Name: Jon Shobin

Case title: National health Care single-payer plan

Case description:

A national health-care single-payer plan is one solution to solving the problem of providing health care for everyone, regardless of ability to pay. This includes rich and poor alike. Currently there are over forty million Americans without any health insurance whatsoever. The single-payer plan would allow all citizens and legal aliens to be enrolled in a program of national health insurance established by the federal government and administered by the states. Needless to say, such a proposal is controversial.

URLs about the case:

1. www.pnhp.org -- Physicians for a National Health Program -- The mission statement of the 9,000 member national organization that advocates a national, comprehensive single payer national health care program.

2. www.thirdworldtraveler.com/health -- On the Third World Traveler Website, an essay from PHNP called "How much does single payer national health-care cost?"

3. www.ama-assn.org/issues -- nov. 4, 1998 -- "Activist Young says 'Gathering Storm' will Propel a Single Payer MovemenT." A JAMA debate between Mass. Rep. Barney Franks and Quinton Young, M.D., about the merits of a single-payer system.

4. www.amsa.org/hp/stateinits.cfm -- In "Speak Up, America! Health Care is our Right," the American Medical Student Asociation endorsed the universal healthcare single-payer proposal.

URLS for Ethical Commentators:

1. www.nonmanagedcared.org -- At The National Coalition of Mental Health Professionals and Consumers Summer 2001 conference, Karen Shore, Ph.D., outlines the ethical and other arguments against managed care and single-payer plans.

2. www.ama-assn.org/sci-pubs/amnews -- Replying to a piece in American Medical News, Dr. Bob Lebow ethically replies that "A Single Payer System is Likely the Best Path to Universay Coverage."

3. www.columbia.edu/cu/21stC/issue -- Columbia's Dean of Medical Ethics, in a piece called "You say managed, I say mangled, let's call the whole thing off," comments on managed care and the single-payer plan.

4. www.everybodyinnobodyout.org/Discuss/Sept.11 -- post the Sept. 11 tragedy, ethical commentray called "A Shift in Strategy," by Jeoffry Gordon, M.D., member of PNHP, Physicians for a National Health Plan.