In 2004 Jon M. Huntsman Jr. ran, for the first time, for Governor of Utah.  At the time I had already become the leading proponent of single payer health system reform in the Beehive State.  As such, I sought an opportunity to meet with all candidates for Governor and the State Legislature.  Generally, I had little success even getting a meeting with Republican candidates (I was often able to meet with Democrats but generally found them to be either outright dismissive of single payer or unreliable as a political ally).  Through a mutual friend, I was invited to meet with candidate Huntsman.  He gave me his whole attention at our first meeting, listened carefully, asked good questions, and then accepted the reading material I provided with a promise to meet again and discuss.  He was as good as his word (unlike virtually all other politicians I have met, before or since).  At our second meeting it was clear that he had done his own homework.  Again, he had prepared good questions.  As the meeting came to its end he summarized that he believed single payer would ultimately be the health policy solution that put an end to the rapid growth of health care costs while preserving quality care for every patient.  He noted that getting to single payer health reform would be politically very difficult because of the political power of the medical industrial complex.  He promised that if elected he would make health reform a priority and would be guided by single payer principles.  

He was elected governor of Utah in 2004 and within a year hosted a very public, high profile conference on health policy on the campus of the University of Utah School of Medicine.  He asked me to be one of the speakers at the conference.  He himself gave the opening address.  We met again and he asked me for ideas about legislation that would move the state of Utah stepwise toward single payer reform.  I responded that I believed that he could make measurable progress for Utah patients if he would sponsor legislation that would change the charter of the Public Employees Health Plan (PEHP) so that it could provide a health benefit to any Utahn willing and able to pay its premium rather than be restricted solely to providing health benefits to public employees and their beneficiaries.  

PEHP is a private, non-profit trust fund organized under the statutes of Utah to serve government employees, both local and state. It has long been known to be the most efficient payer of health services in Utah other than Medicare and Medicaid, with an overhead of 4%, far less than the commercially available health plans which average overheads of more than 15%.  

Gov. Huntsman agreed to run the legislation.  His staff recruited a member of the Utah House of Representatives, a moderate Republican, Steven Mascaro, to run the bill.  I met several times with Rep. Mascaro and attended all of the meetings generated about the bill.  I remember one such meeting called by State Senator Curtis Bramble which featured that Senator opening the meeting with a statement about how the sponsoring Representative must be smoking something to have agreed to run this bill.  The CEO of the Utah Health Insurance Association, Kelly Atkinson (a former democratic member of the Utah House of Representatives) was outraged by the bill and pulled out all of the stops at his disposal.  The bill was assigned to the most unfriendly committee possible.  A hearing date and time were set.  As I went about the customary visits with each member of the committee, I was followed by UHIA lobbyists.  Each time I spoke with a member of the committee they were approached within ten steps of leaving me by UHIA personnel.  Rep. Mascaro had all of his other legislation threatened by legislative leadership.  As I recall, he had four other bills that he was sponsoring and all of them were held up in the Rules Committee.  He was told that none of them would be assigned a hearing unless he changed this one bill substantially to suit UHIA.  Legislative leadership was aware Gov. Huntsman favored the bill and they didn’t dare simply kill it.  

After holding out gamely for awhile, Rep. Mascaro caved in to the pressure.  Without warning me, he showed up to the committee hearing with a substitute bill which transformed the legislation into what is charitably called ‘a study bill’.  I had come to the hearing with the intent to provide opening testimony for the bill.  As I sat at the table with Rep. Mascaro, he made me aware of his unilaterally made change in the bill.  I simply got up and walked away from the hearing.  I had no interest in supporting a meaningless study bill which probably was not going to pass anyway.  Rep. Mascaro was targeted thereafter by hardline Republicans and in 2008 was primaried out of his seat in the legislature.  I respect him for his effort.  

Neither Rep. Mascaro, nor I, nor Gov. Huntsman had anticipated the amount of animosity that this simple, incremental proposal for health system reform would generate.  We were simply recognizing that health care costs were the number one concern for Utah voters at the time (and have been ever since).  A major contributor to high and rising health care costs are the administrative costs of American health insurance.  PEHP is a very lean payer for health services in Utah which at the time already provided a health benefit to about 200,000 Utahns who were public employees or their family members.  We proposed that the so-called health insurance market would be well served if that very efficient business model could be made available to more Utahns.  The Utah Health Insurance Association, however, viewed that change in ‘market’ dynamics as an existential threat and acted accordingly.  

