One reason we spend more than any other country on health care and yet have poor outcomes on measures like morbidity and mortality is that our healthcare system is disorganized, in large part private, and has always left at least 20 million people uncovered. The system is built around assuring pharmaceutical firms, insurance companies, hospitals, doctors, hedge funds, etc. reliable outsized incomes. Perhaps an extra 5 or 10% has been covered by the ACA, but the quality and availability of the care provided by that insurance has deteriorated. It is hard to find a primary care doctor nearly everywhere, the waits for care are unreasonable, the time doctors have to take care of patients is defined by hedge fund managers and keeps getting shorter, data entry takes up much of providers’ time. Nor do we want Medicare Advantage (MA) for all. MA gets 22% more for each patient–the is just another way to privatize health care. We do not need corporations that require profit and 5% growth a year to manage health care. We’ve been doing this for decades and it doesn’t work. And no it doesn’t cost more to have a national health service, it costs less. You can do entirely without insurance companies and markedly decrease bureaucracies, and the lobbying and donations the companies spend to corrupt politicians. There’s too much to say here, but I understand this issue in depth, if there is interest.
The reason we spend more on health care than any other country is because the health care industry is breaking federal law (15 USC Chapter 1) and no one is forcing them to comply because they’re such a huge financier of politicians and lobbies and they control media.
Enforcing the law, we’d cut health care by 80%. And all he needs is an Executive Order to demand the govt to enforce it or face penalties themselves.