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medicare for all
'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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McConnell's Stumbles in Senate Spark Call for Medicare for All
"He won't have to worry about medical bills or skipping tests because he has high-quality, government-funded healthcare—the thing he's fought to deny the rest of us," said one single-payer campaigner.
Feb 05, 2025
U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell reportedly fell twice on Capitol Hill Wednesday, but as one healthcare advocate highlighted, the 82-year-old Kentucky Republican—who's called Medicare for All a "radical scheme" that "would be serious bad news for America's hospital industry"—won't struggle to get any needed treatment.
"Mitch McConnell fell again and is obviously not well," said Melanie D'Arrigo, executive director of the Campaign for New York Health—which fights for universal, single-payer healthcare—on social media.
"But he won't have to worry about medical bills or skipping tests because he has high-quality, government-funded healthcare—the thing he's fought to deny the rest of us," D'Arrigo added. "We need Medicare for All."
Punchbowl News' John Bresnahan and Max Cohen reported Wednesday that McConnell fell while exiting the Senate chamber, then fell again while entering a Republican lunch.
A spokesperson for the former majority leader told Bresnahan—and various other journalists—that "Sen. McConnell is fine. The lingering effects of polio in his left leg will not disrupt his regular schedule of work."
McConnell contracted polio as a toddler in 1944, according toThe Associated Press. His leg was paralyzed, but after two years of treatment, he was ultimately able to walk without a brace.
After the senator's Wednesday falls, Bresnahan said that "McConnell is using a wheelchair as a precautionary measure, we're told."
The Affordable Care Act (ACA) requires members of Congress to obtain coverage via the D.C. Health Link Small Business Market, according to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, the federal government's human resources agency. For lawmakers with Medicare, the federal health program for American seniors serves as a "secondary payer."
The federal government covers up to three-quarters of the premium for lawmakers' primary health plans, according to a Congressional Research Service report from 2017. Another CRS report from last June points out that "in addition, the Office of the Attending Physician provides emergency medical assistance for members of Congress, justices of the Supreme Court, staff, and visitors. Additional services are offered to members who choose to enroll for an annual fee ($650.00 in 2023)."
Meanwhile, tens of millions of Americans don't have adequate health plans or lack coverage altogether. Citing the U.S. Census Bureau, the Commonwealth Fund's November 2024 report on its biennial health insurance survey notes that "an estimated 26 million Americans, or 8% of the U.S. population, lacked health insurance in 2023," and although the United States is still behind countries with universal coverage, before the ACA, 49 million, or 16% of the population, didn't have any coverage.
The U.S.-based Commonwealth Fund found that "nearly a quarter of working-age adults have insurance that leaves them underinsured," and two-thirds of those individuals had coverage through an employer plan. The survey also shows that people who were uninsured or underinsured often did not fill prescriptions, get recommended care, or visit a needed doctor or specialist.
Another survey, released Tuesday by Emory University's Rollins School of Public Health and Gallup, highlights that healthcare access and affordability is a leading priority for the American public, and a majority wants the federal government to act.
"Americans ranked improving healthcare access and affordability as the highest public health priority for government leaders to address out of 15 options," states a report from the pollsters. "One in four in the U.S. selected this issue as their highest priority and more than half (52%) rated it as their first, second, or third priority."
"Majorities of both Republicans and Republican leaners, and Democrats and Democratic leaners, chose the federal government over state government as the more effective force for addressing each of the issues that emerged as a top priority for them," adds the report—which comes as the Trump administration and billionaire Elon Musk attack the federal government.
Despite public opinion polling, President Donald Trump and the Republican majorities in Congress—who have long tried to restrict or fully roll back the ACA—aren't expected to work to expand health coverage, particularly via progressive proposals like Medicare for All, which has been championed on Capitol Hill by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.).
Still, advocates of Medicare for All
continue to call for it. As Sanders said Monday on Musk-owned X: "The U.S. spends 2x more per capita on healthcare than any other nation. Yet 85 million are uninsured or underinsured, 68,000 die because they can't afford a doctor, and we pay the highest prices in the world for Rx drugs. Healthcare is a human right. We must pass Medicare for All."
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Improved Medicare for All Can Heal This Sick Country
A system that collects money from patients and employers then profits by withholding the promised care is not a business but a fraudulent, diabolical scam.
Jan 17, 2025
It’s the beginning of the end for corporate control of health care. The tsunami of outrage against the health insurance industry in the wake of the shooting of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, can propel an urgent, unyielding demand for the removal of profit from healthcare and the enactment of a universal, national single payer system. That is, if the single payer, Medicare for All, national health service movement can summon the vision and audacity to rise to the occasion.
The myth, promoted by health care think tanks and policy experts, that people in the United States are satisfied with their health insurance was exploded in the social media rage unleashed in the aftermath of the killing of the United Healthcare CEO.
Fifteen years after the passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), our failing health care system is exposed with all its cruel denials, debt, disease, despair and death at the hands of the investor-owned companies for whom patients are merely pawns for the extraction of profit.
Health care in the United States comes in dead last when rated against comparable countries. The U. S. is at the bottom in overall performance, health outcomes, equity, access to care, and efficiency. As the Commonwealth Fund states: “In fulfilling this fundamental obligation [the ability to keep people healthy], the U. S. continues to fail.”
Health care in the United States comes in dead last when rated against comparable countries.
People in the United States aren’t living to their full potential. Already, the U.S. is 55th in life expectancy, behind Panama, Albania, and Czechia, and will fall in its global rankings by 2050 if the country continues the same trajectory. Years of life are lost to a health care system that serves profit over the value of life.
