Dear Common Dreams Readers:
Philip Caper
Philip Caper of Brooklin, Maine is a physician and a founding board member of Maine AllCare, a nonpartisan, nonprofit group committed to making health care in Maine universal, accessible and affordable for all, and a member of Physicians for a National Health Program.
Articles by this author
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Views Saturday, May 16, 2015 Obamacare’s Health Plan Choice Benefits are Vastly Overrated It is well documented that many other countries have created health care systems that are more popular than ours, cover everybody, are more effective as measured by better health outcomes, are better able to restrain increases in costs and, therefore, have per-capita costs that are a fraction of... Read more |
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Views Saturday, November 22, 2014 How ACA Fuels Corporatization of American Health Care A new Harvard study has found that Americans’ trust in the medical profession has dropped dramatically in recent years and lags behind that in many other wealthy countries. At the same time, doctors are becoming increasingly unhappy with our profession. In his new memoir, “ Doctored ,” Dr. Sandeep... Read more |
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Views Sunday, October 19, 2014 Think About Your Health When You Vote in November Elections matter. And when it comes to health care, the upcoming election on Nov. 4 will matter a lot. This seems an appropriate time to take stock of where we stand. I strongly believe in health care with dignity for everybody. When I took the Hippocratic Oath, I swore to put the patient first... Read more |
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Views Thursday, June 19, 2014 Expand Medicare to Serve All Veterans The problem of long wait times for veterans seeking care at some (but not all) Veterans Health Administration facilities has been front-page news for the past several weeks, and seems to be resulting in an unusually prompt response from a normally gridlocked Congress. The wait times and the... Read more |
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Views Saturday, March 22, 2014 With Hippocratic Oath, Doctors Pledge Allegiance to Patients, Not Profits Read more |
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Views Sunday, January 19, 2014 Love It or Hate It, Obamacare’s Spurring Interest in the Pathology of Health Care Love it or hate it, even if ObamaCare never fully achieves its intended benefits, it has already had some unintended ones. First, it has destabilized our deeply dysfunctional health-care system. By doing so, the law has created a real opportunity to fundamentally restructure the way we finance and deliver health care. Read more |
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Views Thursday, December 19, 2013 Americans Are Paying for Health Care with More Than Money Americans now spend close to $3 trillion a year for health care, around 18 percent of our GDP. That works out to almost $9,000 per person in Maine, almost twice as much per person as the average for other wealthy nations that provide health care for all their people. Read more |
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Views Friday, November 15, 2013 Obamacare's Problems Run Deeper Than Glitchy Website, Cancellation Notices Serious problems with the websites created by the Affordable Care Act continue, and probably will for a long time. Although frantic efforts at incrementally improving them are being made by the Obama administration, and some sites are working better than others, they are a long way from working well. Read more |
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Views Saturday, February 16, 2013 Health Care Spending: A 21st Century Gold Rush Winston Churchill once remarked, “Americans will always do the right thing, once they’ve exhausted all alternatives.” His observation, at least the second half of it, is proving itself as we continue to struggle with our health care system, especially its out-of-control costs that are crippling the budgets of businesses and government alike. Read more |
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Views Saturday, December 29, 2012 Deja-vu All Over Again: A Chance to Lead About a year ago, facing a budgetary shortfall, the Maine legislature had a knock-down, drag out fight over Governor LePage’s proposal to attempt to save $250 million by throwing 65,000 Maine residents off MaineCare. Read more |