Cost and access to health care are among the most pressing issues facing American families and are likely to take center stage in the 2020 U.S. presidential election. Issues like Medicare for All and the cost of prescription drugs are frequently debated. Each side holds strong, often strident views. Yet most American’s have little understanding of the issues and intersections between health care and other segments of their lives, such as student debt, stagnant wages, property taxes and trade deficits. As President Trump famously noted: “Nobody knew health care could be so complicated.”
Many American’s indeed feel pulled by complicated, conflicting health care tensions and they do not have a framework by which to sort it all out. This book is designed for them and all who have an interest in health care. It distills complex topics such as Obamacare, Medicare for All, mandates, Supreme Court actions, cost-sharing, and Medicaid work requirements into clear, personally-relevant, easy reading.
Why is such understanding critical? Most American’s are painfully aware of the high cost of U.S healthcare, yet unaware of healthcare’s “dirty little secrets.” Healthcare itself is the third leading cause of death in the United States. Employees and employers alike struggle under the burdening costs of insurance. Yet one-third of this $3.3 trillion/year expenditure represents waste and over-treatment. The resulting harm is personal: physical, emotional, and economic. The harm is also societal. Health care bleeds funds from other essential segments of the economy, creates higher costs for U.S products, strains federal and state budgets, and contributes to stagnant real-wage growth and family’s tax burdens.
Transforming healthcare requires a public who can cut through polarized rhetoric and special interests to understand how this massively inefficient, too often dangerous, yet essential, institution came to be this way and what can be done about it. Following this blog, readers will develop the tools to discern personal and political actions that align with their values, support the creation of an effective, efficient healthcare system, more equitable nation and foster enhanced U.S. international competitiveness.