The US has always relied heavily on private insurance to cover its citizens.
As of 2019, roughly two thirds of Americans with healthcare (about 90% of the population) got it through a private company. The remaining third used public coverage like Medicare, Medicaid, and tax credits for private insurance through the Affordable Care Act. It’s not a perfect system by a long stretch: Even those with insurance encounter debilitating medical bills due to the exorbitant, variable ...
healthcare
The more the US invests in Obamacare, the more unsustainable it looks
Obamacare has never been more successful. It’s also never been more obviously unsustainable.
In the wake of Covid-19 and the subsequent rise in unemployment, more Americans than ever turned to the Affordable Care Act (ACA)’s marketplace to buy health insurance. Since early March, when president Joe Biden started a new open-enrollment period, more than 200,000 Americans have signed up. In 2020, 11.5 million health insurance policies were bought through the ACA, and of them, ...
Nursing homes owned by private equity have higher death rates
Between 2004 and 2016 there were 20,150 excess deaths in American nursing homes, amounting to an estimated 160,000 lost years of life. The cause wasn’t a pandemic, but private equity.
Economists analyzed the mortality of patients in 18,485 nursing homes acquired by private equity companies between 2000 and 2017, versus other forms of for-profit ownership. It found that the likelihood of dying in a nursing home within the first 90 days of being admitted—a measure that’s a pr...
What is going to happen to the Affordable Care Act?
There’s a new Supreme Court justice, Election Day is less than a week away, and the Affordable Care Act’s constitutionality is set to be argued before the high court in two weeks. If you’re wondering about what this all means for the future of Obamacare, you’re not alone.
What happens to Obamacare if the Supreme Court decides against the ACA? What happens if Joe Biden wins the election? Or if Donald Trump remains in office? American healthcare coverage could be significantl...
Depending on where they live, coronavirus can still cost Americans thousands of dollars
Relatively early in America’s adventures in coronavirus, on March 18, the US government approved legislation that made coronavirus testing, as well as the visit to administer it, free for all Americans, whether or not they have health care insurance (although if the visit doesn’t result in a coronavirus test, it is not covered).
It was an essential policy: The fear of medical bills acts as a deterrent for many Americans, pushing them to delay, or avoid, tests or medical tr...
As an American, I felt safer from coronavirus in the UK until herd immunity came along
On Jan. 24, I got a text from the UK’s National Health Service telling me if I had returned from Wuhan and felt ill, to call a number to arrange a phone consultation. The request to stay away from my local NHS facility was polite but firm: “Please do not attend.” One month later I got another text, with a longer list of countries (China, Hong Kong, Italy’s Lombardy region, Japan, Macau, Malaysia, Republic of Korea, Singapore and Taiwan). If ill, self-isolate and call 111.
I...
Patients can’t afford for doctors to misunderstand the healthcare business
When I was in medical school, my teachers started a lot of their stories with the same phrase:
“Back in my day, I still helped patients who couldn’t pay.”
“Back in my day, we didn’t have 100 checklists.”
“Back in my day,...
No Obamacare replacement 3 years after Trump’s promise to ‘immediately’ change it
Nearly three years after taking office, Americans still are waiting for Trump's big health insurance reveal. Prescription drug prices have edged lower, but with major legislation stuck in Congress it's unclear if that relief is the start of a trend or merely a blip.
