About
The McCanne Health Justice Monitor (HJM) is a health policy blog focused on a progressive policy agenda. HJM takes as its inspiration Quote of the Day, the daily health policy update produced single-handedly by health policy advocate and expert Don McCanne. Don’s prolific work on issues ranging from health care inequity and waste, to financing patterns and the distortions introduced by profit motives, to health reform politics demonstrated how to understand the myriad health policy developments around us in the context of pursuing health efficiency and justice through single payer. Don’s inspiration is reflected in our name.
The McCanne Health Justice Monitor endeavors to continue and expand the Quote of the Day mission. While our core writing will focus on topics related to U.S. health system failings and, of course, single payer reform, we will also expand into new territory related to health. We are excited to bring you writing on issues of racism and racial inequities, climate and environmental justice, and global health for low and middle income countries. We have a core team of health policy experts who will contribute posts several times per month. We will also feature the work of guest contributors to speak to the broad range of topics we think is fundamental to equitable health reform.
We believe there is no time like the present for dismantling the unequal and unjust U.S. health care system, and shifting to a simple, practical, and humane single payer system. We will endeavor to regularly bring you the most informed and responsible policy updates and views on how to achieve health justice.
Editorial Board
Jim (James G.) Kahn, MD, MPH (editor) is an Emeritus Professor of Health Policy, Epidemiology, and Global Health at the University of California, San Francisco. His work focuses on the cost and effectiveness of prevention and treatment interventions in low and middle income countries, and on single payer economics in the U.S. He has studied, advocated, and educated on single payer since the 1994 campaign for Prop 186 in California, including two years as chair of Physicians for a National Health Program California.
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David Himmelstein, MD and Steffie Woolhandler, MD, MPH are Distinguished Professors of Public Health at City University of New York at Hunter College, Lecturers in Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and Research Associates at Public Citizen Health. Their work focuses on general internal medicine, clinical epidemiology, health care financing, health care reform, and health care inequality. They are also the founders of Physicians for a National Health Program, lead authors of NEJM and JAMA proposals for single payer reform, and chairs of the Lancet Commission on US Public Policy and Health.
Adam Gaffney, MD, MPH is an Assistant Professor in Medicine at Harvard Medical School and a pulmonary and critical care physician at the Cambridge Health Alliance. His research focuses on health equity, disparities in care for patients with lung disease, and national healthcare reform. He also writes regularly for a general audience on matters of health policy, and is the author of To Heal Humankind: The Right to Health in History, published by Routledge in 2017. He is the immediate past president of the nonprofit research and advocacy organization Physicians for a National Health Program.
Eagan Kemp is the health care policy advocate for Public Citizen’s Congress Watch division. He is an expert on a broad range of policy topics including single-payer systems, private health insurance, Medicare, Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, the Veterans Health Administration, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, social determinants of health, mental health, and drug shortages. He previously served as senior policy analyst at the U.S. Government Accountability Office.
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Ana Malinow, MD spent three decades working as a pediatrician with immigrant, refugee, and underserved children in Ohio, Texas, Pennsylvania, and California. She is past president of Physicians for a National Health Program, co-founder of Health Care for All Texas, and lead organizer for National Single Payer. She has written opinion pieces on how national single payer will improve patient care and bring us closer to social justice. She has been a speaker on healthcare reform and featured on national and international television and radio. She recently retired as Professor of Pediatrics from the University of California, San Francisco.
Don McCanne, MD is a retired family physician and serves as senior health policy fellow for Physicians for a National Health Program. He is a past president of PNHP. He has written extensively on the uninsured, health care costs, and health care policy and formerly authored the popular health policy "Quote of the Day."
Other Contributors
Gregg Gonsalves, PhD is Associate Professor at Yale School of Public Health and Law School, where he co-directs the Global Health Justice Partnership, working at the intersections of health, human rights, and social justice. An AIDS activist for 30 years, he worked with the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP), co-founded the Treatment Action Group and International Treatment Preparedness Coalition, and worked with Gay Men’s Health Crisis in NY and the AIDS and Rights Alliance for Southern Africa in Cape Town.
Allison K. Hoffman, JD is Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School and Senior Fellow at Penn’s Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics. Her work examines health insurance regulation, the Affordable Care Act, Medicare, and long-term care. She’s currently working on writing the 3rd Edition of The Politics of Medicare with her mentor Ted Marmor.
Isabel Ostrer, MD is a first-year resident in the internal medicine primary care track at the University of California San Francisco. Her prior research has focused on health care financing and quality. While in medical school, she was involved in organizing for single payer reform in California and nationally.
