Healthcare as a human right not a privilege is cherished by people lucky enough to live in almost every advanced country on the planet. Not so lucky are the people who live in the richest, most powerful country in the world where healthcare is a privilege not a right. As of 2024, 8% of Americans (26 million) have no medical insurance and find the doors to medical providers closed to them. They are not the only victims of this brutal privatized, for-profit health uncaring system. One-third of Americans have health insurance, but are woefully underinsured. Unable to afford “premium” plans, they are stuck with bargain basement plans that offer only a modicum of benefits but still include larcenous premiums, high deductibles (often $10,000 or more) and over-the-top co-pays. How inadequate is a healthcare system when 50% of its intended beneficiaries finds it “difficult to afford healthcare” [Kaiser Family Foundation]?
Medical debt is the leading cause of all bankruptcies in the US. Compare that to other wealthy nations where medical bankruptcies are rare to non-existent. In the U.K. only 8.2% of bankruptcies are due to medical debt [World Population Review, 2025]
You may wonder why the U.S. is the only wealthy country where people can go bankrupt trying to save their lives. Without national “single payer” healthcare, Americans have to pay whatever the chiselers who run the privatized system demand. In a single payer system, the government finances healthcare through taxes.
In this wildly overpriced wasteland, private equity outlaws and financial terrorists have transformed what used to be the “healing profession” into private fiefdoms where Americans’ hard-earned dollars feather the nests of the gangsters who run them. In 2024, Andrew Witty, CEO of United Healthcare, the largest health insurance company in the U.S., took home the munificent compensation of $26,339,215. Guess whose pocket it came out of? Yours. He is part of a pantheon of wildly overcompensated healthcare hooligans whose personal fortunes are baked into the U.S. $5 trillion “healthcare” bill.
What does the U.S. consumer receive for $5 trillion? Are they healthier than other people? Is privatized healthcare cheaper? No on both counts, Americans are stuck with poorer health outcomes, like lower life expectancy, the highest death rate for avoidable and treatable conditions, the highest maternal and infant mortality rates and among the highest suicide rate in the developed world. Americans are dangerously overweight (twice the recommended average) and have the highest rate of chronic conditions. During the pandemic, with only 4% of the world’s population, 1.2 million Americans died, more than in any other country. By comparison, India, the most populous country in the world (1.46 billion people) had 533,600 deaths—about half the number in the U.S. The conclusion is inescapable: the U.S. pays the most but fares the worst.
“We don’t consume a lot more health care than other countries.” We just pay a lot more for each thing.” [Dr. Atul Grover, executive director of the nonprofit AAMC Research and Action Institute] The invasion of private equity, over $1 trillion in investments since 2015, has resulted in sky rocketing costs accompanied by a decline in quality, “[Private equity firms] seek returns on their investment [in healthcare] as high as possible as quickly as possible, then rush to sell off that investment and go on to their next conquest.” [Professor John McDonough, Harvard School of Medicine]
As the U.S. population began to age and the average American got sicker and sicker, greedy investors quickly began to see a new market promising quick and easy profits. They began scooping up physician practices (5,779 in 2023 up from 816 in 2012), one-third of emergency rooms and 460 hospitals (22% of for-profit hospitals). They also have a significant presence in nursing homes, even fertility clinics.
When profit becomes part of every medical decision whether it’s ordering expensive, often unnecessary, tests and procedures, or prescribing expensive medications when less expensive options are available, it’s the patient who suffers. One study found that Medicare patients at private equity-owned hospitals suffered a 25% increase in hospital-acquired complications compared to Medicare patients at hospitals not owned by private equity. [Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) December 26, 2023]. Other studies have found that generally healthcare quality declines and costs skyrocket when private equity takes over.
Isn’t a failing health care system the ultimate life and death issue that calls for elected officials to step up to the plate? Apparently not when major reforms like single payer healthcare would be vehemently opposed by their real constituency, the men and women who control U.S. healthcare through powerful lobbies, major corporations and gigantic financial interests. After all, why should congress care about your health need when unlike you, being in congress entitles them to single payer healthcare? As their real concern is keeping their jobs, business as usual means getting a slice of the $23 million “healthcare professionals” throw into their campaign pots annually and the $16 million that big pharma chips in. Isn’t that how pay-to-play politics works in banana republics?
If congress is unwilling to go against the demands of its paymasters what about the sitting president? In 2010 when President Obama introduced a reworked version of a tired old Republican healthcare proposal and renamed it The Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), he was particularly eloquent with his lying falsehoods—“It’s [Obamacare]…[that’s] going to make sure that nobody…loses everything…because they’re sick.” Consider: over two-thirds of bankruptcies are due to astronomical medical bills. As to the assertion that “[Obamacare] makes quality, affordable healthcare not a privilege but a right.” [Statement on whitehouse.gov], at least 75% of those filing for medical bankruptcy had health insurance.
It gets worse. When Joe Biden became president in 2020, he said the quiet part out loud: he would veto Medicare-for-all if it ever came to his desk.
What’s the moral of this saga? The Democratic party even its progressive wing will never grow a backbone stiff enough to go up against wealthy and powerful elites that oppose single-payer healthcare. Until and unless America joins the rest of the developed world with a national healthcare system, Americans will continue to be the sickest people on the planet.
You may be stuck in an expensive and underperforming privatized health care system but Congress and the President have Medicare-for-all. Looking to learn more? Check out Congress has Single Payer Health Insurance —Why Don’t You?
