How Protecting Profits for the Richest Pharmas and Healthcare Institutions is Sinking US Healthcare

How Protecting Profits for the Richest Pharmas and Healthcare Institutions is Sinking US Healthcare

From Medicare to Medi-Icouldcareless

A bad as my October 3rd We Have the Best Healthcare in the World, if You are Rich blog may have depicted the sad performance of the American healthcare system may have been, the numbers emphasize how much of an under-performer it is, and how much worse it is trending. Yet, medical care issues drifted into the back pages of campaign rhetoric, even with the threat of disruption to our failing healthcare system approaching catastrophic proportions. But there is no question that our current healthcare system makes little sense, especially when compared to that of any other developed country. Writing for the October 20th Yahoo!Finance, Adriana Belmonte provides the supporting numbers:

“The overall cost of healthcare remains a major problem. Healthcare expenditures grew 4.1% in 2022, reaching $4.5 trillion and accounting for 17.3% of US GDP…. The ballooning costs highlight the crux of the US healthcare conundrum: The US spends more on healthcare than any other developed country in the world — an estimated $13,493 per person. Yet it falls behind in overall healthcare performance, access and affordability, administrative efficiency, equity, and health outcomes, according to the Commonwealth Fund… ‘The cost of healthcare is always a pocketbook concern for Americans,” Paul Shafer, assistant professor at Boston University's Department of Health Law, Policy, and Management…

“An estimated 20 million Americans collectively owe $220 billion in medical debt, according to the Peterson-KFF Health System Tracker… In June, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau announced that it would erase medical debt from credit reports using funding from the American Rescue Plan… KFF found that among insured adults with medical debt, 35% indicated they did not fill a prescription for medicine due to cost within the last 12 months (compared to 7% of insured adults without medical debt), while 41% didn’t go to a doctor or clinic for a medical problem due to cost (compared with 9% without medical debt)… Medicare accounts for 10% of the federal budget, a share projected to grow to 18% by 2032, according to KFF. Medicare Advantage, the privatized option under Medicare, makes up 22% of the total spending and has become a lightning rod for criticism from medical providers who say insurers running these plans too often delay and deny care while getting paid too much by the federal government.” And yet, medical bankruptcies are so “American,” even for those with health insurance.

No other country on Earth has per capita or GDP expenditures and percentages anywhere near those in the United States. We could do so much better, but for the most part, progress has been slow: three steps forward, a GOP pushback of one or two steps back. Smug healthcare giants, if they cannot stop this movement totally, have the lobbying/ campaign contribution machine to drag fairness out of play and slorp at their profit margins. But fixing an inane system is critical. And no, this is no more “creeping socialism” than public schools.

Margot Sanger-Katz, writing for the October 28th The Morning newsfeed from the NY Times notes that even without additional legislation, and control of our Congress is beyond determinative, our President will “influence how many people have health insurance, how much many pay for it, the prices of prescription drugs and more through regulatory power alone… [But Congress could well be the decider] During the pandemic, Democrats raised the subsidies that help 20 million Americans buy their own insurance. Poor Americans can get covered without paying a cent, and even people making north of $100,000 got help with premiums. But if Congress does nothing, the new subsidies will expire at the end of next year. That would likely leave more than three million uninsured — and would make nearly everyone insured through Obamacare pay more.”

With the least effective healthcare system in the developed world, and beyond doubt the most expensive, access to all those wonderous American medical inventions and treatments is clearly based on maintaining profits to the biggest players in the American healthcare network… a priority that overrides healthcare itself. Some glaring disparities – like the fact that even with recent efforts by the Biden administration to bring down the cost of prescription drugs; for the most part, Americans pay more than two to three+ times more for the same medications than any developed nation – have made reducing those costs, opening the door to more leverage in healthcare systems when negotiating with pharmas, an issue with supporters from both sides of the aisle. But there is staunch MAGA cadre in Congress that sill prioritize profits over healthcare.

It is equally clear the MAGA is also more focused on the budget deficit and continuing their press for massive additional tax cuts for the rich, continuing and enhancing their 2017 corporate tax reduction legislation, by contracting Medicaid and Medicare (as well as Social Security), and leaving much of those healthcare policies to already cash-strapped states instead. Efforts to repeal or further severely contract the very popular Affordable Care Act, with or without a replacement, just will not die. The rising national slam to reproductive healthcare has created the highest maternal and infant mortality rate in recent memory. The rich get the best, the rest, not so much.

I’m Peter Dekom, we are a nation that has made no meaningful effort to stem gun fatalities (the greatest killer of our children and teens), to care for women in desperate need of what was once normal reproductive medical care and one where healthcare remains deeply subordinate to industry profits.