UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE SAVES LOTS OF LIVES AND MONEY

SUMMARY: A universal, single-payer U.S. health care system could save over 100,000 lives and $1 trillion every year. However, because capitalism has corrupted our health care system, which now puts profits before patients, the potential benefits, both in quality and in savings, won’t occur unless the corporate giants in the system are broken up or strongly regulated. Six corporations dominate Big Medicine with over $2 trillion in revenue and $34 billion in profits in 2025.

(Note: If you find a post too long to read, please just skim the bolded portions. Thanks for reading my blog!)

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A reformed U.S. health care system providing universal coverage could save over 100,000 lives and $1 trillion every year according to a study from the Yale School of Public Health. A universal U.S. public health insurance program, such as Medicare for All, would save over $1 trillion a year even after including roughly $300 billion for the additional care received by currently uninsured or underinsured people. [1]

The five major sources of savings are:

Reduced administrative overhead. At least 15% of U.S. health care spending, about $800 billion annually, is administrative waste. Peer countries and Medicare spend 1% to 4% on administration.
Lowered drug costs due to regulation and negotiation of drug prices.
Reduced fraudulent billing from for-profit entities working to maximize profits.
Fewer emergency room visits and hospitalizations due to earlier and less expensive treatment of medical conditions.
Standardized and capped prices for health care services.

Universal health insurance would, of course, undo the coverage cuts and other health policy changes implemented by the Trump administration since 2025. This alone would prevent about 51,300 deaths a year. Universal comprehensive and affordable health coverage would benefit the over 45 million adults who are underinsured – where deductibles and co-pays make needed care unaffordable. This would save another 29,600 lives a year. Finally, universal health insurance would, of course, insure the uninsured saving an estimated 33,300 additional lives. So, in total over 114,000 deaths per year would be averted.

The Yale study builds on and confirms estimates in a less comprehensive 2020 study that concluded that a single-payer, universal health care system in the U.S. would save at least 68,000 lives and $450 billion a year. [2]

However, capitalism has corrupted the U.S. health care system. The pursuit of profits has become the priority, rather than care for patients. Costs are high and growing fast, while outcomes are poor. (See this previous post for more details.) Big corporations (aka Big Medicine) dominate health insurance, drug manufacturing, hospitals, and doctors’ practices. Middlemen skim off profits at many points in the system. Private equity firms (vulture capitalists) pocket profits at the expense of patients, doctors, and others. Practitioners are burned out and leaving clinical practices in record numbers leading to shortages of doctors in primary care and many specialties, especially mental health. [3]

Therefore, a universal, single-payer, Medicare-for-All type system won’t achieve all its potential benefits, both in quality and in savings, unless the corporate giants in the health care system are broken up or strongly regulated. [4]

Six corporations dominate Big Medicine: huge insurer / provider conglomerates UnitedHealth, CVS, and Cigna, along with mega-wholesalers McKesson, Cencora, and Cardinal Health. They are six of the fifteen largest corporations in the U.S. They have been built by mergers and acquisitions over the last 16 years; only one of them was among the fifteen largest corporations in 2010. They had over $2 trillion in revenue and $34 billion in profits in 2025. For example, McKesson, Cencora, and Cardinal Health are the three largest wholesale drug distributors, controlling 98% of the market, giving them, as middlemen, monopolistic leverage over drug manufacturers, providers, and consumers. (See this previous post for more on corporate consolidation and concentration in health care.)

Big Medicine now employs 80% of doctors. This exemplifies the major changes in our health care system since the early 1980s when 80% of doctors owned their own private practices. Big Medicine (as with big retailers and big tech) also pushes manufacturing of drugs and medical supplies to low-cost sources overseas. This makes supply chains brittle and results in shortages if there’s any disruption.

For patients, Big Medicine means unaffordable coverage, doctor shortages and long wait times, longer trips to doctors and hospitals, administrative barriers to care and payments, worse health, and medical debt for 40% of American adults. For doctors and other practitioners, it means decreased pay and benefits, increased pressure to produce billings, decreased time with patients, delayed payments for services, and worsening working conditions. Big Medicine has pushed both patients and practitioners into frustration and anger, and, as a result, only 28% of patients trust the health care system and practitioners are leaving the field at unprecedented rates.

For lots of good news see Jess Craven’s Chop Wood Carry Water blog’s most recent good news Sunday post here.

