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America's way of providing health care is failing, too, Cohn writes, and its problems also won't go away on their own. He spoke with NEWSWEEK's Mary Carmichael about how to cure an ailing system.

The people who get clobbered the most are still the working poor and the lower middle class. But the big change we're seeing now is that vulnerability is expanding up into the middle class more than before.

New York, NY — Everyday, millions of Americans struggle to find affordable medical care for themselves and their families, often leading to long-delayed treatment of illness and financial ruin. In SICK: The Untold Story of America's Health Care Crisis, and the People Who Pay the Price (HarperCollins; April 10, 2007), journalist and Demos Senior Fellow Jonathan Cohn offers a fascinating, first-hand account of America's failing health care system.

Ms. Draut, director of the Economic Opportunity Program at Demos, a public policy group in New York, got to the heart of the matter in her recent testimony before a U.S. Senate committee looking into higher education costs.

Des Moines, IA — Voter participation in Iowa will significantly increase if the state passes Election Day Registration (EDR) into law, according to a new report published today by national election reform research and policy group Demos and released in collaboration with the Iowa Citizen Action Network (ICAN). The Iowa House this week passed an EDR bill (HF653) and the state Senate is expected to take up the bill on Monday, March 26.

New York, NY — Demos: A Network for Ideas & Action is pleased to announce that Professor Benjamin R. Barber, renowned political theorist and expert on global democracy and citizenship, has joined Demos as a Distinguished Senior Fellow.

New York, NY — More than three-quarters of a million Americans were able to cast their ballot in November 2006 because of Election Day Registration (EDR), according to a new report published this week by Demos.

Washington, DC — Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) voting machines, once considered essential to ensuring private and independent voting booth access for voters with disabilities, often do not work as promised, according to a new report published today.

Cindy Zeldin works for Demos, a nonprofit research and advocacy group. She says even the insured are not immune from this growing trend.

"The direction of health insurance is towards greater individual risk, greater out-of-pocket expenses and those expenses are going right on to credit cards," she says.

The report, released last week, was jointly compiled by Demos, a public policy group in New York, and the Access Project, which is affiliated with a health policy institute at Brandeis University and is trying to broaden the availability of health care in the U.S.

According to the report, called "Borrowing to Stay Healthy," about 29 percent of low- and middle-income families with credit card debt reported using their credit cards to pay medical expenses - in most cases for major medical problems.