We spend over three trillion dollars on health care every year and we have worse outcomes than any other developed country - all of which spend on average about half of what America spends per person.
Obamacare increased the number of insured people but didn't lower the cost of health care. Political resistance and powerful health care lobbies diluted and perverted the legislation that initially offered a public option, a mandate to purchase insurance, and national negotiation for pharmaceutical prices.
Trumpcare does not address the dysfunctional structure that allows a health care-industrial complex to profit at the expense of patients.
There is no simple fix for a system that over decades has shifted its mission from philanthropy to profit. Hospitals, doctors, insurance companies, device makers, and their respective lobbies are all part of the dysfunction. It will take great political will and a "woke" public to change our trajectory.
GUESTS:
- Elisabeth Rosenthal - Editor-in-Chief, Kaiser Health News, former journalist for the New York Times, and the author of An American Sickness: How Healthcare Became Big Business and How You Can Take It Back
- Dan Haar - Blogger and columnist for The Hartford Courant
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Colin McEnroe and Chion Wolf contributed to this show.