Our maternal mortality rate would be the shame of many of the poorest nations. In 2020, U.S. maternal mortality rate was higher than in Gaza. In 2022, there were 22 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births in the U.S. This is easily double, and often triple, the mortality rate in peer nations, which can be as low as 5 per 100,000 live births. Black mortality rate is criminally worse: 49.5 per 100,000 live births.
Over one million in the U.S. died in the pandemic, a rate much higher than other nations. Over 330,000 of the pandemic deaths in the U.S. were avoidable. Those lives could have been saved had we had a healthcare system that left no one with inadequate coverage.
Cancer patients must not only fight for their lives but also for the economic survival of their families. The newest treatments with so much hope are beyond the means of those who have insurance policies but no great wealth. About 30% of cancer survivors report lasting financial hardship.
Cancer patients are nearly 5 times more likely to experience bankruptcy, and the medical burden forces many to forego care.
Those who have employer-based insurance were assumed to have the gold standard in health care. Now even the highest paid workers are subjected to premiums, deductibles, and co-pays that impede their care despite the family plans that average $32,000 per year. More have insurance that covers less than a hospital gown. Gold has turned to scrap metal.
As people struggle to pay for the premiums, deductibles, and co-pays, revenues of the seven largest health insurance companies in 2022 reached $1.25 trillion and profits soared to $69.3 billion. That’s a 287% increase in profits in just one decade, when profits were $24 billion.
The toxicity of the health care profit makers that spread unnecessary suffering and death generates the hatred that is poisoning the land.
Medicare, our best health care program, publicly funded and open to all, is now strangled in the grip of the privatized Medicare Advantage plans and the Accountable Care Organizations facilitated by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI). Medicare Advantage now controls a majority of recipients, not because it is better, but because the law that established it and the regulators that control it have allowed it to charge less in monthly premiums—plans that are also allowed to delay and deny care yet are overpaid by billions every year. CMMI issues waivers to the private plans exempting them from fraud and abuse laws and allowing kickbacks, self-referral, and illegal benefit inducement.
Millions on fixed incomes cannot afford the alternative of traditional Medicare plus a prescription drug plan and a supplementary Medigap plan. Those who have managed to escape the clutches of Medicare Advantage can still find themselves assigned, without their knowledge, to “value-based” payment schemes such as ACO REACH and other Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) which privatize traditional Medicare. “Value-based” payment models are touted, without evidence, as reducing costs for Medicare, yet encompass a multitude of for-profit entities and subject patients to physicians incentivized to deny care. There is ample evidence that “value-based” payment schemes do not lower costs for Medicare. Nevertheless, the privatization of Medicare, through Medicare Advantage or ACOs, is now official policy.
The hoax of “value-based” payments, promoted by CMMI, is exposed by the fact that, despite all the assertions of promoting equity, the inequities of health care are expanding.
Medicaid, the program for children and adults with low income, is almost completely privatized, subjecting the recipients to delays, denials and restrictions imposed by the private managed care organizations that control it.
The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is hurtling down the wrong track. They invite venture capital and health care investors into the Health Care Payment Learning and Action Network (LAN) that they created. CMS holds conferences, seeking advice and collaboration from the very profiteers that are the cause of high cost, low-quality care. The “value-based” payment scheme promoted by CMS has advanced the power of the profit makers, raising costs, cutting care, and pretending to promote equity for minorities and low-income patients.
It’s time to end the chaos. No more foxes in the hen house, no more poison in the system, no more profit in health care.
The toxicity of the health care profit makers that spread unnecessary suffering and death generates the hatred that is poisoning the land.
It’s time to end the chaos. No more foxes in the hen house, no more poison in the system, no more profit in health care. The nation has rejected the insurance company health care model that delays and denies care, demands skin in the game, asserts that there is massive unnecessary care, throws up barriers against care, and walks away with billions. A system that collects money from patients and employers then profits by withholding the promised care is not a business but a fraudulent, diabolical scam.
This system built on profit cannot be tweaked or regulated into better performance. Runaway trains are not deterred by guardrails.
There is one way to heal the nation. Put single payer on the nation’s table and focus the steaming rage to move the engine of change. Raise the demand for removal of profit and enactment of an Improved Medicare for All free from profit to a level commensurate with the damage that our current failing system is causing the patients’ and the country’s goodwill.
Some look at the current Congress, make the assessment that it’s not possible to pass single payer, then change their demand to a lesser proposal. But incremental changes are at the root of the privatization and profit schemes we are locked into now. Fifteen years after the ACA we have a failing health care system. We have witnessed that more incrementalism does more harm than good. Power concedes nothing without a demand, and the demand must be equal to the solution needed.
There is one way to heal the nation. Put single payer on the nation’s table and focus the steaming rage to move the engine of change.
As Marcia Angell, former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, taught us, in our current private profit-based system, proposals that lower costs also decrease care, and proposals that increase care, raise costs. To improve care and control costs, we must turn to national single payer, free from profit or a national health service.
The status quo is deadly, and people are demanding a stronger more effective fight. We must organize and educate, locally and nationally with a new determination. In every town hall, classroom, union, organization, and neighborhood, people must hear the message and join the fight. Redirect the rage into a positive force for change.
The new anger in the nation makes possible what we could not do before. Many are now discussing the possibility of setting a National Day of Action in 2025 to demand freeing health care from corporate profit and covering everyone under a national single payer plan. That’s a great idea. Actions across the country lifting up that demand could inspire the movement we need.
National Single Payer—an Improved Medicare for All free from profit with everybody in and nobody out. Nothing less can heal the nation.
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