Its Time For The U.S. Senate To Make Primary Health Care Affordable

Photos: YouTube Screenshots Our current health care system is broken. Despite spending almost twice as much per capita as any other country, an unsustainable $13,000 per year, 85 million Americans are either uninsured or underinsured; over 60,000 die each year because they can’t get to a doctor when they need to; we pay, by far, the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs; and our life expectancy, already far lower than other developed countries, is getting lower. As broken as our overall health care system is, the situation with regard to primary health care is even worse. All across this country millions of Americans do not have access to affordable, decent-quality primary care, dental care, mental health counseling, or low-cost prescription drugs. Even people with decent insurance often have to wait months for a medical appointment. In the richest country on earth, that is unacceptable. Furthermore, despite the enormous amount of money we spend on health care, we have a massive shortage of doctors, nurses, dentists, and mental health providers — shortages which are getting worse every year. That is why as Chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee (HELP), I fought to pass the Bipartisan...