US healthcare: A cure worse than disease?

In this episode, Mehdi Hasan goes Head to Head with two guests with opposing views.

In part one, he challenges Lanhee Chen, chief architect of former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s campaign. Chen argues that “the employer-sponsored system … has been the linchpin of a quality system of care we have in the US”.

And in part two, Hasan debates Bernie Sanders surrogate and health policy expert Abdul El-Sayed. “I don’t want to live in a society where any of my neighbours … have to potentially go bankrupt because they got sick … and that’s what we have here in the United States,” he says.

Editors Note: In the programme, Hasan refers to a study by the Kaiser Family Foundation, published May 13, which estimated that by May 2, 2020, some 27 million Americans could have lost their health insurance as a result of the economic impact of the coronavirus. After this segment was recorded, a new study, conducted by Families USA, estimated that 5.4 million Americans lost their health insurance. While the Kaiser study took into account family members of the insured, the Families USA study did not. Americans frequently receive their insurance through another family member’s employer.