Health care in the United States
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Health care in the United States is provided by many distinct organizations, made up of insurance companies, healthcare providers, hospital systems, and independent providers. In 2016, 58% of community hospitals in the United States were non-profit, 21% government-owned, and 21% for-profit. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), in 2018 Total health expenditure per capita in 2018 PPP international U.S. dollars were: United States $10,624, Canada $5,200, Australia $5,005, United Kingdom $4,620, Spain $3,576, Cuba $2,519, Russia $1,488, and China $935. The United States does not have a universal healthcare program, unlike most other developed countries.
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Physicians’ and pharmacists’ first and foremost ethical obligation in situations of epidemic, disaster or terrorism is to provide urgent medical care and ensure availability and appropriate use of necessary medications. ~ American Medical Association
Homer Simpson: America's health care system is second only to Japan … Canada, Sweden, Great Britain … well, all of Europe. ~ Gary Apple and Michael Carrington
Addressing the depth of the crises that have been revealed in this pandemic means enacting universal health care... The frontlines of this pandemic will be the poor and dispossessed - those who do not have access to healthcare [...] - and those who are continuing to work in this crisis, meeting our health care and other needs. ~ William Barber II and Liz Theoharis
The U.S.'s privatized for-profit health care system had long been an international scandal, with twice the per capita expenses of other developed societies and some of the worst outcomes. ~ Noam Chomsky
The crisis of public healthcare systems has long been a widespread demand in several countries, particularly in the U.S.... Even before this crisis, healthcare was among the main concerns of the U.S. population because of the debt it generates for families and because 27.5 million people do not have any kind of coverage. Bernie Sanders has been attacked, not only by Trump but also by the Democrats and Biden, because he calls for Medicare for All. ~ Trotskyist Fraction – Fourth International
- Physicians’ and pharmacists’ first and foremost ethical obligation in situations of epidemic , disaster or terrorism is to provide urgent medical care and ensure availability and appropriate use of necessary medications. This requires close coordination with the entire health care team to help ensure patients receive the testing, treatments, follow-up care and medications they need. We applaud the innumerable selfless acts by health care professionals across the nation who are putting themselves in harm’s way to provide care to America’s patients.
- Homer Simpson: America's health care system is second only to Japan … Canada, Sweden, Great Britain … well, all of Europe. But you can thank your lucky stars we don't live in Paraguay !
- Gary Apple and Michael Carrington, The Simpsons, Season 4, episode 11: "Homer's Triple Bypass", (Dec 17, 1992)
- It doesn’t say rest on your laurels, but to keep on pushing. In this work, sometimes you get heavy criticism. People do say ugly things, ‘You just want money.’ I just want other people to have health care. You know, Jesus healed everybody and never charged a co-pay.
- With its broad sweep, the COVID-19 pandemic has forced us into an unprecedented national emergency. This emergency, however, results from a deeper and much longer term crisis — that of poverty and inequality, and of a society that ignores the needs of 140 million people who are poor or a $400 emergency away from being poor. [...] We cannot return to normal. Addressing the depth of the crises that have been revealed in this pandemic means enacting universal health care. [...] Before COVID-19, nearly 700 people died everyday because of poverty and inequality in this country. The frontlines of this pandemic will be the poor and dispossessed - those who do not have access to healthcare [...] - and those who are continuing to work in this crisis, meeting our health care and other needs. It should not have taken a pandemic to raise these resources.
- William Barber II and Liz Theoharis, letter to President Donald Trump, Vice President Mike Pence and Members of the 116th Congress, Poverty Amidst Pandemic: A Moral Response to COVID-19 (March 19, 2020), Poor People's Campaign: A National Call for a Moral Revival.
- In June 2019, we presented a Poor People’s Moral Budget to the House Budget Committee, showing that we can meet these needs for this entire country. If you had taken up this Moral Budget, we would have already moved towards infusing more than $1.2 trillion into the economy to invest in health care, good jobs, living wages, housing, water and sanitation services and more. This is not the time for trickle-down solutions. We know that when you lift from the bottom, everybody rises. There are concrete solutions to this immediate crisis and the longer term illnesses we have been battling for months, years and decades before. We will continue to organize and build power until you meet these demands. Many millions of us have been hurting for far too long. We will not be silent anymore.
- William Barber II and Liz Theoharis, letter to President Donald Trump, Vice President Mike Pence and Members of the 116th Congress, Poverty Amidst Pandemic: A Moral Response to COVID-19 (March 19, 2020), Poor People's Campaign: A National Call for a Moral Revival.
- While the virus itself does not discriminate, it is the poor and disenfranchised who will experience the most suffering and death. They’re the ones who are least likely to have health care. [...] We need health care to be understood as a human right for all of us.
