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community health centers
'This Absurdity Must End,' Sanders Says of Study Highlighting Healthcare Industry Greed
"Unfortunately, instead of working with Congress on this real issue, Trump and Musk have launched an immoral and unconstitutional attack on the Department of Health and Human Services."
Feb 12, 2025
Responding to a new study showing that leading health services companies made $2.7 trillion in profits and spent $2.6 trillion on stock buybacks and dividends in the years 2001-22, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders on Wednesday vowed to continue "to take on the unprecedented level of corporate greed in our healthcare system."
The study, published this week by the Journal of the American Medical Association, noted the "growing concern that a large proportion of U.S. healthcare spending appears to be directed to corporate shareholders rather than enhancing affordable access, improving quality of care, or advancing research and development."
Sanders (I-Vt.)—the ranking member of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions—said in a statement that "it is absolutely unacceptable that since 2001, the top healthcare companies in America spent 95% of their profits, $2.6 trillion, not to make Americans healthy, but to make their CEOs and stockholders obscenely rich."
The top health care companies in America spent 95% of their profits to make their CEOs & stockholders obscenely rich. How many Americans would be alive today if those companies spent $2.6 trillion on disease prevention and primary care, instead of stock buybacks and dividends?
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— Senator Bernie Sanders (@sanders.senate.gov) February 12, 2025 at 11:21 AM
"The function of a rational healthcare system is to guarantee quality healthcare to all, not huge payouts for stockholders and executives in the drug and insurance industries," Sanders asserted. "None of this money was used to search for new treatments and cures, to lower prices, or to improve patient care. That has got to change."
The senator continued:
This study confirms that the greatest waste, fraud, and abuse in this country is corporate greed. Unfortunately, instead of working with Congress on this real issue, [U.S. President Donald] Trump and [Department of Government Efficiency leader Elon] Musk have launched an immoral and unconstitutional attack on the Department of Health and Human Services.
Instead of taking on the greed of the pharmaceutical industry, Trump and Musk are taking away AIDS treatment from poor people.
Instead of taking on the for-profit insurance industry, Trump and Musk are making it harder for working-class Americans to get the healthcare they need through Medicaid and community health centers.
"This absurdity must end," Sanders stressed. "As the ranking member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, I will do everything I can to take on the unprecedented level of corporate greed in our healthcare system."
Last month, Sanders—who twice sought the Democratic presidential nomination on a platform centering Medicare for All—unveiled a nine-point "Make America Healthy Again" plan in response to Health and Human Services secretary nominee Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s variation on Trump's "Make America Great Again" slogan.
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Sanders' Bipartisan Bill to Combat US Primary Care Crisis Passes Key Senate Panel
The HELP Committee chair pledged to work with Senate leadership "in the coming weeks to move this bill forward and ensure that millions more Americans can get the healthcare they deserve."
Sep 21, 2023
U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee Chair Bernie Sanders celebrated on Thursday after the panel advanced his Bipartisan Primary Care and Health Workforce Act, teeing up a possible full-chamber vote on the bill.
"Everyone in America understands that our healthcare system is broken and getting worse," Sanders (I-Vt.) said in a statement. "Despite spending twice as much per capita as any other nation, millions of Americans are unable to access the primary care and dental care they desperately need and we have a massive shortage of doctors, nurses, dentists, and mental health professionals."
"With today's passage of bipartisan legislation in the Senate HELP Committee, we are beginning to address that crisis," added the senator, a longtime advocate of Medicare for All. "I'm pleased this legislation passed with a strong bipartisan 14-7 vote."
"I especially want to thank Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kansas) for his hard work on this legislation," he said. "Together, we will work with Senate leadership in the coming weeks to move this bill forward and ensure that millions more Americans can get the healthcare they deserve."
The committee's decision to advance the healthcare bill—and three others, which were agreed to by voice votes—comes just a week after Sanders and Marshall, a physician, announced that they had reached a deal on the "historic" legislation.
The bill, which took months of work, "increases mandatory funding for Federally Qualified Community Health Centers from $4 billion a year to $5.8 billion a year for three years, which will enable more Americans to receive not only high-quality primary healthcare, but dental care, mental health counseling, and low-cost prescription drugs," Sanders told the committee on Thursday.
"What we have in front of us with your vote is the most significant piece of legislation in addressing the primary healthcare crisis in modern American history."
"In addition, this bill includes a one-time allocation of $3 billion to be used to establish dental operatories so that community health centers can expand their dental care capabilities," he continued. "This legislation will save substantial sums of money. Investing in primary healthcare will keep people healthier and out of hospitals; investing in community health centers will keep people out of emergency rooms, which cost about ten times more per visit than a community health center."
Dr. Kyu Rhee, president and CEO of the National Association of Community Health Centers (NACHC), said last week that "health centers appreciate the strong leadership from Chairman Sanders and Sen. Roger Marshall."
"This bill lays out a vision that emphasizes the role of health centers and expands their reach beyond the 31.5 million existing patients," he pointed out. "The bill also encourages much-needed growth of the primary care workforce by investing in innovative health center-led career development programs."
