Yesterday — at the invitation of Senator Bernie Sanders — I testified before the
Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions about the future of
health care in America.

Here’s some of what I touched on:

* Patient privacy is seriously threatened by numerous factors, including:
intense corporate concentration in the health care sector; reckless changes
by the Trump administration at the Department of Health and Human Services;
unprecedented and unaccountable data access by Elon Musk’s DOGE gang; and
more.

* The recently passed tax and budget package (Donald Trump’s so-called “Big
Beautiful Bill”) will wreak unconscionable destruction, including: 17 million
Americans losing health coverage; 50,000 excess deaths every year; hundreds
and hundreds of hospital closures; tens of thousands of lost jobs; and on and
on. All to lavish even more tax breaks on billionaires and Big Business.

* There are real sources of savings in our nation’s dysfunctional health care
“system.” Like the $200 billion we could save every year with commonsense
measures to rein in Big Pharma’s price gouging. And the $100 billion we could
save every year by reversing the privatization of Medicare.

* The built-in waste of our private, for-profit health care regime costs the
American people $700 billion or more each and every year just in
administrative costs — while leaving millions uninsured or under-insured. Switching to Medicare for All would not only let us claw back the vast
majority of that wasted money but also make sure, at long last, that every
American has access to the health care they need.

Visit the committee’s website to watch a recording of the hearing and to
download my full written testimony.
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Onward!

- Robert Weissman, Co-President of Public Citizen


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