Why Neither Party Wants to Fix Healthcare

We’ve all heard stories or lived through them ourselves. A friend who’s sick but can’t afford to go to the doctor still goes into work. A loved one who stopped taking their prescriptions because they couldn’t afford them anymore who saw their diabetes worsen or their heart condition take their life.

These should not be our stories. Not in the greatest, wealthiest, most powerful country on earth.

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So, why are they? Why is access to healthcare such an insurmountable barrier for so many of us? Why is medical bankruptcy the leading cause of bankruptcy in America.

Our healthcare corporations tell us that our healthcare system is the best in the world. And, in some ways, it is. We have some of the greatest medical researchers working in our hospitals and universities. Some of the world’s best medical minds come to practice here, because our system pays a lot more than other countries. But somehow all that greatness hasn’t led to better healthcare for ordinary people.

We know the numbers. The United States pays more for healthcare than any country on earth. But we somehow get worse results. After spending $4.9 trillion each year, life expectancy in the U.S. ranks 46th in the world, and every year more than 380,000 Americans die from preventable causes.

What really gets me: Here in the U.S., more mothers die during childbirth than any other wealthy nation, and more babies die in infancy here than most developed nations.

But how is this happening? How is this broken system the best we have to give to our families and the hardworking people of this country? How can smaller, poorer countries figure out how to take care of their people while we watch our loved ones get sicker and die from neglected care?

There’s only one reason that makes sense to me. And it’s the same one that explains why all the other parts of our system are breaking down and not working for everyday Americans. The corporatization of this country.

Our healthcare system has been handed to private corporations — and when I say system, I mean the whole system. Single companies own multiple parts of the supply chain. Healthcare companies have become modern day oil barons, who owned not just the oil, but the railroads that shipped the oil. They controlled both sides of the transaction and everything in between. It’s called vertical integration, and it allows the corporation to raise prices on consumers.

One example is UnitedHealth Group, a giant corporation worth $358 billion that owns UnitedHealthcare (insurance), Optum Health (90,000 doctors), OptumRx (prescriptions), and thousands of pharmacies as well as urgent care centers, surgery centers and health data companies. This monopoly means one company decides whether you need care (insurance), who provides that care (they employ your doctor) and who processes and fills your prescriptions.

It’s the same story with CVS Health, Cigna and a handful of others that control nearly the entire healthcare system in the U.S. They negotiate with themselves. They pay themselves. They cut costs at every step. Why? Because their primary goal is not to make us healthier. It’s to make their shareholders richer.

Vertical integration is why you have to fight with insurers to get your healthcare paid for and why they can send so many denials. It’s why you might be networked out of being able to see your own doctor. It’s why doctors aren’t working for themselves anymore and are being told how many minutes they can spend with their patients. It’s why local pharmacies are closing and healthcare costs keep rising no matter which party is in power.

It wasn’t always this way. Before the 1980s, healthcare was a lot simpler. Patients saw their doctors when they needed to, and the doctors usually knew their names. Doctors provided services and billed Medicare or insurance directly. Insurers were typically nonprofits. It was simple and transparent, without layers of middlemen trying to make a buck along the way. Administrative costs at that time were 2% of overall healthcare spending.

Then the private markets started taking over. Today, administrative costs consume 15-30% of healthcare spending. That’s $675 billion to $1.35 trillion per year spent on paperwork, billing, prior authorizations, claims denials and corporate profits instead of actual medical care.

Corporations tell us that government can’t run healthcare. And they’re right. Corrupt government cannot run healthcare. Most healthcare laws that have passed in the last 40 years have given more power to private corporations that lobby and pay politicians to do their bidding. .

Everyone in Washington, D.C., no matter what political aisle they’re sitting on, should be ashamed of the state of healthcare in this country. While healthcare corporations get richer every year, medical costs are bankrupting families, parents are losing their babies, mothers are losing their lives and hundreds of thousands of Americans are dying unnecessarily from preventable illnesses.

These should never be our stories. Let’s change the narrative in this country.

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