(yelling) Oh God, oh God!
It hurts so damn much!
I'm uninsured!
How much is this gonna cost me?
That does look painful.
But you're just one of the 27 million Americans
who doesn't have health insurance.
Oh, well that's no big deal, right?
Uh, no, for every 830 people who don't have health insurance,
one person dies every year.
That means that every year, 30,000 people die
from lack of medical treatment.
30,000 deaths?
How is that even possible?
Holy mackerel!
Well, it's complicated.
The big problem with health care is money.
It's expensive.
Isn't that right, real-life
health care policy expert Tim Faust?
That's right.
No individual can afford the full cost of their own
health care without going into crushing poverty or debt.
That's why we invented the idea of insurance
in the late 1930s.
The idea behind insurance is that if you have a big pot
and a group of people throw some money into it every month
then, when one of these people needs health care,
because not everyone gets sick at once,
they can just draw from the pot.
Sounds like a win-win.
Well, the problem is that America, contrary to every other
developed democracy on earth, doesn't have some sort of a
national health insurance system.
Right, that's where the government foots the bill for all
basic and essential care, which guarantees that
all residents have their costs completely covered.
Yeah, we do things a little differently here.
[Narrator] That's right, Nando.
In our system, we have different companies offering
their own version of health insurance.
So instead of one giant pot, we have a bunch of
smaller pots, and this creates all kinds of problems.
Because covering sick people just isn't profitable.
Only 5% of the population account
for 50% of all health care costs.
One giant pot diminishes risk.
And rest assured, at some point in your life,
you will need to draw from it.
In a true market, consumers and sellers are supposed to
have the power to walk away from a deal.
(tire skid)
(glass breaking)
But if your arm got ripped off in a car accident,
you don't really have a free choice.
You have to treat it.
(woman screams)
The reason U.S. health care is so expensive is because
all these smaller insurance companies are just floating
out there by themselves, lessening their negotiating power.
But if we all got together and negotiated with, say,
the company that makes MRIs, as a nation, we would have
the collective strength to get those MRIs for way cheaper.
So how did we get here? Time for a backstory.
(tape rewinding)
(old-fashioned music)
From the dawn of the 20th century
to shortly after the Second World War,
most Western democracies built their
own form of a national health care.
The most famous was Great Britain's own
National Health Service.
The U.S. tried to create a similar system
but never succeeded, mostly due to fierce opposition from
the doctor's lobby, AKA, the American Medical Association,
who hired a popular Hollywood actor, and enlisted the help
of the first-ever political PR firm to warn the good people
of America about the dangers of socialized medicine.
One of the methods of imposing statism
or socialism on a people has been by way of medicine.
Behind it will come other federal programs that will invade
every area of freedom as we have known it in this country.
(gunshot)
And it worked.
So we now have this insane insurance system
where Americans get health care from all over the place.
50% through employers, 20% through Medicaid,
which is a government health insurance program for the
poor and disabled, 14% through Medicare,
which is a program for the old,
7% through the Affordable Care Act Marketplace,
which leaves 10% entirely uninsured.
And our hodgepodge health care system is the most
expensive in the world, but it doesn't cover everybody,
and it delivers far worse outcomes.
We live shorter lives.
We're the only developed country
that has a decreasing life expectancy.
The number of mothers that die
in childbirth is actually increasing.
Infant mortality is actually higher
in West Baltimore than the West Bank.
(baby cries)
From the green hills of Vermont to the arid plains of West Texas,
the battle lines were drawn.
The central issue is that any meaningful fix to our system
was always going to face massive opposition from hospitals,
drug makers, doctors and insurance companies
for the simple reason that in our system,
all of these people still make a f**k ton of money.
Damn. That's frustrating.
You see, in America we treat health care like a private good
that's bought and sold on a market.
It should be a public good.
Which is weird because we consider other things
public goods, like, say, firefighting.
Wow. You weren't kidding, lady. This is a real fire.
Well, put it out!
All right, hold on, lady, I gotta
tell you about our packages first.
Packages?
My building's on fire!
Yeah, I know.
And putting out the whole building's gonna cost $7,000.
I can't afford that.
Well, I can put out some of the fire.
You pick one room you're really passionate about.
I need my whole house saved, OK?
Get your hose out.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, this is just a consultation visit.
What's your policy number?
It may feel like the sun has set. That health care is
a horrible nightmare that you can't wake up from.
But it doesn't have to be.
There's already a system in place.
(heartbeat)
You know, my grandparents, they seem really happy.
We love Medicare.
We sure do.
Medicare is the solution.
It's efficient.
It's cheaper.
(suspenseful music)
But, Nando.
(dramatic music)
(gasps)
That would cost $32 trillion over 10 years.
That's a highly misleading stat.
Yeah, it's not like we'd be paying that
on top of what we're paying now.
We'd be paying it instead of what we're paying now.
And what we're paying now is absolutely bonkers.
(scream)
Oh good God.
If my calculations are correct, we'll spend
$49 trillion over the next 10 years on health care.
So $32 trillion, even if it does turn out to be correct,
(keyboard clicking)
which it's not, would actually represent a $17 trillion
savings on our current system.
Great, so it's cheaper.
So Medicare for all would work.
Thanks, man.
(dramatic music)
[Narrator] Your journey to universal coverage is complete.
Health care works best when we're all in it together,
much better than competing and fighting.
Families go broke, and people die when they don't have to.
And nobody wants that.
We have to treat health care as a public good,
like education, public works, or firefighting.
We don't ask people to take personal responsibility
for putting out massive building fires.
That would be stressful, chaotic and scary.
But it's no less scary to confront the reality of cancer
or a ripped off arm.
(laughs)
We're the richest country in the history of the world.
There's nothing stopping us from making
health care available to all Americans.
We just haven't done it yet.
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