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'A Serious and Alarming Threat': US Bombing, Blockade Deepen Iran Medical Crisis
"The most serious risk is premature death," said one physician.
Sep 09, 2026
A senior Iranian health official on Tuesday accused the United States of deliberately targeting Iran's medical infrastructure amid a worsening shortage of critical medicines as President Donald Trump's illegal US-Israeli war of choice against Iran drags on.
Iran's pharmaceutical system is straining under US bombing, blockade, and sanctions that have severely disrupted trade and transportation in the Middle East nation of around 90 million people. Iranian officials say shortages of roughly 800 medicines—including dozens of essential drugs—are affecting the treatment of cancer and other serious illnesses.
“The enemy has identified medicine as one of the sensitive areas of the country, and is trying to denigrate and portray Iran’s conditions as unfavorable by releasing content in the press and social media," Deputy Health Minister Mahdi Pirsalehi, who also heads Iran's Food and Drug Administration, told Al Jazeera.
Pirsalehi has said that more than 50 factories and pharmacies have been damaged or destroyed by US and Israeli bombing during the six-month war. The attacks have exacerbated existing shortages.
One gastroenterologist and university professor in Tehran, who spoke to Al Jazeera on condition of anonymity, sounded the alarm on what she called a "staggering" rise in drug prices—including for domestically produced generic medications—caused in significant part by the US naval blockade.
“Reports that rotavirus vaccine imports have been halted because of the maritime blockade—and that influenza vaccines may soon face the same problem—represent a serious and alarming threat to nationwide efforts to prevent vaccine-preventable communicable diseases,” she said.
“Runaway inflation, poverty, and inadequate access to essential food groups among vulnerable populations, including infants, children, and pregnant women, signal the onset and spread of malnutrition,” she added, warning of the risk “of both communicable and noncommunicable diseases, creating a vicious cycle in which malnutrition develops and progressively worsens."
For ordinary Iranians, empty pharmacy shelves, delayed treatments, and prohibitively expensive prescription drugs have become the new normal.
One Iranian pharmaceutical company recently announced price increases for scores of drugs, including a 543% rise in the price of the Alzheimer's medication donepezil, a 308% higher cost for the antibiotic clarithromycin, and a 135% spike in acetaminophen and diphenhydramine syrups, according to reporting by Tasnim News Agency.
Dr. Hassan Nayeb Hashem told Deutsche Welle last month that "for many specific diseases, there is effectively no substitute" for prescribed drugs.
"If the medicine becomes inaccessible, patients can develop complications much sooner," he said. "The most serious risk is premature death."
One patient requiring testing for an abdominal and pelvic mass recently told Iran International that CT and MRI scans now cost over $100, even with Social Security insurance—the equivalent of a month's pay for many Iranians.
“How are we supposed to pay these costs with such meager incomes?” they asked.
A 33-year-old man said the exorbitant cost of dental treatment has left him without half of his teeth.
“I feel like I’m 60,” he said. “The bitter part is that this humiliating way of life has become normal for me.”
Another Iranian said they feared what would happen if anyone in their family got sick this winter.
“We’re stressed about where we would get the money for treatment," they said, "if God forbid we or our children even catch a cold."
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Doctors Without Borders Says Trump Aid Cuts Fueling Humanitarian Catastrophe in Sudan
"War is driving Sudan’s needs; funding cuts are shrinking the response."
Sep 08, 2026
The renowned humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders said Tuesday that the Trump administration's destruction of the US Agency for International Development has contributed to the collapse of the war-torn nation's healthcare system, forcing clinics to close and leaving millions of people without access to lifesaving treatment.
The organization, known internationally as Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), said the closure of USAID last year at the behest of President Donald Trump and the world's richest man, Elon Musk, left many healthcare providers in Sudan "unable to find alternative funding to continue providing services," leaving facilities with no option but to shut down in the midst of a worsening humanitarian catastrophe.
"War is driving Sudan’s needs; funding cuts are shrinking the response,” Muhammad Ibrahim, MSF's head of mission in Sudan, said in a statement on Tuesday. “MSF’s work in Sudan is privately funded. But when funding disappears from other health services, clinics close, patients have fewer places to go, and pressure shifts to the facilities that remain, including ours.”
MSF said its hospital in Um Rakuba, a refugee camp in eastern Sudan, is now "the only lifeline left" for locals and refugees.
"The cuts here go well beyond healthcare," emphasized Fabrizio Locuratolo, MSF humanitarian affairs manager. "Food rations are shrinking and protection programs are being dismantled, pulling away the last safety nets and leaving refugees completely exposed.”
The dismantling of USAID by Musk's wrecking crew at the so-called US Department of Government Efficiency has already killed hundreds of thousands of people—most of them children—according to experts tracking the impacts on humanitarian aid around the world. Musk and the Trump administration have continued to deny that the aid cuts have killed any children.
A study published in The Lancet earlier this year estimated that the gutting of USAID—whose surviving programs were mostly transferred to the US State Department—could result in more than 14 million additional deaths by the end of the decade. The US Department of Agriculture took over USAID's Food for Peace program—and subsequently omitted Sudan from the list of countries that would receive shipments of US grain.
MSF said Tuesday that "just as health providers faced the impending removal of US support, many European governments also reduced their assistance to people in Sudan."
The results have been horrific. MSF said that "malaria and malnutrition cases are already rising despite limited rainfall, ahead of the peak of the rainy season—and we expect numbers to increase as the rain intensifies."
"In August, our teams admitted 191 children under five with severe malnutrition to our inpatient feeding center, and nearly 22% also tested positive for malaria," the group said Tuesday. "The UN reports that 825,000 children under five are expected to suffer severe acute malnutrition and 19.5 million people faced crisis-level hunger earlier this year. Yet the UN’s $2.87 billion response plan is barely 41 per cent funded, and 37 per cent of Sudan’s health facilities are estimated to be completely out of service."
"As world leaders gather at the UN General Assembly, governments and institutional donors must protect funding for essential health services in Sudan and provide flexible transitional financing where facilities are at risk of closure," the organization pleaded.
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Medicare for All Also Means This: An Improved, Expanded Medicare
The wrong question is how can we afford Improved Medicare for All. Rather, the right question is how can we afford not to enact it.
Sep 08, 2026
Editor's Note: The following is the second excerpt from Nancy J. Altman's latest book, The Road to Medicare for All: A Call to Action (Routledge, 2026), now available for purchase wherever quality books are sold. Read the first excerpt published by Common Dreams here. As the United States continues to spend substantially more on health care than other wealthy nations but with poorer health outcomes, Altman's book analyzes the dysfunction of the current system and sets forth the solution. "Medicare for All won’t happen without a fight," she argues, "but it is a fight we can win."
