how the profit motive of big pharma inclines pharma corporations to ignore major those who are sick and poor, showing the inhumanity of capitalism

David Doel, Non-Americans Stunned By American Health Care Costs. The Rational National, Apr 28, 2021.  features clips from the NY Times, What Does U.S. Health Care Look Like Abroad? (New York Times, Apr 28, 2021.

Jon Walker, Biden Would Rather Build an Entirely New Welfare State Than Touch the Hospitals. Prospect, Apr 29, 2021.  “Health care improvements are minor and largely neglected in Biden’s new plan because he doesn’t want to arouse the ire of health care lobbyists.”

David Doel, Katie Porter Exposes Big Pharma CEO's Greedy Lies To His Face. The Rational National, May 18, 2021.  Abbott Labs/AbbVie raised the price of Humira by 13x because there are no price controls in the U.S. The federal government does not negotiate drug prices with big pharma. See The Hill, Katie Porter Presses Pharma CEO on Increased US Prices of Two Drugs. The Hill, May 18, 2021.  for full video of Katie Porter. D-CA.  grilling CEO Gonzales.

Washington Post, What Experts Say About Who Has the Best Health Care System.  Washington Post, Jun 17, 2021.  Seven leading health economists and public policy experts reflect on one of the hardest questions facing them — and us — today.  Informative, and despite the multiple criteria that people can legitimately use based on variation of values, the US ranks dead last.

The New York TImes, Takeover: How We Occupied a Hospital and Changed Public Health Care | Op-Docs.  New York Times, Oct 12, 2021.  “On July 14, 1970, members of the Young Lords occupied Lincoln Hospital in the South Bronx — known locally as “the Butcher Shop.” A group of activists, many of them in their late teens and early 20s, barricaded themselves inside the facility, demanding safer and more accessible health care for the community.  Originally a Chicago-based street gang, the Young Lords turned to community activism, inspired by the Black Panthers and by student movements in Puerto Rico. A Young Lords chapter in New York soon formed, agitating for community control of institutions and land, as well as self-determination for Puerto Rico. Their tactics included direct action and occupations that highlighted institutional failures.  Through archival footage, re-enactments and contemporary interviews, Emma Francis-Snyder's "Takeover" shines a light on the Young Lords’ resistance movement and their fight for human rights. The dramatic takeover of Lincoln Hospital led to one of the first Patient’s Bill of Rights, changing patients’ relationship with hospitals and doctors nationwide.”

Ryan Grim, Medicare Is Being Privatized On Biden’s Watch, Insurance Industry Salivates. Rising | The Hill, Dec 9, 2021.  highlights a disturbing apparent oversight in private health insurers being enlisted by Medicare. This is like charter schools: privately managed, but publicly funded, with the financial incentive to remove underperformers.

Vice News, How Nursing Homes Hide Profits While Residents Suffer.  Vice News, Dec 16, 2021.  Life Care, founded by Bernard Bergman and Forrest Preston, hides horror stories and massive Medicare fraud.  One example is a shell company that owns the facility, and the nursing home pays the shell company, which is self-dealing.  “The nursing home industry is 70% for-profit, which means that residents are competing with owners and shareholders for the same dollars.”  How big of a factor is corporate greed?  “We don’t really know how much of the money that goes into these places actually goes to direct care.”  One of every three COVID deaths was a nursing home resident or worker.  

Molly Redden, Private Equity Is Gobbling Up Hospice Chains And Getting Involved In The Business Of Dying. Huffington Post, Dec 21, 2021. “One private-equity-led hospice chain has thousands of seniors in its care and millions of dollars in government revenue. The owner's identity is a mystery.” “Today, private equity firms are acquiring American hospices at an astonishing rate. From 2012 to 2019, the number of hospices owned by private equity companies tripled. The pace of acquisitions seems to have only gotten faster during the COVID-19 pandemic. Industry brokers who have never before put together a deal involving private equity say they now field calls from private equity buyers multiple times a week. Tempted by a wave of retiring baby boomers, the-sky’s-the-limit Medicare payments, the mom-and-pop nature of the industry and a lack of regulation that is pretty startling even by U.S. standards, private equity now accounts for three out of every five new hospice acquisitions.”  Examined Traditions Health, which is owned by Dorilton Capital, whose owners are unknown.  “From 2000 to 2012, the share of for-profit hospices doubled, to 60%. Then, about a decade ago, private equity began to get more and more interested in the health care sector. It has recently come to dominate fields including dermatology and dentistry and impose steep profit demands, practitioners say, at the expense of patient care.  From 2011 to 2019, private equity ownership of hospices tripled. By 2019, there were more than 300 private-equity-owned hospices providing care to more than 112,000 Medicare recipients, according to Tyler Braun, a health policy researcher at Weill Cornell Medical College. That is a modest share of the total number of Medicare hospice patients — 1.46 million in 2019 — but it still works out to a soaring increase in the number of people spending their final days in the care of private equity: a 328% jump since 2012.”

Amy Goodman, Despite U.S. Embargo, Cuba Aims to Share Homegrown Vaccine with Global South.  Democracy Now, Jan 27, 2022.  Cuba developed 3 vaccines despite the limitations that the US led embargo placed on it.  

CNBC, Is Obamacare Fueling The Great Resignation?  CNBC, Jan 31, 2022.  Since workers don’t need their employer to provide health care, more workers feel free to not return to work.

David Sirota, The Congressional Budget Office’s Single-Payer Pitch.  The Daily Poster, Mar 14, 2022.  This video reveals “a surprising admission from the Republican-run Congressional Budget Office: Corporate health care is immiserating millions of Americans, and a Medicare for All-style system could fix the catastrophe.”

