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Click a topic below for an index of articles: Alternative TreatmentsFinancial or Socio-Economic Issues
Math Models or Methods to Predict Trends
Religion and infectious diseases Stigma or Discrimination Issues If you would like to submit an article to this website, email us your paper to info@heart-intl.net |
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HIV/AIDS ; Hepatitis C:
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Main topics can be found within the left column; sub-topics and/or research reports can be found near the bottom of this page. Thank you
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Document Name & Link to Document |
Description |
File Size /Type** |
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A Better-Quality Alternative: Single-Payer National Health System Reform |
MANY MISCONSTRUE US health system reform options by presuming that "trade-offs" are needed to counter-balance the competing goals of increasing access, containing costs, and preserving quality.1, 2 Standing as an apparent paradox to this zero-sum equation are countries such as Canada that ensure access to all at a cost 40% per capita less, with satisfaction and outcomes as good as or better than those in the United States |
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A National Health Program for the United States: A Physicians' Proposal |
Our health care system is failing. Tens of millions of people are uninsured, costs are skyrocketing, and the bureaucracy is expanding. Patchwork reforms succeed only in exchanging old problems for new ones. |
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Associated Health Costs - United States |
Although few prospective long-term survival and health care cost studies are available for hepatitis C, it has been possible to estimate the life-long economic impact of the disease for both the individual patient and for the U.S. population with chronic hepatitis B. Lifetime health care costs for a patient with chronic hepatitis B has been estimated at $65,000 in the absence of liver transplantation. For the 150,000 HBV carriers with significant liver damage, the lifetime health care costs in the U.S. have been estimated to be $9 billion. Assuming an estimated survival of 25 years, the annual health care costs for the affected U.S. population with chronic hepatitis B is $360 million. Based on the same economic analysis, treatment of chronic hepatitis B with interferon is projected to increase life expectancy by about three years and reduce the aggregate health care costs. | ||||
| BUDGETING FOR HIV/AIDS - Costing the ‘Indirect Impact’ on the Health Sector | PowerPoint Presentation | 139 kb | |||
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While legislators, judges and politicians and their families enjoy at no cost, for the rest of their lives, the finest comprehensive medical care benefits taxpayers can provide, one out of every six Americans has no medical care insurance. |
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Policy analysts and politicians alike recognize the evolving demographic changes that mandate that reforms be made in our Medicare program that will assure that funding will always be available to ensure that health care need never be an issue for the retired and for those with long term disabilities. |
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| DECLARATION OF ALMA-ATA |
Under WHO
director Mahler of Denmark (1973-88) the goal of "Health for
All" was proposed and was formally put forth in the 1978
WHO-UNICEF Alma-Ata Declaration. The attendees of the
conference realized that improving health called for a
comprehensive approach whereby primary health care was seen
as "the key to achieving an acceptable level of health
throughout the world in the foreseeable future as a part of
social development and in the spirit of social justice."
WHO, Declaration of Alma Ata, as reported in "Report on the
international conference on primary health care". The Alma-Ata Declaration affirmed health as a fundamental human and right and called for a transformation of conventional health care systems and for broad intersectoral collaboration and community organizing. |
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The Deteriorating Administrative Efficiency of the US Health Care System |
In 1983 the proportion of health care expenditures consumed by administration in the United States was 60 percent higher than in Canada and 97 percent higher than in Britain. |
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Myths about universal coverage and the look at these misconceptions |
PDF / 110 KB |
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The United States National Health Insurance Act (HR676) establishes a new American national health insurance program by creating a single payer health care system. The bill would create a publicly financed, privately delivered health care program that uses the already existing Medicare program by expanding and improving it to all U.S. residents, and all residents living in U.S. territories. |
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By eliminating unnecessary, duplicative paperwork (with single-source financing) and adopting rational, proven mechanisms to stretch our health care dollars (such as bulk purchasing of medications), the United States can provide comprehensive health care coverage - including long-term care - to every resident of the United States for less than what we are currently spending. |
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The legislation proposes an effective mechanism for controlling skyrocketing health costs while covering all 42 million uninsured Americans. The bill also restores free choice of physician to patients and provides comprehensive prescription drug coverage to seniors, as well as younger people. |
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Questions and Answers about the French Health System |
PDF / 86 KB |
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| Health Insurance Coverage: 2001 |
Reversing two years of falling uninsured rates, the share of the
population without health insurance rose in 2001. An estimated
14.6 percent of the population or 41.2 million people were
without health insurance coverage during the entire year in 2001,
up from 14.2 percent in 2000, an increase of 1.4 million people
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Universal coverage could be finance with a 7% payroll tax |
PDF / 111 KB |
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| Impact of AIDS on the Health Sector | The AIDS epidemic poses enormous challenges to the health systems of developing countries. The magnitude of the epidemic requires medical care and social support for those infected. Yet, the threat of future infections demands an effective preventive programme. And AIDS must compete for resources with acute infectious diseases and the growing burden of chronic diseases | 51 kb pdf | |||
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Health care systems in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries primarily reflect three types of programs: |
