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Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.

The other provisions of the Affordable Care Act--or 'Obamacare--are slated to go through as scheduled, the Obama administration says.
The one-year delay of what Obama touted as a 'key provision' to his plan will apply to businesses that employ 50 or more full-time workers. The change was announced by the Treasury Department as a concession to big business after employer complaints over the rule's complexity, it said.
Critics charge that this latest delay exposes an underlying truth: Obamacare has been a concession to big business all along, aimed at deepening the privatization of the U.S. health care industry that is responsible for the current crisis.
"The whole bill is built around the needs of the insurance and pharmaceutical industries," Ida Hellander, director of health policy and programs for Physicians for a National Health Program, told Common Dreams. "The delay is just a symptom of this bill being too complicated and too burdensome for the many people who will be uninsured or under-insured under Obamacare."
Single-payer healthcare advocates blast the bill that will leave many without insurance, or with inadequate insurance, while fattening the coffers of the private insurance industry responsible for the current healthcare crisis that has ranked the U.S. lowest in life expectancy among the world's 'wealthiest' nations.
"This is is one more piece of evidence that we will have to replace the current healthcare system with HR 676--the improved and extended medicare for all, single payer bill that provides coverage for everyone," Don Bechler, chair of Single Payer Now, told Common Dreams.
Furthermore, critics charge that Obamacare's complex web of publicly and privately funded insurance plans are complicated, fragmented, and simply leave many people out of the equation. A recent Health Affairs study finds that approximately 30 million in the U.S. will remain uninsured under Obamacare.
"What we are seeing is a tremendous fragmentation of our health system," says Hellander. "This is the natural result of centralizing the private healthcare industry. We have already had a 50-year experiment with private healthcare. It has been a failure."
_____________________
Dear Common Dreams reader, It’s been nearly 30 years since I co-founded Common Dreams with my late wife, Lina Newhouser. We had the radical notion that journalism should serve the public good, not corporate profits. It was clear to us from the outset what it would take to build such a project. No paid advertisements. No corporate sponsors. No millionaire publisher telling us what to think or do. Many people said we wouldn't last a year, but we proved those doubters wrong. Together with a tremendous team of journalists and dedicated staff, we built an independent media outlet free from the constraints of profits and corporate control. Our mission has always been simple: To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. Building Common Dreams was not easy. Our survival was never guaranteed. When you take on the most powerful forces—Wall Street greed, fossil fuel industry destruction, Big Tech lobbyists, and uber-rich oligarchs who have spent billions upon billions rigging the economy and democracy in their favor—the only bulwark you have is supporters who believe in your work. But here’s the urgent message from me today. It's never been this bad out there. And it's never been this hard to keep us going. At the very moment Common Dreams is most needed, the threats we face are intensifying. We need your support now more than ever. We don't accept corporate advertising and never will. We don't have a paywall because we don't think people should be blocked from critical news based on their ability to pay. Everything we do is funded by the donations of readers like you. When everyone does the little they can afford, we are strong. But if that support retreats or dries up, so do we. Will you donate now to make sure Common Dreams not only survives but thrives? —Craig Brown, Co-founder |

The other provisions of the Affordable Care Act--or 'Obamacare--are slated to go through as scheduled, the Obama administration says.
The one-year delay of what Obama touted as a 'key provision' to his plan will apply to businesses that employ 50 or more full-time workers. The change was announced by the Treasury Department as a concession to big business after employer complaints over the rule's complexity, it said.
Critics charge that this latest delay exposes an underlying truth: Obamacare has been a concession to big business all along, aimed at deepening the privatization of the U.S. health care industry that is responsible for the current crisis.
"The whole bill is built around the needs of the insurance and pharmaceutical industries," Ida Hellander, director of health policy and programs for Physicians for a National Health Program, told Common Dreams. "The delay is just a symptom of this bill being too complicated and too burdensome for the many people who will be uninsured or under-insured under Obamacare."
Single-payer healthcare advocates blast the bill that will leave many without insurance, or with inadequate insurance, while fattening the coffers of the private insurance industry responsible for the current healthcare crisis that has ranked the U.S. lowest in life expectancy among the world's 'wealthiest' nations.
"This is is one more piece of evidence that we will have to replace the current healthcare system with HR 676--the improved and extended medicare for all, single payer bill that provides coverage for everyone," Don Bechler, chair of Single Payer Now, told Common Dreams.
Furthermore, critics charge that Obamacare's complex web of publicly and privately funded insurance plans are complicated, fragmented, and simply leave many people out of the equation. A recent Health Affairs study finds that approximately 30 million in the U.S. will remain uninsured under Obamacare.
"What we are seeing is a tremendous fragmentation of our health system," says Hellander. "This is the natural result of centralizing the private healthcare industry. We have already had a 50-year experiment with private healthcare. It has been a failure."
_____________________

The other provisions of the Affordable Care Act--or 'Obamacare--are slated to go through as scheduled, the Obama administration says.
The one-year delay of what Obama touted as a 'key provision' to his plan will apply to businesses that employ 50 or more full-time workers. The change was announced by the Treasury Department as a concession to big business after employer complaints over the rule's complexity, it said.
Critics charge that this latest delay exposes an underlying truth: Obamacare has been a concession to big business all along, aimed at deepening the privatization of the U.S. health care industry that is responsible for the current crisis.
"The whole bill is built around the needs of the insurance and pharmaceutical industries," Ida Hellander, director of health policy and programs for Physicians for a National Health Program, told Common Dreams. "The delay is just a symptom of this bill being too complicated and too burdensome for the many people who will be uninsured or under-insured under Obamacare."
Single-payer healthcare advocates blast the bill that will leave many without insurance, or with inadequate insurance, while fattening the coffers of the private insurance industry responsible for the current healthcare crisis that has ranked the U.S. lowest in life expectancy among the world's 'wealthiest' nations.
"This is is one more piece of evidence that we will have to replace the current healthcare system with HR 676--the improved and extended medicare for all, single payer bill that provides coverage for everyone," Don Bechler, chair of Single Payer Now, told Common Dreams.
Furthermore, critics charge that Obamacare's complex web of publicly and privately funded insurance plans are complicated, fragmented, and simply leave many people out of the equation. A recent Health Affairs study finds that approximately 30 million in the U.S. will remain uninsured under Obamacare.
"What we are seeing is a tremendous fragmentation of our health system," says Hellander. "This is the natural result of centralizing the private healthcare industry. We have already had a 50-year experiment with private healthcare. It has been a failure."
_____________________