Health Insurance in the United States

Health insurance and health care in the United States is at a crossroads in the second decade of the twenty-first century: national reliance on for-profit health insurance corporations is bankrupting America and her citizens. The United States has the most expensive health care in the world (almost 20% of GDP), while ranking last among developed countries in inefficiency and other measurements. At the same time, most medical bankruptcies in America are the result of insurmountable medical bills (and most of those bankruptcies involve families and individuals who have health insurance).

The historic federal health care reform efforts passed in March 2010 represent an initial step on the road to reigning in for-profit health insurance industry practices such as: denying coverage and policy claims in order to boost company profits; paying executives billions of dollars while some 40,000 Americans die annually from lack of insurance coverage or from denial of policy claims; and spending less and less premium dollars on medical services while granting ever-larger salaries to executives.

In the bigger picture, while the American public wants the government to offer a single-payer public health option (that is, government-run universal health care) to compete with for-profit insurance companies, Congressional support may yet be a few years down the road. The health care reform bill now enacted does provide wider insurance coverage to the American public (as of 2010, some 50 million Americans lacked health insurance), prohibits some of the most onerous practices of for-profit health insurance corporations, and slows the growth of health care costs.

It will yet be many years before America's health care industry is on par with that of other developed nations.

Health Care Providers

Navigating the web of health care can be daunting. Use this site as a resource for basic information and a launching pad for further exploration of the health care landscape.