After this legislative debacle, I decided to run for the legislature myself, which I did twice:  in 2006 as a Republican nominee for the State Senate and in 2008 again as a Republican nominee but for the State House of Representatives.  I ran on a platform of single payer health system reform, calling it constitutionally, morally, and fiscally conservative (which it is).  For each election I had the outright support of Gov. Jon Huntsman.  He appeared with me in public, had photos taken together with me, and shared a booth at a street fair with me.  I failed in both elections because the district in which I reside is overwhelmingly democrat and most voters just voted a straight ticket, probably without even knowing who I was or what I proposed.  

I have met with many politicians during my career as an advocate for real and sustainable health system reform.  There are many very earnest, hardworking, and basically good people in politics.  But Gov. Huntsman remains my favorite.  Together we failed to make a substantial change in business as usual in American healthcare.  But he did his own homework, learned what the fault lines were, and made an effort to do something about it.  Of course, he came at this subject from the perspective of being a member of the Utah family which has been trying since before his political career to do something to help all patients in Utah.  The Huntsman Cancer Center makes every effort to treat all cancer patients, regardless of ability to pay.  The Huntsman family is also actively serving patients with mental illness.  Gov. Huntsman came at the problem of high health care costs with experience observing how American healthcare is generally failing to provide the care that people need.

The major lesson I learned from this experience is that incremental health reform strategies DO NOT WORK!  The powers that be in American health care, the medical industrial complex, like the Utah Health Insurance Association, are well heeled.  They have the resources to beat down any incremental effort that they view as at all threatening to their profiteering.  They will expend the same effort whether they are fighting the smallest change or opposing the real and sustainable reform—single payer.  Incremental changes in health care are always co-opted by the medical industrial complex (see the photo below).  Why—because incremental changes do not change the fundamental function of a health care system which is corrupted.  The corruption in health care will inevitably overtake every well-intended incremental change, Obamacare being the most recent example.

It is for that reason that in recent years I have chosen to work towards fashioning a single payer bill for Utah.  Along with others, I have succeeded.  The Utah Cares Act will actually change how health care business is done in Utah.  The principal change that will happen if the Utah Cares Act is implemented is that PEHP will become the sole payer for health services for ALL UTAHNS and will be renamed Utah Cares.  Learn more about better, simpler care financed fairly for all at View source at utahcares.health

While you are visiting the Utah Cares website, please donate whatever funds you can to the campaign to bring the Utah Cares Act to the voters of Utah as a ballot initiative in 2028.  

Thank you.

Dr. Joseph Q. Jarvis is a public health physician, chair of the Utah Cares Political Issue Committee and author of several books, including The Purple World: Healing the Harm in American Health Care and What the Single Eye Sees: Faith, Hope, Charity, and the Pursuit of Discipleship.

The United States of America has for decades now enjoyed the enviable position of leading economy in the world.  We Americans are blessed by the confluence of opportunity, natural resources, freedom, and infrastructure within our national boundaries that makes our economic success possible.  Very few now alive can remember the last time our nation was in really sorry financial shape, though of course we have had some bumps and grinds along the way.  

That is not true for the citizens of the only other superpower to have survived World War II.  The Soviet Union, now no longer in existence, competed hand and glove for dominance with the US for decades during the second half of the twentieth century during what became known as the Cold War. And then, suddenly, just around 1990, the Soviet Union economy suffered a terminal hit and that entire national superpower disappeared overnight, replaced by a second class country.

I have visited the nation which replaced the Soviet Union, known as Russia, a decade ago. I stayed in 5 cities and traveled by train and plane through most of the western or European parts of that nation.  I had friendly conversations with a few dozen people in some of those cities, including Rostov, Volgograd, and Krasnodar.  And I enjoyed visits to the major cities of St. Petersburg and Moscow.  I am by no means an expert on economics or Russian commerce, but I have a few amateur observations about what life in Russia, a second class country, is like.

People there have trouble getting and keeping jobs, especially full time work that pays enough to survive and thrive as a family. Mostly they get by with gig work, cobbling together various salvage efforts, gardening, and harvesting what they can from nature.  They are extremely thrifty at home, using and re-using everything, never leaving any waste. Local governments do not have the wherewithal to provide consistent services, such as zoning enforcement, construction code enforcement, snow and ice removal, traffic control, fire control and prevention, public transportation, decent roads and highways, and parks, libraries and museums. Russia does offer its citizens universal health care as far as the national budget allows.  But with a per capita GDP that is 1/5 of the per person economic activity of the US, there is not enough of a tax base to really provide the infrastructure necessary for twenty first century life.  After all is said and done, Russia is a second class country.

