• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

PNHP

  • Home
  • Contact PNHP
  • Join PNHP
  • Donate
  • PNHP Store
  • About PNHP
    • Mission Statement
    • Board of Directors
    • National Office Staff
    • Speakers Bureau
    • Local Chapters
    • Students for a National Health Program
    • Contact Us
    • Privacy Policy
  • About Single Payer
    • What is Single Payer?
      • Policy Details
      • FAQs
      • History of Health Reform
      • Información en Español
    • How do we pay for it?
    • Physicians’ Proposal
      • Full Proposal
      • Supplemental Materials
      • Media Coverage
    • The Medicare for All Act of 2025
  • Take Action
    • Moral Injury and Distress
    • Medical Society Resolutions
    • Recruit Colleagues
    • Schedule a Grand Rounds
    • Letters to the Editor
    • Lobby Visits
    • Organizing in Red Districts
  • Heal Medicare
    • HealMedicare.org
    • Sign our Petition
    • Take our Survey
    • Medicare Disadvantage
    • Stop REACH
  • Kitchen Table Campaign
    • Medicare Disadvantage
    • Maternal Mortality
    • Mental Health Care
    • Health Care Voters Guide
    • COVID-19 Endangers Health Workers
    • COVID-19 Exacerbates Racial Inequities
    • Public Health Emergencies
    • Rural Health Care
    • Racial Health Inequities
    • Surprise Billing
  • Latest News
    • Sign up for e-alerts
    • Medicare Advantage harms report
    • Members in the news
    • Health Justice Monitor
    • Articles of Interest
    • Latest Research
    • For the Press
  • Member Resources
    • 2024 Annual Meeting Materials
    • Member Interest Groups (MIGs)
    • Newsletter
    • Slideshows
    • Materials & Handouts
    • Kitchen Table Campaign
    • COVID-19 Response
      • Why we Need Medicare for All
      • PNHP’s 8-point plan
      • New Study: Perils and Possibilities
      • Emergency COVID-19 Legislation
      • Kitchen Table Toolkit
      • Take Action on COVID-19
      • Telling your COVID-19 story
      • PNHP members in the news
    • Events Calendar
    • Webinars
    • Film Room
    • Join or renew your membership

Articles of Interest

Our failing healthcare system costs us countless lives. It’s time to adopt Medicare for All

Being a doctor during the pandemic has made clear to me how desperately we need Medicare for All in the US

Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

By Adam Gaffney, M.D., M.P.H.
Salon, February 11, 2021

Over the past year, COVID-19 has inundated the ICU where I work. Death and suffering have become the everyday norm. But I’ve also seen how our broken health care system amplifies the catastrophes caused by the virus.

Last spring, one of my many gravely ill patients who required intubation, and who had to be put in a drug-induced coma while the ventilator breathed for her, turned the corner after many weeks. After the breathing tube was removed, her first words expressed panic – not about the constant din of alarms from cardiac and respiratory monitors or the critical illness that she had narrowly survived — but for fear of ruinous medical bills.

She’s not alone. One in 10 respondents to a Gallup survey in April said they’d avoid treatment if they thought they had COVID-19 because they feared the medical costs. Even before the pandemic, 30 million people were uninsured, 1 in 3 Americans struggled to pay medical bills, and illness and medical bills contributed to more than half a million personal bankruptcies annually.

As our nation recovers from the horrifying second peak of COVID-19, and as it grapples with the most severe economic downturn since the Great Depression, it’s time to eliminate the scourge of inadequate health coverage – forever. It’s time to adopt Medicare for All.

Today, in the medical journal The Lancet, I joined colleagues in providing the first comprehensive assessment of the Trump administration’s impact on health, including in health care financing. We also make recommendations for action.

As we document, health protections dwindled under President Donald Trump. Cuts to the Affordable Care Act’s navigator and outreach programs, the growing red tape in Medicaid, and the administration’s xenophobic “public charge” rule that frightened immigrants away from enrollment in nutrition and health programs caused the number of uninsured to swell by 2.3 million, including 700,000 children – and that’s before the virus struck.

When the pandemic hit, Congress moved to cover the costs of COVID-19 testing, treatment and vaccination for those without coverage. Yet some uninsured patients with COVID-19 have still received large bills. And many – including those with coverage – continue to face financial disaster from deductibles and copayments for non-COVID-19 illness.

Meanwhile, gaps in coverage are growing. Millions of Americans have lost their jobs, and with it, their private health coverage. Many more have suffered income losses that will make copays and deductibles even more onerous.

Make no mistake: Study after study has found that lack of health coverage is often fatal. Each year, tens of thousands of Americans die because they’re uninsured and don’t get vital care.

But it’s not just the uninsured who suffer; cost barriers of any kind are medically hazardous. Deductibles cause women with breast cancer to delay starting chemotherapy by 6 months or more. Insured heart attack victims who fear the costs delay going to the ER – a potentially fatal mistake. For heart attack survivors, copays and deductibles for medications increase the risk of future heart problems. High insulin prices kill young people unable to afford that life-saving medication. And many patients with asthma and emphysema suffer unnecessary exacerbations and hospitalization because they can’t afford routine medications and care.

As we show in our wide-ranging Lancet report, most deficiencies in our health care system predated Trump.  His actions made those deficiencies more acute, however.

It’s therefore not enough to undo Trump’s legacy. We need to go further.

Urgent action to cover health care costs – including copayments and deductibles – for everyone is essential. Legislation introduced last year by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), the Health Care Emergency Guarantee Act, would cover medical costs for the uninsured, as well as copays and deductibles for those with insurance, for the duration of the pandemic.

