It might be easier to make sense of the recent fatal shooting of an insurance CEO, an act with ominous overtones about health care costs and insurance coverage, if any one aspect of health-care finance in America had gotten dramatically worse.
But what if there is no one thing?
Everything in American health care seems to cost more, across the board, year after year. Millions of insurance claims get denied. Medical debt routinely drives patients into bankruptcy. And patients see no relief in sight.
“Americans forgo necessary health care every single day, because they can’t afford it,” said Caroline Pearson, executive director of the nonprofit Peterson Center on Healthcare.
Americans spend more out of pocket on health care than people in most comparable countries, the health policy nonprofit KFF found. In the United Kingdom, for example, out-of-pocket health care costs totaled $764 per person in 2022.
“We don’t consume a lot more health care than other countries,” said Dr. Atul Grover, executive director of the nonprofit AAMC Research and Action Institute. “We just pay a lot more for each thing.”
United Healthcare reported net income of $22.3 billion last year, had net income of $20.6 billion in 2022 after making $17.3 billion in 2021 and $15.4 billion in 2020. Before the pandemic United Health made $13.8 billion in 2019.
Delay, Deny, Defend: Why Insurance Companies Don’t Pay Claims and What You Can Do About It is a 2010 book by Rutgers Law professor Jay M. Feinman
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