Surprise medical bills, coronavirus and bad insurance: 3 arguments for Medicare for All
By Philip A. Verhoef for USA Today Congress is grappling with the problem of surprise medical bills, but will its Band-Aid approaches make a difference? As a physician, I’m trained to look beyond superficial symptoms to diagnose the underlying ailment. When patients pay thousands of dollars each year for “good” private insurance, how does a health care […]
20 Top Economists Endorse Medicare for All as Best Plan to Cut Costs, Save Tens of Thousands of Lives Each Year
“By eliminating insurance premiums and out-of-pocket expenses, and lowering overall healthcare costs, Medicare for All will result in enormous savings for almost all households, all except the richest households who will pay more in taxes.” By Jake Johnson for Common Dreams Rejecting “loose talk” from corporate Democrats, the media, and insurance industry that a single-payer […]
More than a third of U.S. healthcare costs go to bureaucracy
HOPE NOTE: We have similar information in our Tools for Education section. Check it out and spread the word among friends, family and community! By Linda Carroll for Reuters (Reuters Health) – U.S. insurers and providers spent more than $800 billion in 2017 on administration, or nearly $2,500 per person – more than four times […]
Looming Coronavirus Threat in US Bolsters Case for Medicare for All and Universal Paid Sick Leave
“Doubters may claim that our nation can’t afford Medicare for All, but it’s increasingly likely that we are about to discover just how costly our current system really is.” By Julia Conley for Common Dreams The global coronavirus outbreak which also threatens the United States—and the widely criticized effort by the Trump administration to address […]
Millions of Americans Donate through Crowdfunding Sites to Help Others Pay for Medical Bills
Approximately 50 million—or 20 percent—of American adults reported donating to a crowdfunding campaign to help raise money for a medical bill or treatment. Via NORC at the University of Chicago One in five Americans reported that they or someone in their household have contributed to a crowdfunding campaign to pay for medical bills or treatments, […]
American health care system costs four times more than Canada’s single-payer system
Average Americans pay $2,497 a year for insurance overhead and admin costs, while Canadians pay just $551 By Igor Derysh for Salon The cost of administering health care in the United States costs four times as much as it does in Canada, which has had a single-payer system for nearly 60 years, according to a new […]
Yale Study Says Medicare for All Would Save U.S. $450 Billion, Prevent Nearly 70,000 Deaths a Year
By Staff for Democracy Now! As the Democratic presidential hopefuls prepare to take to the debate stage tonight, we turn to a central issue of the campaign: Medicare for All. In a new study, Yale scholars have found that Medicare for All will save Americans more than $450 billion and prevent 68,000 deaths every year. […]
In Historic Shift, Second Largest Physicians Group in US Has New Prescription: It’s Medicare for All
“Major changes are needed,” declares the 159,000-member American College of Physicians, “to a system that costs too much, leaves too many behind, and delivers too little.” By Jon Queally for Common Dreams The fight for Medicare for All received a two-handed boost from tens of thousands of doctors on Monday when the American College of […]
Medicare for All ‘Is What Patients Need’: New Harvard Study Shows Even Those With Private Insurance Can’t Afford Care
“When so many people can’t get the care they need even when they have insurance coverage, it says that insurance is not doing what it is supposed to do: ensure that healthcare is affordable when you need it.” By Jake Johnson for Common Dreams The for-profit U.S. healthcare system is so broken that a growing […]
Protecting Americans from surprise medical costs
By Ed Weisbart for St. Louis Post-Dispatch Breaking news: At the end of 2019, Congress failed to fix a major problem with American health insurance. This would be comically boring if so many lives and so much money were not at stake. Chances are that you are among the majority of Americans who have received […]