Podcasts about national health program

This week on CodeWACK! Medicare for All is back in the spotlight! With two new bills recently introduced in Congress, what makes these proposals different from earlier versions— and why are some advocates feeling hopeful, even in the current political climate? What would a truly public, universal health care system look like, and how could it help curb the soaring costs, corporate greed, and bureaucracy plaguing our current system? To unpack this, we spoke with Rachel Madley, Director of Policy and Advocacy at the Center for Health and Democracy. A former health policy advisor to Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal — lead sponsor of the House Medicare for All bill — Rachel helped shape and reintroduce the landmark legislation in 2023. She's also a former FDA staffer and holds a PhD in Microbiology and Immunology from Columbia University, where she was active in both Physicians for a National Health Program and Students for a National Health Program.

This week on CodeWACK! Medicare for All is back in the spotlight! With two new bills recently introduced in Congress, what makes these proposals different from earlier versions— and why are some advocates feeling hopeful, even in the current political climate? What would a truly public, universal health care system look like, and how could it help curb the soaring costs, corporate greed, and bureaucracy plaguing our current system? To unpack this, we spoke with Rachel Madley, Director of Policy and Advocacy at the Center for Health and Democracy. A former health policy advisor to Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal — lead sponsor of the House Medicare for All bill — Rachel helped shape and reintroduce the landmark legislation in 2023. She's also a former FDA staffer and holds a PhD in Microbiology and Immunology from Columbia University, where she was active in both Physicians for a National Health Program and Students for a National Health Program. Check out the Transcript and Show Notes for more! And please keep Code WACK! on the air with a tax-deductible donation at heal-ca.org/donate.

Why is National Single Payer organizing a National Day of Action on May 31 amid cuts and freezes to public health programs? How has an incremental approach to universal health care in America made comprehensive healthcare reform more difficult? To find out, we recently talked to Dr. Ana Malinow, who spent three decades working as a pediatrician with immigrant, refugee and underserved children before retiring as clinical professor of Pediatrics from UC San Francisco School of Medicine. The past president of Physicians for a National Health Program, she is on the steering committee of National Single Payer. She's also a lead organizer for The Movement to End Privatization of Medicare. This is the first episode in a two-part series.

This week on CodeWACK! Single payer is back in the spotlight with Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Pramila Jayapal submitting new Medicare for All bills for 2025-26! How will the upcoming National Day of Action on May 31st keep the need for healthcare reform in the spotlight? And how do physicians feel about single payer today, 60 years after the American Medical Association's infamous ‘stealth campaign' against socialized medicine (featuring none other than Ronald Reagan)? To find out, we recently talked to Dr. Ana Malinow, who spent three decades working as a pediatrician with immigrant, refugee and underserved children before retiring as clinical professor of Pediatrics from UC San Francisco School of Medicine. The past president of Physicians for a National Health Program, she is on the steering committee of National Single Payer. She's also a lead organizer for The Movement to End Privatization of Medicare.

This week on CodeWACK! Single payer is back in the spotlight with Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Pramila Jayapal  submitting new Medicare for All bills for 2025-26! How will the upcoming National Day of Action on May 31st keep the need for healthcare reform in the spotlight? And how do physicians feel about single payer today, 60 years after the American Medical Association's infamous ‘stealth campaign' against socialized medicine (featuring none other than Ronald Reagan)?  To find out, we recently talked to Dr. Ana Malinow, who spent three decades working as a pediatrician with immigrant, refugee and underserved children before retiring as clinical professor of Pediatrics from UC San Francisco School of Medicine. The past president of Physicians for a National Health Program, she is on the steering committee of National Single Payer. She's also a lead organizer for The Movement to End Privatization of Medicare. This is the second episode in a two-part series. Check out the Transcript and Show Notes for more! And please keep Code WACK! on the air with a tax-deductible donation at heal-ca.org/donate.   

This week on CodeWACK! Single payer is back in the spotlight with Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Pramila Jayapal submitting new Medicare for All bills for 2025-26! How will the upcoming National Day of Action on May 31st keep the need for healthcare reform in the spotlight? And how do physicians feel about single payer today, 60 years after the American Medical Association's infamous ‘stealth campaign' against socialized medicine (featuring none other than Ronald Reagan)? To find out, we recently talked to Dr. Ana Malinow, who spent three decades working as a pediatrician with immigrant, refugee and underserved children before retiring as clinical professor of Pediatrics from UC San Francisco School of Medicine. The past president of Physicians for a National Health Program, she is on the steering committee of National Single Payer. She's also a lead organizer for The Movement to End Privatization of Medicare. This is the second episode in a two-part series. Check out the Transcript and Show Notes for more! And please keep Code WACK! on the air with a tax-deductible donation at heal-ca.org/donate.

Please donate to the show!We invite Morgan Moore, executive director of the New York Metro Chapter of Physicians for a National Health Program, to the show for the third part of our series on health care. We take a look at New York as a case study for advancing single-payer health care legislation, challenging reluctant Democratic legislative leadership, and building long-term movements to achieve policy goals.You're listening to Incorruptible Mass. Our goal is to help people transform state politics: we investigate why it's so broken, imagine what we could have here in MA if we fixed it, and report on how you can get involved.To stay informed:Subscribe to our YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/@theincorruptibles6939Subscribe to the podcast at https://incorruptible-mass.buzzsprout.com/Sign up to get updates at https://www.theincorruptibles.us/Donate to the show at https://secure.actblue.com/donate/impodcast

This week on CodeWACK!   Why is National Single Payer organizing a National Day of Action on May 31 amid cuts and freezes to public health programs? How has an incremental approach to universal health care in America made comprehensive healthcare reform more difficult?  To find out, we recently talked to Dr. Ana Malinow, who spent three decades working as a pediatrician with immigrant, refugee and underserved children before retiring as clinical professor of Pediatrics from UC San Francisco School of Medicine. The past president of Physicians for a National Health Program, she is on the steering committee of National Single Payer. She's also a lead organizer for The Movement to End Privatization of Medicare. This is the first episode in a two-part series. Check out the Transcript and Show Notes for more! And please keep Code WACK! on the air with a tax-deductible donation at heal-ca.org/donate.   

This week on CodeWACK! Why is National Single Payer organizing a National Day of Action on May 31 amid cuts and freezes to public health programs? How has an incremental approach to universal health care in America made comprehensive healthcare reform more difficult? To find out, we recently talked to Dr. Ana Malinow, who spent three decades working as a pediatrician with immigrant, refugee and underserved children before retiring as clinical professor of Pediatrics from UC San Francisco School of Medicine. The past president of Physicians for a National Health Program, she is on the steering committee of National Single Payer. She's also a lead organizer for The Movement to End Privatization of Medicare. This is the first episode in a two-part series. And please keep Code WACK! on the air with a tax-deductible donation at heal-ca.org/donate.

For this episode, we're going back to a familiar villain from podcast-past because  unfortunately, healthcare villains have a habit of staying relevant. This is a guy who made his fame by cozying up to Oprah while schilling diet pills, supplements, and medical conspiracy theories – it's Doctor Oz, who is now Trump's nominee for Director of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services. That's right, the man who has previously claimed that there are deadly levels of arsenic in apple juice, that most olive oil is fake, that “Reparative Therapy” can cure homosexuality, and that hydroxychloroquine cures COVID, is pretty close to running our largest public health systems. Today I'm talking with Dr. Diljeet Singh of Physicians for a National Health program about what that means for you and the country at large, and how we can do something about it!  NOTE: At the Medicare for All Podcast, we've had a brief, unplanned hiatus due to pesky technical issues – and the fact that Trump is keeping us busy in our organizing work – but we are very excited to be back! I'm flying solo right now while my regular cohost Ben is saving the environment at his 9 to 5 organizing job, but that feels like important work as well, so we're going to give him a pass and send him our love! https://www.youtube.com/live/3ZUE4sOTI_g?si=WGg97KnP-UxktIsu Our guest for this episode was the brilliant Dr. Diljeet Singh! She's a women's health advocate, an integrative gynecologic oncologist, and the President of Physicians for a National Health Program. Dr. Singh received her medical degree from Northwestern University and her master's degree from the Harvard School of Public Health. She completed an obstetrics and gynecology residency at Johns Hopkins and a gynecologic oncology fellowship at the MD Anderson Cancer Center. She completed her doctoral degree in public health on cost analysis at the University of Texas School of Public Health and an associate fellowship in integrative medicine at the University of Arizona. Dr. Singh and our friends at Physicians for a National Health Program are going all out to let folks know about the serious danger Dr. Oz poses to our national health! Check out the videos from their Dr. Oz Shadow Hearing below: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLO8yDO3B42TdHs6GC-PcLez2ZHfZ4CfTN&si=Q3YMJR1IEvr9uHX1 Even though it is likely that the Senate will make it official later this month, as of April 1st, Dr. Oz still hasn't been confirmed, so if you're listening to this in the next couple weeks, you may still be able to call your Senators to ask them to come to their senses! Reach their offices through the Capitol Hill switchboard: (202) 224-3121. Follow & Support the Pod! Don't forget to like this episode and subscribe to The Medicare for All Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or your favorite podcast platform! This show is a project of the Healthcare NOW Education Fund! This show is a project of the Healthcare-NOW Education Fund! If you want to support our work, you can donate at our website, healthcare-now.org.

Listeners, what were you doing in 2004? Perhaps you were strolling down the street in low rise jeans, Uggs, and a Livestrong bracelet listening to Outkast's “Hey Ya!” Or maybe you were sitting in a movie theater ready to have your mind blown by Ashton Kutcher's tour de force performance in The Butterfly Effect. Well, the folks joining us on this week's episode of our podcast may have missed some of that stuff because they were too busy building a movement for healthcare justice! 2024 marks the 20th anniversary of Healthcare NOW, the national organization fighting for Medicare for All that brings you your favorite podcast! If you're a regular listener, you probably know that I was the Executive Director of Healthcare NOW for 11 years, and Gillian is the current Executive Director, but today we're taking it back to 2004 and talking with some of the OGs who started it all! This episode features some of our very favorite people -- the leaders in the healthcare justice movement who have made Healthcare NOW what it is today (the creator of your favorite podcast content!): Mark Dudzic is a longtime union organizer and activist.  He served as national organizer of the Labor Party from 2003 to 2007 and was a cofounder of the Labor Campaign for Single Payer in 2009.  He has been a member of the Healthcare Now board since its founding in 2004. Lindy Hern is the Chair of the Sociology Department at the University of Hawaii at Hilo and President of the Association for Applied and Clinical Sociology. She has been on the Healthcare NOW board since 2009 and is the author of “Single Payer Healthcare Reform: Grassroots Mobilization and the Turn Against Establishment Politics in the Medicare for All Movement."  Donna Smith is an advocate for single payer, improved and expanded Medicare for all. Her journalism career included work as a stringer for NEWSWEEK magazine, editing and reporting for the Black Hills Pioneer in South Dakota, as well as appearances on CNN and Bill Moyers Journal, and as one of the subjects in Michael Moore's 2007 film, SiCKO. She worked for National Nurses United and traveled more than 250,000 miles advocating for health justice. She now serves as the National Advisory Board chair for Progressive Democrats of America. Walter Tsou is a Board Advisor to Physicians for a National Health Program and on the Board of HCN.  He has been a long time single payer healthcare activist.  Walter is a former Health Commissioner of Philadelphia and Past President of the American Public Health Association. Cindy Young has been a healthcare activist for over 40 years. She has served on the Health Care Now board since 2012. In her retirement, she serves as a Vice President for the California Alliance for Retired Americans (CARA), whose principle goal is to establish a single payer system in California. If this episode doesn't give you your fill of Healthcare NOW history, you can always check out Lindy's book or this sweet tribute to our founder Marilyn Clement. And of course, if you want to keep up the good work of all these amazing folks, you can make a donation to support our work!

