America's Broken Healthcare System

America’s Health Care System Needs Better Economics, Not Bullets
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/13/opinion/health-care-united-shooting.html

How Did We End Up with Such an Opaque and Costly Health-Care System?
https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-financial-page/how-did-we-end-up-with-such-an-opaque-and-costly-health-care-system

What are pharmacy benefit managers? A health economist explains how lack of competition drives up drug prices for everyone
https://theconversation.com/what-are-pharmacy-benefit-managers-a-health-economist-explains-how-lack-of-competition-drives-up-drug-prices-for-everyone-236772

Healthcare Spending is Sinking the Federal Budget
https://www.fa-mag.com/news/healthcare-spending-is-sinking-the-federal-budget-80554.html

UnitedHealth Group C.E.O.: The Health Care System Is Flawed. Let’s Fix It.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/13/opinion/united-health-care-brian-thompson-luigi-mangione.html

The Gilded Age of Medicine Is Here

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/2024-in-review/the-gilded-age-of-medicine-is-here

Dhruv Khullar:

In recent years, health-care corporations have embraced an approach that can only be described as gamification. In the U.S., all seniors over sixty-five are entitled to health insurance through Medicare, and, for several decades, private companies have offered plans through programs such as Medicare Advantage. The government pays insurance companies a fixed sum based partly on how sick those patients are. The sicker the patients, the bigger the potential payments. But who’s to say, really, how sick a patient is? Let the games begin.

This year, the health-news site STAT revealed that UnitedHealth, the country’s largest private insurer, had set up dashboards for practices to compete on how many conditions they could diagnose in patients. Doctors who completed the most appointments with seniors in Medicare Advantage were eligible for ten-thousand-dollar bonuses, and patients were offered seventy-five-dollar gift cards for getting checkups at which their medical histories could be recorded.

 

Taxpayers spend 22% more per patient to support Medicare Advantage – the private alternative to Medicare that promised to cost less

https://theconversation.com/taxpayers-spend-22-more-per-patient-to-support-medicare-advantage-the-private-alternative-to-medicare-that-promised-to-cost-less-241997

Insurers Collected Billions from Medicare for Veterans Who Cost Them Almost Nothing
https://www.wsj.com/health/healthcare/veterans-medicare-insurers-collect-billions-bfd47d27
Taxpayers paid for their care at the VA—and for Medicare Advantage coverage that many didn’t use

 

The deep roots of Americans’ hatred of their health care system
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/390111/united-healthcare-ceo-shot-insurance-hospitals-doctors
The industry’s blame game will not end the US national health care nightmare.

What Doctors Like Myself Know About Americans’ Health Care Anger
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/08/opinion/health-care-anger.html
Among these grievances is the great unknown of whether a treatment recommended by a doctor will be covered. It’s critical for me as a physician to build trust with my patients by giving them clear answers. But the conversations we’re seeing now about health care remind me that insurance unknowns don’t just compromise the care I can deliver to my patients — they also undermine the fragile doctor-patient trust. It’s an unsustainable dynamic.
 
The Rage and Glee That Followed a C.E.O.’s Killing Should Ring All Alarms
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/06/opinion/united-health-care-ceo-shooting.html
 
Mirror, Mirror 2024: A Portrait of the Failing U.S. Health System
https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/fund-reports/2024/sep/mirror-mirror-2024

Americans Spend More Years Sick Than Rest of World, Study Finds
https://www.fa-mag.com/news/americans-spend-more-years-sick-than-rest-of-world--study-finds-80645.html
Even as Americans live longer, they spend more of their years in poor health than any other country, a new study shows.
People in the U.S. live with illness for 12.4 years on average—up from 10.9 years in 2000, according to a study published by the American Medical Association Wednesday. 
The U.S. offers the starkest illustration of a so-called health span-lifespan gap that is widening around the world, as chronic illnesses take up larger portions of people’s lives. While life expectancy has long been a standard measure of public health, researchers are increasingly focused on health-adjusted life expectancy, which tracks the number of years people live in good health.