[1] Kristoffersen, M., 8/13/26, “Universal health coverage could save $1 trillion and 114,000 lives every year, Yale study projects,” Yale School of Public Health (https://ysph.yale.edu/news-article/universal-health-coverage-could-save-one-trillion-dollars-and-114000-lives-every-year/)

[2] Galvani, A. P., et al., 2/15/20, “Improving the prognosis of health care in the USA,” The Lancet (https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(19)33019-3/abstract)

[3] Freer, E., & Harper, M., August 2026, “Break up Big Medicine: A health care agenda to restore power to patients and practitioners and save families $6,000 a year,” American Economic Liberties Project (https://www.economicliberties.us/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/AELPHealthcareAgenda.pdf)

[4] Dayen, D., 8/27/26, “Health care reform needs more than universal coverage,” The American Prospect (https://prospect.org/2026/08/27/health-care-reform-universal-coverage-medicare-for-all/)

CAPITALISM HAS CORRUPTED HEALTH CARE

Capitalism and its pursuit of profits have corrupted our health care system, resulting in the most expensive system in the world, but one that delivers poor outcomes. Three elements have driven this corruption: corporate consolidation, private equity, and privatization.

SUMMARY: Capitalism and its pursuit of profits have corrupted our health care system. Oligarchs have been allowed to reap huge rewards resulting in the most expensive health care system in the world but one that delivers poor outcomes. Three essential elements that have driven this corruption are corporate consolidation, private equity, and privatization. Some remedies are clear but require dramatic changes in our federal elected officials.

(Note: If you find a post too long to read, please just skim the bolded portions. Thanks for reading my blog!)

(Note: Please follow me and see my blog posts on Bluesky at: @jalippitt.bsky.social. Thanks!)

Capitalism has corrupted our health care system. My previous two posts described more generally 1) how corporate America’s current brand of capitalism is corrupt and undermines democracy, while abetting oligarchy and fascism; and 2) how large, profitable corporations avoid paying taxes while paying their employees so little they have to rely on government assistance to survive.

The U.S. health care system does not provide high-quality health care and is not accessible and affordable because it has been corrupted by the pursuit of profits. As a result, Americans have the worst health outcomes among peer countries. Moreover, they face high costs for insurance and care, resulting in huge amounts of medical debt and many bankruptcies. Individual health care providers are burned out and have low morale because their managers are focused on maximizing profit.

The U.S. health care system has been corrupted by the “free market” revolution that began in the 1970s, took off under President Reagan in the 1980s, and has dominated the U.S. economic system ever since. This laissez-faire, deregulated, no-holds-barred brand of capitalism has been championed by wealthy “conservatives” and Republicans, and abetted by some Democrats. It has been dubbed neo-liberalism. It is a turbocharged version of capitalism that promotes deregulation of business and privatization of public goods and services. [1]

Oligarchs have been allowed to reap huge rewards from our health care system through financial manipulation, mergers and acquisitions, and what amounts to bribery of elected officials. The result has been huge mega-hospitals and vertically integrated insurers / providers, along with pharmaceutical giants and a mind-boggling number of middlemen. All these entities are focused on squeezing as much profit as possible out of the health care system, while patient outcomes and the well-being of individual providers are sacrificed.

The result is the most expensive health care system in the world but one that delivers poor outcomes.

There are three essential elements that have driven this corruption of our health care system: [2]

Corporate consolidation: Deregulation and lack of antitrust enforcement over the last 40 years have led to huge health care corporations that have monopolistic power, which allows them to maximize profits at the expense of patients and individual providers. Almost every component of our health care system is rated as “highly concentrated.” [3] For example, 90% of dialysis is performed by just two companies, while 90% of hospital markets, 74% of health insurance markets, and 65% of specialized physician services are rated as highly concentrated.
Private equity: Private equity firms (which I referred to as vulture capitalists [see background here]) invaded health care starting in the 2000s. In the decade from 2010 to 2020, private equity firms spent $750 billion buying health care entities. While these purchases have produced big returns for the private equity financiers, the results for patients have been higher prices, poorer quality, and less access due to the closing of facilities, while doctors and other personnel are disempowered and discouraged. (This is consistent with the standard practice of private equity firms in all sectors of our economy. See more here.)