Imagine having more money in your pocket. Imagine being able to see any doctor you want without checking whether the provider is in your network and covered by your insurance. Imagine having more time with your doctor and, at the end of the appointment, simply walking out the door without having to take out your wallet or even ask what you owe for the visit. Imagine being free of filing insurance claims. Imagine being able to simply get any medicine your doctor prescribes without discovering it is exorbitantly expensive and asking your doctor what, if anything, they can prescribe that is covered by your insurance. Imagine no such thing as medical debt. Imagine simply getting the care, procedures, hospital stays, therapies, and medications your doctor prescribes with your only focus and thought being on how to restore and optimize your health. That is what you will experience.
Where is that destination? It is tantalizingly close. In fact, those who, on average, have the greatest medical needs—seniors and people with disabilities—are already almost there. Medicare, having recently celebrated its 61st anniversary, is well known to Americans. Most people are either covered by Medicare or know someone who is. It already covers Americans from age 65 to the grave. To reach the destination that health care is a right, not a privilege, with all those imaginations a reality, it has to be extended back to the cradle and improved, so that its coverage is completely comprehensive and available without premiums, co-payments, co-insurance, or deductibles. (To be clear, the destination is the expansion of traditional Medicare, not privatized Medicare—the deceptively named Medicare Advantage—whose serious shortcomings are discussed throughout this book.)
As important as Medicare is... it should be improved.
Medicare, which currently covers only seniors and people with disabilities—those who, on average, have the highest healthcare costs—does so more efficiently, comprehensively, and fairly than commercial insurance does, or indeed can. Medicare is the most important birthday gift those turning age 65 get. Too many Americans in their late fifties and early sixties lack adequate health insurance and desperately seek to hang on until they reach that special birthday that brings Medicare. As important as Medicare is, though, it should be improved. As Chapter 3 explains, soon after Medicare was enacted and expanded to people with disabilities, the most powerful forces organized against it. They succeeded in stopping further expansion of its coverage and the services and treatment it provides. They also stood in the way of reducing the costs of those it covers.
On the road to Improved Medicare for All, traditional Medicare should be expanded to cover all essential services. As the nation is driving toward Improved Medicare for All, traditional Medicare should be expanded to cover all safe and effective prescription drugs, also. Under the current system, without Medicare simply covering all safe and effective prescription drugs automatically at no cost, beneficiaries must repeatedly answer the following impossible, ludicrous questions: What illnesses will you contract next year? What medications will your doctor prescribe to treat those yet-to-be-contracted illnesses? Only if you know the answers to those unanswerable questions, can you intelligently decide, in today’s dysfunctional system, which insurance plan has the right drug formulary or list of covered drugs at a price you can afford.
Expanding traditional Medicare to cover all prescription drugs will mean that people can fill all of their prescriptions without worry about their cost. In addition, Medicare should be expanded to cover long-term care—both care at home and in nursing homes.
If Medicare were expanded to cover in-home services and supports as well as nursing home care for those who had no other alternatives, people who were able could age at home, as most want, with the security to know that they would not be a financial burden to those they love. An expanded Medicare for All would meet Americans’ needs today and their unforeseeable needs in the future. As it does today for seniors who have traditional Medicare, it would pool risk among everyone so that everyone is protected; people with costly and complex medical conditions would not be saddled with huge costs.
Under today’s patchwork system, out-of-pocket costs in the form of deductibles, co-pays and co-insurance force people into the arms of commercial insurance, whether they like it or not. Those with traditional Medicare must buy, if they can afford it, private supplemental insurance, colloquially known as Medigap, since traditional Medicare lacks an overall cap on out-of-pocket expenses. Those who can’t afford Medigap may be forced to purchase an inadequate Medicare Advantage plan which includes an overall cap, one more thumb on the scale placed by those who are hostile to single-payer health insurance.
With comprehensive coverage, without co-pays, co-insurance, deductibles, or premiums, there will be no need for supplemental, so-called Medigap, private insurance. We do not pay out of pocket for public libraries, schools, fire protection, or the military. Rather, those services are paid from taxes. We should not be required to pay out of pocket for health care, either. Like those other services, we should have universal, national health insurance, paid for completely out of taxes. The United States is the wealthiest nation in the world at the wealthiest moment in its history. It doesn’t feel that way to many, because so much of that wealth is concentrated in the hands of the very few. A fairer system of taxation which finances an Improved Medicare for All would allow all of us to share the wealth that all of us have created.
We do not pay out of pocket for public libraries, schools, fire protection, or the military. Rather, those services are paid from taxes. We should not be required to pay out of pocket for health care, either.
The nationwide network of Improved Medicare for All providers, which would likely cover all doctors and hospitals nationwide, would ensure that people can continue to get care from the doctors they know and trust. Everyone would be free to see doctors and use hospitals anywhere in the nation. There would be no restrictive networks that keep people from using centers of excellence and seeing the doctors they want to see, including the best specialists. Improved Medicare for All would ensure that everyone—people with costly and complex conditions, people who want good specialty care from doctors and hospitals they know and trust, people who need continuity of care, and those who are currently in excellent health—could get needed health care without financial stress or anxiety.
Improved Medicare for All is fully affordable. Given the unsustainability of the current system, as described in the last chapter, the wrong question is how can we afford Improved Medicare for All. Rather, the right question is how can we afford not to enact it. Relatedly, Improved Medicare for All will cost less than we pay currently. Consequently, the other correct question is not how are we going to pay for Improved Medicare for All, but, rather, how should we divvy up the savings!
Improved Medicare for All will save the nation trillions of dollars while covering everyone comprehensively. In addition to money saved, Improved Medicare for All will save lives. It will result in a higher quality of life for individuals and also a healthier population overall, generating greater productivity for the nation as a whole. Doctors will have more freedom and flexibility. They will be free from the micro-management of commercial insurance companies, concerned about turning a profit.
An Improved Medicare for All system will provide dependable income to healthcare providers. They can count on their bills being paid in a timely manner without the need to chase patients or, even more dispiriting, seek the assistance of loan collection agencies.
Part of the savings should go to doctors, nurses, and other providers to ensure that they are well compensated. They should do better under Improved Medicare for All, not just financially, but also in terms of job satisfaction and time to focus on healing, not paperwork.
