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.

Onward!

- Robert Weissman, Co-President of Public Citizen
 
 
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