by Tyler Rosen
Ask the average American on the street and they will probably tell you that healthcare in the United States is severely broken. This sentiment is confirmed by a recent analysis by Commonwealth Fund. The 2026 annual analysis reported that the United States spends the most on healthcare among the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development countries. Despite spending 18 percent of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the United States has among the lowest in health outcomes and 8 percent of Americans, or 27 million people, cannot afford insurance. The report stated:
The U.S., on average, has the poorest health outcomes of any high-income country, and among the poorest of the high- and middle-income nations belonging to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
This abysmal rate of access to healthcare is further aggravated by the Heritage Foundation and big business sponsored so-called “Big Beautiful Bill.” This legislation signed into law in 2025 by the Trump regime made massive cuts to the Affordable Care Act which subsidizes healthcare for nearly 15 million Americans.
This is the reality of a for-profit privatized healthcare system. Despite the claims by insurance monopolies, further amplified by US corporate media, healthcare cannot be seen as a profitable business but rather a social service that society shares the costs of.
Unfortunately for many of us who are lucky enough to be able to afford health insurance, there are further hurdles to accessing regular and effective healthcare. It is common for many health service providers to be “out-of-network” and therefore accompanied with higher deductibles or co-pays.
The United States life expectancy lags by nearly 3 years behind the OECD average of 82 years and has a higher than average number of avoidable deaths of 312 in 100,000 Americans. These numbers are even more stark among racial and national minorities. The life expectancy of non-Hispanic Black Americans is 74 years and non-Hispanic Native Americans is 70 years.
As healthcare is increasingly seen wrongly as a luxury, it is becoming more clear that our society needs to rethink healthcare and view it as a human right. When perceived in that light, evidently treating healthcare as a profitable business is not working and a new National Health Service is needed.