As a result of the coronavirus pandemic, millions of U.S. workers who were satisfied with and didn’t want to give up their employer-provided health insurance are losing both their jobs and the associated insurance. While most public option plans have glaring deficiencies, this crisis may be the perfect moment for a new public option plan, Medicare For All Who Lose their … [Read more...]
Hospital cutbacks amid coronavirus accentuate the flaws in our health care system
HCfANC's own Jonathan Michels authored this letter for the editor of the News & Observer, printed on April 10th. Regarding “NC hospitals cut staff, expenses as coronavirus spreads,” (April 3): The coronavirus pandemic lays bare the ways in which our expensive, inefficient and profit-driven health care system has left our communities defenseless against public … [Read more...]
Masks, Gowns, and Medicare for All
Thoughts and prayers are nice, but healthcare workers need Medicare for All If patients want to support healthcare workers on the frontlines of the coronavirus pandemic, they should join us in calling for a universal, single-payer healthcare system. _ Any hope that we might emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic unscathed is gone. So far, the novel coronavirus … [Read more...]
Letter to the Editor: US Health Care
Originally published in the News & Observer on March 13, 2020: Regarding "Blue Cross NC announces coronavirus test coverage," (March 7): Why is it news when Blue Cross Blue Shield announces that COVID-19 testing will be a covered benefit? Because only in the failing US health care system would individual patients have to pay for a lab test that is … [Read more...]
The Spin Doctors
From the article: For decades, the American Medical Association has fought single-payer tooth and nail. But the US’s corporatized health system hurts doctors too — and cracks are forming in the AMA’s opposition to Medicare for All. Draft cards weren’t the only cards set on fire during the 1960s. Back then, at least one young medical student … [Read more...]
Medicaid Expansion Slowed Rates Of Health Decline For Low-Income Adults In Southern States
ABSTRACT Of the fourteen states that have not expanded eligibility for Medicaid, nine are in the southern census region, and two others border that region. Ongoing debate over the merits of Medicaid expansion in these states has focused, in part, on whether the safety net provides sufficient access for uninsured low-income Americans. We analyzed longitudinal survey and … [Read more...]
Every American family basically pays an $8,000 ‘poll tax’ under the U.S. health system, top economists say
America’s sky-high health-care costs are so far above what people pay in other countries that they are the equivalent of a hefty tax, Princeton University economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton say. They are surprised Americans aren’t revolting against these taxes. … [Read more...]
Health Care Administrative Costs in the United States and Canada, 2017
This paper published in the Annals of Internal Medicine sheds light on the costs of bureaucratic waste in our health care financing system. This waste is a cost of enforcing unequal access to care and extracting profit. The study found that health care bureaucracy cost Americans $812 billion in 2017, more than one-third (34.2%) of total … [Read more...]
Letter: Health care spending is not sustainable
“The U.S. federal government is on an unsustainable fiscal path. … The thing that drives our single unsustainability is health care spending. “We spend 17 percent of GDP; everyone else spends 10 percent. ... It’s not that benefits themselves are too generous. We deliver them in inefficient ways.” You might guess that Sen. Bernie Sanders said this, but it was … [Read more...]
CMS Office of the Actuary Releases 2017 National Health Expenditures
Overall national health spending grew at a rate of 3.9 percent in 2017, almost 1.0 percentage point slower than growth in 2016, according to a study conducted by the Office of the Actuary at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and published online today ahead of print by Health Affairs. Medicare spending grew at about the same rate in 2017 as in … [Read more...]