Steward Health is perhaps the poster child for private equity’s harmful impact on health care. Among other negative outcomes, it delivered poor care as it cut corners to maximize profits. By filing for bankruptcy, patient malpractice awards (among other debts) won’t be paid or will be paid with pennies on the dollar, while executives and private equity owners walked away with fortunes.
Privatization: Privatization and profits are the hallmarks of our neoliberal health care system. Notably, Medicare, which provides health insurance coverage for 65 million seniors and people with disabilities, is being increasingly privatized to the detriment of taxpayers and patients. A growing portion of Medicare enrollees are being seduced by slick advertising and short-term benefits to sign up for privatized Medicare Advantage plans, which now have 55% of the population.

The only long-term advantage of the plans is to the profits of private insurers, such as the giants UnitedHealthcare and Humana, which between them have 46% of all Medicare Advantage enrollees. Recently, these two corporations announced plans to boost their profits by dropping some “under-performing” markets and kicking more than a million seniors off their insurance plans.

Medicare Advantage (MA) plans cost the government over $500 billion a year and more per person than non-privatized, traditional Medicare, despite serving a healthier population. MA companies are notorious for denying payments for necessary care and for overbilling the government. Nonetheless, the Trump administration recently approved a substantial increase in payments to MA plans. [4]

Not surprisingly, another result of this corruption of our health care system has been that trust in the system has dropped dramatically from 79% in 1975 to 28% in 2026. [5]

Some of the remedies for our health care system’s dysfunction are clear but obviously would require dramatic changes in our federal elected officials:

Strong enforcement of antitrust laws (as the Biden administration started to do for the first time in 40 years). The high concentration in many parts of the health care system will require breaking up some of the huge, monopolistic corporations that have been created.
Banning private equity ownership from our health care system.
Regulating drug prices, as they are in every other peer country.
Implementing a single-payer, Medicare for All type system, like those in every other peer country.
Establishment of a new patient bill of rights.

For lots of good news see Jess Craven’s Chop Wood Carry Water blog’s most recent good news Sunday post here.

[1] McDonough, J. E., 8/30/26, “The little-understood roots of the American health care catastrophe,” The Boston Globe

[2] McDonough, J. E., 8/30/26, see above

[3] Highly concentrated is defined in the merger guidelines of the Federal Trade Commission. More on its application to health care is in this American Medical Association publication: https://www.ama-assn.org/health-care-advocacy/access-care/95-us-health-insurance-markets-are-highly-concentrated

[4] Johnson, J., 9/10/26, “To boost profits, Medicare Advantage giants move to kick over a million seniors off their plans,” Common Dreams (https://www.commondreams.org/news/medicare-advantage-benefit-cuts)

[5] McDonough, J. E., 8/30/26, see above

TRUMP AND HIS REGIME DON’T CARE ABOUT YOU

SUMMARY: President Trump and his regime don’t care about you and aren’t protecting your health, safety, or financial security. Here are some examples of actions they have taken that put you at risk.

(Note: If you find a post too long to read, please just skim the bolded portions. Thanks for reading my blog!)

(Note: Please follow me and see my blog posts on Bluesky at: @jalippitt.bsky.social. Thanks!)

Trump and his regime don’t care about you, your health or safety, or protecting you from financial fraud and crime. They demonstrate this in many ways. Here are some examples.

The Trump regime is NOT protecting you from financial fraud and abuse. Since its first days in office, it’s been weakening the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). Most recently, the Trump-controlled CFPB announced it would no longer make consumer complaints public. Failure to make complaints public will protect financial companies from scrutiny and transparency, hiding corporate misconduct from the public. It removes the incentive companies have to avoid, fix, and respond to problems that comes with public awareness and publicity. Furthermore, the CFPB recently purged its backlog of complaints and canceled a policy requiring refunds to consumers who had been overcharged. [1]

Consumer complaints filed with the CFPB have doubled in 2025 to 6.6 million (from 3.2 million in 2024). Since 2011, the CFPB has received and made public more than seventeen million complaints. Nearly six million consumers have received some form of relief in response to their CFPB complaints over its 16 years of operation. The CFPB has gotten consumers over $20 billion in compensation based on complaints involving loans, bank accounts, credit reports, and other financial matters.

The Trump regime is also NOT protecting us from drug and human trafficking as well as financial fraud because it has stopped blocking the money laundering necessary for these criminal enterprises. It has terminated the shell company [2] registry of the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) in the Treasury Department. Congress created the registry in 2021 through the Corporate Transparency Act (CTA). It was a response to the reporting of investigative journalists who documented that between 1999 and 2017 U.S. banks had processed more than $2 trillion in potentially laundered money for criminals using shell companies and operating out of Russia, China, Iran, and Syria. At the time, Senator Rubio, now Trump’s Secretary of State, called the CTA “the most significant anti-corruption and money laundering law in decades.” [3]

To combat this extensive money laundering, the CTA requires every individual owning at least 25% of a shell company to register their legal name, date of birth, and residential street address; and provide an image of an official identification document with a unique identifying number. The Trump regime has now (probably illegally) stopped enforcing this law. [4] The termination of the shell company registry also facilitates oligarchs’ ability to hide their money and avoid taxes. Trump’s Treasury Department also destroyed the registry’s data that had been previously collected.

