There’s a lot going on right now in our country, so we wanted to step back and provide a 10,000-foot view of where our current health care system stands in light of recent news.
The state of U.S. health care has only gotten worse since the Covid-19 pandemic, with tens of millions of people getting kicked off Medicaid, costs continuing to rise, hospitals and health care practices being further consolidated, the uninsured rate increasing, and harmful Supreme Court decisions being handed down. Let’s take a closer look:
While the current uninsured rate is 7.7 percent or 26 million people, that is expected to rise to 8.9 percent over the next decade, largely due to Medicaid disenrollment and the expiration of Affordable Care Act subsidies.1
During the height of the pandemic, states were prohibited from disenrolling Medicaid recipients from their rolls, but that came to an end last year when the national public emergency around Covid was lifted. Since then, nearly 23.8 million people have been disenrolled from Medicaid, and a 69 percent majority of those were due to procedural reasons (as opposed to becoming ineligible), according to KFF.2
In the worst cases, being disenrolled from Medicaid means some people become uninsured. But even for those who get coverage elsewhere, disenrollment from Medicaid may mean losing access to specific providers and having to navigate a new plan.
Hospitals continue to consolidate, which also drives costs up — researchers with the National Bureau of Economic Research found that “two years after a merger, healthcare prices go up by 1.2 percent.”3 Too often, mergers are an opportunity to maximize profits rather than deliver the highest quality of care to communities and deliver the safest working standards for nurses and other staff.
To make matters worse, the right-wing, pro-corporate U.S. Supreme Court handed down a dangerous ruling this week that reverses 40 years of legal precedent and weakens federal agencies’ ability to issue and enforce regulations.4
The conservative-majority Court is putting industry profits before the health and safety of our communities by overturning their 1984 landmark Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council decision. This ruling strips broad regulatory power from critical agencies like the Food and Drug Administration and Environmental Protection Agency, opening the door for new lawsuits from Big Pharma to go after Medicare negotiating drug prices — which we helped win.
That’s the bad news. The good news is that together, we are making progress in our movement for health care justice across the country. From achieving nearly 200 Patients Over Profits pledge signers who reject political donations from the for-profit health industry, to advancing the fight for single-payer health care through our CalCare bill in California, and securing a record percentage of Medicare for All support at the federal level, we are keeping up the fight.
Congressional action is needed to reverse the impacts of the Supreme Court’s disastrous Chevron decision and pass Medicare for All in order to fix our deeply broken health care system — that’s where you come in.
We may have challenges ahead of us, but together, we must come together and keep up our momentum for health care justice for all. Thank you for doing this critical work alongside us.
In solidarity,
Nurses’ Campaign to Win Medicare for All
Sources:
1.“Health Insurance Coverage Projections For The US Population And Sources Of Coverage, By Age, 2024–34,” Health Affairs, June 18, 2024.
https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/full/10.1377/hlthaff.2024.00460
2. “Medicaid Enrollment and Unwinding Tracker,” KFF, June 14, 2024.
https://www.kff.org/report-section/medicaid-enrollment-and-unwinding-tracker-overview/
3. “Who pays for rising healthcare prices? Evidence from hospital mergers,” National Bureau of Economic Research, April 12, 2024.
https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w32613/w32613.pdf
4. “NNU condemns Supreme Court’s decision eviscerating role of regulatory agencies,” National Nurses United, June 28, 2024.
https://www.nationalnursesunited.org/press/nnu-condemns-supreme-court-decision-eviscerating-role-of-regulatory-agencies
