Did you know that healthcare expenditures make up the largest portion of our national debt, which has ballooned to a whopping $35 trillion? The current state of things shows that it is only going to get worse over the next decade, an issue that I discuss in the latest episode of my podcast.

Federal spending on major healthcare programs such as Medicare and Medicaid is expected to skyrocket by 73 percent over the next ten years.

The House Budget Committee had a recent hearing about the role healthcare monopolies have played in this issue. Chairman Jodey Arrington (R-TX) highlighted that over the past decade, there have been over 1,000 hospital mergers. There will likely be even more in the near future.

His proposal involves equalizing service payments, reducing incentives for mergers, and reducing out-of-pocket costs for patients. However, it is clear that more needs to be done to prevent this problem from becoming worse.

Several people, including Patients Rising’s MacKey Jimeson, who highlighted a series of stories detailing how the lack of control people have over their healthcare due to insurance company practices and inflated costs for care and medicine, have placed many Americans in a precarious position. There are no easy answers to this problem, but allowing people to have more of a say in their healthcare decisions is certainly a step in the right direction, an issue I discuss in this episode.