On March 18, several hundred people including many medical students and doctors came to Albany to lobby for NY Health, a single payer universal health care program NY Health would lower overall health care expenditures while ensuring that all New Yorkers would have access to quality health care regardless of their employment or immigration status, with no out of pocket expenditures and no role for private health expenditures. We hear first from retired Assemblymember Richard Gottfried, the author of NY Health. We also hear from Dr. Betty Kolod, the Chair of the Metro Chapter of Physicians for a National Health Program and Dr. Jessica Mitter Pardo. By Mark Dunlea for Hudson Mohawk Magazine

With less than 2 weeks left before the Governor and State Legislature are due to agree on the state budget, advocacy groups were out in full force at the State Capitol pitching their causes. We covered three events, all occurring at 11 AM. We talk with Jerome Wright Co-Director of the Halt Solitary campaign in the 2nd floor war room; Rachel Fauss of Reinvent Albany who was part of a coalition on the fourth floor outside the Senate Gallery calling to overhaul the state's Freedom of Information laws; and Dr. Oliver Fein of Physicians for a National Health Program with the NY Health Campaign on the Million Dollar Staircase on the third floor. By Mark Dunlea for the Hudson Mohawk Magazine.

Today, on the Hudson Mohawk Magazine, Mark Dunlea talks with Jerome Wright Co-Director of the Halt Solitary campaign; Rachel Fauss of Reinvent Albany who was part of a coalition calling to overhaul the state's Freedom of Information laws; and Dr. Oliver Fein of Physicians for a National Health Program with the NY Health Campaign. Then, Willie Terry interviews Joni Richter, Associate Director of the American Cancer Society, Cancer Center Partnership, about their project "Voices of Black Women." Later on, Andrea Cunliffe chats with Assistant Professor Tassiana Moura deOliveira about her experiences living in Brazil under Dictatorship and Democracy as a Law and Political Science Professor. After that, Juan Pantaleon talks about the competitive side of comedy with Ryan Shipley and Drew Moore who host a monthly Open Mic Comedy Competition on the last Wednesday of every month at the Van Dyck Music Club in Schenectady. Finally, Thom Francis highlights poets Jill Crammond and Cheryl A. Rice Co-hosts: Vinny DamaPoleto & Sina Basila Hickey Engineer: Jalaya Reid

The NY Health Act is a single payer universal health care proposal, similar to an improved and expanded Medicare for All. Morgan Moore of the Metro Chapter of the Physicians for a National Health Program talks about the March 18th advocacy day for NY Health at the Capitol with Mark Dunlea for Hudson Mohawk Magazine.