The video graphic embedded in this post below documents the size of the leading nations gross domestic products (GDPs) over the recent half century.  As I already noted, the US leads the way during this entire time frame.  Watch the ebb and flow of the GDP of the Soviet Union and then its sudden fall off of the list of leading nations, with Russia not reappearing for many years.  Why did this happen to the Soviet Union?

I have a simplistic answer for that question.  The Soviet Union failed to follow the advice Pres. Eisenhower gave the world during his presidency in the 1950s.  They allowed the military industrial complex to skew their economy so much that other important functions (aside from defense) were terribly underfunded and neglected.  A nation can not live by defense alone. So, once defense spending in the Soviet Union grew to 20% of the total GDP during the Afghanistan War in the 1980s, the entire economy collapsed, the Soviet Union ceased to exist, and the Russian nation fell into second class status, from which they have never recovered.  

This review of Soviet failure is relevant to the US today because the US is now allowing its economy to be skewed in a dangerous way, albeit not by spending too much on defense. At no time since World War II has the US spent more than 5% of GDP on defense.  We have listened to Pres. Eisenhower and kept the military industrial complex at bay.  However, we have allowed the medical industrial complex to eat up more and more of our economy.  Health care spending now swallows nearly 20% of American economic output.  We are underfunding other vital sectors of our economy—food, housing, education, public transportation, and other infrastructure—in order to feed the endless appetite of for profit health care corporations (the medical industrial complex) for profits.  We, too, no matter how big our economy is, can fall out of superpower status and into a permanent second class national existence if we do not curb health care spending. 

The Utah Cares Political Issue Committee has carefully studied how to stop the relentless skewing of our economic power towards health care.  Using what we have learned from these economic studies, we have fashioned a health reform proposal in the form of The Utah Cares Act.  You can read the entire Act and the economic studies which back it up at View source at utahcares.health.  

We make a bold assertion:  The Utah Cares Act is the only proposal for health system reform that will actually reduce the percentage of GDP going to health care after implementation. All other proposals allow the medical industrial complex to continue to rob us of our economic future.  We can not continue to exist as a leading economic nation if we do not change how we do health care business.  The leading economic threat to our nation is not the federal debt, it is the rapid growth of health care costs eating up more and more of our national productivity without giving us any improvement in health.

Join us in the campaign to save our national economic prowess.  Visit the website (View source at utahcares.health) and  MAKE A DONATION to the campaign for better, simpler health care financed fairly for all.  By doing so, you will save our nation’s productivity for your children and grandchildren.  We do not need to follow the Soviet Union into second class national status.

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Dr. Joseph Q. Jarvis is a public health physician, chair of the Utah Cares Political Issue Committee and author of several books, including The Purple World: Healing the Harm in American Health Care and What the Single Eye Sees: Faith, Hope, Charity, and the Pursuit of Discipleship.

For two days this week I hosted a couple from New Zealand in my home.  My wife, an attorney, has professional connections to the woman who practices law in the greater Auckland area.  As is usual for me when I have a chance to converse with people who live elsewhere in the developed world, I asked them about their experience with health care in their home country.  Their immediate response was to talk about how terrible their health care system can be.  By this they meant that it can be difficult to get a primary care appointment within a week of asking, and some patients must wait a couple of hours for definitive treatment in an emergency room, leading to understandable annoyance.

People all over the world are likely to have been disappointed somehow by the health care delivery system where they live.  That is the nature of human built systems just as complaining is built into human nature.  I never allow myself to forget that most health care systems in the developed world are underfunded.  Naturally, no matter how these systems are intended to function, without adequate funding they will fail at times.  

After listening to their complaints I asked this couple two standard questions that are my universal health system comparison inquiries: 1) Do you know anyone who has ever been denied medically necessary care because they could not afford it?  And 2) Do you know anyone who has been bankrupted by the cost of illness or injury care?  Their answers were 1) NO and 2) NO.  I have asked people from Canada, Spain, Portugal, the UK, Austria, Germany, Switzerland, Japan, Australia, and Italy the same questions.  The answer to each question is always NO.  

However, as a citizen of the United States of America, the wealthiest nation in the world and the nation that spends more on health care, by far, than any other nation, I must answer these two questions as follows:  1) Yes-millions of American patients are denied health care every year because they can not afford it and plausibly 200,000 of my fellow citizens die prematurely every year due to this health system failure; and 2) Yes-500,000 Americans are bankrupted every year due to health care costs.  