- William Barber II, The Real Epidemic is Poverty (March 30, 2020), The Progressive
- When Susan Finley developed flu-like symptoms, she didn’t go to the doctor because she was frightened about the cost. Finley’s grandparents later found her dead in her apartment. She was 53. Finley did not die as a result of Covid-19. She died in 2016 as a result of America’s healthcare system – a system that led her to avoid treatment for the common flu in order to avoid debt. It is that same system that is currently creaking under the pressure of a pandemic that experts warned was coming but governments failed to prepare for.
- It [America’s healthcare system] is a system that does not qualify for the term “developed”. [...] There are 2.9 hospital beds for every 1,000 people in the United States. That’s fewer than Turkmenistan (7.4 beds per 1,000), Mongolia (7.0), Argentina (5.0) and Libya (3.7). In fact, the US ranks 69th out of 182 countries analyzed by the World Health Organization. This lack of hospital beds is forcing doctors across the country to ration care under Covid-19, pushing up the number of preventable deaths. America’s numbers are similarly unimpressive when it comes to medical doctors. The United States has 2.6 doctors per 1,000 people, placing it behind Trinidad & Tobago (2.7), and Russia (4.0 doctors per 1,000, for a country that is described as being “in transition”). Life expectancies at birth are lower in the US than they are in Chile or China. The US has a higher maternal mortality rate than Iran or Saudi Arabia.
- The facts are as exhaustive as they are exhausting. There’s one simple conclusion from all of this. We’ve been tricked. We’ve been told that America, like most other majority-white countries, deserves the title “developed economy”. It does not. You cannot charge a woman $39.95 to hold the baby that she has just given birth to. You cannot constantly operate hospitals at close to capacity in order to maximize profits. The pursuit of private money in systems built for public good has not worked ethically or practically.
- I don't think I know enough to say, well, here's the plan. It's not my specialty.... But I don't think there's any way not to have that debate about how much we're going to spend on health care.... In finding our way forward, we've got to be able to find ways to deliver the quality care that everyone expects and that we're capable of providing to the maximum number of people.
- Dick Cheney, "The Weekend Interview: The Story of Dick Cheney's Heart", The Wall Street Journal, July 9, 2011.
- The U.S.'s privatized for-profit health care system had long been an international scandal, with twice the per capita expenses of other developed societies and some of the worst outcomes. Neoliberal doctrine struck another blow, introducing business measures of efficiency: just-on-time service with no fat in the system. Any disruption and the system collapses. This is the world that Trump inherited, the target of his battering ram.
- Noam Chomsky, in an interview with C.J. Polychroniou, Chomsky: Ventilator Shortage Exposes the Cruelty of Neoliberal Capitalism (April 1, 2020), Truthout
- If Americans are to have the courage to change in a difficult time, we must first be secure in our most basic needs. Tonight I want to talk to you about the most critical thing we can do to build that security. This health care system of ours is badly broken, and it is time to fix it. Despite the dedication of literally millions of talented health care professionals, our health care is too uncertain and too expensive, too bureaucratic and too wasteful. It has too much fraud and too much greed.
- Bill Clinton, Address to a Joint Session of the Congress on Health Care Reform, (22 September 1993)
- Sarah Kliff spent the last year looking at over 1000 ER bills and has found outrageous facility fees, high costs for OTC drugs, and charges for simply sitting in the waiting room. Medicare for All would take these excess costs out of the equation...
- Ro Khanna in a Twitter post (28 December 2018)
- Our demand for Medicare for All must be stronger than Big Pharma lobbyists.
- Ro Khanna in a Twitter post (28 December 2018)
- Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in healthcare is the most shocking and inhumane.
- Martin Luther King, Jr., Speech to the Second National Convention of the Medical Committee for Human Rights – Chicago (25 March 1966), as quoted in Dan Munro, "America's Forgotten Civil Right - Healthcare", Forbes (28 August 2013). See also: Amanda Moore, "Tracking Down Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Words on Health Care", Huffington Post (18 August 2013)
- Un pre-ACA days, a bout with a virus might not have been considered a preexisting condition. That's because many people tend to recover quickly from viruses.
But in a blog post last week, researchers at the Rand Corp. suggested that COVID-19 could be seen differently by insurers. "Given the chronic problems [which can include organ damage, fatigue and confusion] associated with some COVID-19 cases, it is possible that some insurers would place restrictions on anyone who had a confirmed case of COVID-19," wrote Carter C. Price, Rand's senior mathematician, and Raffaele Vardavas, a mathematician at Rand who specializes in infectious disease models.- Fran Kritz, ”Coronavirus FAQ: Could COVID-19 Ever Be Considered A Preexisting Condition?”, Goats and Soda, NPR, (November 9, 2020)
- Twenty years ago, Kaiser surveyed health insurance underwriters and asked about a similar situation: a hypothetical applicant in perfect health except for "situational depression" following the death of a spouse. According to the survey, "in 60 applications for coverage, this applicant was denied a quarter of the time, and offered coverage with a surcharged premium and/or benefit exclusions 60% of the time."