Dr. Gary Null provides a commentary on "Universal  Healthcare"       Universal Healthcare is the Solution to a Broken Medical System Gary Null, PhD Progressive Radio Network, March 3, 2025 For over 50 years, there has been no concerted or successful effort to bring down medical costs in the American healthcare system. Nor are the federal health agencies making disease prevention a priority. Regardless whether the political left or right sponsors proposals for reform, such measures are repeatedly defeated by both parties in Congress. As a result, the nation's healthcare system remains one of the most expensive and least efficient in the developed world. For the past 30 years, medical bills contributing to personal debt regularly rank among the top three causes of personal bankruptcy. This is a reality that reflects not only the financial strain on ordinary Americans but the systemic failure of the healthcare system itself. The urgent question is: If President Trump and his administration are truly seeking to reduce the nation's $36 trillion deficit, why is there no serious effort to reform the most bloated and corrupt sector of the economy? A key obstacle is the widespread misinformation campaign that falsely claims universal health care would cost an additional $2 trillion annually and further balloon the national debt. However, a more honest assessment reveals the opposite. If the US adopted a universal single-payer system, the nation could actually save up to $20 trillion over the next 10 years rather than add to the deficit. Even with the most ambitious efforts by people like Elon Musk to rein in federal spending or optimize government efficiency, the estimated savings would only amount to $500 billion. This is only a fraction of what could be achieved through comprehensive healthcare reform alone. Healthcare is the largest single expenditure of the federal budget. A careful examination of where the $5 trillion spent annually on healthcare actually goes reveals massive systemic fraud and inefficiency. Aside from emergency medicine, which accounts for only 10-12 percent of total healthcare expenditures, the bulk of this spending does not deliver better health outcomes nor reduce trends in physical and mental illness. Applying Ockham's Razor, the principle that the simplest solution is often the best, the obvious conclusion is that America's astronomical healthcare costs are the direct result of price gouging on an unimaginable scale. For example, in most small businesses, profit margins range between 1.6 and 2.5 percent, such as in grocery retail. Yet the pharmaceutical industrial complex routinely operates on markup rates as high as 150,000 percent for many prescription drugs. The chart below highlights the astronomical gap between the retail price of some top-selling patented pharmaceutical medications and their generic equivalents. Drug Condition Patent Price (per unit) Generic Price Estimated Manufacture Cost Markup Source Insulin (Humalog) Diabetes $300 $30 $3 10,000% Rand (2021) EpiPen Allergic reactions $600 $30 $10 6,000% BMJ (2022) Daraprim Toxoplasmosis $750/pill $2 $0.50 150,000% JAMA (2019) Harvoni Hepatitis C $94,500 (12 weeks) $30,000 $200 47,000% WHO Report (2018) Lipitor Cholesterol $150 $10 $0.50 29,900% Health Affairs (2020) Xarelto Blood Thinner $450 $25 $1.50 30,000% NEJM (2020) Abilify Schizophrenia $800 (30 tablets) $15 $2 39,900% AJMC (2019) Revlimid Cancer $16,000/mo $450 $150 10,500% Kaiser Health News (2021) Humira Arthritis $2,984/dose $400 $50 5,868% Rand (2021) Sovaldi Hepatitis C $1,000/pill $10 $2 49,900% JAMA (2021) Xolair Asthma $2,400/dose $300 $50 4,800% NEJM (2020) Gleevec Leukemia $10,000/mo $350 $200 4,900% Harvard Public Health Review (2020) OxyContin Pain Relief $600 (30 tablets) $15 $0.50 119,900% BMJ (2022) Remdesivir Covid-19 $3,120 (5 doses) N/A $10 31,100% The Lancet (2020) The corruption extends far beyond price gouging. Many pharmaceutical companies convince federal health agencies to fund their basic research and drug development with taxpayer dollars. Yet when these companies bring successful products to market, the profits are kept entirely by the corporations or shared with the agencies or groups of government scientists. On the other hand, the public, who funded the research, receives no financial return. This amounts to a systemic betrayal of the public trust on a scale of hundreds of billions of dollars annually. Another significant contributor to rising healthcare costs is the widespread practice of defensive medicine that is driven by the constant threat of litigation. Over the past 40 years, defensive medicine has become a cottage industry. Physicians order excessive diagnostic tests and unnecessary treatments simply to protect themselves from lawsuits. Study after study has shown that these over-performed procedures not only inflate costs but lead to iatrogenesis or medical injury and death caused by the medical  system and practices itself. The solution is simple: adopting no-fault healthcare coverage for everyone where patients receive care without needing to sue and thereby freeing doctors from the burden of excessive malpractice insurance. A single-payer universal healthcare system could fundamentally transform the entire industry by capping profits at every level — from drug manufacturers to hospitals to medical equipment suppliers. The Department of Health and Human Services would have the authority to set profit margins for medical procedures. This would ensure that healthcare is determined by outcomes, not profits. Additionally, the growing influence of private equity firms and vulture capitalists buying up hospitals and medical clinics across America must be reined in. These equity firms prioritize profit extraction over improving the quality of care. They often slash staff, raise prices, and dictate medical procedures based on what will yield the highest returns. Another vital reform would be to provide free medical education for doctors and nurses in exchange for five years of service under the universal system. Medical professionals would earn a realistic salary cap to prevent them from being lured into equity partnerships or charging exorbitant rates. The biggest single expense in the current system, however, is the private health insurance industry, which consumes 33 percent of the $5 trillion healthcare budget. Health insurance CEOs consistently rank among the highest-paid executives in the country. Their companies, who are nothing more than bean counters, decide what procedures and drugs will be covered, partially covered, or denied altogether. This entire industry is designed to place profits above patients' lives. If the US dismantled its existing insurance-based system and replaced it with a fully reformed national healthcare model, the country could save $2.7 trillion annually while simultaneously improving health outcomes. Over the course of 10 years, those savings would amount to $27 trillion. This could wipe out nearly the entire national debt in a short time. This solution has been available for decades but has been systematically blocked by corporate lobbying and bipartisan corruption in Washington. The path forward is clear but only if American citizens demand a system where healthcare is valued as a public service and not a commodity. The national healthcare crisis is not just a fiscal issue. It is a crucial moral failure of the highest order. With the right reforms, the nation could simultaneously restore its financial health and deliver the kind of healthcare system its citizens have long deserved. American Healthcare: Corrupt, Broken and Lethal Richard Gale and Gary Null Progressive Radio Network, March 3, 2025 For a nation that prides itself on being the world's wealthiest, most innovative and technologically advanced, the US' healthcare system is nothing less than a disaster and disgrace. Not only are Americans the least healthy among the most developed nations, but the US' health system ranks dead last among high-income countries. Despite rising costs and our unshakeable faith in American medical exceptionalism, average life expectancy in the US has remained lower than other OECD nations for many years and continues to decline. The United Nations recognizes healthcare as a human right. In 2018, former UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon denounced the American healthcare system as "politically and morally wrong." During the pandemic it is estimated that two to three years was lost on average life expectancy. On the other hand, before the Covid-19 pandemic, countries with universal healthcare coverage found their average life expectancy stable or slowly increasing. The fundamental problem in the U.S. is that politics have been far too beholden to the pharmaceutical, HMO and private insurance industries. Neither party has made any concerted effort to reign in the corruption of corporate campaign funding and do what is sensible, financially feasible and morally correct to improve Americans' quality of health and well-being.   The fact that our healthcare system is horribly broken is proof that moneyed interests have become so powerful to keep single-payer debate out of the media spotlight and censored. Poll after poll shows that the American public favors the expansion of public health coverage. Other incremental proposals, including Medicare and Medicaid buy-in plans, are also widely preferred to the Affordable Care Act or Obamacare mess we are currently stuck with.   It is not difficult to understand how the dismal state of American medicine is the result of a system that has been sold out to the free-market and the bottom line interests of drug makers and an inflated private insurance industry. How advanced and ethically sound can a healthcare system be if tens of millions of people have no access to medical care because it is financially out of their reach?  The figures speak for themselves. The U.S. is burdened with a $41 trillion Medicare liability. The number of uninsured has declined during the past several years but still lingers around 25 million. An additional 30-35 million are underinsured. There are currently 65 million Medicare enrollees and 89 million Medicaid recipients. This is an extremely unhealthy snapshot of the country's ability to provide affordable healthcare and it is certainly unsustainable. The system is a public economic failure, benefiting no one except the large and increasingly consolidated insurance and pharmaceutical firms at the top that supervise the racket.   Our political parties have wrestled with single-payer or universal healthcare for decades. Obama ran his first 2008 presidential campaign on a single-payer platform. Since 1985, his campaign health adviser, the late Dr. Quentin Young from the University of Illinois Medical School, was one of the nation's leading voices calling for universal health coverage.  During a private conversation with Dr. Young shortly before his passing in 2016, he conveyed his sense of betrayal at the hands of the Obama administration. Dr. Young was in his 80s when he joined the Obama campaign team to help lead the young Senator to victory on a promise that America would finally catch up with other nations. The doctor sounded defeated. He shared how he was manipulated, and that Obama held no sincere intention to make universal healthcare a part of his administration's agenda. During the closed-door negotiations, which spawned the weak and compromised Affordable Care Act, Dr. Young was neither consulted nor invited to participate. In fact, he told us that he never heard from Obama again after his White House victory.   Past efforts to even raise the issue have been viciously attacked. A huge army of private interests is determined to keep the public enslaved to private insurers and high medical costs. The failure of our healthcare is in no small measure due to it being a fully for-profit operation. Last year, private health insurance accounted for 65 percent of coverage. Consider that there are over 900 private insurance companies in the US. National Health Expenditures (NHE) grew to $4.5 trillion in 2022, which was 17.3 percent of GDP. Older corporate rank-and-file Democrats and Republicans argue that a single-payer or socialized medical program is unaffordable. However, not only is single-payer affordable, it will end bankruptcies due to unpayable medical debt. In addition, universal healthcare, structured on a preventative model, will reduce disease rates at the outset.    Corporate Democrats argue that Obama's Affordable Care Act (ACA) was a positive step inching the country towards complete public coverage. However, aside from providing coverage to the poorest of Americans, Obamacare turned into another financial anchor around the necks of millions more. According to the health policy research group KFF, the average annual health insurance premium for single coverage is $8,400 and almost $24,000 for a family. In addition, patient out-of-pocket costs continue to increase, a 6.6% increase to $471 billion in 2022. Rather than healthcare spending falling, it has exploded, and the Trump and Biden administrations made matters worse.    Clearly, a universal healthcare program will require flipping the script on the entire private insurance industry, which employed over half a million people last year.  Obviously, the most volatile debate concerning a national universal healthcare system concerns cost. Although there is already a socialized healthcare system in place -- every federal legislator, bureaucrat, government employee and veteran benefits from it -- fiscal Republican conservatives and groups such as the Koch Brothers network are single-mindedly dedicated to preventing the expansion of Medicare and Medicaid. A Koch-funded Mercatus analysis made the outrageous claim that a single-payer system would increase federal health spending by $32 trillion in ten years. However, analyses and reviews by the Congressional Budget Office in the early 1990s concluded that such a system would only increase spending at the start; enormous savings would quickly offset it as the years pass. In one analysis, "the savings in administrative costs [10 percent of health spending] would be more than enough to offset the expense of universal coverage."    Defenders of those advocating for funding a National Health Program argue this can primarily be accomplished by raising taxes to levels comparable to other developed nations. This was a platform Senator Bernie Sanders and some of the younger progressive Democrats in the House campaigned on. The strategy was to tax the highest multimillion-dollar earners 60-70 percent. Despite the outrage of its critics, including old rank-and-file multi-millionaire Democrats like Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, this is still far less than in the past. During the Korean War, the top tax rate was 91 percent; it declined to 70 percent in the late 1960s. Throughout most of the 1970s, those in the lowest income bracket were taxed at 14 percent. We are not advocating for this strategy because it ignores where the funding is going, and the corruption in the system that is contributing to exorbitant waste.    But Democratic supporters of the ACA who oppose a universal healthcare plan ignore the additional taxes Obama levied to pay for the program. These included surtaxes on investment income, Medicare taxes from those earning over $200,000, taxes on tanning services, an excise tax on medical equipment, and a 40 percent tax on health coverage for costs over the designated cap that applied to flexible savings and health savings accounts. The entire ACA was reckless, sloppy and unnecessarily complicated from the start.    The fact that Obamacare further strengthened the distinctions between two parallel systems -- federal and private -- with entirely different economic structures created a labyrinth of red tape, rules, and wasteful bureaucracy. Since the ACA went into effect, over 150 new boards, agencies and programs have had to be established to monitor its 2,700 pages of gibberish. A federal single-payer system would easily eliminate this bureaucracy and waste.    A medical New Deal to establish universal healthcare coverage is a decisive step in the correct direction. But we must look at the crisis holistically and in a systematic way. Simply shuffling private insurance into a federal Medicare-for-all or buy-in program, funded by taxing the wealthiest of citizens, would only temporarily reduce costs. It will neither curtail nor slash escalating disease rates e. Any effective healthcare reform must also tackle the underlying reasons for Americans' poor state of health. We cannot shy away from examining the social illnesses infecting our entire free-market capitalist culture and its addiction to deregulation. A viable healthcare model would have to structurally transform how the medical economy operates. Finally, a successful medical New Deal must honestly evaluate the best and most reliable scientific evidence in order to effectively redirect public health spending.    For example, Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, a former Obama healthcare adviser, observed that AIDS-HIV measures consume the most public health spending, even though the disease "ranked 75th on the list of diseases by personal health expenditures." On the other hand, according to the American Medical Association, a large percentage of the nation's $3.4 trillion healthcare spending goes towards treating preventable diseases, notably diabetes, common forms of heart disease, and back and neck pain conditions. In 2016, these three conditions were the most costly and accounted for approximately $277 billion in spending. Last year, the CDC announced the autism rate is now 1 in 36 children compared to 1 in 44 two years ago. A retracted study by Mark Blaxill, an autism activist at the Holland Center and a friend of the authors, estimates that ASD costs will reach $589 billion annually by 2030. There are no signs that this alarming trend will reverse and decline; and yet, our entire federal health system has failed to conscientiously investigate the underlying causes of this epidemic. All explanations that might interfere with the pharmaceutical industry's unchecked growth, such as over-vaccination, are ignored and viciously discredited without any sound scientific evidence. Therefore, a proper medical New Deal will require a systemic overhaul and reform of our federal health agencies, especially the HHS, CDC and FDA. Only the Robert Kennedy Jr presidential campaign is even addressing the crisis and has an inexpensive and comprehensive plan to deal with it. For any medical revolution to succeed in advancing universal healthcare, the plan must prioritize spending in a manner that serves public health and not private interests. It will also require reshuffling private corporate interests and their lobbyists to the sidelines, away from any strategic planning, in order to break up the private interests' control over federal agencies and its revolving door policies. Aside from those who benefit from this medical corruption, the overwhelming majority of Americans would agree with this criticism. However, there is a complete lack of national trust that our legislators, including the so-called progressives, would be willing to undertake such actions.    In addition, America's healthcare system ignores the single most critical initiative to reduce costs - that is, preventative efforts and programs instead of deregulation and closing loopholes designed to protect the drug and insurance industries' bottom line. Prevention can begin with banning toxic chemicals that are proven health hazards associated with current disease epidemics, and it can begin by removing a 1,000-plus toxins already banned in Europe. This should be a no-brainer for any legislator who cares for public health. For example, Stacy Malkan, co-founder of the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, notes that "the policy approach in the US and Europe is dramatically different" when it comes to chemical allowances in cosmetic products. Whereas the EU has banned 1,328 toxic substances from the cosmetic industry alone, the US has banned only 11. The US continues to allow carcinogenic formaldehyde, petroleum, forever chemicals, many parabens (an estrogen mimicker and endocrine hormone destroyer), the highly allergenic p-phenylenediamine or PBD, triclosan, which has been associated with the rise in antibiotic resistant bacteria, avobenzone, and many others to be used in cosmetics, sunscreens, shampoo and hair dyes.   Next, the food Americans consume can be reevaluated for its health benefits. There should be no hesitation to tax the unhealthiest foods, such as commercial junk food, sodas and candy relying on high fructose corn syrup, products that contain ingredients proven to be toxic, and meat products laden with dangerous chemicals including growth hormones and antibiotics. The scientific evidence that the average American diet is contributing to rising disease trends is indisputable. We could also implement additional taxes on the public advertising of these demonstrably unhealthy products. All such tax revenue would accrue to a national universal health program to offset medical expenditures associated with the very illnesses linked to these products. Although such tax measures would help pay for a new medical New Deal, it may be combined with programs to educate the public about healthy nutrition if it is to produce a reduction in the most common preventable diseases. In fact, comprehensive nutrition courses in medical schools should be mandatory because the average physician receives no education in this crucial subject.  