Tag: Healthcare Reform

Graph Shows When the U.S. Healthcare System Went off the Rails

Nixon's Healthcare Maintenance Organization Act of 1973 played an early role in enabling corporations to profit off sick and dying Americans

Jon Ponder
Chart source: Our World in Data

This graph shows the point at which the efficacy of healthcare in the United States diverged from the systems of its peer and competitor countries like the United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, France and Japan. It shows that at the point when healthcare spending skyrocketed in the United States, the results of the enormous spending began to falter as measured by life expectancy.

Obviously, there were many factors that led to this divergence. But one factor in particular stands out. In 1973, President Nixon pushed through Congress and then signed into law the Health Maintenance Organization Act of 1973, which changed the operating parameters of HMOs and other pre-paid medical plans. Its advocate was Edgar Kaiser, a wealthy California donor and president of Kaiser Permanente.

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Single-Payer Healthcare Gaining Popularity

Buck Banks

19 points

NBC News: “Support for single-payer has jumped 19 percentage points among Democrats since 2014 — and nine points since January alone — to 52%, according to a Pew survey in June. With 85% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents now saying the federal government has a responsibility to make sure every American has health care, two-thirds of liberals favor single-payer as the means.”

Two-Thirds Say They Disapprove of Trump’s Handling of Healthcare

Buck Banks

64%

“Just 40% of Americans approve of the job he is doing in the White House, and 55% now view him unfavorably, up 12 points since December. Worse, even more — 61% — say the nation is headed down the wrong path, also up 12 points since December…. And despite his assurances that he and congressional Republicans will repeal Obamacare and replace it with a ‘beautiful’ new health care bill, 64% of Americans say they disapprove of his handling of the issue.”

— Bloomberg

GOP Healthcare Bill Is Not Getting Better with Time

Buck Banks

“The Republicans have spent eight years insisting that they could produce a better health-care-reform plan if they had the chance. They have come to realize that this promise was false. The only thing they can do is rip away the benefits Obamacare has given millions of Americans. Their sole objective now is to do so with the minimum level of transparency or accountability.”

— Jonathan Chait

Half of Americans Account for Only 3 Percent of Healthcare Spending

Buck Banks

3%

Washington Post: “The top 1 percent of health-care spenders use more resources, collectively, than the bottom 75 percent, according to a new study based on national surveys. Slice the data a different way, and the bottom half of spenders all together rack up only about 3 percent of overall health care spending — a pattern that hasn’t budged for decades. This creates a fundamental inequality in the country’s health spending that is the crux of the challenge policymakers face: They need a system that works for people who are ill, but is attractive to those who are healthy and spend little on health care.”