Hospitals and those they serve will do better, as well. Improved Medicare for All can reduce physician shortages in underserved areas, often described as healthcare deserts, and help to reduce shortages in areas of medicine where they exist now or are projected to exist. Rural hospitals too often have limited staff without backup. The loss of a surgeon can cause the surgical unit to close, which, in turn, can have a cascading effect, ultimately resulting in the inability to receive care close by, quickly, in an emergency.
Despite all the advantages, Improved Medicare for All won’t happen without a fight.
Like the need to reimburse doctors fairly, in a timely manner, hospitals must be, as well. Whether for-profit, nonprofit, or governmental, hospitals want to remain state-of-the-art, with the latest equipment, and be fully staffed. Consequently, they need to cover their costs and ideally, maintain reserves. Under Improved Medicare for All, hospitals will have reduced costs along with more certainty and dependability of payments, free from charitable cases, which will become a thing of the past. In addition to fairly reimbursing hospitals and other facilities, the costs of maintaining, updating, and constructing them should be a priority, so that all communities are adequately served. At base, under Improved Medicare for All, hospitals, physicians, nurses, and other practitioners should be paid generously. They can and should be paid fully and on a timely basis for care given to every patient. Improved Medicare for All can and should be structured to ensure that providers have the ability to spend the time required to see patients.
In addition to all of the health and health-related advantages that Improved Medicare for All will bring, it can also usher in improvements unrelated to health care. They include a fairer federal tax system, together with reduced income and wealth inequality; more revenue for Social Security; an improved system of workers’ compensation, and more funds for state governments. Improved Medicare for All will provide intangible benefits for everyone, including reduced stress, less paperwork with the accompanying added free time, and, most importantly, greater peace of mind. All of those byproducts are explained at length in the book. They are just some of the fortuitous byproducts that will accompany the enactment of Improved Medicare for All.
Despite all the advantages, Improved Medicare for All won’t happen without a fight. The special interests will fight ferociously, but they will be no match for the hundreds of millions of Americans who will be benefited, as long as the public is engaged and active.
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I Spent 32 Years Caring for Children and I Still Can't Afford to Retire—I'm Not Alone
The work that our families run on often happens where no one can see it. This Labor Day, as midterms near, I'm thinking about what it will take for the people who do that work—and the people who depend on it—to finally be counted.
Sep 07, 2026
What does it say about this country when you can work for more than 40 years and still can’t afford to stop?
I am 66 years old and have spent over 30 years caring for children across the South. When 2024 drew to a close, I tried to retire. I thought I had put in enough time to set myself free from the labor of surviving this economy.
But, as I worried, I couldn't afford it. The price of everything was increasing, including bread, and I realized I had no choice but to return to work within six months of my retirement.
You can tell workers like me that we should have saved more, planned better, chosen a better path toward our retirement. But here’s the problem many domestic and care workers encounter: You cannot save money you never had. When wages barely cover housing, groceries, medicine, and everything else life throws at you, retirement is less like a plan and more like a luxury. In 2025 (the year I was supposed to be retired), early educators had a median wage of $34,980. Other domestic workers, like house cleaners make an estimated median wage of $34,650, and home care workers in 2025 had a median annual income of $22,429. These wages reflect the reality that domestic workers overall are three times as likely to live in poverty as other workers.
With seven children and 18 grandchildren, I do not want another generation of women in my family to inherit a country’s economy where caring for others means giving up their own security.
I come from a legacy of domestic workers. My grandmother, Big Momma, was a Certified Nursing Assistant. My mother was a housekeeper. I became a childcare worker. Three generations of Black women in my family have cared for other people.
We are part of a much longer history, and that is why this work has never paid what it should.
In 1881, 20 Black laundresses organized a movement that grew to nearly 3,000 members and won better wages after striking. Nearly a century later, Dorothy Bolden organized domestic workers across this same city and founded the National Domestic Workers Union of America. Bolden understood that better working conditions and civic power went hand in hand and even made voter registration part of the strategy to organize domestic workers.
When this country finally wrote basic protections into law, such as the right to organize, a minimum wage, and a path to retirement, domestic workers and farmworkers were left out of these protections. That was intentional. Much of that work was done by Black women in the South; leaving it unprotected was no accident. A multigenerational legacy later, we are still living with the consequences these gaps created.
It’s why a person can care for children for over 32 years and still not be able to afford to retire. We didn’t fail to plan; our work was just kept out of sight and out of the protections other workers won.
For most of my career as a childcare worker, children knew me as Miss Cathy. If one of them came to me crying because they were being bullied or something was wrong, I would tell them, "Miss Cathy is going to get to the bottom of it." And trust that Miss Cathy always did.
I adore my work and the children I care for. But loving your work should not require sacrificing your own security.
Or your health.
I have Graves’ disease—a disease that is twice as likely to impact Black women—and often, we face delayed diagnoses and advanced symptoms because of healthcare disparities. For years, I managed it by going to quick clinics when I could afford them and, most of the time, went without care when I couldn't. It was ironic: I was spending my days making sure other people's children were cared for while struggling to afford consistent care for myself. It was not until I turned 65 and qualified for Medicare that I finally had access to health coverage. And even that coverage is at risk.
But this essay is not meant to share all of the challenges I face in care work. No, I am writing this to emphasize that I am no longer the exception. We, as working-class people, have become the rule.
Across the United States, retirement is slipping out of reach for working people of every kind. Wages have not kept up with the cost of the roof over our heads, a simple doctor's visit, a full grocery cart, or care of any kind. More and more people are working into their late 60s, 70s, even 80s, not because they want to, but because stopping simply is not an option. For me, I work until God tells me to stop. The insecurity I’ve referenced has always shadowed domestic workers, and now it’s reaching the rest of the working class. My story reflects the lives of so many working people.
But domestic workers are building a constituency around care: domestic workers, family caregivers, parents, and everyone who understands that care is not some niche issue. It is part of whether a family can afford to live and whether the people who provide that care can afford to grow old, in my case, preferably with a crisp beverage on a beautiful beach.
The economy and affordability are on people's minds. It’s the only thing that’s on my mind. My bank account tells me that things are expensive.
For Black women like me, the right to be heard was never simple. Our grandmothers cleaned other people's homes and were told their voice did not matter in their own country. My father, who raised my siblings and me in 1960s Memphis, taught us that sitting out of the civic process was not optional; he refused to be invisible, and engaging with elected officials was a way to ensure that.
And it is not only domestic workers who have a stake in this. Every family with childcare needs, every person with an aging parent or disabled loved one at home, all of us who will need care someday—we all deeply depend on this work. When we make that care visible, when we insist that it be counted and prioritized, we are looking out for one another.