In addition, preventative health education should be mandatory throughout public school systems.   Private insurers force hospitals, clinics and private physicians into financial corners, and this is contributing to prodigious waste in money and resources. Annually, healthcare spending towards medical liability insurance costs tens of billions of dollars. In particular, this economic burden has taxed small clinics and physicians. It is well past the time that physician liability insurance is replaced with no-fault options. Today's doctors are spending an inordinate amount of money to protect themselves. Legions of liability and trial lawyers seek big paydays for themselves stemming from physician error. This has created a culture of fear among doctors and hospitals, resulting in the overly cautious practice of defensive medicine, driving up costs and insurance premiums just to avoid lawsuits. Doctors are forced to order unnecessary tests and prescribe more medications and medical procedures just to cover their backsides. No-fault insurance is a common-sense plan that enables physicians to pursue their profession in a manner that will reduce iatrogenic injuries and costs. Individual cases requiring additional medical intervention and loss of income would still be compensated. This would generate huge savings.    No other nation suffers from the scourge of excessive drug price gouging like the US. After many years of haggling to lower prices and increase access to generic drugs, only a minute amount of progress has been made in recent years. A 60 Minutes feature about the Affordable Care Act reported an "orgy of lobbying and backroom deals in which just about everyone with a stake in the $3-trillion-a-year health industry came out ahead—except the taxpayers.” For example, Life Extension magazine reported that an antiviral cream (acyclovir), which had lost its patent protection, "was being sold to pharmacies for 7,500% over the active ingredient cost. The active ingredient (acyclovir) costs only 8 pennies, yet pharmacies are paying a generic maker $600 for this drug and selling it to consumers for around $700." Other examples include the antibiotic Doxycycline. The price per pill averages 7 cents to $3.36 but has a 5,300 percent markup when it reaches the consumer. The antidepressant Clomipramine is marked up 3,780 percent, and the anti-hypertensive drug Captopril's mark-up is 2,850 percent. And these are generic drugs!    Medication costs need to be dramatically cut to allow drug manufacturers a reasonable but not obscene profit margin. By capping profits approximately 100 percent above all costs, we would save our system hundreds of billions of dollars. Such a measure would also extirpate the growing corporate misdemeanors of pricing fraud, which forces patients to pay out-of-pocket in order to make up for the costs insurers are unwilling to pay.    Finally, we can acknowledge that our healthcare is fundamentally a despotic rationing system based upon high insurance costs vis-a-vis a toss of the dice to determine where a person sits on the economic ladder. For the past three decades it has contributed to inequality. The present insurance-based economic metrics cast millions of Americans out of coverage because private insurance costs are beyond their means. Uwe Reinhardt, a Princeton University political economist, has called our system "brutal" because it "rations [people] out of the system." He defined rationing as "withholding something from someone that is beneficial." Discriminatory healthcare rationing now affects upwards to 60 million people who have been either priced out of the system or under insured. They make too much to qualify for Medicare under Obamacare, yet earn far too little to afford private insurance costs and premiums. In the final analysis, the entire system is discriminatory and predatory.    However, we must be realistic. Almost every member of Congress has benefited from Big Pharma and private insurance lobbyists. The only way to begin to bring our healthcare program up to the level of a truly developed nation is to remove the drug industry's rampant and unnecessary profiteering from the equation.     How did Fauci memory-hole a cure for AIDS and get away with it?   By Helen Buyniski   Over 700,000 Americans have died of AIDS since 1981, with the disease claiming some 42.3 million victims worldwide. While an HIV diagnosis is no longer considered a certain death sentence, the disease looms large in the public imagination and in public health funding, with contemporary treatments running into thousands of dollars per patient annually.   But was there a cure for AIDS all this time - an affordable and safe treatment that was ruthlessly suppressed and attacked by the US public health bureaucracy and its agents? Could this have saved millions of lives and billions of dollars spent on AZT, ddI and failed HIV vaccine trials? What could possibly justify the decision to disappear a safe and effective approach down the memory hole?   The inventor of the cure, Gary Null, already had several decades of experience creating healing protocols for physicians to help patients not responding well to conventional treatments by the time AIDS was officially defined in 1981. Null, a registered dietitian and board-certified nutritionist with a PhD in human nutrition and public health science, was a senior research fellow and Director of Anti-Aging Medicine at the Institute of Applied Biology for 36 years and has published over 950 papers, conducting groundbreaking experiments in reversing biological aging as confirmed with DNA methylation testing. Additionally, Null is a multi-award-winning documentary filmmaker, bestselling author, and investigative journalist whose work exposing crimes against humanity over the last 50 years has highlighted abuses by Big Pharma, the military-industrial complex, the financial industry, and the permanent government stay-behind networks that have come to be known as the Deep State.   Null was contacted in 1974 by Dr. Stephen Caiazza, a physician working with a subculture of gay men in New York living the so-called “fast track” lifestyle, an extreme manifestation of the gay liberation movement that began with the Stonewall riots. Defined by rampant sexual promiscuity and copious use of illegal and prescription drugs, including heavy antibiotic use for a cornucopia of sexually-transmitted diseases, the fast-track never included more than about two percent of gay men, though these dominated many of the bathhouses and clubs that defined gay nightlife in the era. These patients had become seriously ill as a result of their indulgence, generally arriving at the clinic with multiple STDs including cytomegalovirus and several types of herpes and hepatitis, along with candida overgrowth, nutritional deficiencies, gut issues, and recurring pneumonia. Every week for the next 10 years, Null would counsel two or three of these men - a total of 800 patients - on how to detoxify their bodies and de-stress their lives, tracking their progress with Caiazza and the other providers at weekly feedback meetings that he credits with allowing the team to quickly evaluate which treatments were most effective. He observed that it only took about two years on the “fast track” for a healthy young person to begin seeing muscle loss and the recurrent, lingering opportunistic infections that would later come to be associated with AIDS - while those willing to commit to a healthier lifestyle could regain their health in about a year.    It was with this background that Null established the Tri-State Healing Center in Manhattan in 1980, staffing the facility with what would eventually run to 22 certified health professionals to offer safe, natural, and effective low- and no-cost treatments to thousands of patients with HIV and AIDS-defining conditions. Null and his staff used variations of the protocols he had perfected with Caiazza's patients, a multifactorial patient-tailored approach that included high-dose vitamin C drips, intravenous ozone therapy, juicing and nutritional improvements and supplementation, aspects of homeopathy and naturopathy with some Traditional Chinese Medicine and Ayurvedic practices. Additional services offered on-site included acupuncture and holistic dentistry, while peer support groups were also held at the facility so that patients could find community and a positive environment, healing their minds and spirits while they healed their bodies.   “Instead of trying to kill the virus with antiretroviral pharmaceuticals designed to stop viral replication before it kills patients, we focused on what benefits could be gained by building up the patients' natural immunity and restoring biochemical integrity so the body could fight for itself,” Null wrote in a 2014 article describing the philosophy behind the Center's approach, which was wholly at odds with the pharmaceutical model.1   Patients were comprehensively tested every week, with any “recovery” defined solely by the labs, which documented AIDS patient after patient - 1,200 of them - returning to good health and reversing their debilitating conditions. Null claims to have never lost an AIDS patient in the Center's care, even as the death toll for the disease - and its pharmaceutical standard of care AZT - reached an all-time high in the early 1990s. Eight patients who had opted for a more intensive course of treatment - visiting the Center six days a week rather than one - actually sero-deconverted, with repeated subsequent testing showing no trace of HIV in their bodies.   As an experienced clinical researcher himself, Null recognized that any claims made by the Center would be massively scrutinized, challenging as they did the prevailing scientific consensus that AIDS was an incurable, terminal illness. He freely gave his protocols to any medical practitioner who asked, understanding that his own work could be considered scientifically valid only if others could replicate it under the same conditions. After weeks of daily observational visits to the Center, Dr. Robert Cathcart took the protocols back to San Francisco, where he excitedly reported that patients were no longer dying in his care.    Null's own colleague at the Institute of Applied Biology, senior research fellow Elana Avram, set up IV drip rooms at the Institute and used his intensive protocols to sero-deconvert 10 patients over a two-year period. While the experiment had been conducted in secret, as the Institute had been funded by Big Pharma since its inception half a century earlier, Avram had hoped she would be able to publish a journal article to further publicize Null's protocols and potentially help AIDS patients, who were still dying at incredibly high rates thanks to Burroughs Wellcome's noxious but profitable AZT. But as she would later explain in a 2019 letter to Null, their groundbreaking research never made it into print - despite meticulous documentation of their successes - because the Institute's director and board feared their pharmaceutical benefactors would withdraw the funding on which they depended, given that Null's protocols did not involve any patentable or otherwise profitable drugs. When Avram approached them about publication, the board vetoed the idea, arguing that it would “draw negative attention because [the work] was contrary to standard drug treatments.” With no real point in continuing experiments along those lines without institutional support and no hope of obtaining funding from elsewhere, the department she had created specifically for these experiments shut down after a two-year followup with her test subjects - all of whom remained alive and healthy - was completed.2   While the Center was receiving regular visits by this time from medical professionals and, increasingly, black celebrities like Stokely Carmichael and Isaac Hayes, who would occasionally perform for the patients, the news was spreading by word of mouth alone - not a single media outlet had dared to document the clinic that was curing AIDS patients for free. Instead, they gave airtime to Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases, who had for years been spreading baseless, hysteria-fueling claims about HIV and AIDS to any news outlet that would put him on. His claim that children could contract the virus from “ordinary household conduct” with an infected relative proved so outrageous he had to walk it back,3 and he never really stopped insisting the deadly plague associated with gays and drug users was about to explode like a nuclear bomb among the law-abiding heterosexual population. Fauci by this time controlled all government science funding through NIAID, and his zero-tolerance approach to dissent on the HIV/AIDS front had already seen prominent scientists like virologist Peter Duesberg stripped of the resources they needed for their work because they had dared to question his commandment: There is no cause of AIDS but HIV, and AZT is its treatment. Even the AIDS activist groups, which by then had been coopted by Big Pharma and essentially reduced to astroturfing for the toxic failed chemotherapy drug AZT backed by the institutional might of Fauci's NIAID,4 didn't seem to want to hear that there was a cure. Unconcerned with the irrationality of denouncing the man touting his free AIDS cure as an  “AIDS denier,” they warned journalists that platforming Null or anyone else rejecting the mainstream medical line would be met with organized demands for their firing.    Determined to breach the institutional iron curtain and get his message to the masses, Null and his team staged a press conference in New York, inviting scientists and doctors from around the world to share their research on alternative approaches to HIV and AIDS in 1993. To emphasize the sound scientific basis of the Center's protocols and encourage guests to adopt them into their own practices, Null printed out thousands of abstracts in support of each nutrient and treatment being used. However, despite over 7,000 invitations sent three times to major media, government figures, scientists, and activists, almost none of the intended audience members showed up. Over 100 AIDS patients and their doctors, whose charts exhaustively documented their improvements using natural and nontoxic modalities over the preceding 12 months, gave filmed testimonials, declaring that the feared disease was no longer a death sentence, but the conference had effectively been silenced. Bill Tatum, publisher of the Amsterdam News, suggested Null and his patients would find a more welcoming audience in his home neighborhood of Harlem - specifically, its iconic Apollo Theatre. For three nights, the theater was packed to capacity. Hit especially hard by the epidemic and distrustful of a medical system that had only recently stopped being openly racist (the Tuskegee syphilis experiment only ended in 1972), black Americans, at least, did not seem to care what Anthony Fauci would do if he found out they were investigating alternatives to AZT and death.    PBS journalist Tony Brown, having obtained a copy of the video of patient testimonials from the failed press conference, was among a handful of black journalists who began visiting the Center to investigate the legitimacy of Null's claims. Satisfied they had something significant to offer his audience, Brown invited eight patients - along with Null himself - onto his program over the course of several episodes to discuss the work. It was the first time these protocols had received any attention in the media, despite Null having released nearly two dozen articles and multiple documentaries on the subject by that time. A typical patient on one program, Al, a recovered IV drug user who was diagnosed with AIDS at age 32, described how he “panicked,” saw a doctor and started taking AZT despite his misgivings - only to be forced to discontinue the drug after just a few weeks due to his condition deteriorating rapidly. Researching alternatives brought him to Null, and after six months of “detoxing [his] lifestyle,” he observed his initial symptoms - swollen lymph nodes and weight loss - begin to reverse, culminating with sero-deconversion. On Bill McCreary's Channel 5 program, a married couple diagnosed with HIV described how they watched their T-cell counts increase as they cut out sugar, caffeine, smoking, and drinking and began eating a healthy diet. They also saw the virus leave their bodies.   For HIV-positive viewers surrounded by fear and negativity, watching healthy-looking, cheerful “AIDS patients” detail their recovery while Null backed up their claims with charts must have been balm for the soul. But the TV programs were also a form of outreach to the medical community, with patients' charts always on hand to convince skeptics the cure was scientifically valid. Null brought patients' charts to every program, urging them to keep an open mind: “Other physicians and public health officials should know that there's good science in the alternative perspective. It may not be a therapy that they're familiar with, because they're just not trained in it, but if the results are positive, and you can document them…” He challenged doubters to send in charts from their own sero-deconverted patients on AZT, and volunteered to debate proponents of the orthodox treatment paradigm - though the NIH and WHO both refused to participate in such a debate on Tony Brown's Journal, following Fauci's directive prohibiting engagement with forbidden ideas.    Aside from those few TV programs and Null's own films, suppression of Null's AIDS cure beyond word of mouth was total. The 2021 documentary The Cost of Denial, produced by the Society for Independent Journalists, tells the story of the Tri-State Healing Center and the medical paradigm that sought to destroy it, lamenting the loss of the lives that might have been saved in a more enlightened society. Nurse practitioner Luanne Pennesi, who treated many of the AIDS patients at the Center, speculated in the film that the refusal by the scientific establishment and AIDS activists to accept their successes was financially motivated. “It was as if they didn't want this information to get out. Understand that our healthcare system as we know it is a corporation, it's a corporate model, and it's about generating revenue. My concern was that maybe they couldn't generate enough revenue from these natural approaches.”5   Funding was certainly the main disciplinary tool Fauci's NIAID used to keep the scientific community in line. Despite the massive community interest in the work being done at the Center, no foundation or institution would defy Fauci and risk getting itself blacklisted, leaving Null to continue funding the operation out of his pocket with the profits from book sales. After 15 years, he left the Center in 1995, convinced the mainstream model had so thoroughly been institutionalized that there was no chance of overthrowing it. He has continued to counsel patients and advocate for a reappraisal of the HIV=AIDS hypothesis and its pharmaceutical treatments, highlighting the deeply flawed science underpinning the model of the disease espoused by the scientific establishment in 39 articles, six documentaries and a 700-page textbook on AIDS, but the Center's achievements have been effectively memory-holed by Fauci's multi-billion-dollar propaganda apparatus.     FRUIT OF THE POISONOUS TREE   To understand just how much of a threat Null's work was to the HIV/AIDS establishment, it is instructive to revisit the 1984 paper, published by Dr. Robert Gallo of the National Cancer Institute, that established HIV as the sole cause of AIDS. The CDC's official recognition of AIDS in 1981 had done little to quell the mounting public panic over the mysterious illness afflicting gay men in the US, as the agency had effectively admitted it had no idea what was causing them to sicken and die. As years passed with no progress determining the causative agent of the plague, activist groups like Gay Men's Health Crisis disrupted public events and threatened further mass civil disobedience as they excoriated the NIH for its sluggish allocation of government science funding to uncovering the cause of the “gay cancer.”6 When Gallo published his paper declaring that the retrovirus we now know as HIV was the sole “probable” cause of AIDS, its simple, single-factor hypothesis was the answer to the scientific establishment's prayers. This was particularly true for Fauci, as the NIAID chief was able to claim the hot new disease as his agency's own domain in what has been described as a “dramatic confrontation” with his rival Sam Broder at the National Cancer Institute. After all, Fauci pointed out, Gallo's findings - presented by Health and Human Services Secretary Margaret Heckler as if they were gospel truth before any other scientists had had a chance to inspect them, never mind conduct a full peer review - clearly classified AIDS as an infectious disease, and not a cancer like the Kaposi's sarcoma which was at the time its most visible manifestation. Money and media attention began pouring in, even as funding for the investigation of other potential causes of AIDS dried up. Having already patented a diagnostic test for “his” retrovirus before introducing it to the world, Gallo was poised for a financial windfall, while Fauci was busily leveraging the discovery into full bureaucratic empire of the US scientific apparatus.   