What is at stake is our ability to provide any care at all to substantial segments of our population. Our national failure to provide basic health care for all Americans seriously threatens the missions of major teaching hospitals. A quarter of American families remain uninsured. Corporate jobs with health care benefits are disappearing. Accelerating drug prices impose an impoverishing burden on many families.
Small businesses reject insurance plans.
Medicare and Medicaid benefits are being slashed. As a result, academic health centers, which have traditionally served all comers, are in bad financial shape and municipal hospitals are disappearing. To cope, health care providers have taken action individually. The result is a plethora of hospital mergers by which provider institutions hope to preserve reasonable market share. Only government can solve the insurance deficit.