Lydia Densworth, People in Republican Counties Have Higher Death Rates Than Those in Democratic Counties. Scientific American, Jul 18, 2022. A growing mortality gap between Republican and Democratic areas may largely stem from policy choices. “In a study published in June in The BMJ, Warraich and his colleagues showed that over the two decades prior to the pandemic, there was a growing gap in mortality rates for residents of Republican and Democratic counties across the U.S. In 2001, the study’s starting point, the risk of death among red and blue counties (as defined by the results of presidential elections) was similar. Overall, the U.S. mortality rate has decreased in the nearly two decades since then (albeit not as much as in most other high-income countries). But the improvement for those living in Republican counties by 2019 was half that of those in Democratic counties—11 percent lower versus 22 percent lower.”

PBS News Hour, Compelling New Evidence Tracks COVID’s Origin to Wuhan Market.  PBS News Hour, Jul 27, 2022.  Not about animal extinction per se, but the impact of climate change and government policy on human-animal interaction. Interview with Angela Rasmussen, Canadian virologist, who published an article in the Journal of Science.  There is physical evidence of the virus at the live animal market from November and December of 2019.  Also, incidents of human infection clustered around the market, not the Wuhan Institute of Virology.  Argues for two separate introductions at the market of SARS-COV-2 lineage A and B.  Although see Briahna Joy Grey, Robby Soave, Ryan Grim and Emily Jashinsky, Lab Leak Theory Not Debunked By New Studies Claiming Natural Origin. Rising | The Hill, Jul 28, 2022. The market was very close to the lab. The natural emergence theory actually looks worse for the Chinese government than the lab outbreak theory, because the Chinese government had promised to regulate live animal markets.  This raises the equally troubling concern that climate change is driving shifts in animal habitats and behavior, and therefore in human-animal interaction, and the need for global cooperation in health monitoring systems.

Amy Goodman, Health Insurance Whistleblower: Medicare Advantage Is "Heist" by Private Firms to Defraud the Public.  Democracy Now, Oct 12, 2022.  Goodman interviews Wendell Potter, author and health insurance whistleblower. “Many of the nation's largest health insurance companies have made billions of dollars in profits by overbilling the U.S. government's Medicare Advantage program. A New York Times investigation has revealed that under the Advantage program, health insurance companies are incentivized to make patients appear more ill than they actually are. Some estimates find it has cost the government between $12 billion and $25 billion in 2020 alone. We speak with former healthcare insurance executive Wendell Potter, now president ​​of the Center for Health and Democracy, who says Medicare Advantage will be recognized in years to come as the "biggest transfer of wealth" from taxpayers to corporate shareholders, and blames the lack of regulation over the program on the "revolving door between private industry and government."” 

Morning Joe, Red States See Highest Affordable Care Act Enrollment Rates.  Morning Joe | MSNBC, Feb 2, 2023.  A good update on the ACA.

Krystal Ball, Revealed: Why Southerners' Credit Scores Are Terrible. Breaking Points, Feb 23, 2023.  Medical debt due to Southern political leaders refusing to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act 2010.  Refers to Andrew Van Dam, Why the South Has Such Low Credit Scores.  Washington Post, Feb 17, 2023. 

Krystal Ball, Biden Kills Healthcare for 15 Million. Breaking Points, Apr 3, 2023. 

More Perfect Union, How One Drug Could Break America’s Health Care System.  More Perfect Union, Jun 28, 2023.  

Matthew Cunningham-Cook, Private Equity Wreckers Come For Your Health Insurance. The Lever, Jul 28, 2023. “As hundreds of thousands lose coverage and face major additional out-of-pocket expenses, private equity enters the spotlight.”

Colin Woodward, America’s Surprising Partisan Divide on Life Expectancy.  Politico, Sep 1, 2023. “Centuries-old settlement patterns — and the attitudes they spawned about government — are to blame for differences in longevity between red southern states and bluer parts of the country.”

Noah Smith, Here Are Some Better Versions of Bernie’s Ideas.  Noahpinion | Substack, Sep 26, 2023.  

Lisa Jarvis, Long Covid Is Real. Now the Evidence Is Piling Up.  Bloomberg, Sep 27, 2023.  Two new reports this week from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that in 2022, some 18 million adults said they had ever had long Covid, with about 8.8 million currently suffering from the condition. In that time, roughly 1 million children had been affected — with about 360,000 children reporting an ongoing case.

National Institutes of Health, SARS-CoV-2 Infects Coronary Arteries, Increases Plaque Inflammation.  NIH, Sep 28, 2023.  

Washington Post Staff, The Post Spent the Past Year Examining U.S. Life Expectancy. Here’s What We Found. Washington Post, Oct 3, 2023. Factors highlighted: chronic diseases; poverty’s impact on health; childhood. Lauren Weber, Dan Diamond, and Dan Keating, How Red State Policies Are Shaving Years Off American Lives. Washington Post, Oct 3, 2023.

James Li, The Toxic Ingredient Hiding in Everything That Nobody is Talking About.  51 - 49 with James Li, Jan 3, 2024.  Trans-fats that are triglycerides have to be labeled at certain quantities.  But not Monoglycerides and Diglycerides.  This can lead to leaky gut, inflammation, irritable bowel syndrome, and other health issues.  James Li also talks about the politics and corporations behind this.

Negar Fani, Racism Produces Subtle Brain Changes that Lead to Increased Disease Risk in Black Populations.  Insight News, Jan 2, 2024. Fani is Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Neuroscience at Emory University and Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. 

Linda F. Hersey, Severe Shortages of Doctors and Nurses Have Persisted for a Decade at VA Facilities, Report Finds. Stars and Stripes, Aug 7, 2024.