While it would serve as the sole basis for all US government-backed AIDS research to follow - quickly turning Gallo into the most-cited scientist in the world during the 1980s,7 Gallo's “discovery” of HIV was deeply problematic. The sample that yielded the momentous discovery actually belonged to Prof. Luc Montagnier of the French Institut Pasteur, a fact Gallo finally admitted in 1991, four years after a lawsuit from the French government challenged his patent on the HIV antibody test, forcing the US government to negotiate a hasty profit-sharing agreement between Gallo's and Montagnier's labs. That lawsuit triggered a cascade of official investigations into scientific misconduct by Gallo, and evidence submitted during one of these probes, unearthed in 2008 by journalist Janine Roberts, revealed a much deeper problem with the seminal “discovery.” While Gallo's co-author, Mikulas Popovic, had concluded after numerous experiments with the French samples that the virus they contained was not the cause of AIDS, Gallo had drastically altered the paper's conclusion, scribbling his notes in the margins, and submitted it for publication to the journal Science without informing his co-author.   After Roberts shared her discovery with contacts in the scientific community, 37 scientific experts wrote to the journal demanding that Gallo's career-defining HIV paper be retracted from Science for lacking scientific integrity.8 Their call, backed by an endorsement from the 2,600-member scientific organization Rethinking AIDS, was ignored by the publication and by the rest of mainstream science despite - or perhaps because of - its profound implications.   That 2008 letter, addressed to Science editor-in-chief Bruce Alberts and copied to American Association for the Advancement of Science CEO Alan Leshner, is worth reproducing here in its entirety, as it utterly dismantles Gallo's hypothesis - and with them the entire HIV is the sole cause of AIDS dogma upon which the contemporary medical model of the disease rests:   On May 4, 1984 your journal published four papers by a group led by Dr. Robert Gallo. We are writing to express our serious concerns with regard to the integrity and veracity of the lead paper among these four of which Dr. Mikulas Popovic is the lead author.[1] The other three are also of concern because they rely upon the conclusions of the lead paper .[2][3][4]  In the early 1990s, several highly critical reports on the research underlying these papers were produced as a result of governmental inquiries working under the supervision of scientists nominated by the National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine. The Office of Research Integrity of the US Department of Health and Human Services concluded that the lead paper was “fraught with false and erroneous statements,” and that the “ORI believes that the careless and unacceptable keeping of research records...reflects irresponsible laboratory management that has permanently impaired the ability to retrace the important steps taken.”[5] Further, a Congressional Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations led by US Representative John D. Dingell of Michigan produced a staff report on the papers which contains scathing criticisms of their integrity.[6]  Despite the publically available record of challenges to their veracity, these papers have remained uncorrected and continue to be part of the scientific record.  What prompts our communication today is the recent revelation of an astonishing number of previously unreported deletions and unjustified alterations made by Gallo to the lead paper. There are several documents originating from Gallo's laboratory that, while available for some time, have only recently been fully analyzed. These include a draft of the lead paper typewritten by Popovic which contains handwritten changes made to it by Gallo.[7] This draft was the key evidence used in the above described inquiries to establish that Gallo had concealed his laboratory's use of a cell culture sample (known as LAV) which it received from the Institut Pasteur.  These earlier inquiries verified that the typed manuscript draft was produced by Popovic who had carried out the recorded experiment while his laboratory chief, Gallo, was in Europe and that, upon his return, Gallo changed the document by hand a few days before it was submitted to Science on March 30, 1984. According to the ORI investigation, “Dr. Gallo systematically rewrote the manuscript for what would become a renowned LTCB [Gallo's laboratory at the National Cancer Institute] paper.”[5]  This document provided the important evidence that established the basis for awarding Dr. Luc Montagnier and Dr. Francoise Barré-Sinoussi the 2008 Nobel Prize in Medicine for the discovery of the AIDS virus by proving it was their samples of LAV that Popovic used in his key experiment. The draft reveals that Popovic had forthrightly admitted using the French samples of LAV renamed as Gallo's virus, HTLV-III, and that Gallo had deleted this admission, concealing their use of LAV.  However, it has not been previously reported that on page three of this same document Gallo had also deleted Popovic's unambiguous statement that, "Despite intensive research efforts, the causative agent of AIDS has not yet been identified,” replacing it in the published paper with a statement that said practically the opposite, namely, “That a retrovirus of the HTLV family might be an etiologic agent of AIDS was suggested by the findings.”  It is clear that the rest of Popovic's typed paper is entirely consistent with his statement that the cause of AIDS had not been found, despite his use of the French LAV. Popovic's final conclusion was that the culture he produced “provides the possibility” for detailed studies. He claimed to have achieved nothing more. At no point in his paper did Popovic attempt to prove that any virus caused AIDS, and it is evident that Gallo concealed these key elements in Popovic's experimental findings.  It is astonishing now to discover these unreported changes to such a seminal document. We can only assume that Gallo's alterations of Popovic's conclusions were not highlighted by earlier inquiries because the focus at the time was on establishing that the sample used by Gallo's lab came from Montagnier and was not independently collected by Gallo. In fact, the only attention paid to the deletions made by Gallo pertains to his effort to hide the identity of the sample. The questions of whether Gallo and Popovic's research proved that LAV or any other virus was the cause of AIDS were clearly not considered.  Related to these questions are other long overlooked documents that merit your attention. One of these is a letter from Dr. Matthew A. Gonda, then Head of the Electron Microscopy Laboratory at the National Cancer Institute, which is addressed to Popovic, copied to Gallo and dated just four days prior to Gallo's submission to Science.[8] In this letter, Gonda remarks on samples he had been sent for imaging because “Dr Gallo wanted these micrographs for publication because they contain HTLV.” He states, “I do not believe any of the particles photographed are of HTLV-I, II or III.” According to Gonda, one sample contained cellular debris, while another had no particles near the size of a retrovirus. Despite Gonda's clearly worded statement, Science published on May 4, 1984 papers attributed to Gallo et al with micrographs attributed to Gonda and described unequivocally as HTLV-III.  In another letter by Gallo, dated one day before he submitted his papers to Science, Gallo states, “It's extremely rare to find fresh cells [from AIDS patients] expressing the virus... cell culture seems to be necessary to induce virus,” a statement which raises the possibility he was working with a laboratory artifact. [9]  Included here are copies of these documents and links to the same. The very serious flaws they reveal in the preparation of the lead paper published in your journal in 1984 prompts our request that this paper be withdrawn. It appears that key experimental findings have been concealed. We further request that the three associated papers published on the same date also be withdrawn as they depend on the accuracy of this paper.  For the scientific record to be reliable, it is vital that papers shown to be flawed, or falsified be retracted. Because a very public record now exists showing that the Gallo papers drew unjustified conclusions, their withdrawal from Science is all the more important to maintain integrity. Future researchers must also understand they cannot rely on the 1984 Gallo papers for statements about HIV and AIDS, and all authors of papers that previously relied on this set of four papers should have the opportunity to consider whether their own conclusions are weakened by these revelations.      Gallo's handwritten revision, submitted without his colleague's knowledge despite multiple experiments that failed to support the new conclusion, was the sole foundation for the HIV=AIDS hypothesis. Had Science published the manuscript the way Popovic had typed it, there would be no AIDS “pandemic” - merely small clusters of people with AIDS. Without a viral hypothesis backing the development of expensive and deadly pharmaceuticals, would Fauci have allowed these patients to learn about the cure that existed all along?   Faced with a potential rebellion, Fauci marshaled the full resources under his control to squelch the publication of the investigations into Gallo and restrict any discussion of competing hypotheses in the scientific and mainstream press, which had been running virus-scare stories full-time since 1984. The effect was total, according to biochemist Dr. Kary Mullis, inventor of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) procedure. In a 2009 interview, Mullis recalled his own shock when he attempted to unearth the experimental basis for the HIV=AIDS hypothesis. Despite his extensive inquiry into the literature, “there wasn't a scientific reference…[that] said ‘here's how come we know that HIV is the probable cause of AIDS.' There was nothing out there like that.”9 This yawning void at the core of HIV/AIDS “science" turned him into a strident critic of AIDS dogma - and those views made him persona non grata where the scientific press was concerned, suddenly unable to publish a single paper despite having won the Nobel Prize for his invention of the PCR test just weeks before.  10   DISSENT BECOMES “DENIAL”   While many of those who dissent from the orthodox HIV=AIDS view believe HIV plays a role in the development of AIDS, they point to lifestyle and other co-factors as being equally if not more important. Individuals who test positive for HIV can live for decades in perfect health - so long as they don't take AZT or the other toxic antivirals fast-tracked by Fauci's NIAID - but those who developed full-blown AIDS generally engaged in highly risky behaviors like extreme promiscuity and prodigious drug abuse, contracting STDs they took large quantities of antibiotics to treat, further running down their immune systems. While AIDS was largely portrayed as a “gay disease,” it was only the “fast track” gays, hooking up with dozens of partners nightly in sex marathons fueled by “poppers” (nitrate inhalants notorious for their own devastating effects on the immune system), who became sick. Kaposi's sarcoma, one of the original AIDS-defining conditions, was widespread among poppers-using gay men, but never appeared among IV drug users or hemophiliacs, the other two main risk groups during the early years of the epidemic. Even Robert Gallo himself, at a 1994 conference on poppers held by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, would admit that the previously-rare form of skin cancer surging among gay men was not primarily caused by HIV - and that it was immune stimulation, rather than suppression, that was likely responsible.11 Similarly, IV drug users are often riddled with opportunistic infections as their habit depresses the immune system and their focus on maintaining their addiction means that healthier habits - like good nutrition and even basic hygiene - fall by the wayside.    Supporting the call for revising the HIV=AIDS hypothesis to include co-factors is the fact that the mass heterosexual outbreaks long predicted by Fauci and his ilk in seemingly every country on Earth have failed to materialize, except - supposedly - in Africa, where the diagnostic standard for AIDS differs dramatically from those of the West. Given the prohibitively high cost of HIV testing for poor African nations, the WHO in 1985 crafted a diagnostic loophole that became known as the “Bangui definition,” allowing medical professionals to diagnose AIDS in the absence of a test using just clinical symptoms: high fever, persistent cough, at least 30 days of diarrhea, and the loss of 10% of one's body weight within two months. Often suffering from malnutrition and without access to clean drinking water, many of the inhabitants of sub-Saharan Africa fit the bill, especially when the WHO added tuberculosis to the list of AIDS-defining illnesses in 1993 - a move which may be responsible for as many as one half of African “AIDS” cases, according to journalist Christine Johnson. The WHO's former Chief of Global HIV Surveillance, James Chin, acknowledged their manipulation of statistics, but stressed that it was the entire AIDS industry - not just his organization - perpetrating the fraud. “There's the saying that, if you knew what sausages are made of, most people would hesitate to sort of eat them, because they wouldn't like what's in it. And if you knew how HIV/AIDS numbers are cooked, or made up, you would use them with extreme caution,” Chin told an interviewer in 2009.12   With infected numbers stubbornly remaining constant in the US despite Fauci's fearmongering projections of the looming heterosexually-transmitted plague, the CDC in 1993 broadened its definition of AIDS to include asymptomatic (that is, healthy) HIV-positive people with low T-cell counts - an absurd criteria given that an individual's T-cell count can fluctuate by hundreds within a single day. As a result, the number of “AIDS cases” in the US immediately doubled. Supervised by Fauci, the NIAID had been quietly piling on diseases into the “AIDS-related” category for years, bloating the list from just two conditions - pneumocystis carinii pneumonia and Kaposi's sarcoma - to 30 so fast it raised eyebrows among some of science's leading lights. Deeming the entire process “bizarre” and unprecedented, Kary Mullis wondered aloud why no one had called the AIDS establishment out: “There's something wrong here. And it's got to be financial.”13   Indeed, an early CDC public relations campaign was exposed by the Wall Street Journal in 1987 as having deliberately mischaracterized AIDS as a threat to the entire population so as to garner increased public and private funding for what was very much a niche issue, with the risk to average heterosexuals from a single act of sex “smaller than the risk of ever getting hit by lightning.” Ironically, the ads, which sought to humanize AIDS patients in an era when few Americans knew anyone with the disease and more than half the adult population thought infected people should be forced to carry cards warning of their status, could be seen as a reaction to the fear tactics deployed by Fauci early on.14   It's hard to tell where fraud ends and incompetence begins with Gallo's HIV antibody test. Much like Covid-19 would become a “pandemic of testing,” with murder victims and motorcycle crashes lumped into “Covid deaths” thanks to over-sensitized PCR tests that yielded as many as 90% false positives,15 HIV testing is fraught with false positives - and unlike with Covid-19, most people who hear they are HIV-positive still believe they are receiving a death sentence. Due to the difficulty of isolating HIV itself from human samples, the most common diagnostic tests, ELISA and the Western Blot, are designed to detect not the virus but antibodies to it, upending the traditional medical understanding that the presence of antibodies indicates only exposure - and often that the body has actually vanquished the pathogen. Patients are known to test positive for HIV antibodies in the absence of the virus due to at least 70 other conditions, including hepatitis, lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, syphilis, recent vaccination or even pregnancy. (https://www.chcfl.org/diseases-that-can-cause-a-false-positive-hiv-test/) Positive results are often followed up with a PCR “viral load” test, even though the inventor of the PCR technique Kary Mullis famously condemned its misuse as a tool for diagnosing infection. Packaging inserts for all three tests warn the user that they cannot be reliably used to diagnose HIV.16 The ELISA HIV antibody test explicitly states: “At present there is no recognized standard for establishing the presence and absence of HIV antibody in human blood.”17   That the public remains largely unaware of these and other massive holes in the supposedly airtight HIV=AIDS=DEATH paradigm is a testament to Fauci's multi-layered control of the press. Like the writers of the Great Barrington Declaration and other Covid-19 dissidents, scientists who question HIV/AIDS dogma have been brutally punished for their heresy, no matter how prestigious their prior standing in the field and no matter how much evidence they have for their own claims. In 1987, the year the FDA's approval of AZT made AIDS the most profitable epidemic yet (a dubious designation Covid-19 has since surpassed), Fauci made it clearer than ever that scientific inquiry and debate - the basis of the scientific method - would no longer be welcome in the American public health sector, eliminating retrovirologist Peter Duesberg, then one of the most prominent opponents of the HIV=AIDS hypothesis, from the scientific conversation with a professional disemboweling that would make a cartel hitman blush. Duesberg had just eviscerated Gallo's 1984 HIV paper with an article of his own in the journal Cancer Research, pointing out that retroviruses had never before been found to cause a single disease in humans - let alone 30 AIDS-defining diseases. Rather than allow Gallo or any of the other scientists in his camp to respond to the challenge, Fauci waged a scorched-earth campaign against Duesberg, who had until then been one of the most highly regarded researchers in his field. Every research grant he requested was denied; every media appearance was canceled or preempted. The University of California at Berkeley, unable to fully fire him due to tenure, took away his lab, his graduate students, and the rest of his funding. The few colleagues who dared speak up for him in public were also attacked, while enemies and opportunists were encouraged to slander Duesberg at the conferences he was barred from attending and in the journals that would no longer publish his replies. When Duesberg was summoned to the White House later that year by then-President Ronald Reagan to debate Fauci on the origins of AIDS, Fauci convinced the president to cancel, allegedly pulling rank on the Commander-in-Chief with an accusation that the “White House was interfering in scientific matters that belonged to the NIH and the Office of Science and Technology Assessment.” After seven years of this treatment, Duesberg was contacted by NIH official Stephen O'Brien and offered an escape from professional purgatory. He could have “everything back,” he was told, and shown a manuscript of a scientific paper - apparently commissioned by the editor of the journal Nature - “HIV Causes AIDS: Koch's Postulates Fulfilled” with his own name listed alongside O'Brien's as an author.18 His refusal to take the bribe effectively guaranteed the epithet “AIDS denier” will appear on his tombstone. The character assassination of Duesberg became a template that would be deployed to great effectiveness wherever Fauci encountered dissent - never debate, only demonize, deplatform and destroy.    Even Luc Montagnier, the real discoverer of HIV, soon found himself on the wrong side of the Fauci machine. With his 1990 declaration that “the HIV virus [by itself] is harmless and passive, a benign virus,” Montagnier began distancing himself from Gallo's fraud, effectively placing a target on his own back. In a 1995 interview, he elaborated: “four factors that have come together to account for the sudden epidemic [of AIDS]: HIV presence, immune hyper-activation, increased sexually transmitted disease incidence, sexual behavior changes and other behavioral changes” such as drug use, poor nutrition and stress - all of which he said had to occur “essentially simultaneously” for HIV to be transmitted, creating the modern epidemic. Like the professionals at the Tri-State Healing Center, Montagnier advocated for the use of antioxidants like vitamin C and N-acetyl cysteine, naming oxidative stress as a critical factor in the progression from HIV to AIDS.19 When Montagnier died in 2022, Fauci's media mouthpieces sneered that the scientist (who was awarded the Nobel Prize in 2008 for his discovery of HIV, despite his flagging faith in that discovery's significance) “started espousing views devoid of a scientific basis” in the late 2000s, leading him to be “shunned by the scientific community.”20 In a particularly egregious jab, the Washington Post's obit sings the praises of Robert Gallo, implying it was the American scientist who really should have won the Nobel for HIV, while dismissing as “