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A single-payer national health program would eliminate the jobs of hundreds of thousands of people who currently perform billing, advertising, eligibility determination, and other superfluous tasks. These workers must be guaranteed retraining and placement in meaningful jobs. |
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The Physicians for a National Health Program proposes to cover all Americans under a single, comprehensive public insurance program without copayments or deductibles and with free choice of provider. Such a national health program could reap tens of billions of dollars in administrative savings in the initial years, enough to fund generous increases in health care services not only for the uninsured, but for the underinsured as well. |
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Articles on National Healthcare issues |
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Proposed bill that would implement universal coverage |
PDF / 105 KB |
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| Prescription For Danger | "The insurance companies are pushing all of us around, they're pushing the patient, the consumer, they're pushing the physician and they're pushing the pharmacist." The drugs and dosages an insurance company prefers are called its 'formulary.' We discovered your insurance formulary often depends on secret deals your health plan makes with drug manufacturers. Depending on which drug is not selling well, manufacturers give incentives -- what some call kickbacks. | ||||
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Do Canadians really use the US health system? |
PDF / 158 KB |
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Press Releases summarize and highlight research done by our members, announcements from the organization, and upcoming events, like debates and television appearances. |
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Private health plans are responsible for much of the administrative waste that uniquely characterizes the health care system of the United States. And for this outrageous cost and inefficiency, these plans are providing highly flawed and inequitable methods of pooling funds and allocating health care resources. |
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Proposal of the Physicians' Working Group for Single-Payer National Health Insurance |
Yet despite medical abundance, care is too often meager because of the irrationality of the present health care system. Over 39 million Americans have no health insurance whatsoever |
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This article describes a way to finance universal health care coverage that preserves much of the current financing system |
PDF / 345 KB |
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Single-payer national health insurance could cover the uninsured and upgrade coverage for most Americans without increasing costs. |
PDF / 103 KB |
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Future of Health care in Canada |
PDF / 2,391 KB |
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Socialized medicine is a system in which doctors and hospitals work for the government and draw salaries from the government. Doctors in the Veterans Administration and the Armed Services are paid this way. |
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In countries with a national health insurance system, physicians are rarely questioned about their medical practices (and usually only in cases of expected fraud). Compare it to today’s system, where doctors routinely have to ask an insurance company permission to perform procedures, prescribe certain medications, or run certain tests to help their patients. |
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The evidence in support of the claim that managed care saves money in inconclusive. Little evidence is on the efficiency of managed care plans compared with FFS plans. |
PDF / 59 KB |
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| The Social Impact of AIDS in the United States | The U.S. health care system stands alone among advanced industrial countries in lacking a national program to ensure universal or nearly universal health insurance coverage. The various public and private insurance plans and delivery systems (such as the Veterans Administration health system) reflect what John Iglehart characterizes as ''society's profound ambivalence about whether medical care for all is a social good, of which the costs should be borne by society, or a benefit that employers should purchase for employees and their dependents, with government insurance for people outside the work force." This ambivalence, and the resulting lack of any political consensus on how to finance and deliver health services, has resulted in an odd assortment of programs that does provide health insurance to about 85 percent of the population, but leaves some 36 million people uninsured. The uninsured are primarily full-time workers and their dependents who are employed in small firms at a low or the minimum wage. | ||||
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Universal Coverage-How do we pay for it |
PDF / 107 KB |
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Report on medical coverage in Vermont and how it reduced the cost of healthcare |
PDF / 172 KB |
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Every person living in the United States and the U.S. Territories would receive a United States National Health Insurance Card and i.d number once they enroll at the appropriate location. Social Security numbers may not be used when assigning i.d cards. |
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In the case of health care, a single-payer system would be setup such that one entity—a government run organization—would collect all health care fees, and pay out all health care costs. |
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Time to rescue the Uninsured-concept of National Healthcare |
PDF / 54 KB |
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Single payer insurance is commonly defined as a single government fund within each state which pays hospitals, physicians and other health care providers, replacing the current multi-payer system of private insurance companies and health plans. |
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| WHY DO AMERICANS HAVE SUCH POOR HEALTH? | In order to understand the current status of medical care in the U.S., Canada and Europe it is vital to understand that health care in these 3 regions is nearly completely under the control of the pharmaceutical industry. All major pharmaceutical firms have interlocking boards of directors so there is no real competition among these companies. In the United States the primary function of the Federal Drug Administration is to ensure the profitability of pharmaceutical firms, chemical firms and large agricultural conglomerates | ||||
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