I want the people in elected office to hear that childcare lets parents go to work, that home care lets people live with dignity, and that we, the people who do that work, should be able to retire from it one day.
Domestic workers are more than our labor. We are neighbors, parents, and grandparents.
With seven children and 18 grandchildren, I do not want another generation of women in my family to inherit a country’s economy where caring for others means giving up their own security.
My grandmother cared for people. My mother cared for people. I spent 32 years caring for children. We have done our part.
This Labor Day, I want the people who represent us—and the country we have spent our lives caring for—to show us they will do theirs.
And if they don't, Miss Cathy is going to get to the bottom of it.
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Medicare for All: Where We're Going and How We're Getting There
Health care should be available to everyone in America as a right—automatic and free of charge when we need it. Rich or poor, sick or healthy, old or young, no matter where you live, everyone should have high-quality health care.
Sep 04, 2026
Editor's Note: The following is an excerpt from Nancy J. Altman's latest book, The Road to Medicare for All: A Call to Action (Routledge, 2026), published today and now available for purchase wherever quality books are sold. As the United States continues to spend substantially more on health care than other wealthy nations but with poorer health outcomes, Altman's book analyzes the dysfunction of the current system and sets forth the solution. "Medicare for All won’t happen without a fight," she argues, "but it is a fight we can win."
In the early morning hours of December 4, 2024, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare was gunned down outside the Hilton Hotel in midtown Manhattan in New York City. The CEO was on his way to the health insurance company’s annual investor conference. The police found the words “Delay,” “Deny,” and “Depose” carved into bullet casings at the scene.
The public reaction was swift and overwhelming. People took to social media to describe stories of mothers, fathers, spouses, children, and friends who had died from treatable illnesses, dead because UnitedHealthcare or other health insurance companies had either denied the life-saving care doctors had prescribed to their loved ones or had endlessly delayed approval of the lifesaving treatment.
Physicians posted stories of the hours they spent on the phone, seeking to convince insurance companies of the necessity of the care. The providers detailed spending countless hours advocating for their patients to insurance company doctors who had little or no expertise in their area of medicine but with the power of literal life or death to authorize or deny payment for the prescribed treatment. The frustrated providers recounted incidents of being on hold for hours and transferred among insurance executives in what felt like perpetual loops.
The United States is an outlier. Its health care is the most expensive in the industrialized world, while its outcomes rank at or near the bottom
When the treating physicians finally got through and were told they had to schedule a time to talk, the time for the so-called peer-to-peer conversation was solely at the convenience of the insurance company doctor, with no concern for the schedule of the treating physician. One doctor talked about a particular insurance company that told doctors they would get a call back but were not told when or from what number. They were told, though, that if they didn’t answer, the claim would be denied.
Then came the denials. UnitedHealthcare and other insurance companies are not required to disclose their denial rates, but anecdotal evidence and lawsuits suggest that the rates are high. And denial is a life and death matter. Virtually all treatments are prohibitively expensive without insurance. One TikTok contributor described receiving six months of chemotherapy for her dangerously advanced, stage 4 cancer, only to receive a letter from her insurer saying it would no longer pay for the treatment. She explained in her post that the treatment cost $15,000 every three weeks and the alternatives she had tried before starting the current regimen had done nothing. Only the current treatment prescribed by her oncologist worked.
America’s Outlier Healthcare System: Expensive, Wasteful, Complicated, Deficient
The delay and denial of lifesaving care doesn’t happen in other wealthy countries the way it does here. The United States is an outlier. Its health care is the most expensive in the industrialized world, while its outcomes rank at or near the bottom… Thirty million Americans—almost 10 percent of the population—have no health insurance whatsoever. Millions more are underinsured. Though they have health insurance, it does not cover the care they need at a cost they can afford. Even those with supposedly adequate coverage often have high deductibles, causing them to delay care until their health issues are too severe to ignore. The problem is that in the United States, health care is implicitly treated like a commodity, like the latest iPhone or simply a service, like plumbing or electrical work in a home. Of course, health care is not just another commodity or service. It is literally a life-and-death matter.
Like our court system, police and fire departments, public libraries, and our public schools, high-quality health care should be available to everyone in America as a right—automatic and free of charge when we need it.
Unlike the government, which has the power to tax, can control its currency, and is not going out of business, companies can only stay in business if they turn a profit. That means that health insurance corporations must ensure that they don’t pay out more in benefits than they collect in premiums, and the premiums can’t be too large or their customers will go elsewhere. To make the numbers work and earn a large enough profit to keep shareholders happy, these companies must seek to entice those who are healthy and therefore not in need of health care, by offering benefits like gym memberships. They must carefully screen to cherry-pick the healthiest of the population and avoid covering those likely to need expensive care. If their enrollees do get sick, insurance companies can restrict what treatment patients are able to get by limiting the doctors and hospitals that are in-network. The companies can delay or even deny prescribed treatments, if they are expensive and supposedly uncertain of success, by requiring pre-authorizations. Indeed, insurance companies refused to insure anyone with pre-existing conditions, such as birth defects, pregnancy, and job-related injuries, until the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act prohibited that discriminatory practice designed to reduce expenses and bolster profits.
In short, private companies must cover their costs to remain in business. That too often translates, in the case of health insurance corporations, to denying payment for doctor-prescribed medical care. Like our court system, police and fire departments, public libraries, and our public schools, high-quality health care should be available to everyone in America as a right—automatic and free of charge when we need it. Rich or poor, sick or healthy, old or young, no matter where you live, everyone should have high-quality health care.
The Obvious Solution to Our Broken Healthcare System
The way for health insurance in the United States to be universal, affordable, and efficient is to make the federal government the insurer. Insurance is most cost-efficient and reliable when the risks can be spread across as broad a population as possible and when people cannot delay purchasing the insurance until the moment people know they are getting sick—a practice known as adverse selection. Only the national government has the power and ability to establish a nationwide, universal risk pool, with mandatory participation, making adverse selection impossible. Furthermore, when the federal government administers the insurance, overhead is minimized. Instead of high-paid CEOs wielding power over our health care, hardworking, modestly-paid civil servants are in charge. Instead of unaccountable private actors in control, federal employees, subject to transparency and oversight, are the administrators. Moreover, other costs, like advertising and marketing, are unnecessary.