On January 14th members of the Physicians for a National Health Program went to the New York State Capitol during Gov. Hochul's State of the State to advocate in favour of the passage of the New York Health Act which would provide affordable health care for all New Yorkers. Lennox Apudo talks with Dr. Steve Auerbach, retired NY physician, on the potential impacts of the New York Health Act on the state's health sector and the health outcomes of New Yorkers.

On Tuesday January 14, 2025, Governor Hochul delivered the annual State of the State address. There was a massive showing of state police. The climate group Planet over Profit did briefly block an entrance to the speech as part of the campaign to get the New York Power Authority to up their goal for building new renewables from 3.5 GW to 15. Other groups protested against nuclear power; called for the state to divest from Israel bonds; supported single payer health care; demanded justice for Robert Brooks, who was killed by prison guards in Utica; opposed mandatory vaccines; and, showed support for the Medical Aid in Dying Act. We hear from Laura Shindell of Food and Water Watch opposing the push by Governor Hochul to build more nuclear plants; Pippa Bartolloti as part of the protest over New York State's support for the attacks in Gaza; and Dr. Oliver Fein of Physicians for A National Health Program. By Mark Dunlea for Hudson Mohawk Magazine.

Rebate aggregators? Group purchasing? Vertical integration? How exactly do Pharmacy Benefit Managers, or PBMs, operate to maximize profit? And how are everyday Americans suffering from these practices? To find out, we spoke to Dr. Ed Weisbart, national board secretary of Physicians for a National Health Program, a single-payer advocacy coalition that boasts more than 25,000 members, and former chief medical officer for one of the largest PBMs in the country. This is the second episode in a two-part series.

This time on Code WACK!  Rebate aggregators? Group purchasing? Vertical integration? How exactly do Pharmacy Benefit Managers, or PBMs, operate to maximize profit? And how are everyday Americans suffering from these practices? To find out, we spoke to Dr. Ed Weisbart, national board secretary of Physicians for a National Health Program, a single-payer advocacy coalition that boasts more than 25,000 members,  and former chief medical officer for one of the largest PBMs in the country. This is the second episode in a two-part series. Check out the Transcript and Show Notes for more!  

This time on Code WACK! Rebate aggregators? Group purchasing? Vertical integration? How exactly do Pharmacy Benefit Managers, or PBMs, operate to maximize profit? And how are everyday Americans suffering from these practices? To find out, we spoke to Dr. Ed Weisbart, national board secretary of Physicians for a National Health Program, a single-payer advocacy coalition that boasts more than 25,000 members, and former chief medical officer for one of the largest PBMs in the country. This is the second episode in a two-part series.

We're taking another look at Pharmacy Benefit Managers or PBMs. Why were PBMs started and how did they morph to become one of the most powerful entities in health care? Why have they caught the attention of the Federal Trade Commission? How are they a threat to consumers? To find out, we spoke to Dr. Ed Weisbart, the national board secretary of Physicians for a National Health Program and former chief medical officer of one of the biggest PBMs in the country. This is the first episode in a two-part series.

We're taking another look at Pharmacy Benefit Managers or PBMs. Why were PBMs started and how did they morph to become one of the most powerful entities in health care? Why have they caught the attention of the Federal Trade Commission? How are they a threat to consumers? To find out, we spoke to Dr. Ed Weisbart, the national board secretary of Physicians for a National Health Program and former chief medical officer of one of the biggest PBMs in the country. This is the first episode in a two-part series.

