National Health Insurance

CAMBRIDGE -- Maurice Lazarus, who enjoyed two successful careers, one in his family's department store business and another as a founder of one of the nation's first health maintenance organizations, died Tuesday. He was 88. Mr. Lazarus, whose family founded retail giant Federated Department Stores , died at his home in Cambridge after a battle with lung cancer, said his wife, Nell. After retiring from retail, he was among the founders of Harvard Community Health Plan, now known as Harvard Pilgrim Health Care.

CAMBRIDGE -- Maurice Lazarus, who enjoyed two successful careers, one in his family's department store business and another as a founder of one of the nation's first health maintenance organizations, died Tuesday. He was 88. Mr. Lazarus, whose family founded retail giant Federated Department Stores , died at his home in Cambridge after a battle with lung cancer, said his wife, Nell. After retiring from retail, he was among the founders of Harvard Community Health Plan, now known as Harvard Pilgrim Health Care.

REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL candidate Tim Pawlenty was right. While he backed away from the nice term he coined — ObamneyCare — the health reforms enacted by then-governor Mitt Romney in 2006 and President Obama in 2010 have much in common, although both would deny it. Their main strength is that more people get insured. In Massachusetts, the percentage is up to 98 percent, the highest in the nation. Obama projects that about 95 percent of people will be insured nationally in a decade.

ATLANTA -- You can add Canadians to the list of foreigners who are healthier than Americans. Americans are more likely than Canadians to have diabetes, high blood pressure, and arthritis, according to a Harvard Medical School analysis of a telephone survey of American and Canadian adults. The study comes less than a month after other researchers reported that middle-aged, white Americans are much sicker than their counterparts in England. "We're really falling behind other nations," said Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard and a co-author of the new...

LONDON - Britain’s universal health care system was back in the spotlight yesterday, as a leaked consultants’ report advised drastic cuts in staff and budget. British politicians and the public rallied behind the National Health Service in the face of attacks by opponents of health care legislation in the United States. Critics of President Obama’s plan for national health insurance have used the British system as a negative example, saying it provided rationed care in which bureaucrats could make life-and-death decisions.

ATLANTA -- High-deductible health insurance plans favored by many employers often wind up being an unfair burden to women, a study says, largely because women need many routine medical exams that quickly add up. The median expense for men younger than 45 in these plans was less than $500, but for women it was more than $1,200, according to a study by Harvard Medical School researchers. They also found that only a third of insured men in that age group spent more than $1,050 in annual medical costs, while 55 percent of women did. "High-deductible plans punish women...

1915: American Association for Labor Legislation releases proposal to insure low-income workers and their families. Special interests and fear of socialism kill the plan. 1945: President Truman delivers message to Congress calling for compulsory, single-payer health care program. A bill incorporating Truman's suggestions dies in the Senate the following year. 1958: Congress begins hearings on health insurance for the elderly. 1960: Congress rejects the Forand Bill, a proposal to provide a limited package of health benefits to the elderly.

When President Nixon wanted to overhaul the health care system to provide universal coverage, his administration turned to Stuart Altman. Ten years later, when Congress created a commission to improve the Medicare payment system, Altman led the effort. And, in the early '90s, when newly elected Bill Clinton assembled a team to guide his health care policies, Altman was among the first chosen. There may be no single person with a longer or deeper history in the health care overhaul efforts of the past 40 years than Altman, a professor of national health policy at...

IN THE spirit of the political season, I recently watched Robert Redford's movie "The Candidate," first released in 1972. The film is a satire - gentle by today's standards - of our electoral system, in which an idealistic young lawyer named Bill McKay (Redford) is persuaded to run for US Senate, losing his innocence even as he wins office. McKay's frustrations with the hypocrisy and absurdity of campaigning ring true today. But the real value of this cultural artifact is the lens it provides on the country's ideological shift over the past 40 years.

Arnold Bennett, 71; backed Clinton's health care plan WASHINGTON - Arnold Bennett, a Democratic consultant and grass-roots organizer who played a key role in shaping strategy for President Clinton's unsuccessful campaign for national health insurance coverage, died Oct. 26 at George Washington University Hospital at 71. He apparently died after a heart attack, said his wife, Nancy. Mr. Bennett began his career in politics working on the campaign staff of Shirley Chisholm in 1968, when she became the first black woman elected to Congress.