{"title":"The High Cost of American Health Care: Understanding the Deeper Roots of the Crisis.","authors":"Cyril F Chang, David M Mirvis, Asos Mahmood","doi":"10.1007/s10728-025-00554-x","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The recent tragic death of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson has renewed public scrutiny of the US health care system and reignited debate over why Americans face disproportionately high health care costs. This essay examines both the widely recognized drivers of excessive costs and the deeper systemic issues that often remain unaddressed yet continue to sustain the crisis. It highlights two critical challenges: the need to target structural barriers and misaligned economic incentives in order to design sustainable reforms, and the persistent political polarization that impedes long-term, meaningful change. The paper concludes by outlining short-term strategies that can generate immediate improvements while laying the foundation for comprehensive and enduring reform.</p>","PeriodicalId":46740,"journal":{"name":"Health Care Analysis","volume":" ","pages":"1-12"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4000,"publicationDate":"2026-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12920308/pdf/","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Health Care Analysis","FirstCategoryId":"3","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s10728-025-00554-x","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"2025/12/15 0:00:00","PubModel":"Epub","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"ETHICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
The recent tragic death of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson has renewed public scrutiny of the US health care system and reignited debate over why Americans face disproportionately high health care costs. This essay examines both the widely recognized drivers of excessive costs and the deeper systemic issues that often remain unaddressed yet continue to sustain the crisis. It highlights two critical challenges: the need to target structural barriers and misaligned economic incentives in order to design sustainable reforms, and the persistent political polarization that impedes long-term, meaningful change. The paper concludes by outlining short-term strategies that can generate immediate improvements while laying the foundation for comprehensive and enduring reform.
期刊介绍：
Health Care Analysis is a journal that promotes dialogue and debate about conceptual and normative issues related to health and health care, including health systems, healthcare provision, health law, public policy and health, professional health practice, health services organization and decision-making, and health-related education at all levels of clinical medicine, public health and global health. Health Care Analysis seeks to support the conversation between philosophy and policy, in particular illustrating the importance of conceptual and normative analysis to health policy, practice and research. As such, papers accepted for publication are likely to analyse philosophical questions related to health, health care or health policy that focus on one or more of the following: aims or ends, theories, frameworks, concepts, principles, values or ideology. All styles of theoretical analysis are welcome providing that they illuminate conceptual or normative issues and encourage debate between those interested in health, philosophy and policy. Papers must be rigorous, but should strive for accessibility – with care being taken to ensure that their arguments and implications are plain to a broad academic and international audience. In addition to purely theoretical papers, papers grounded in empirical research or case-studies are very welcome so long as they explore the conceptual or normative implications of such work. Authors are encouraged, where possible, to have regard to the social contexts of the issues they are discussing, and all authors should ensure that they indicate the ‘real world’ implications of their work. Health Care Analysis publishes contributions from philosophers, lawyers, social scientists, healthcare educators, healthcare professionals and administrators, and other health-related academics and policy analysts.
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