This time on Code WACK!  We're taking another look at Pharmacy Benefit Managers or PBMs. Why were PBMs started and how did they morph to become one of the most powerful entities in health care? Why have they caught the attention of the Federal Trade Commission? How are they a threat to consumers? To find out, we spoke to Dr. Ed Weisbart, the national board secretary of Physicians for a National Health Program and former chief medical officer of one of the biggest PBMs in the country. This is the first episode in a two-part series. Check out the Transcript and Show Notes for more!  

Welcome to the final day of the RNC, slated to culminate with a lengthy speech from former President Trump focused on "unity." The RNC theme tonight is "Make America Great Once Again."Other speakers are slated to include Tucker Carlson, Franklin Graham (son of Billy Graham), Hulk Hogan and Dana White (CEO of the Ultimate Fighting Championship).Also speaking tonight is Wisconsin billionaire and GOP megadonor Diane Hendricks, who is appearing tonight as one of the QUOTE "everyday Americans" invited to speak during the convention.Reporters Sara Gabler and Peter Donalds give updates from the floor.We catch up with Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson about the economics of the RNC and what he says is the potential to "put Milwaukee on the map," along a slate of other questions.And we hear from the Milwaukee Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, which says they've been warning Milwaukee officials that bringing 4,000 more police officers to Milwaukee would risk the safety of residents.We speak with New York City defense lawyer Ron Kuby about whether much has changed in police accountability since 2020. Then we speak with Gloria Browne-Marshall, professor of constitutional law at John Jay College of Criminal Justice at CUNY, about Trump's ongoing election legal issues.For more on the psychology of voters attracted to Trump, we speak with Dan P. McAdams, professor of Psychology and Professor of Human Development and Social Policy at Northwestern University and the author of “The Strange Case of Donald J. Trump: A Psychological Reckoning.” WORT reporter Sara Gabler dissects the expansion of oil and gas drilling and rolling back of federal environmental protections that would happen under another Trump presidency. WORT news director Chali Pittman examines the personal responsibility claim of child care. And Bob Hennelly speaks with Dr. Steve Auerbach, Physicians for a National Health Program, about the deepening healthcare crisis.

This week on CounterSpin: Headlined “The Cash Monster Was Insatiable,” a 2022 New York Times piece reported insurance companies gaming Medicare Advantage, originally presented as a “low-cost” alternative to traditional Medicare. One company pressed doctors to add additional illnesses to the records of patients they hadn't seen for weeks: Dig up enough new diagnoses, and you could win a bottle of champagne. Some companies cherry-picked healthier seniors for enrollment. Such maneuvers don't lead to good health outcomes but serve the real goal: netting private insurers more money. Here to discuss new research on the problem and the response is David Himmelstein, co-founder of Physicians for a National Health Program and co-author of this new analysis of Medicare Advantage. You may get the impression from media that marijuana is legal everywhere now, that it's moved from blight to business, if you will. It's not as simple as that, and many people harmed by decades of criminalization have yet to see any benefit from decriminalization. Our guest Tauhid Chappell has tracked the issue for years now; he teaches the country's first graduate-level course on equity movements in the cannabis industry, at Thomas Jefferson University. But first, Janine Jackson takes a quick look at recent press coverage of Julian Assange.   The post David Himmelstein on Medicare Dis-Advantage / Tauhid Chappell on Cannabis Equity appeared first on KPFA.

More and more Americans are finding themselves in financial debt when needing to avail of healthcare procedures. This has resulted in many questions being raised around medical care in the US and if more needs to be done to improve the accessibility and affordability of health care. Mardge Cohen from the Physicians for a National Health Program, joins Kieran to discuss.

Why is tying a medical provider's pay to the outcomes of their patients a bad idea? Why else should we be concerned about Accountable Care Organizations and the privatization of traditional Medicare? To find out, we spoke to Dr. Ana Malinow, who spent three decades working as a pediatrician with immigrant, refugee and underserved children before retiring as Clinical Professor of Pediatrics from the University of California San Francisco School of Medicine. She's past president of Physicians for a National Health Program and is currently a lead organizer for National Single Payer and The Movement to End Privatization of Medicare. This is the second episode in a two-part series with Dr. Malinow.

Why is tying a medical provider's pay to the outcomes of their patients a bad idea? Why else should we be concerned about Accountable Care Organizations and the privatization of traditional Medicare? To find out, we spoke to Dr. Ana Malinow, who spent three decades working as a pediatrician with immigrant, refugee and underserved children before retiring as Clinical Professor of Pediatrics from the University of California San Francisco School of Medicine. She's past president of Physicians for a National Health Program and is currently a lead organizer for National Single Payer and The Movement to End Privatization of Medicare. This is the second episode in a two-part series with Dr. Malinow.

Why is tying a medical provider's pay to the outcomes of their patients a bad idea? Why else should we be concerned about Accountable Care Organizations and the privatization of traditional Medicare? To find out, we spoke to Dr. Ana Malinow, who spent three decades working as a pediatrician with immigrant, refugee and underserved children before retiring as Clinical Professor of Pediatrics from the University of California San Francisco School of Medicine. She's past president of Physicians for a National Health Program and is currently a lead organizer for National Single Payer and The Movement to End Privatization of Medicare. This is the second episode in a two-part series with Dr. Malinow.

This time on Code WACK!    Why is tying a medical provider's pay to the outcomes of their patients a bad idea? Why else should we be concerned about Accountable Care Organizations and the privatization of traditional Medicare?  To find out, we spoke to Dr. Ana Malinow,  who spent three decades working as a pediatrician with immigrant, refugee and underserved children before retiring as Clinical Professor of Pediatrics from the University of California San Francisco School of Medicine. She's past president of Physicians for a National Health Program and is currently a lead organizer for National Single Payer and The Movement to End Privatization of Medicare.  This is the second episode in a two-part series with Dr. Malinow.   Check out the Transcript and Show Notes for more!

This time on Code WACK! You've probably heard about the dangers of Medicare Advantage, but did you know that traditional Medicare is being privatized too? How is this corrupting our healthcare system even more and what does this mean for patients? To find out, we spoke to Dr. Ana Malinow, who spent three decades working as a pediatrician with immigrant, refugee and underserved children in Ohio, Texas, Pennsylvania, and California before retiring as Clinical Professor of Pediatrics from the University of California San Francisco School of Medicine. She's past president of Physicians for a National Health Program and is currently a lead organizer for National Single Payer and The Movement to End Privatization of Medicare. This is the first episode in a two-part series with Dr. Malinow.

This time on Code WACK!    You've probably heard about the dangers of Medicare Advantage, but did you know that traditional Medicare is being privatized too? How is this corrupting our healthcare system even more and what does this mean for patients?   To find out, we spoke to Dr. Ana Malinow,  who spent three decades working as a pediatrician with immigrant, refugee and underserved children in Ohio, Texas, Pennsylvania, and California before retiring as Clinical Professor of Pediatrics from the University of California San Francisco School of Medicine. She's past president of Physicians for a National Health Program and is currently a lead organizer for National Single Payer and The Movement to End Privatization of Medicare. This is the first episode in a two-part series with Dr. Malinow.   Check out the Transcript and Show Notes for more!  

This time on Code WACK! You've probably heard about the dangers of Medicare Advantage, but did you know that traditional Medicare is being privatized too? How is this corrupting our healthcare system even more and what does this mean for patients? To find out, we spoke to Dr. Ana Malinow, who spent three decades working as a pediatrician with immigrant, refugee and underserved children in Ohio, Texas, Pennsylvania, and California before retiring as Clinical Professor of Pediatrics from the University of California San Francisco School of Medicine. She's past president of Physicians for a National Health Program and is currently a lead organizer for National Single Payer and The Movement to End Privatization of Medicare. This is the first episode in a two-part series with Dr. Malinow.

This is the WFHB Local News for Thursday, January 18th, 2023. Later in the program, Diljeet Singh MD, vice president of Physicians for a National Health Program, joins us on a new edition of Prescription for Healthcare. More in the bottom half of our program. Also coming up in the next half hour, WFHB Correspondent …

Few people in American history have saved more lives than Dr. Sidney Wolfe. Dr. Wolfe and his small staff at the Health Research Group of Public Citizen have taken on Big Pharma and the FDA to pull over two dozen dangerous drugs and countless hazardous medical devices off the market, not to mention putting numerous incompetent doctors out of business. Over the course of his storied career, Sid worked relentlessly for workplace safety and with his best-selling book and subsequent newsletter Worst Pills/Best Pills, provided the American people with the most reliable, up-to-date, evidence-based, easy-to-read guide to pharmaceuticals ever compiled. Today we pay tribute to the man who invented the concept of the “public interest doctor.”Dr. Steffie Woolhandler is a co-founder of Physicians for a National Health Program, which is a non-profit research and education organization that advocates for single-payer national health insurance. Dr. Woolhandler is a practicing primary care physician, distinguished professor of public health and health policy in the City University of New York (CUNY) School of Public Health, an adjunct professor at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and lecturer in medicine at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Woolhandler has authored more than 150 journal articles, reviews, chapters, and books on health policy.Dr. David Himmelstein is a co-founder of Physicians for a National Health Program. Dr. Himmelstein is a practicing primary care physician, distinguished professor of public health at the City University of New York, a lecturer at Harvard Medical School, and a His more than 150 peer reviewed studies include widely-cited articles appearing in the New England Journal, Annals of Internal Medicine, JAMA, Health Affairs and the American Journal of Public Health on the excess death rate among the uninsured, medical bankruptcy, health care administrative costs, insurance firms' misbehaviors, and dangerous medications.For over 50 years, Dr. Sidney Wolfe—who directed Public Citizen's Health Research Group—has been what I would call the doctor's doctor. Stressing the prevention of trauma and sickness, stressing accountability for gouging and unsafe practices by the drug companies, and pushing for effective regulation by the Food and Drug Administration and the Occupational Safety and Health Agency.Ralph NaderI think that Dr. Sid Wolfe had that emotional intelligence that went with his cognitive intelligence, which makes all the difference in terms of whether someone just knows something and bewails it, or someone just knows something and connects it to action that saves people's lives and prevents injuries.Ralph NaderDr. Sid Wolfe was insistent that those who sell drugs and profit from drugs have to prove that the drug is actually safe, that the harms do not outweigh the benefits. And for many, many drugs on the market in the United States, Sid and others found out that the harms were much greater than the benefits. In identifying literally dozens of drugs that were unsafe, that should not be used, Sid has saved hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of lives of Americans who were threatened by unsafe drugs.Dr. Steffie WoolhandlerDr. Sid Wolfe was meticulous about the truth. Sid insisted that you couldn't overstate what you didn't know, that the most important responsibility of doctors was to be honest with the patients, with the public, with the government about what we know and what we don't know—and often what we don't know is critically important. He never stretched the truth. That was important, not just because others were watching and trying to find flaws in what he did, but it was inherent in Sid's character that he cared about telling the truth and about doing what was right.Dr. David HimmelsteinRobert Weissman is a staunch public interest advocate and activist, as well as an expert on a wide variety of issues ranging from corporate accountability and government transparency to trade and globalization, to economic and regulatory policy. As the President of Public Citizen, Weissman has spearheaded the effort to loosen the chokehold corporations and the wealthy have over our democracy.Outrage may have been Sid's catchphrase, because he saw so much outrageousness in the health field. Precisely because he knew that things were being put on the market that shouldn't be, or services were being withheld from people that shouldn't be— not because of any lack of information, but because of the improper influence and political power and economic power of Big Pharma and the for-profit health insurance industry. And he was outraged about that. Because he understood it rightfully as a matter of life and death.Robert WeissmanDr. Peter Lurie is President and Executive Director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest—an independent, science-based consumer advocacy organization that advocates for a safer, healthier food system. The CSPI also publishes NutritionAction, a healthy-living guide for consumers. Dr. Lurie previously worked with the Food and Drug Administration and Public Citizen's Health Research Group, where he co-authored their Worst Pills, Best Pills consumer guide to medications.'Dr. Sid Wolfe was the person who really held [the FDA's] feet to the fire and held us— or even me, when I was there—accountable. He was the person who raised the impertinent questions. He was the person who asked why you couldn't do more, or he was the person who asked why you did what you had done. All of those were appropriate to do. And all of those challenged the agency in ways that I think were healthy, even if not always welcomed by the agency.Dr. Peter LurieI didn't think, personally, that you could actually win in this life. What I thought that I would do was tilt at windmills for the rest of my life, fight the good fight, maybe be an honorable person, maybe my kids would appreciate it. That's all I really thought would happen. But what Dr. Sid Wolfe showed me was that if you picked the right project, if you picked the project that was the right size, that involved a question that was actually being posed to a regulatory agency… If you picked that right-sized project and you brought the right data to bear, you actually could win. You could get that warning on the box. And if you won the first time, that told you that you could win a second and a third and a fourth time. And that is what keeps you going.Dr. Peter Lurie Get full access to Ralph Nader Radio Hour at www.ralphnaderradiohour.com/subscribe

What can be done in light of Medicare Advantage overcharging taxpayers to the tune of around $140 billion a year? What's the Medigap Trap and why should you worry about it? Why should we work to improve traditional Medicare while pursuing Medicare for All? To find out, we spoke to Dr. Ed Weisbart, the national board secretary for Physicians for a National Health Program and president of the Consumers Council of Missouri.