Fundamentally, the government is not seeking a profit for shareholders or high salaries for executives. In addition, there is only one payer, producing more efficiency and less waste. Consequently, all of us, collectively through the government, can provide health care less expensively and more efficiently for everyone. [...] Profit should have no place in our healthcare system. Instead, there should be a single insurer that can pay for the most efficient care equitably and universally. We would spend less as a nation and have better health outcomes.
Profit should have no place in our healthcare system.
We know it works because an American institution has been paying for health care efficiently and fairly for over 60 years: Medicare. To be clear, the solution is definitely not the vastly inferior, misleadingly-named Medicare “Advantage.” […] The solution is traditional Medicare as it was designed and enacted in 1965, with it improved and expanded to everyone.
Medicare works. Americans overwhelmingly agree. After living with private health insurance or, worse, no health insurance at all, your 65th birthday is eye-opening. That birthday brings Medicare. Once you enroll in Medicare, you generally have no claims to fill out, no insurance companies to contact. It is comparatively simple.
The vision of Medicare for all is for everyone to have that simplicity and much, much more. In addition to expanding it to everyone, Medicare should be improved. Today, those with traditional Medicare who can afford supplemental private-insurance coverage (colloquially known as Medigap, because it fills in the gaps) generally must purchase it to control their costs. That will be in the rearview mirror under Improved Medicare for All. All premiums, co-pays, co-insurance, and deductibles should be eliminated.
The vision is for cradle to grave, comprehensive healthcare coverage for everyone in America, automatically. It means better protection for everyone at lower cost—including for those covered under today’s Medicare. Improved Medicare for All means going to the doctor of your choice, without first checking to see if your preferred practitioner is in your insurance network. With Improved Medicare for All, there is essentially one big network of virtually every doctor and hospital in America. The result? Guaranteed health care with the provider of your choice, anywhere you happen to be, without the stress of dealing with private insurance companies. […] So how do we make that vision a reality? Medicare provides protection to the grave. But not from the cradle. At least, not yet. We are the wealthiest nation in the entire world at the wealthiest moment in our history. We are much wealthier than we were in 1965, more than a half century ago, when we enacted Medicare for those aged 65 and older. We are much wealthier than we were in 1972, when we extended Medicare coverage to people with serious, work-limiting disabilities. Seniors and people with disabilities are the segments of our population who, on average, have the highest medical costs and the most frequent need for care. Covering the rest of us should be easy. The politics make it hard, but it is achievable. As the title of the book makes clear, we are on a journey.
With Improved Medicare for All, there is essentially one big network of virtually every doctor and hospital in America. The result? Guaranteed health care with the provider of your choice, anywhere you happen to be, without the stress of dealing with private insurance companies.
Every chapter contains aspects of the discussion of how we got here—the nation’s history of health care—in order to provide context for the following points: Chapter 2 explains that the nation was on a slow path toward a single-payer system (essentially Medicare for All) during the first three-quarters of the twentieth century despite the strong opposition of powerful forces. Then, though, as Chapter 3 details, the powerful forces became more organized and pro-active. They succeeded in stopping the push for Medicare for All in its tracks. Indeed, they did not just halt progress; they partly reversed it. Perhaps most damaging, mainstream Democratic political leaders lost sight of the destination. Opportunities were lost as a result. Chapter 4 explains that where we are now is a result of having failed to enact a single-payer system. It discusses the flaws and unsustainability of the current patchwork system. The chapter explains that Democratic leaders, in the face of the election of President Ronald Reagan almost a half century ago, gave up on the destination. That was unfortunate. It has led to where the nation finds itself today. Continuing down the current road, simply tinkering with the present system, is unsustainable. Exiting the current road and getting back on track is essential.
Chapter 5 explains what the right road is. It reminds us what our North Star was prior to 1972 and what it should be again. It lays out the vision of a single-payer Improved Medicare for All system. It also explains that questioning the affordability of Medicare for All is misguided. The correct questions are (1) since the new system will save money, how should we divvy up the savings; and (2) given the complete unsustainability of the current system, how can the nation afford not to enact Improved Medicare for All. Monied interests have prevailed for the last half century, but history is not destiny. Replacing our current Rube Goldberg-style, overly complicated, dysfunctional healthcare system with a straightforward, superior system of Improved Medicare for All won’t happen without determined effort. History teaches that the commercial health insurance industry fears losing its business and will fight every initiative that jeopardizes those profits. The pharmaceutical industry will fight any initiative that will cut its exorbitant profits. Historically, physicians and hospitals have opposed government-provided health insurance. Given the powerful forces arrayed against Improved Medicare for All, its failure so far to become the law of the land is not hard to understand. Indeed, because health care is so crucial to all of us, it is easy to convince us that we will lose, not gain, from Improved Medicare for All. It is not hard to scare us into thinking that it is something foreign, un-American, inconsistent with the nation’s values, and harmful for us as individuals.
Replacing our current Rube Goldberg-style, overly complicated, dysfunctional healthcare system with a straightforward, superior system of Improved Medicare for All won’t happen without determined effort.
The concluding three chapters answer all of these challenges and fears. They provide the tools, including a roadmap, to finally reach our destination. Chapter 6 highlights the politics and how a winning coalition can be forged. It discusses why the organizations that represent hospitals and physicians may be convinced to end their opposition to Improved Medicare for All and join the other supporters working to enact it. Whether that happens or not, it is crucial to understand that the forces arrayed against Improved Medicare for All have been defeated in the past and they can be defeated again. The response to the murder of the UnitedHealthcare CEO is but one example spotlighting that the American people are both united and ready. The answer lies in numbers, active involvement, and determination. To the extent the electorate is engaged and clear-eyed, victory is not only achievable; it is inevitable. Chapter 7 alerts supporters to at least some of the disinformation that opponents will use to stymie and depress those engaged in the effort. The chapter adopts the premise that forewarned is forearmed. Finally, Chapter 8 provides specific actions that readers may take to join the winning fight. Universal Health Care Is a Fight We Can and Must Win And a winning fight it will be.
It may appear that the worst time to engage in this fight is now, in the shadow of the November 2024 election, when Donald Trump was returned to office together with a Republican House of Representatives and Senate. The Supreme Court is controlled by conservative forces hostile to a domestically-active federal government, and the entire judiciary will be even more conservative after the first few years of a Trump presidency. Yet this is the perfect time.
As polarized as the American people currently are, we are overwhelmingly united in our support for Medicare, as well as Social Security. Expanding both programs can lead the way to re-unite the United States. Together, we will win. We must. Medicare for All won’t happen without a fight, but it is a fight we can win. It is a fight we must win. Our lives literally depend on it.
