Why can’t healthcare be free in America?

Latest

Philadelphia protest to save Medicaid.
PHOTO/HARVEY FINKLE

 
If you’re dangerously ill, good healthcare may be the only thing between you and dying. Yet in America healthcare has become a profit-making $3.2 trillion-a-year business, and you will be allowed to die if you don’t have insurance or money. It’s estimated some 45,000 people die every year in America because they lack health insurance.
Neurosurgeon Russell Andrews writes about how the profit motive interferes with providing healthcare in the US. He complains that the long-term doctor-patient relationship has been replaced with impersonal “corporate medicine,” and that American medicine has morphed “from a function of humanitarian society into a revenue stream for healthcare professionals, drug and medical device companies, hospitals, and insurance companies.”
The top five health insurers— UnitedHealth, Anthem, Aetna, Humana and Cigna—handed out nearly $30 billion in profits to investors (in the form of stock buybacks and dividends) from 2013 to 2015. Aetna’s CEO was paid $28 million in 2015. The private insurers make their money by charging as much as they can and paying out as little as they can.
The profit motive is standing between us and universal healthcare, and it’s wasting hundreds of billions that could be spent on care and save lives.
The next step for America is a single-payer system (Medicare for all) where everyone has publically financed health insurance. And that is just a step toward where we really need to go: a publicly financed health system that completely removes the profit motive and rising prices, that nationalizes every aspect of healthcare—doctors, pharmaceutical companies, hospitals, emergency services, etc.—and that guarantees high quality healthcare to everyone who lives in our country. Healthcare is a human right, and should be available to everyone who lives in our country. Healthcare can be a for-profit commodity, or it can be a human right, but it can’t be both.

PT Logo collage
+ Articles by this author

Free to republish but please credit the People's Tribune. Visit us at www.peoplestribune.org, email peoplestribune@gmail.com, or call 773-486-3551.

The People’s Tribune brings you articles written by individuals or organizations, along with our own reporting. Bylined articles reflect the views of the authors. Unsigned articles reflect the views of the editorial board. Please credit the source when sharing: ©2024 peoplestribune.org. Please donate to help us keep bringing you voices of the movement. Click here. We’re all volunteer, no paid staff.

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here

Featured

Speakers Listed for April 22 Webinar on Mass Deportations

The speakers for an April 22 webinar on the resistance to mass deportations have been announced. See the speaker biographies and registration information.

Bring Union Brother Kilmar Home: His Deportation Is an Attack on All of Us

The deportation of union brother Kilmar Abrego Garcia is a gut punch to the labor movement, a slap in the face to every worker who dares to organize.

Michigan Journalism Hall of Fame Inducts 11 Journalists

Michigan Journalism Hall of Fame selects 11 journalists in its 2025 class. See speech from one of the 11, Daymon J. Hartley, who has contributed photos from the front lines to the People's Tribune for decades.

April 22 Webinar Will Explore Resistance to Mass Deportations

On April 22, the Zooming to the Border Coalition, which includes the People's Tribune and Tribuno del Pueblo, will hold a webinar titled Zooming to the Resistance Against Mass Deportations. A group of activists will share their experiences in resisting the government's assault on immigrants.

‘Oligarchs are Deeply Tied to Both Parties,’ says MI State Rep. at ‘Hands Off’ Protest

MI State Rep. Dylan Wegela tells protesters to prevent people like Trump from coming to power we have to fight for people, not corporations. And to win, Democrats cannot be complicit in the oligarchy.

More from the People's Tribune