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Universal Healthcare For Every American Should Be The Norm
The fact that we still saddle ourselves under mountains of medical debt to protect an industry whose entire purpose is to deny us care is asinine
The U.S. healthcare system is a tangled web of deferred care, deductibles, and denied care.
According to CMS.gov Americans will pay around $42.9 trillion on healthcare over the next decade.
A study out of Yale concluded that switching to Medicare for All would save about 68,000 lives a year and reduce costs by $450 billion annually, a 13% decrease. This is because people would be more inclined to get preventative treatment beforehand and be more likely to go to the doctor at the first sign something is wrong instead of putting it off and waiting until symptoms become too much to ignore. Reducing administrative costs would save about $5 trillion over the decade.
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Currently, U.S. residents owe over $220 billion in medical debt according to testimony given before Congress by the American Hospital Association. They also said that 14 million people or 6% of adults in the U.S. owe over $1,000 in medical debt. About 3 million owe more than $10,000.
And for what really? Because they got sick or injured and needed care from a medical professional. Now they’re mired in debt that can make it difficult to improve their lives and avoid more sickness or injury in the future.
Patient advocates are urging states to assist residents who can’t pay off their medical debt due to fears the incoming Trump Administration will turn a blind eye to the whole ordeal:
"The election simply shifts our focus," said Eva Stahl, who oversees public policy at Undue Medical Debt, a nonprofit that has worked closely with the Biden administration and state leaders on medical debt. "States are going to be the epicenter of policy change to mitigate the harms of medical debt."
The fear is that Trump and Congress may aggressively curtail federal aid that helps Americans pay off these debts, reduce plan costs, or gain better coverage in recent years.
Project 2025 listed several ways it wanted to make things harder for U.S. residents who need healthcare:
End Medicare drug price negotiation
Fully privatizing Medicare through making Medicare Advantage plans the default enrollment
Change nonsubsidized ACA plans by eliminating the consumer protection provisions
Make higher out-of-pocket insurance plans like short-term and association health plans more prevalent
Roll back EPA protections that combat environmental hazards
These provisions, rule changes, and likely new laws would only enrich already mega-wealthy for-profit healthcare companies and saddle U.S. consumers with more debt.
While there has not yet been one, singular Medicare For All law put forward by Congress and supported by the majority, several bills have common features and goals.
According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, Sanders’ and Jayapal’s bills (S. 1129 and H.R. 1384, respectively) share many similarities, such as:
Other bills put a slightly different spin on single-payer health insurance. For instance, they may give you the right to opt out of the plan, offer this healthcare only to people who don’t qualify for Medicaid, or make it eligible to people who are only between the ages of 50 and 64.
This framework is a great place to start, putting the health of U.S. citizens first instead of for-profit hospitals or insurance carriers who employ entire departments of people dedicated to denying coverage.
Our goal should be the overall health and well-being of every American, as it lowers overall costs and taxes for everyone when our society is healthier and taken better care of.
It’s also simply the right thing to do, and you can never go wrong doing that.