The high costs of affordable health care have been a driver of rhetoric for many elections in the U.S. However, it is such a complicated subject that it has received little attention. The fix — not-for-profit national health insurance, as demonstrated by all other high-income countries, continues to be the best solution.

Growing Costs of U.S. Health Care, Corporate Power vs. Human Rights — Is reform finally within reach? traces the history of health care in the U.S. over the last 60 years, and describes the ways whereby costs and other problems of health care can be resolved to the benefit of all U.S. residents. 

This essential primer details the origins and contours of the current disastrous state of American healthcare, the added peril posed by Donald Trump, and the salutary alternative (national health insurance) that could save lives and money. — David Himmelstein, M.D., and Steffie Woolhandler, M.D. are American primary care physicians and medical researchers, advocating for single-payer national health insurance in the United States.