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Analysis Finds Up to 10 Million People Have Lost Healthcare Coverage During Trump's Second Term
"Over half the provisions of the Big Ugly Bill have already gone into effect, and the negative results are already devastating."
Sep 03, 2026
Independent healthcare analyst Charles Gaba on Thursday published a detailed report estimating that up to 10 million people living in the US have lost their healthcare coverage since the start of President Donald Trump's second term.
In his analysis, Gaba brought together the most recent enrollment data for Medicaid, the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP), Medicare, and the Affordable Care Act (ACA).
Breaking things down by program, Gaba estimated there are 5.9 million fewer people enrolled in Medicaid and CHIP, as well as at least 4.5 million fewer people enrolled in the ACA, since Trump returned to power in January 2025.
These losses in coverage are somewhat mitigated by Medicare, whose enrollment has increased by around 1.6 million people during Trump's second term.
Losing access to these programs doesn't mean that the people were on them have gotten well paying jobs and are receiving insurance from their employer, Gaba wrote. Given that the unemployment rate has risen during Trump's second term, Gaba suggested it is highly unlikely that there are now more people who get employer-sponsored coverage now than in January 2025.
Depending on a number of variables, Gaba concluded, somewhere between 8.8 million to 10.3 million fewer people now have healthcare coverage.
Adjusting for population growth, Gaba added, "you get a grand total of between 10.27 million and 11.75 million more Americans not enrolled in a public healthcare coverage program as of May 2026 than in were as of January 2025."
The healthcare analyst noted that "this isn't quite the same thing as counting how many lost coverage, but not having healthcare sucks regardless of how you slice it."
He also pointed out that the lost in healthcare coverage all came before the Medicaid work requirements from the GOP's 2025 budget law are put into effect.
"Over half the provisions of the Big Ugly Bill have already gone into effect," wrote Gaba, "and the negative results are already devastating."
Gaba's analysis was published just days after the Georgetown University Center for Children and Families released a report estimating that nearly 2.5 million children in the US have lost access to Medicaid or CHIP during Trump's second term.
Trump and congressional Republicans have taken a number of actions that have made healthcare less affordable.
First, they cut spending on Medicaid by an estimated $900 billion over a 10-year period when they enacted the One Big Beautiful Bill Act in 2025. The Congressional Budget Office projects these cuts will leave more than 10 million fewer people enrolled in the program by 2034.
GOP lawmakers last year also refused to extend enhanced subsidies for insurance plans purchased through the ACA, even as insurers raised premiums on those plans by an average of 26% this year, according to an analysis published by KFF.
According to Wednesday reporting by Politico, hospitals are sounding the alarm about new regulations being proposed by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services that they say would cost hundreds of billions of dollars in lost revenue.
"If the rules are finalized and they lose hundreds of billions on top of Congress’ funding cuts," Politico reported, "hospitals say they’ll be forced to reduce services, lay off workers, consolidate operations or shutter entirely."
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Trump Lies That Medicare for All Would Cost ‘Entire Budget of the Whole Country’
As Trump-GOP healthcare cuts devastate millions, Yale experts have found that Medicare for All would save the US over $1 trillion and more than 114,000 lives per year.
Sep 02, 2026
US President Donald Trump railed against Medicare for All during an Oval Office event on Tuesday, falsely claiming the proposal would be prohibitively expensive and ineffective despite new research confirming it would save lives and cost significantly less than the corporate-dominated status quo.
The president's remarks came during an event touting his limited, voluntary, and secretive agreements with leading pharmaceutical companies, deals purportedly aimed at lowering drug prices. Trump again lied by claiming that his efforts are "much bigger" than Medicare for All, which would provide comprehensive health coverage to every person in the US for free at the point of service, eliminating premiums, copays, and deductibles.
Trump said that Medicare for All, which has not been tried at a national level in the US, "doesn't work," falsely claiming a single-payer system would cost "the entire budget of the whole country" and send taxes into the stratosphere.
Nancy Altman, president of the progressive advocacy group Social Security Works and author of the forthcoming book, The Road to Medicare for All: A Call to Action, told Common Dreams on Wednesday that "Trump is once again revealing that he lies about healthcare or is totally ignorant of it."
Total federal outlays were $7.04 trillion in 2025. According to a study published last month by Yale University researchers, a single-payer system like the one set out in Sen. Bernie Sanders' (I-Vt.) Medicare for All Act would save the US roughly $1 trillion per year in national healthcare expenditures, which totaled around $5.7 trillion last year. The finding was consistent with past research showing major savings under Medicare for All compared with the current privatized system.
"A universal healthcare system in the US would not require the country to spend more on healthcare," the Yale researchers wrote. "It would require it to spend less. Our results indicate that the existing budget is more than sufficient to cover everyone at lower total cost."
The study also found that Medicare for All would save more than 114,000 lives across the US each year by providing the tens of millions of uninsured and underinsured Americans with comprehensive coverage.
The researchers contrasted the life-saving impacts of a Medicare for All system with the deadly consequences of the unprecedented Medicaid cuts that Trump signed into law last summer. Experts at Yale and the University of Pennsylvania estimated that the sweeping Republican assault on Medicaid could cause more than 51,000 deaths annually as millions are kicked off the program.
"Numerous highly respected analyses show that improving Medicare and expanding it to everyone, with no premiums, copays, deductibles or coinsurance costs trillions of dollars less than what the nation now spends, while covering the entire population and saving lives," Altman of Social Security Works told Common Dreams. "The question isn't how will we pay for universal coverage, but how will we divvy up the savings."
The House version of the Medicare for All Act, led by Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) and Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.), is cosponsored by a majority of the chamber's Democratic caucus—though it's opposed by the House Democratic leader, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York. The Senate version of the bill, led by Sanders, has 17 cosponsors.
"We already introduced the legislation. Now we need the political will to pass it," Jayapal said on Tuesday. "Healthcare is a human right. No one should go broke, or die, because they got sick."
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Nearly 2.5 Million Children Have Lost Medicaid and CHIP—So Far—During Trump’s Second Term
The drop in children covered by Medicaid comes before the most draconian changes to the program made by Republicans' 2025 budget law are set to take effect next year.
Sep 01, 2026
Nearly 2.5 million children living in the US have lost access to Medicaid or Children's Health Insurance Program coverage during President Donald Trump's second term, according to data published on Monday by the Georgetown University Center for Children and Families.
In total, five states have seen children's enrollment in Medicaid and CHIP fall by 10% or higher since January 2025, with Indiana seeing a drop in enrollment in those programs of more than 23%.
