Seniors’ Anxiety Over Healthcare Costs

77% of seniors, defined as those 65 and older, reported being concerned that rising healthcare costs will result in significant and lasting damage to the economy. This forward-looking pessimism is pervasive, with 92% of the older population expecting that healthcare costs will increase (73%) or stay about the same (19%).

But angst is not isolated to economic perspectives. The research also included qualitative interviews with healthcare experts and members of the Gallup Panel that illustrated the personal impact of healthcare costs. One of these interviews uncovered complexity as a serious obstacle in the current system. A healthcare expert at the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation shared:

“[Last] Thanksgiving, I helped a person who said, ‘I’m going to drop my Medicare drug plan.’ Well, that’s a bad move because if he ever takes a lot of drugs, he’d pay a lifetime penalty. He decided to keep it. And I was like, ‘OK, let’s take a look then.’ I saved him an additional $750. Just by looking. There ought to be a way for people to get decent […]

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Thousands of people march through London to protest against underfunding and privatisation of the NHS.
Credit: Wiktor Szymanowicz/Barcroft

My life was saved last year by the Churchill Hospital in Oxford, through a skilful procedure to remove a cancer from my body. Now I will need another operation, to remove my jaw from the floor. I’ve just learned what was happening at the hospital while I was being treated. On the surface, it ran smoothly. Underneath, unknown to me, was fury and tumult. Many of the staff had objected to a decision by the National Health Service to privatise the hospital’s cancer scanning. They complained that the scanners the private company was offering were less sensitive than the hospital’s own machines. Privatisation, they said, would put patients at risk. In response, as the Guardian revealed last week, NHS England threatened to sue the hospital for libel if its staff continued to criticise the decision.

The dominant system of political thought […]

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Activists in Argentina wear the “Handmaid’s Tale” costume in August 2018 to protest the legalization of abortion.

On April 3, USA Today published an array of stories under the banner, “Copy, Paste, Legislate,” exploring the political impact of model bills on state-level legislation — more than 10,000 bills from 2010 to 2018 — based on a two-year joint investigation with the Arizona Republic and the Center for Public Integrity. The lead story headline said it all: “You elected them to write new laws. They’re letting corporations do it instead.“

OK, it wasn’t quite all. While corporate influence was the strongest, figures revealed that conservative groups weren’t far behind: There were 4,301 bills from industry and 4,012 from conservative groups, far more than the 1,602 from liberal groups or the 248 classified as “other.” The hidden origins of these bills often hides their true intent. The most notorious such group, the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, for instance combines business interests with […]

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