American health system dysfunction is orders of magnitude worse than any problems or annoyances experienced in health care delivery anywhere else in the developed world.  This fact is in stark contrast to what is routinely and repetitively asserted in the US over and over again about change in our health care system.  Whenever the subject of health system reform comes up (and it does often around me) people in the US tend to think that somehow change in healthcare will make things worse. Would be healthcare experts seem to come out of the woodwork to decry how terrible socialized medicine is, how long the wait times are in Canada, how death panels kill grandmas in the UK, how people in other nations are benefitting from the development of new drugs and devices in the US made possible by our better health care business model (or in other words, better profits).  Whenever the government gets involved, they say, things go very bad (government can’t be the solution for the problem because government is the problem, etc. etc). None of this is remotely true.

To all of you auto-moronic commentators on health care reform, please stop repeating the nonsense propaganda that the US medical industrial complex pays its PR staff and lobbyists to develop and deploy in an effort (so far successfully) to salt the political ground where we should be growing and harvesting a better, simpler health care system funded fairly for all.  American health system performance is the laughingstock of the developed world.  The chart below is a simple way to understand this.  Choose virtually any parameter to measure real health system performance and you will find American health care lagging, usually well behind other wealthy nations.  

My guests from New Zealand, once I had a chance to tell them about how American patients are treated (or not), were aghast.  As are my friends from anywhere else among wealthy nations.  Americans wait far longer (on average) for care and walk away with bills that bury their household budgets.  No one in New Zealand can fathom how much Americans pay at the point of service for care.  It is stupefying and we Americans should have long ago absolutely rejected the businesses that propagate this financial carnage and the politicians that support them.  

The truth is that a very few other wealthy nations have chosen socialized medicine (meaning that health care is publicly paid for and delivered by government owned hospitals and government employed doctors and nurses).  No one in the US (including me) has seriously proposed that for American patients.  But all other wealthy nations HAVE adopted a very important starting point for their health care system, whether socialized or not:  universal financing for care. It is not just an international norm to assure that every resident in your nation has health care financing, it is how ALL wealthy countries operate, except the US.  Most of the money in health care systems around the world is tax money.  How else do you go about making sure that every resident has health care financing?  Because health care access is universal elsewhere in the developed world, it is less expensive.  It turns out that if you do well in caring for your populace by spending healthcare taxes on patients instead of profits people are healthier and you have lower health care costs.

And here is another irony.  American health care is also mostly paid for by taxes.  In fact, because American health care is so much more expensive than care elsewhere in the developed world (please see the chart below) the tax burden for health care in the US is THE HIGHEST IN THE WORLD.  That’s correct.  Americans pay higher health care taxes than do the citizens of any other country, including the taxpayers in countries with socialized medicine.  And part of the reason for that extra cost is because we fail to support universal care.  We leave people to die from treatable conditions because they can’t afford care.  It’s that simple.  

I have learned from 35 years of health reform advocacy that many of the auto-moronic commentators on health system change are unconcerned about facts and therefore unpersuadable.  I am not writing this essay for them.  I am writing to those of you who have heard the constant drumbeat about socialized medicine, death panels, wait times, etc etc., and are either made uncertain by those comments or are truly fearful about what health reform might do.  Many Americans are generally healthy and therefore have had little personal experience with the perverse incentives of American health care.  They believe that the health insurance they have must be good and they cling to it in ignorance of what is truly wrong with it and fear about losing it.  To you I offer an alternative vision.

The Utah Cares Act offers you a chance to have better, simpler health care financed fairly for everyone.  It is not socialized medicine.  It is public funding (like we have been doing for 75 years in the US) and private health care delivery. It is freedom to choose your doctor and hospital (without fear of a surprise bill because you unknowingly received care out of network).  It is freedom to choose your career, job, pathway in life, marriage (or divorce) without fear of losing your health financing.  It is freedom from medical bankruptcy.  It is freedom to pursue your best health in the interest of pursuing your best life, liberty, and happiness.  

Read the Act at View source at utahcares.health where you can also find the economic studies that document the fiscal soundness of this proposal.  

The Utah Cares Act will become law when you rise up with your fellow citizens and throw the profiteering medical industrial complex on the scrap heap of history where it belongs.  We will have better simpler care financed fairly for all when we get the Utah Cares Act on the ballot in 2028 and campaign through to victory at the polls.  The Utah Cares Political Issue Committee needs you to join in with us through volunteering and through donations.  

DONATE TODAY AT View source at utahcares.health

Many thanks.

Dr. Joseph Q. Jarvis is a public health physician, chair of the Utah Cares Political Issue Committee and author of several books, including The Purple World: Healing the Harm in American Health Care and What the Single Eye Sees: Faith, Hope, Charity, and the Pursuit of Discipleship.

