A plan to end unaffordable out-of-pocket costs

Put a cap on it that is based on household income. It's doable if we put providers on a budget.

I have been rather shocked in the two weeks since UnitedHealth CEO Brian Thompson’s assassination that leading media outlets have failed to outline any alternative to the “deny and delay” strategy pursued by most health insurers. Every article denounces the online world’s cruel and inappropriate response to the killings, while admitting the anger at insurers is justified.

But no one offers a plan for change — not in the media, not on Capitol Hill, nor from any of the past or nominated leaders of the government’s major health care agencies. Even voices for single-payer, the alternative offered by Sen. Bernie Sanders and Physicians for a National Health Program, have failed to make it into the media, although I suspect they have submitted op-eds but have been denied.

Well, I published one this morning on Stat, the online publication that has grown beyond its initial focus on the pharmaceutical industry to become the leading publication devoted to health care industry news. You can read it by clicking on its headline:

The ‘skin in the game’ approach to health care spending has failed

It’s time to end the experiment and reform the system

Most of Stat’s articles are behind a paywall. But you can read its opinion pieces for free. I encourage all my readers to check it out today.

I also encourage you to read two other commentaries that appeared this morning, one by Paul Krugman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist who recently departed the New York Times to start his own substack website (it’s headline: Health insurance is a racket), and one by Wendell Potter, a former spokesman for Cigna who has become the leading critic of the industry (Headline: I was a health insurance executive. What I saw made me quit).

Neither writer, whose critiques are similar to mine, offers a plan. I have. Check it out. It will appear on my website next week.