We are the biggest suckers in the world. No other country on the planet allows their people to be ripped off the way we are ripped off in the U.S. by health insurance companies. How is it possible that we calmly accept paying more than twice as much per person for healthcare that produces the worst outcomes in the developed world? We have among the highest rates of heart and lung disease, cancer, stroke, and diabetes. All other developed countries cover everyone, at about half the cost, with comprehensive healthcare that cannot be canceled. No premiums, no deductibles, and no co-pays.
In the U.S. most of us pay a fortune each year, yet we have 28 million people with no coverage at all, about 50 million with poor coverage. We have about 45,000 people dying each year because of a lack of health care. And we are the only country on the planet that has over 530,000 people declaring bankruptcy, each year because of medical bills. Meanwhile, health insurance companies make tens of $billions in profits, each year.
How is this possible? How did this happen? Wendell Potter was a senior VP of corporate communications for CIGNA health insurance, where he helped craft the propaganda that got us where we are today. Potter later resigned and wrote "Deadly Spin - How Corporate PR Is Killing Health Care and Deceiving Americans." In a recent interview titled "Without Medicare for All, the Healthcare System Will Collapse," Potter explains how insurance companies use propaganda to pacify most of us into accepting the status quo and how they also scare us into rejecting any change. Please read the book or watch the interview, because too many Americans are ruined and too many people are dying, to satisfy the greed of a small number of billionaires.