But a permanent solution – a Medicare for All reform – is needed in the pandemic’s wake.

Medicare for All would provide all Americans with comprehensive first-dollar coverage. It would improve health and save lives, even as it would save money. A recent analysis from the Congressional Budget Office estimated that such reform could reduce overall health spending by at least $42 billion each year; the $400 billion in annual savings from cutting out private insurer’s waste would more than pay for the costs of expanding and improving coverage.

The COVID-19 pandemic will, fortunately, end. But the ongoing suffering caused by our broken health care financing system will not – unless we take action. Nobody should ever awaken fearing medical bills, much less from a coma. The prescription is clear: Medicare for All.

Dr. Adam Gaffney is the immediate past president of Physicians for a National Health Program. He blogs at theprogressivephysician.org and is on Twitter at @awgaffney.

https://www.salon.com…

Primary Sidebar

Recent Articles of Interest

  • Proposed Medicaid cuts could lead to thousands of deaths, study finds
  • The Case for Single-Payer
  • The U.S. Healthcare System in Conversation with Dr. Don McCanne
  • Medicare Enrollment Proposals Would Speed Shift to Private Care
  • Trump’s CMS dramatically raises payments to Medicare Advantage plans
  • About PNHP
    • Mission Statement
    • Board of Directors
    • National Office Staff
    • Speakers Bureau
    • Local Chapters
    • Students for a National Health Program
    • Contact Us
    • Privacy Policy
  • About Single Payer
    • What is Single Payer?
      • Policy Details
      • FAQs
      • History of Health Reform
      • Información en Español
    • How do we pay for it?
    • Physicians’ Proposal
      • Full Proposal
      • Supplemental Materials
      • Media Coverage
    • The Medicare for All Act of 2025
  • Take Action
    • Moral Injury and Distress
    • Medical Society Resolutions
    • Recruit Colleagues
    • Schedule a Grand Rounds
    • Letters to the Editor
    • Lobby Visits
    • Organizing in Red Districts
  • Heal Medicare
    • HealMedicare.org
    • Sign our Petition
    • Take our Survey
    • Medicare Disadvantage
    • Stop REACH
  • Kitchen Table Campaign
    • Medicare Disadvantage
    • Maternal Mortality
    • Mental Health Care
    • Health Care Voters Guide
    • COVID-19 Endangers Health Workers
    • COVID-19 Exacerbates Racial Inequities
    • Public Health Emergencies
    • Rural Health Care
    • Racial Health Inequities
    • Surprise Billing
  • Latest News
    • Sign up for e-alerts
    • Medicare Advantage harms report
    • Members in the news
    • Health Justice Monitor
    • Articles of Interest
    • Latest Research
    • For the Press
  • Member Resources
    • 2024 Annual Meeting Materials
    • Member Interest Groups (MIGs)
    • Newsletter
    • Slideshows
    • Materials & Handouts
    • Kitchen Table Campaign
    • COVID-19 Response
      • Why we Need Medicare for All
      • PNHP’s 8-point plan
      • New Study: Perils and Possibilities
      • Emergency COVID-19 Legislation
      • Kitchen Table Toolkit
      • Take Action on COVID-19
      • Telling your COVID-19 story
      • PNHP members in the news
    • Events Calendar
    • Webinars
    • Film Room
    • Join or renew your membership

Footer

  • About PNHP
    • Mission Statement
    • Board of Directors
    • National Office Staff
    • Speakers Bureau
    • Local Chapters
    • Students for a National Health Program
    • Contact Us
    • Privacy Policy
  • About Single Payer
    • What is Single Payer?
      • Policy Details
      • FAQs
      • History of Health Reform
      • Información en Español
    • How do we pay for it?
    • Physicians’ Proposal
      • Full Proposal
      • Supplemental Materials
      • Media Coverage
    • The Medicare for All Act of 2025
  • Take Action
    • Moral Injury and Distress
    • Medical Society Resolutions
    • Recruit Colleagues
    • Schedule a Grand Rounds
    • Letters to the Editor
    • Lobby Visits
    • Organizing in Red Districts
  • Heal Medicare
    • HealMedicare.org
    • Sign our Petition
    • Take our Survey
    • Medicare Disadvantage
    • Stop REACH
  • Kitchen Table Campaign
    • Medicare Disadvantage
    • Maternal Mortality
    • Mental Health Care
    • Health Care Voters Guide
    • COVID-19 Endangers Health Workers
    • COVID-19 Exacerbates Racial Inequities
    • Public Health Emergencies
    • Rural Health Care
    • Racial Health Inequities
    • Surprise Billing
  • Latest News
    • Sign up for e-alerts
    • Medicare Advantage harms report
    • Members in the news
    • Health Justice Monitor
    • Articles of Interest
    • Latest Research
    • For the Press
  • Member Resources
    • 2024 Annual Meeting Materials
    • Member Interest Groups (MIGs)
    • Newsletter
    • Slideshows
    • Materials & Handouts
    • Kitchen Table Campaign
    • COVID-19 Response
      • Why we Need Medicare for All
      • PNHP’s 8-point plan
      • New Study: Perils and Possibilities
      • Emergency COVID-19 Legislation
      • Kitchen Table Toolkit
      • Take Action on COVID-19
      • Telling your COVID-19 story
      • PNHP members in the news
    • Events Calendar
    • Webinars
    • Film Room
    • Join or renew your membership
©2025 PNHP