Colorado and Hawaii were the only two states to see a net increase in children in Medicaid or CHIP over that same period.
Joan Alker, executive director of the Center for Children and Families, described the drop in children enrolled in the programs as "a lot," and said it was important to track because "when Medicaid child enrollment declines, the number of uninsured kids typically goes up."
President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans cut spending on Medicaid by an estimated $900 billion over a 10-year period when they enacted the One Big Beautiful Bill Act in 2025. The Congressional Budget Office projects these cuts will leave more than 10 million fewer people enrolled in the program by 2034.
One way the GOP budget law is projected to kick people off Medicaid has been to add extra administrative burdens and paperwork for people who qualify for the program.
As explained by a Scripps News report published last week, Medicaid starting next year will make beneficiaries enroll twice a year instead of just once, while also mandating adults who "earn above a typical income cutoff and do not have children... work or volunteer at least 80 hours a month, or enroll in school."
Eileen Appelbaum, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, told Scripps News that this will result in many people not receiving Medicaid coverage despite being qualified for it.
"The best guesses from the experts are that two-thirds of the people that will be disqualified will actually be eligible, but they just couldn't handle the paperwork," Appelbaum explained.
In an op-ed published by Stat on Monday, Brown University epidemiologists Abdullah Shihipar and Brandon DL Marshall highlighted how getting out of the new Medicaid work requirements by proving yourself "medically frail" is shaping up to be a "nightmare scenario for millions of Americans."
"Let’s say you are undergoing cancer treatment, but you don’t have the right paperwork for your renewal," Shihipar and Marshall wrote. "As a result, you’re disenrolled from Medicaid. You desperately try to fix the mistake, but you are faced with long wait times and no answers, so you cease treatment altogether... Paperwork here is not merely an annoyance, it is a matter of life or death for millions with Medicaid coverage."
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Trump Pharma Deals Called Distraction From 'Failed Plan to Lower US Drug Prices'
"Lasting relief requires transparent, enforceable measures that lower drug prices and hold big drug companies accountable," said one critic.
Aug 31, 2026
US President Donald Trump on Monday announced nine more agreements with pharmaceutical manufacturers intended to lower prescription drug prices nationwide, bringing the total to 26, but patient advocates responded skeptically.
The administration previously struck "most favored nation" (MFN) deals with 17 large drug manufacturers. The new ones with midsized companies—Alcon, Astellas Pharma, BeOne Medicines, BridgeBio, CSL, Kyowa Kirin, Sun Pharma, Teva Pharmaceuticals, and UCB—mean that 89% of the branded drug market is subject to an agreement, according to a White House fact sheet.
"It has been nearly a year since Trump announced his first secret MFN deal with Pfizer, and he has almost nothing to show for it," Peter Maybarduk, Access to Medicines director at the watchdog group Public Citizen, said in a Monday statement. "The new deals are a distraction from the administration's failed plan to lower US drug prices to the levels paid in other wealthy countries."
Earlier this month, Public Citizen released an analysis of Trump's policies to cut drug costs, including MFN deals. Maybarduk said at the time that "Trump has three kinds of drug pricing policy: fake, exaggerated, and not-real-yet, probably-won't-happen."
Following Monday's agreements, the campaigner argued that "a more serious approach would build international reference pricing into Medicare drug price negotiation. Instead, Trump is cozying up to Big Pharma and keeping American drug prices high."
"There still is no evidence that any pharma company has followed through on prior commitments to the Trump administration to launch new drugs at MFN price points," he explained. "Uptake of TrumpRx, which may cause consumers to overpay on medicines, has been lackluster."
TrumpRx is a government-operated website that helps patients find discounted prices and coupons for certain medications—and, as the Public Citizen analysis highlighted, the only part of the president's MFN program that is fully underway.
"The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has not announced any state participants in a pilot to test MFN-based prices in Medicaid," Maybarduk noted. "And CMS has failed to issue final rules to test MFN-pricing in Medicare, while simultaneously excluding almost all drug companies from these programs."
Public Citizen said it plans to immediately file a Freedom of Information Act request to obtain the texts of these "farce" deals—a pledge that came just days after US Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) highlighted that Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has failed to publicize initial 17 agreements, despite agreeing to do so during an April hearing.
Like Public Citizen, the advocacy group Patients for Affordable Drugs was critical of the new deals, with CEO Merith Basey pointing out that "for decades, drug companies have been charging Americans at least four times more for brand-name medicines than people in other high-income nations."
"Patients need systemic reforms that will lower drug prices, rather than short-term, voluntary agreements whose terms remain secret," she asserted. "The deals announced today focus on Medicaid, where steep discounts already exist, and even then, states can choose whether to participate. Lasting relief requires transparent, enforceable measures that lower drug prices and hold big drug companies accountable."
As the industry trade publication Fierce Pharma reported, the large companies behind the initial deals "made a combination of drug pricing commitments and domestic investment pledges to win temporary immunity from the Trump administration's drug import tariffs," and "individual company press releases Monday, like UCB's, suggest that tariff immunity is still very much part of the MFN equation."
Although Trump's tried taking credit for a recent drop in medication costs, with the White House X account claiming Monday that he's "leveled the playing field, and made prescription drugs more affordable than ever for the American people," as Common Dreams reported earlier this month, experts have cited the Biden administration's policy allowing Medicare to directly negotiate some prices.
As Trump has touted his MFN deals, critics of the United States' for-profit healthcare system have in recent months renewed calls for shifting to Medicare for All—which new research shows would save over 114,000 lives and $1 trillion each year—and other healthcare reforms, including breaking up industry giants, capping drug prices, strengthening antitrust enforcement, and expanding the sector's workforce.
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'Break Up Big Medicine': Taking On Healthcare Industry Greed Could Save US Families $6,000+ a Year
One expert said the options are to "watch the US healthcare system spiral into profit-driven chaos or finally treat the Big Medicine disease to create a healthcare system that puts patients and clinicians in control of care."
Aug 28, 2026
As millions of working-class Americans suffer from President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans' cuts to the already dysfunctional US healthcare system, a leading anti-monopoly group this week released a report with recommendations to restore "affordability and control to patients, clinicians, and communities across the country."
"The healthcare crisis didn’t happen by accident, it is the direct result of decades of neoliberal policy choices that handed more power to corporate healthcare giants while families paid the price," said Morgan Harper, director of policy and advocacy at the American Economic Liberties Project (AELP).
