Healthcare for All Should be a US Political Priority

Poor people don’t deserve to die

In the United States, people die every year from lack of adequate medical care. This has been allowed to happen by a for-profit healthcare system that cares more about profits than people. Things are run by insurance companies and big pharma, and they lack compassion for those they serve.

According to Obamacare Facts,

We can safely say (that with an uninsured rate of about 40 million, and remember that is dropping under the ACA) that somewhere between 20,000 and 40,000 deaths occur each year due to lack of health insurance.

Many people who are uninsured go without preventative care because they simply can’t afford it, and only go to the emergency room if they are in dire need of care. That means, disease is being caught in the later instead of early stages, so there is less of a chance for a good treatment prognosis.

The United States has worse healthcare than other industrialized countries, and is the only ‘rich’ country without a universal healthcare system.

According to CNN,

The United States spends more on health care than any other high-income country but still has the lowest life expectancy at birth and the highest rate of people with multiple chronic diseases, according to a new report from The Commonwealth Fund, an independent research group.

The report, released Tuesday, also says that compared with peer nations, the US has the highest rates of deaths from avoidable or treatable causes and the highest maternal and infant death rates.

Although the US is spending more money on healthcare than any other country in the study, we still have worse health outcomes overall.

CNN Continues,

The researchers examined how the United States measured against Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, South Korea, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. They also compared the US with the OECD average for 38 high-income countries.

It’s the 21st century. People shouldn’t be dying because they can’t afford to go to the doctor or buy their medications.

Prescription Medications

When I moved to Germany, my healthcare costs decreased dramatically. I have mental health conditions that require a lot of doctor visits and medications.

In the US, an average psychiatrist visit costs between $80-$200 without insurance. Here in Germany, I am paying $64 per visit.

The medications that I was getting in the US were more expensive too. Here, I am paying about $300 every 3 months. In the US, just a one-month supply of one of my medications cost $320. That is one of 4 prescriptions that I take.

My medications aren’t the priciest on the list either. Some of the Most Expensive Drugs in the US can cost in the millions of dollars range. While this isn’t a cost that most people are paying, it is still astronomical.

In a recent victory, President Joe Biden has negotiated for seniors to be charged less for their insulin. Historically, the prices for this diabetes treatment have been skyrocketing in the United States.

According to the BBC,

Insulin costs in the US have often been five to 10 times higher than in other countries, a Rand study found.

The Inflation Reduction Act, which went into effect this year, capped insulin costs for some older patients at $35 a month.

The new pricing structure is set to go into place in January 2024. This is the beginning of a major healthcare reform in cuts to prescription drug costs in the United States.

What is happening in the United States is because of Pharmaceutical Companies putting their profits ahead of their patients. There is a huge mark-up that both insurance companies and patients are forced to pay. Some drugs aren’t covered by insurance either, so patients will have to pay out of pocket for these.

According to the National Institute of Health,

For pharmaceutical companies, the median gross profit margin was 76.5%

This just goes to show, prescription drugs are getting a huge mark-up when they come to the consumer, so that companies can profit off of other people’s suffering and illness.

I have had it argued recently, in comments on one of my articles, that the reason there is no cure for depression or cancer is because big pharma is profiting too much off of ‘treating’ these diseases. Whether this is true or not is unclear, however, it does beg the question, why are they allowed to charge so much?

If a company like Pepsi started charging $200 a can for their product, they would go out of business overnight. Nobody needs a Pepsi that badly. But when it is your life-saving medication, you have no choice but to pay up or risk your health.

Administrative Costs of Healthcare

Part of the reason that healthcare costs in the US are so high is because the cost of administration (think billing and paperwork) is too high. The US beats out every other country, again, on the costs of administering its healthcare system.

According to Health Affairs, 15–30% of US healthcare spending goes to administrative costs, and at least half of that spending is wasteful. They go on to point out,

Research indicates that the US spends more on health care administration than comparable nations. One estimate from the Peterson Foundation, based on 2021 data from the OECD, finds that the US spends $1,055 per capita on administrative costs — by far the highest amount on a list of twelve OECD nations plus the US. The country with the next highest level of per capita administrative spending is Germany, at $306 per capita.

Let’s put that into dollars. Health Affairs continues,

if administrative spending is about 15–30 percent of national health spending, then wasteful administrative spending comprises half of that, or 7.5–15 percent of national health spending (or $285–$570 billion in 2019).

Put very simply, that means our healthcare system is basically throwing billions of dollars into the garbage every year.

This waste could easily be curbed, if the United States had a Universal Healthcare system like every other industrialized country does. We don’t need to spend billions of dollars every year just for insurance companies and for-profit hospitals to make money.

US Doctors get paid more

Another factor effecting the US medical system is the pay that doctors receive for their salaries. They are paid more on average than any other country.

According to Advisory,

Medscape found U.S. physicians have the highest annual salaries, at $313,000, and German physicians have the second-highest annual salaries, at $163,000:

Medscape noted that a number of factors could affect physician salaries. For example, the cost of living varies significantly among the countries studied, with the average cost of rent in Mexico being about 75% lower than in the United States.

Another factor affecting physician salaries could be the cost of a medical education, according to Medscape. Medscape found the average annual cost of a private medical school education in the United States is $50,000, compared to up to $17,000 in Spain:

Looking at the statistics, you can see that a doctor in the US makes almost double of what a doctor makes in Germany. This can partially, but not wholly, be attributed to a lower cost of living in Germany. The remaining difference is unaccounted for.

With all this being the case, you would probably assume that if you get an American doctor, you are getting better medical care.

Are US Doctors Better?

With all the money that is being spent on healthcare in the United States, some people argue that US doctors are better, and that is a contributing factor.

However, according to Time magazine,

Either way, foreign-trained doctors had the edge. Patients who saw a foreign-trained doctor had a slightly lower rate of death (11.2%) compared to patients of U.S. medical graduates (11.6%).

That difference may sound small, but the authors point out that if the care were equal, one person’s life would be saved out of every 250 patients.

Doctors that go to medical school in the United States aren’t actually better doctors. In fact, their patients are actually more likely to die.

A contributing factor could be the way that doctor’s appointments are scheduled in the US. Clinics try to fit in as many patients as possible, so they can bill as much as possible, which leaves many doctors with only 10 minutes or so to see each patient. This can lead to doctors being burned out.

According to Time,

According to one recent survey, 30% of U.S. physicians said they felt burned out in late 2022, and about as many said they’d considered leaving the profession in the previous six months.

When you’re going to the doctor, probably about the last thing you want to hear is how your doctor is burned out. That just doesn’t bode well. We all know the effects of burnout, and how it can lead to chronic stress and inattentiveness.

All these factors combined lead to questions about the quality of the medical care you are receiving for the astronomical feel that you pay.

The United States medical system is broken. It is harming patients, doctors, and the uninsured. Not to mention medical support staff who also have to work long hours. The for-profit medical establishment needs to come to an end, and we need to provide patient-centered healthcare that works, like in European countries.

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