Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP)

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"Expanded & Improved Medicare For All Act" Provides Renewal For The Movement

Don McCanne | Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP) | February 15, 2013

Congressman John Conyers has reintroduced his bill for a single payer national health program: H.R. 676, "Expanded & Improved Medicare For All Act." Some perspective is warranted. Read More »

$375 Billion Wasted On Billing And Health Insurance-Related Paperwork Annually: Study

Press Release | Physicians for a National Health Program | January 12, 2015

Medical billing paperwork and insurance-related red tape cost the U.S. economy approximately $471 billion in 2012, 80 percent of which is waste due to the inefficiency of the nation’s complex, multi-payer way of financing care, a group of researchers say. The researchers – physicians and health policy researchers with ties to the University of California, San Francisco, the City University of New York School of Public Health, and Harvard Medical School – note that a simplified, single-payer system of financing health care similar to Canada’s or the U.S. Medicare program could result in savings of approximately $375 billion annually, or more than $1 trillion over three years.

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Are We Getting Enough Bang For Our Healthcare Buck? Hardly.

Philip Caper | Physicians For A National Health Program | July 17, 2014

The U.S. healthcare system costs each of us about twice as much as those in other wealthy countries. Are we getting our money’s worth? Not by a long shot...

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Doctors Group Hails Reintroduction Of Medicare-For-All Bill

Press Release | Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP) | February 14, 2013

Single-payer health program would cover all 50 million uninsured, upgrade everyone’s benefits and save $400 billion annually on bureaucracy, physicians say Read More »

Electronic Health Records Increase Doctors’ Bureaucratic Burden

Press Release | Physicians for a National Health Program | October 23, 2014

The average U.S. doctor spends 16.6 percent of his or her working hours on non-patient-related paperwork, time that might otherwise be spent caring for patients. And the more time doctors spend on such bureaucratic tasks, the unhappier they are about having chosen medicine as a career.

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How the American Health Care Business Turned Patients into Consumers

A clash of cultures is rapidly developing among those of us who see the mission of the health care system to be primarily the diagnosis and healing of illness and those who see it primarily as an opportunity to create personal wealth. The concept of health care primarily as a business is uniquely American, and it has gained ascendancy during the last few decades. While there have always been a few greedy doctors, businessmen-wealth-seekers — not doctors — now dominate the medical-industrial complex. 

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US Defense Think Tank Calls for DoD to Adopt the Open Source VistA EHR and Avoid Closed and Proprietary EHRs.

One of the most prestigious U.S. defense think tanks, the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), issued a white paper Thursday calling on the Department of Defense (DoD) to replace their existing dysfunctional “vendor-lock” medical records system with an electronic health records system (EHR) that is "extensible, flexible and easy to safely modify and upgrade as technology improves and interoperability demands evolve." The white paper warns that a "closed and proprietary" commercial EHR - such as the ones offered by Epic, Cerner or Allscripts - will lead to "vendor-lock” and isolation of health data. Read More »

‘Subsidies Upheld, But Health Needs Still Unmet’: Doctors Group

Press Release | PNHP | June 25, 2015

Although the Supreme Court has upheld the premium subsidies under the Affordable Care Act, the law remains incapable of remedying the U.S. health crisis, physician group says

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