WASHINGTON, Feb. 12 – Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP), today released the following statement regarding a new study from the Journal of American Medical Association. The study found that between 2001 and 2022, top health care companies made $2.7 trillion in profits and spent $2.6 trillion on stock buybacks and dividends.
It is absolutely unacceptable that since 2001, the top health care companies in America spent 95% of their profits, $2.6 trillion, not to make Americans healthy, but to make their CEOs and stockholders obscenely rich.
In America today, 85 million Americans are uninsured or under-insured. One out of four Americans cannot afford the medicine their doctors prescribe. Over half a million Americans go bankrupt each and every year due to medically related debt. 68,000 people in our country die each year because they cannot afford to go to a doctor when they get sick. How many of those Americans would be alive today if the top health care companies in our country spent $2.6 trillion on disease prevention and primary care, instead of stock buybacks and dividends?
The function of a rational health care system is to guarantee quality health care to all, not huge payouts for stockholders and executives in the drug and insurance industries. None of this money was used to search for new treatments and cures, to lower prices, or to improve patient care. That has got to change.
This study confirms that the greatest waste, fraud and abuse in this country is corporate greed. Unfortunately, instead of working with Congress on this real issue, Trump and Musk have launched an immoral and unconstitutional attack on the Department of Health and Human Services.
Instead of taking on the greed of the pharmaceutical industry, Trump and Musk are taking away AIDS treatment from poor people.
Instead of taking on the for-profit insurance industry, Trump and Musk are making it harder for working-class Americans to get the health care they need through Medicaid and community health centers.
This absurdity must end. As the Ranking Member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, I will do everything I can to take on the unprecedented level of corporate greed in our health care system.