"The choice now is clear: Continue to watch the US healthcare system spiral into profit-driven chaos or finally treat the Big Medicine disease to create a healthcare system that puts patients and clinicians in control of care," she explained. "This agenda presents a roadmap for how to do it."
Harper and Emma Freer, AELP's senior policy analyst for healthcare, co-authored the new report, "Break Up Big Medicine," with contributions from a trio of other experts. One of them is Dr. Will Flanary, an independent ophthalmologist in Portland, Oregon.
"The US healthcare system, once made up of mostly independent practices like mine, is now dominated by Big Medicine behemoths—including private insurance conglomerates, Big Pharma manufacturers, pharmaceutical middlemen, megahospitals, and private equity-backed practices—whose only fiduciary duty is to executives and investors," he wrote in the foreword. "This makes it increasingly difficult to keep my practice afloat and uphold my oath, resulting in moral injury."
"So, I now have a second career as an advocate," who goes by "Dr. Glaucomflecken" on social media. "What my patients need most is bold policy reforms to break up Big Medicine and build a better healthcare system, one where they can access affordable, high-quality care and independent physicians like me can thrive."
The report notes that "between 2005 and 2025, the annual cost of employer-sponsored family coverage nearly tripled, from $12,214 to $35,119," US patients pay nearly three times as much for prescription drug prices as people in other countries, and "the United States spends more than $15,000 per person on healthcare each year—roughly one-fifth of our entire economy, and more than twice what peer nations spend, in return for worse patient outcomes on a variety of metrics."
Costs continue to rise, with The Wall Street Journal reporting last week that, according to benefits consulting giant Aon, US workers with employer-sponsored insurance are expected to spend an average of $5,297 on healthcare this year, or $388 more than last year. Another consultant, WTW, found that US employers expect their healthcare costs will rise 11.1% next year.
Meanwhile, six "corporate behemoths" in the sector—Cardinal Health, Cencora, Cigna, CVS Health, McKesson, and UnitedHealth Group—"now rank among the Fortune 15, making nearly $34 billion in annual profit," collectively, as AELP detailed Thursday. "Big Medicine now employs more than four in five US doctors," and practices must spend time completing, "on average, 40 prior authorizations per physician per week, time that would be better spent on patient care."
"Our current healthcare crisis is the result of several decades of federal policymaking by both political parties based on the flawed premise that empowering private insurers to ration access to healthcare, rather than addressing the underlying root causes of high prices, would effectively contain costs," the AELP report says.
The publication lays out a four-part "treatment plan" to save Americans $795 billion annually, or more than $6,000 per household: break up Big Medicine, bring down healthcare prices, build capacity, and bolster enforcement of existing laws.
The first section highlights how some solutions already exist in Congress, pointing to various bills, including Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Josh Hawley's (R-Mo.) Break Up Big Medicine Act, their Patients Before Monopolies Act with Reps. Diana Harshbarger (R-Tenn.) and Jake Auchincloss (D-Mass.), Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and Rep. Val Hoyle's (D-Ore.) Patients Over Profits Act, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) and Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon's (D-Pa.) Take Back Our Hospitals Act, and the Corporate Crimes Against Health Care Act, introduced by Rep. Maggie Goodlander (D-NH) and Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Peter Welch (D-Vt.), Merkley, and Warren.
The second section calls for standardizing and capping "healthcare prices across public and private payers using traditional Medicare reimbursement rates for inpatient and outpatient services and negotiated drug prices as benchmarks." It urges a ban on prior authorization, an end to patient cost-sharing obligations, investments "in public options that eliminate Big Medicine administrative waste," and passage of Rep. Rashida Tlaib's (D-Mich.) Medicines for the People Act.
The third section calls for investments in the US prescription drug manufacturing base as well as in providers, "especially safety-net hospitals in rural and low-income metro areas, independent medical and dental practices, community pharmacies, and primary care physicians."
The final section calls on Congress to "close loopholes that allow anti-competitive business practices, which Big Medicine uses to drive up prescription drug costs," specifically promoting the repeal of the 1987 safe harbor for pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) and other pharmaceutical middlemen, and the prohibition of "price discrimination, spread pricing, self-preferencing, network discrimination, and sole-source or exclusive contracting terms across all payers." It further advocates for an increase in funding for antitrust enforcers at the Federal Trade Commission and the US Department of Justice.
"For decades, healthcare reform has focused on expanding private coverage and putting more money into a broken system while allowing corporate giants to consolidate power and drive up costs," said Freer. "Working families have paid more only to receive lower-quality care.
"Americans need a new policy paradigm that actually takes on the root causes of the crisis: consolidation, corporate control, and lack of competition," she argued. "This agenda is about moving beyond the status quo to build a healthcare system where patients come first, clinicians can thrive, and every American can afford the care they need."
The report comes amid renewed scrutiny of the president's "most favored nation" deals with Big Pharma, with Peter Maybarduk, access to medicines director for the watchdog Public Citizen, saying last week that "Trump has three kinds of drug pricing policy: fake, exaggerated, and not-real-yet, probably-won't-happen."
After pointing out on social media Wednesday that Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in April agreed to publicize the deals for medicines listed on the direct-to-consumer website TrumpRx, and "months later, still crickets," Warren wondered, "Why should Americans believe this isn't just another Trump handout to fatten Big Pharma's pockets?"
Additionally, as Americans have started contending with the Medicaid cuts in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act passed by Republicans in Congress and signed by Trump last year, as well as the GOP's refusal to extend Affordable Care Act subsidies, which has caused premiums to skyrocket, there have also been renewed calls for shifting the United States to a universal healthcare system.
A study published earlier this month by researchers at Yale University suggests the Medicare for All Act that's been repeatedly introduced by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) would save more than $1 trillion and over 114,000 lives annually.
"At a time when 15 million Americans are being thrown off the healthcare they have and 20 million Americans have already seen their premiums double, on average, as a result of Trump’s so-called ‘Big Beautiful Bill,’ we need Medicare for All now more than ever," Sanders said in response to the study. "The time is now to end the greed of the big insurance and drug companies and pass Medicare for All."
David Dayen, executive editor of The American Prospect and the author of books including Monopolized: Life in the Age of Corporate Power, noted in his Thursday coverage of AELP's report that "while it's complementary to a Medicare for All approach, single-payer insurance is not mentioned."
"In tandem with moving toward a Medicare for All system, we have to address consolidation that is the cause of healthcare being so expensive, with degraded quality, and the squeezing of healthcare professionals," Freer told Dayen. "Otherwise we end up with something like Medicare Advantage for All, which would be disastrous."
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