So both experts and consumers are concerned that invalidating the Affordable Care Act could mean that once again, individuals with preexisting conditions might not be covered — and such conditions could include COVID-19.- Fran Kritz, ”Coronavirus FAQ: Could COVID-19 Ever Be Considered A Preexisting Condition?”, Goats and Soda, NPR, (November 9, 2020)
- We believe we can reduce overall healthcare costs. The pandemic has accelerated elements of our transformation.
- CVS Health CEO, Larry Merlo in CVS Health CEO Larry Merlo says pandemic has pushed transformation to digital health published October 23, 2020
- We are the richest country in the world. We spend more on health care than any other country. Yet we have the worst health care in the Western world. Come on. We can do better than this.
- Michael Moore as quoted in Corliss, Richard (19 May 2007). "Sicko is Socko". Time.
- Sanders is still fighting the battle for single payer, Medicare-like coverage for all, even as fellow Democrats capitulated to the siren songs of the health and insurance industries. President Obama, himself a one-time advocate of single payer coverage, buckled to the insurance companies and its lobbyists and minions in Congress and agreed to health care legislation (the Affordable Care Act) that would continue to treat healing the sick as a profit center instead of a basic human right.
- Bill Moyers & Michael Winship, Tell the Truth about Bernie’s Health Care Stand, Common Dreams, (16 January 2016)
- Criticism should not be focused on Nazi Germany alone but extend beyond to include physicians in democratic countries, as well. Physicians outside Germany before the war, in the United States in particular were well aware of the evolving racist thrust of the health care system. They chose to remain silent.
- William E. Seidelman (1992). Quoted in, The War Against Children of Color: Psychiatry Targets Inner-City Youth (1998), Peter R. Breggin, M.D., Common Courage Press, Monroe, Maine, ISBN 1567511279 ISBN 1567511260 ( 2002 ed., ISBN 1567511260 ISBN 9781567511260 ch. 7, Condemned by Science: The Role of Psychiatry in the Holocaust, p. 124. [1]
- We're going to ask the wealthiest people and the largest corporations to start paying their fair share of taxes. We're going to take on the pharmaceutical industry and have Medicare negotiate prices. We're going to finally deal with child care and pre-K. Can you imagine in this country where you have free pre-K for every working family in America? We're going to have — end the disgrace of the United States being the only major country on Earth not to have paid family and medical leave. We're going to expand Medicare to cover dental, hearing aids and eyeglasses. We are going to got home health care... We're going to have — end the disgrace of the United States being the only major country on Earth not to have paid family and medical leave. We're going to expand Medicare to cover dental, hearing aids and eyeglasses. We are going to got home health care.
- Let Mr. Barrasso go to the folks in Wyoming and ask them whether they think it's a good idea that they should be paying a third of their income in child care. Ask elderly people who don't have any teeth in their mouth whether they should be able to get dentures through Medicare. Ask the scientific community whether the time is now in a big way to deal with climate. Ask the ordinary American consumer whether we should take on the greed of the pharmaceutical industry, which charges us the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs.
- Bernie Sanders, Sanders: GOP ‘nervous’ about ‘overdue’ progressive policies in budget, infrastructure bill, PBS Newshour (20 July 2021)
- The crisis of public healthcare systems has long been a widespread demand in several countries, particularly in the U.S. Surveys showed that even before this crisis, healthcare was among the main concerns of the U.S. population because of the debt it generates for families and because 27.5 million people do not have any kind of coverage. Bernie Sanders has been attacked, not only by Trump but also by the Democrats and Biden, because he calls for Medicare for All. All healthcare systems are organized around the profits of big corporations.
- Trotskyist Fraction – Fourth International, Coronavirus and the Healthcare Crisis: Our Lives Are Worth More than Their Profits!, Left Voice, (March 14, 2020).
- Obamacare's going to be repealed and replaced. Obamacare is a disaster if you look at what's going on with premiums where they're up 45, 50, 55 percent... They [the uninsured] are going to be taken care of. I would make a deal with existing hospitals to take care of people.
- Donald Trump, "Trump gets down to business on 60 Minutes" aired September 27, 2015
- For historical purposes remember, I was able to get rid of the INDIVIDUAL MANDATE, the most unpopular and expensive part of ObamaCare. You are no longer forced to pay a fortune for the “privilege” of NOT getting bad healthcare. This ended ObamaCare as we knew it. Thank you!
- Donald Trump via Twitter tweet posted January 2, 2020
