Health care is the universal service that all individuals will need at some point in their lives. Nearly all first-tier countries provide some form of single-payer universal health care, where all residents are provided basic levels of health care regardless of their income through a government-funded system or other similar means. The World Health Organization describes universal health care as a system “where citizens can access health services without incurring financial hardship.”
The United States has historically relied on the health-insurance system for providing health care, yet we spend the most per person — $14,570 in 2023, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services [CMS] — significantly higher than the world average of around $5,000 and the highest in the world, yet our outcomes are also among the worst:
• Life expectancy at birth 3 years lower than average
• Highest rate of infant and maternal deaths
• Obesity rate nearly double the average
• Highest rate of adults with multiple chronic conditions
• Among the lowest rates of physician visits and practicing physicians
• No healthy metrics in the “top 10” category
Health insurance is provided largely by for-profit companies, who do nothing to control costs but just shift more and more of them onto their policyholders through co-pays, deductibles, and similar fees, and pay exorbitant salaries, bonuses, and stock options for their CEOs and other upper-level management, contributing to the continuing increases in health care costs and placing our system on an unsustainable footing. After trying this process for the past 50+ years in an attempt to “reform,” it is time to cut our losses and determine an affordable alternative to the health insurance model.
The best-known alternative movement is Medicare for All. In 2020 it was estimated that 68,000 lives and $450 billion in expenditures could have been saved. Studies from both Harvard and Yale universities undertaken in recent years show that some form of universal and/or single-payer health care would both improve health in the U.S. as well as reduce the cost. U.S. insurance companies use vertical (combination of a single company into two or more stages of production) and horizontal (acquiring/merging with other companies in the same industry at the same level) integration, reducing consumer choice and increasing costs due to consolidation of market share and resultant lack of competition.
Clearly we need an alternative to the current health insurance profit-based model since it doesn’t provide health care in either an affordable or effective manner.
Daniel Herbert-Voss, White City