Two recent events call attention to our horrible medical care “system.” First was the murder of the CEO of the medical insurance company UnitedHealthcare. The other was President-Elect Trump telling Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that if Canada had trouble dealing with the oncoming tariffs, Canada could become the 51st U.S. state.
Following the capture of the suspect in the murder of the CEO, there was considerable public support for the killer, including the beginning of a fund for his defense. It became apparent that this surprising support was because of public anger at medical insurance companies in general and UnitedHealthcare in particular. UnitedHealthcare is the largest medical insurance company, and it has the highest rate of denials of medical care services.
Michael Moore described the situation as follows;
“[We] have a whopping 1.4 million people employed with the job of DENYING HEALTH CARE, vs only 1 million doctors in the entire country! That’s all you need to know about America. We pay more people to deny care than to give it. One million doctors to give care, 1.4 million brutes in cubicles doing their best to stop doctors from giving that care. If the purpose of “health care” is to keep people alive, then what is the purpose of DENYING PEOPLE HEALTH CARE?”
The bottom line is that the United States needs a health care system. Instead, it has a hodgepodge of medical care enterprises that profit from citizens’ illnesses. Citizens pay out of pocket, unlike in education, where citizens pay taxes and get “free” public education. Consequently, Americans owe at least $140 billion in outstanding medical debt, and over 50 percent of Americans have medical debt.
By 2020, individuals had more medical debt in collections than debt from all other sources combined, including credit cards, phone bills, and utilities. While the high cost of medical care has historically been a factor in bankruptcy filings, data show that implementing the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) did not change the proportion of bankruptcy filings for medical causes.
Medical debt is a primary cause of bankruptcy. Two-thirds of people who file bankruptcy cite medical issues as a key contributor to their financial problems. Nearly half of people with medical debt say it has prevented them from buying a house or saving for retirement.
I have long advocated for a national health plan that would provide universal health care, which all other industrialized countries have.
Among the many pushbacks I received through the years was, “The [inept] United States government cannot handle anything as large as a national health plan.” Americans “knew ” this because, incredibly, Richard Nixon succeeded in getting that outrageous drumbeat widely accepted while the United States was audaciously putting a man on the moon, which occurred a few years after Medicare started. Medicare is a universal health care plan.
But the issue is more critical than debt. There is the issue of deaths. Somewhere between 20,000 and 40,000 deaths occur each year in the United States due to lack of insurance. This happens despite Obamacare, which still leaves up to 40 million people uninsured.
Senator Sanders, well-known for advocating a universal health care plan, responded notably to Trump’s offhand suggestion that Canada become the 51st state. Sanders commented:
“Does that mean we can adopt the Canadian health care system and guarantee health care to all, lower the cost of prescription drugs, and spend 50 percent less per capita on health care?” If so, he went on, “I’m all for it. The health care problem in America [would be] solved.”
Yes, the Canadian health care system is vastly superior to the U.S. Few, if any, people die for lack of insurance.
This brings us back to UnitedHealthcare. The CEO was attending a meeting of the large company’s shareholders to discuss plans to keep their dividends flowing. One way of doing that is to minimize payments for medical services. Thus, there is a high rate of service denials.
It is way past time for the United States to join other industrialized countries and institute a universal medical care system. Senator Sanders and others call it Medicare for All, a system like Medicare for all ages.
Experts agree that a national health plan would be less expensive than our current system, not more expensive. Traditional Medicare administrative costs are about 2 percent of the program’s expenditures, while the overhead of private health insurance companies before the Affordable Care Act was much higher, at around 12 to 14 percent.
Of course, we are currently destined to pay to live.