What can be done in light of Medicare Advantage overcharging taxpayers to the tune of around $140 billion a year? What's the Medigap Trap and why should you worry about it? Why should we work to improve traditional Medicare while pursuing Medicare for All? To find out, we spoke to Dr. Ed Weisbart, the national board secretary for Physicians for a National Health Program and president of the Consumers Council of Missouri.

This time on Code WACK!   What can be done in light of Medicare Advantage overcharging taxpayers to the tune of around $140 billion a year? What's the Medigap Trap and why should you worry about it?  Why should we work to improve traditional Medicare while pursuing Medicare for All? To find out, we spoke to Dr. Ed Weisbart, the national board secretary for Physicians for a National Health Program and president of the Consumers Council of Missouri. Check out the Transcript and Show Notes for more!

Medicare Advantage is overcharging the federal government – and you won't believe by how much! How's this affecting taxpayers like you and me and what can be done about it? To find out, we spoke to Dr. Ed Weisbart, the national board secretary for Physicians for a National Health Program and president of the Consumers Council of Missouri.

Medicare Advantage is overcharging the federal government – and you won't believe by how much! How's this affecting taxpayers like you and me and what can be done about it? To find out, we spoke to Dr. Ed Weisbart, the national board secretary for Physicians for a National Health Program and president of the Consumers Council of Missouri.

This time on Code WACK!   Medicare Advantage is overcharging the federal government – and you won't believe by how much! How's this affecting taxpayers like you and me and what can be done about it?   To find out, we spoke to Dr. Ed Weisbart, the national board secretary for Physicians for a National Health Program and president of the Consumers Council of Missouri.  

Very happy to share a ranging conversation with activist Rick Staggenborg. Recorded at a union hall in Albany, Oregon, host Ken Volante and Rick talk about public banking, health care for all, philosophy, God, veterans, service and hope for the betterment of humans.Rick is a retired psychiatrist who specialized in PTSD and worked in community psychiatry before finishing his career at the VA, retiring in 2010.Rick advocates for universal health care as a member of Physicians for a National Health Program and by serving in multiple roles with Health Care for All Oregon and is chair of the Faith Caucus.Rick is also an Army veteran and is active in the antiwar movement as the President of the Linus Pauling Chapter of Veterans For Peace.Listen in on this special and exploratory episode!SRTN Website

Why do Black women have a 5-year mortality risk from endometrial cancer that's 90 percent higher than White women? Is it about race or racism – and what can we do about it? To find out, we spoke with Dr. Diljeet Singh, a women's health advocate and integrative gynecologic oncologist who has practiced for nearly 25 years. She's also the vice president of Physicians for a National Health Program, which advocates for Medicare for All.

This time on Code WACK!   Why do Black women have a 5-year mortality risk from endometrial cancer that's 90 percent higher than White women? Is it about race or racism – and what can we do about it?  To find out, we spoke with Dr. Diljeet Singh, a women's health advocate and integrative gynecologic oncologist who has practiced for nearly 25 years. She's also the vice president of Physicians for a National Health Program, which advocates for Medicare for All.   Check out the Transcript and Show Notes for more!  

Kay Tillow, chairperson of Kentuckians for Single Payer Healthcare and Dr. Garrett Adams, pointperson for the KY chapter of Physicians for a National Health Program discuss the new Medicare for All legislation proposed and the need for a national nonprofit single payer system.

This time on Code WACK! Why is it that infant mortality rates in America differ by race? Why are some American babies more likely to be born premature or underweight than babies in other developed countries? And how could single-payer health care help? To find out, we spoke with Dr. Diljeet Singh, a women's health advocate and integrative gynecologic oncologist who has practiced for nearly 25 years. She's also the vice president of Physicians for a National Health Program, which advocates for Medicare for All. Check out the Transcript and Show Notes for more!

To hear the rest of the discussion, please join us on Patreon at - https://www.patreon.com/posts/aaron-good-81201647 Status Coup journalist Louis DeAngelis, who has been reporting on the ground in East Palestine talks about a bombshell investigation into the EPA coverup. Read Louis' reporting here - https://statuscoup.substack.com/p/east-palestine-bombshell-epa-official But first, Dr. Ana Malinow and union activist Kay Tillow talk about how residents of East Palestine could get medicare for all, how residents of Libby Montana already got it for asbestos poisoning and how Democrats need to improve their Medicare for All Bill before introducing it. Dr. Ana Malinow spent three decades working as a pediatrician with immigrant, refugee and underserved children in Ohio, Texas, Pennsylvania, and California. She is past president of Physicians for a National Health Program, co-founder of Health Care for All Texas, and a lead organizer for National Single Payer and The Movement to End Privatization of Medicare. She has authored opinion pieces on how national single payer will improve patient care and bring us closer to social justice. She has been a speaker on health care reform and the privatization of Medicare and featured on national and international television and radio. She recently retired as Professor of Pediatrics from the University of California in San Francisco. Learn more at - https://www.nationalsinglepayer.org Born in Paducah, Kentucky, Kay Tillow worked in the southern Civil Rights Movement, and worked for health care and nurses' unions on organizing and collective bargaining. She is currently chair of Kentuckians for Single Payer Healthcare and coordinator of the All Unions Committee for Single Payer Health Care ***Please support The Katie Halper Show *** For bonus content, exclusive interviews, to support independent media and to help make this program possible, please join us on Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/thekatiehalpershow Follow Katie on Twitter: @kthalps Join the Discord: https://discord.gg/rkEk75Emhy If you haven't already done so, please sign this petition calling on Germany to uncancel Roger Waters' concert. https://chng.it/bBMJRgnRkn

It is well documented how much more cost effective a Medicare for All system would be in the aggregate. But do you want to know how much money per year a Medicare for All system would personally save you? Listen to Dr. James Kahn, explain the calculator he developed to help you figure that out. Plus, we invite Dr. Fred Hyde and healthcare consultant, Kip Sullivan, back to answer the feedback you sent us on the topic of Medicare (dis)Advantage.Dr. James Kahn is an expert in policy modeling in health care, cost-effectiveness analysis, and evidence-based medicine. He is an Emeritus Professor of Health Policy, Epidemiology, and Global Health at the University of California, San Francisco. He is also past president of the California chapter of Physicians for a National Health Program. He recently launched the Medicare for All Savings Calculator, which compares what individuals or families currently spend to what they would pay under Improved Medicare for All.If you compare 70% of our healthcare spending to total healthcare spending in any other wealthy country around the world, we're already spending more in public money than any other country spends in total. I like to say we're already paying for universal healthcare, we're just not getting it.Dr. James KahnWhy the American people do not wake up and demand that their members of Congress come to their town meetings back home— run by the people, where they talk all about this health care shenanigans— and send their Senators and Representatives back to Washington with instructions to support the kinds of single-payer that was illustrated in H.R.676 two years ago…HR676 is the gold standard, and it should be reintroduced in the next Congress so that people can rally around it.Ralph NaderDr. Fred Hyde is a consultant to hospitals, medical schools and physicians, as well as to unions, community groups and others interested in the health of hospitals, health care facilities and organizations. Dr. Hyde is also the publisher of a daily health policy newsletter called DCMedical News.A problem aside from the extraordinary cost of our medical care system is its complexity. I'm not surprised that your listeners have questions. I have questions, and I've been in the field fifty years. I teach graduate students in hospital operations and healthcare finance, and, trust me, everyone has questions when it comes to their own coverage… Complexity is itself an issue. And we live in a society where there are a good deal of middlemen who undertake to smooth over the complexity of our society, and make a buck doing so.Dr. Fred HydeKip Sullivan is a Health Care Advisor with Health Care for All Minnesota, and has written several hundred articles on health policy. He is an active member of Physicians for a National Health Program, which advocates for universal, comprehensive single-payer national health insurance.It is impossible to give you a dollars and cents comparison of the costs of Medicare Advantage with either Medicare alone or Medicare with supplemental coverage. And the reason it's impossible is: you don't know what you bought from Medicare Advantage until you need it.Kip Sullivan Get full access to Ralph Nader Radio Hour at www.ralphnaderradiohour.com/subscribe

Do not sign-up for Medicare Advantage! We don't care what Joe Namath tells you. That's the message of healthcare expert, Kip Sullivan, who returns to remind us why Medicare Advantage is simply a further for-profit corporate takeover of Medicare. Plus, we rifle through the mailbag where Ralph answers your questions and comments on your feedback about past programs.Kip Sullivan is a Health Care Advisor with Health Care for All Minnesota, and has written several hundred articles on health policy. He is an active member of Physicians for a National Health Program, which advocates for universal, comprehensive single-payer national health insurance.With the original Medicare you know what you're buying. The two parts of this scam that we're talking about is United Healthcare puts out this brochure making it sound like because they're so efficient that they can offer these extra services. It's not true. They're overpaid. We're wasting money on them. And the other piece of the scam is when you get sick you may very well not get the coverage that is described in the policy.Kip SullivanYou can't overstate the enthusiasm with which the Biden administration is promoting the takeover of Medicare by both Medicare Advantage plans and this new breed of parasite called the Accountable Care Organization, or ACO.Kip SullivanThere are multiple reasons to oppose the takeover of Medicare by these corporations. But the Democrats ought to be thinking about their own political future and looking ahead to this so-called crisis in 2028.Kip SullivanWe're underinvesting in the consequences of global warming— the climate disruption, droughts, gigantic wildfires, floods, surges from the sea, hurricanes. But we're overinvesting in blowing up countries overseas that do not threaten us… This is a sign of the collective insanity of the corporate state.Ralph NaderThis article by Diane Archer would be very useful for any listeners just turning 65 and trying to figure out whether to enroll in MA or stay in traditional Medicare:Four things to think about when choosing a plan to fill gaps in Medicare, a “Medigap” or Medicare supplemental insurance plan This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ralphnader.substack.com