Noting Thursday that Senate HELP Committee Ranking Member Bill Cassidy (R-La.) put forth over five dozen amendments, Sanders said: "Is this a perfect piece of legislation? No, I don't think so."
Yet, Sanders stressed, it also represents a remarkable opportunity.
"As every member of this committee knows, it is very difficult to get any substantive legislation passed in Congress today," he said. "Sen. Marshall and I and other senators have tried, and what we have in front of us with your vote is the most significant piece of legislation in addressing the primary healthcare crisis in modern American history."
The Senate panel's vote for the Bipartisan Primary Care and Health Workforce Act comes as House Republicans are self-destructing, pushing the United States toward a potential government shutdown in just over a week. Unless Congress acts to prevent a shutdown before the end of the month, all federal funding for health centers will expire.
NACHC's Rhee said Monday that "I am staying up at night worrying about the stability of our primary care workforce."
"This debate over health center funding comes as clinicians are considering what residency they should go on, what training program, or whether or not they should sign a contract at a community health center," he added. "That is why it makes sense to invest in health centers and in primary care development programs to grow the current workforce of 285,000 health center professionals."
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'Now Is the Time to Act': Sanders Pushes Bipartisan Bill to Solve Primary Care Crisis
"Providing Americans with a medical home will not only save lives and ease suffering," said the senator. "It will save billions of dollars. Providing primary care to all is not only smart healthcare, it is cost-effective healthcare."
Aug 16, 2023
In an op-ed on Wednesday, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders made the case for the bipartisan legislation he introduced last month to address the nation's shortage of doctors and nurses as well as the "primary care cliff" that he has warned millions of Americans are heading toward if Congress does not act to fund the community health centers that many Americans rely on.
Writing at The Daily Beast, the Vermont independent senator said the country's for-profit healthcare industry—in addition to leaving more than 27 million Americans without health insurance—has failed to recruit and retain a sufficient number of medical providers, with the American Association of Medical Colleges projecting a shortage of 122,000 doctors by 2032.
A shortage of 400,000 home health aides—badly needed in a country where the population of people over age 65 is expected to grow by nearly 50% in the next decade—is also expected, and as Sanders wrote, "over the next two years alone it is estimated that we will need between 200,000 and 450,000 more nurses."
The healthcare provider shortage can partially be blamed, said Sanders, on disinvestment in primary care and a heavy focus on "hospital and tertiary care," with the for-profit system forcing many uninsured people "with common illnesses into emergency rooms—the most expensive form of primary care."
"Most countries spend between 10% to 15% of their healthcare budgets on primary healthcare," wrote Sanders, who chairs the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee and has for decades pushed for a government-funded universal healthcare system. "Canada spends 13%, Germany spends 15%, Spain spends 17%, and Australia spends 18%. We spend less than 7%."
While spending less on preventive care than other wealthy countries, the U.S. spends three to four times more on its healthcare system overall than countries including New Zealand, South Korea, and Japan, and more than twice as much as the U.K., France, and Australia.
But with a system that "can seem designed to discourage people from using services," noted the Commonwealth Fund in a report earlier this year, the U.S. has a higher rate than other wealthy countries of adults with chronic health conditions, and "Americans see physicians less often than people in most other countries."
"Every major medical organization in the country agrees that what we are investing in primary healthcare is woefully inadequate," the senator wrote on Wednesday. "They understand that focusing on disease prevention and providing Americans with a medical home will not only save lives and ease suffering. It will save billions of dollars. Providing primary care to all is not only smart healthcare, it is cost-effective healthcare."
Sanders' bill, the Primary Care and Health Workforce Expansion Act, would expand the Graduate Medical Education and Teaching Health Center Graduate Medical Education programs as well as the National Health Service Corps—steps that would "significantly increase the number of doctors in our country" and ensure more doctors are licensed to provide primary rather than specialty care.
The bill would also provide incentives to encourage medical schools to graduate more primary care providers and expand programs that address the shortage of instructors in nursing programs—which has impacted the number of people who are able to go into the nursing field.
With community health centers currently facing a potential 70% funding cut if Congress does not act to expand federal investments, the legislation also provides funding to provide the facilities with $65.5 billion over five years. The funding would be used for expanded operating hours, the creation of school-based health centers, mental healthcare, substance use disorder care, and dental care.
"This bill would increase the number of these centers throughout the country, concentrating on rural and urban areas which are now medically underserved," wrote Sanders. "The result: millions more Americans would be able to receive the primary healthcare they need in a timely and cost-effective way."
Sanders noted that "the day must come, sooner than later, when we join the rest of the industrialized world and guarantee healthcare for every man, woman, and child as a human right through a Medicare for All single-payer system. That is the right thing to do, that is the humane thing, and that is the cost-effective thing to do."
Until then, he wrote, lawmakers must take action to significantly improve a healthcare system in which "tens of millions of Americans, even those with decent insurance, cannot find the medical care they need on a timely basis" due to provider shortages.
"For many years members of Congress have talked about our healthcare crises," said the senator. "Now is the time to act."
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