“I can’t afford my oxygen”: The human toll of health insurance profits

Ed Weisbart is the national board secretary for Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP) He says the system is designed to return profits rather than improve health.

He says he was "aghast" by the reaction to the murder of UnitedHealth CEO Brian Thompson .

PNHP is a nonpartisan organization of some 25,000 doctors.

In Canada , the overhead of running a practice to deal with the national health insurance they have there is more like $ 20,000 or $ 25,000 per doctor.

In healthcare, a very large percentage [of the total cost of care] is spent in the last six months of life by people who are desperately sick.

The average prescription drug in the U.S. is about twice as expensive as it is in the rest of the modern world.

Insurers typically don't want to put barriers to things that low-expense patients get, like a blood pressure medication that's very inexpensive and that healthier populations use.

But if you're sick and you need home oxygen, or you need a CT scan or an MRI, they don’t want to spend that money.