New Haven Independent

Health Care

Sounding the Health Care Alarm

by Melissa Bailey | Jun 23, 2006 11:37 am | Comments (0)

What are the alternatives to Connecticut’s “failing,” “helter-skelter” system of health care coverage? The Universal Health Care Foundation poses three concrete ideas for reform in a recent report, “Sounding the Alarm.” Each solution covers most or all of the state’s uninsured and cuts employers’ health care costs. Their plans?

1. One big, state-sponsored plan that covers everyone in the state.
2. Those who don’t have employer-sponsored plans join a state pool with competing private plans.
3. Expand the state HUSKY plan to include more adults, and requiring coverage for all children, including those whose immigration status bars them from federal funds.

“The numbers also put the onus on Gov. Rell to defend her position that universal health care doesn’t make sense for Connecticut,” responded the campaign of gubernatorial candidate and New Haven Mayor John DeStefano, who has pushed universal health care to the forefront of the issues surrounding the race.

Fair Haven merchants applauded the new health care report. Click here to see what they said about it

Our Own Katrinas

by Tess Wheelwright | Jun 21, 2006 6:34 pm | Comments (2)

Community health workers like Gary Spinner (pictured with Hill alderwoman Andrea Jackson-Brooks) say our national “health safety net” has nearer enemies than bioterror and bird flu, and that it didn’t break with Katrina: It is broken everyday. How about aiming crisis relief at “our own Katrinas”?: the diabetes and underinsurance epidemics devastating communities right here, right now.

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Never Too Poor to be Treated

by Melinda Tuhus | Jun 19, 2006 10:09 am | Comments (0)

These people, and hundreds more, listened as physician and medical anthropologist Paul Farmer explored the life and death issues of health care as a commodity versus health care as a human right. He spoke at Woolsey Hall on Friday as part of the Festival of Arts & Ideas.

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Doctor, We Have a Problem

by Tess Wheelwright | Jun 13, 2006 4:42 pm | Comments (0)

A crisis in how health care gets provided in Connecticut was glaring to community health specialists like Ronald Rozett (right) at an industry summit Tuesday morning — and a little foggy for practitioners.

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“More People Are Dying”

by Melinda Tuhus | Jun 8, 2006 7:00 pm | Comments (1)

As AIDS turns 25, one of the country’s first Latino AIDS organizations has moved to a third stage in the disease’s historic progression. Masks, created by long-term AIDS survivor Javier Villot (pictured), line the wall of an office at Hispanos Unidos.

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Malloy Goes Universal

by Paul Bass | Jun 7, 2006 11:39 am | Comments (0)

What a difference a campaign makes: Now both candidates running for the Democratic gubernatorical nomination support universal health care. Dannel Malloy previously offered a plan for just partial expansion of health care coverage in Connecticut, to 71,000 uninsured children. Wednesday he announced the Malloy Health Care Plan 2.0, which covers everybody, including adults. He’s scrambling to catch up with the other Democratic candidate, John DeStefano, who has received a positive response by making his own universal health care plan the policy centerpiece of his campaign. Malloy’s plan differs in how to pay for it (a cigarette tax hike, future budget surpluses), but not in the basic concept of universal coverage. Click here to read his campaign’s release summarizing the plan; click here to read the whole plan. Click here to find out how to get more involved in the universal health care issue.

“The question is no longer whether or not we need universal health care. The question is how we get there,” said Universal Health Care Foundation of Connecticut President Juan Figueroa in a prepared statement released after Malloy’s announced. Figueroa praised the Malloy plan’s focus on the working uninsured. (Disclosure: The foundation is one of the charitable donors to the not-for-profit organization that publishes this website.)

“Like the plan proposed by ... John Destefano, the Malloy proposal emphasizes features such as portability, expanding access to all residents, cost reduction and wellness,” Figueroa stated. “The Malloy and DeStefano plans differ in financing, delivery and other details that merit closer analysis.  However, by submitting potentially viable statewide options, both of these gubernatorial candidates have helped to advance a much-needed public discussion on health care policy and issues.”

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