Law enforcement, national security experts, and small business owners are alarmed. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has called this lack of enforcement of the CTA “a gift to cartels, criminals, and U.S. adversaries.” [5]

On a different front, Trump’s Justice Department has reduced or stopped investigations and prosecutions of crimes like tax evasion, drug trafficking, and sex trafficking. The number of personnel assigned to these crimes has declined because of staffing shortages, funding cuts, and the reassignment of agents to immigration enforcement. [6]

The Trump regime is also NOT protecting your health. Measles in the U.S. is at levels not seen in many years and children have died from it. Nonetheless, Trump issued an executive order demanding states revise their recommendations for childhood vaccinations in ways that will reduce vaccinations for measles, as well as for mumps and rubella. Although the executive order does not change the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s recommendations or insurance coverage, it will increase confusion over and distrust of vaccinations that Trump’s Secretary of Health and Human Services Kennedy has been fomenting. This will result in more diseases, disabilities, and deaths. [7]

Foodborne illnesses in the U.S. are at very high levels. This year’s 10,500 cases to-date are almost ten times the annual rates in 2021 – 2025. A major contributor is the Trump regime’s cuts of more than 40% to food safety detection systems, including reduced funding for federal agencies to conduct food inspections and for grants to state and local health departments that track outbreaks. [8]

To add insult to injury, the Trump regime is also reducing access to health insurance and raising its cost for millions of Americans. In late June 2026, its own Department of Health and Human Services reported that at least five million people lost public health insurance in the first six months of the year, a drop of about 13%. For those remaining on public plans, premiums have spiked, more than doubling for some, while deductibles have increased by about $1,000 a person for many as they chose cheaper policies. [9]

The Trump regime announced in June plans to cancel 53 of 66 active grants from the Teen Pregnancy Prevention (TPP) program. TPP was created by bipartisan legislation in 2009 and has been credited with contributing to reducing the unwanted teen pregnancy rate by 65%. The Trump regime wants to end the comprehensive sex education of TPP programs and focus on abstinence promotion, despite evidence that abstinence only sex education is ineffective. A federal judge recently paused the regime’s attempt to put limits on the TPP grants’ sex education programs. [10]

Other examples of Trump regime actions that may hurt you:

Canceled the rule requiring airlines to compensate you for canceled flights (after United and Delta donated a million dollars to Trump).
Ended the IRS’s free tax return filing program (after the TurboTax tax return prepration software’s parent company gave a million dollars to Trump).
Weakened gun laws including restrictions that have been in place since 1934 on sawed-off (and therefore easily concealed) shotguns and silencers.
Promote cryptocurrency. But that’s a whole other story.

For lots of good news see Jess Craven’s Chop Wood Carry Water blog’s most recent good news Sunday post here.

[1] Conley, J., 8/14/26, “In gift to abusive Wall Street firms, Trump CFPB moves to suppress consumer complaints,” Common Dreams (https://www.commondreams.org/news/cfpb-complaint-database)

[2] Shell companies are legal entities that don’t have any physical presence or operations but are used for moving money and processing financial transactions.

[3] Baratta, J., 8/14/26, “Trump makes crime legal,” The American Prospect (https://prospect.org/2026/08/14/trump-makes-crime-legal-corporate-transparency-act-treasury/)

[4] Cox Richardson, H., 8/15/26, “Letters from an American blog,” (https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/august-15-2026)

[5] Baratta, J., 8/14/26, see above

[6] Cox Richardson, H., 8/13/26, “Letters from an American blog,” (https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/august-13-2026)

[7] Cox Richardson, H., 8/13/26, see above

[8] Cox Richardson, H., 8/20/26, “Letters from an American blog,” (https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/august-20-2026)

[9] Cox Richardson, H., 8/20/26, see above

[10] Conley, J., 8/19/26, “Federal judge blocks Trump and RFK effort to get more teens pregnant,” Common Dreams (https://www.commondreams.org/news/teen-pregnancy-programs)