A Single-Payer System Would Reduce U.S. Health Care Costs

We Have Not Yet Solved the Health Care Crisis

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) is introducing insurance reforms that will improve the lives of millions of Americans, but we need to go much further to solve the crisis in health care.

Without correcting the fundamental structural flaws in health care financing, overall health care costs will remain poorly controlled. Though our clinical outcomes are mediocre by comparison [1], the average per capita cost of health care in the United States is twice that of other modern nations [2]. Increasingly, these costs are being borne by patients and government, driving personal bankruptcies and ever more austere public policies [3, 4]. Under the ACA, 30 million people will still have no coverage [5], and countless more will have inadequate coverage [1].