When Jesus of Nazareth was challenged to explain what He meant when He used the term ‘neighbor’ to describe  whom we should love, He told the parable of man whose acute needs were met by someone who crossed social boundaries to meet those needs. The parable has become known as the Good Samaritan, because it was a Samaritan who, despite danger, stopped on his journey and had compassion on a half dead injured Jew lying on the road to Jericho, bound up his wounds and took care of him.  At the end of the story, Jesus advises his followers to ‘go and do likewise’.  

Jesus chose to illustrate mankind’s obligation to care for one another by telling the story of an injured man, half dead, who obviously couldn’t care for himself, and therefore needed someone else to step in. Illness and injury are moments of great need in each life.  There is no moral or ethical standard that I know of that does not recognize those healthcare needs as paramount, requiring a response from each of us as neighbors to one another and from society as a whole, which is our neighborhood.  Just as Christians are admonished to care for the sick and injured, so are Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, and Humanists.  This moral obligation we have one to another has been the primal cause of the development of universal care systems in all wealthy nations across the entire globe—except one.

In only one wealthy, developed nation are there millions of people without the health care they need because they can’t afford it, leading to hundreds of thousands of premature deaths and hundreds of thousands of family financial failures.  In fact it is the wealthiest nation on earth, the United States of America, where this deplorable lack of adherence to fundamental Christian observance exists.  

What happens when a nation fails at one of its most basic societal requirements?  Beyond the unnecessary death and financial distress, is there a national price to pay for allowing the sick and injured to wither without care?

The United States is providing an answer to this question.  First, when some ill and injured people are left unattended, the remainder of the population is put at risk.  Infectious diseases are undiagnosed and untreated leaving contagion at large in the community.  When only some of the trauma patients receive care, then the doctors and nurses who provide that care are less well practiced and ready to deliver the care that is required.  When we fail at universal care, the burden of disease increases and the cost of treatment consequently expands.  The US has a sicker, less productive population because we don’t rise to the Christian call for universal care.  And we pay more for the care that is delivered.

Second, and equally important, when we abandon some of our people and leave them without the health care they need, we abandon their communities to a lower standard of living.  Where health care delivery is unsupported, hospitals and clinics close.  White collar health professions jobs disappear from those towns and cities.  The tax base shrinks.  Businesses move away.  Schools, libraries, roads, sewers, and other public services are weakened financially.  Infrastructure weakens and the regional way of life is threatened.  

Third, and finally, as communities witness increasing death rates and declining social structure when health services are unsupported where they live, while other regions of the country receive better health care funded primarily with public dollars leading to longer, more productive lives and a higher standard of living, there will inevitably be a fracture in the social fabric.  In the United States, urban areas tend to be blessed with better health care services while rural areas are left behind.  In general, in the US, urban areas are blue or democrat leaning, while rural areas are red or republican leaning.  As illustrated in the graphic below, for at least 20 years there has been a trend toward higher mortality rates in republican areas of the country, with the mortality gap growing steadily for decades.  I believe this widening gap in mortality at least partly explains the increasing anger and hostility arising between the two national political parties.

It is time for the United States of America to live up to the ancient call to care for all neighbors which is inherent in our founding documents.  Most Americans, when polled, agree that health care should be universal.  Better, simpler care financed fairly for all would improve the way of life for all Americans, rich, poor, urban, rural, red, blue, or purple.  We would save lives and save on health care costs.  We can be more productive, more healthy,  and less angry with one another.  

Please visit View source at utahcares.health to learn more.  AND please DONATE to this campaign to give Americans a chance to vote for Good Samaritan care for everyone in the US.

Dr. Joseph Q. Jarvis is a public health physician, chair of the Utah Cares Political Issue Committee and author of several books, including The Purple World: Healing the Harm in American Health Care and What the Single Eye Sees: Faith, Hope, Charity, and the Pursuit of Discipleship.

In 2022 the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) published its Health Care Debt Survey in partnership with National Public Radio.  They found that 100 million people in the United States carry medical debt.  A quarter of US adults have health care debt in excess of $5000 and 20% have an amount of medical debt which they don’t ever expect to pay off. This burden of debt is forcing families to cut spending on food and other essentials and is driving millions from their homes or into bankruptcy.  This debt is piling up despite the so-called Affordable Care Act, which perversely financially embarrassed patients while enriching health care corporations.  That finding is due to the fact that the Affordable Care Act created a health insurance industry push to increase out of pocket costs for patients in the form of co-payments, deductibles, or co-insurance while half of US adults don’t have cash reserves to cover an unexpected $500 health care bill.  The irony is that more Americans have health insurance but fewer Americans can actually afford health care.  Profits are up for hospitals, pharmaceutical firms, and insurers since the Affordable Care Act passed, but so is medical debt.  The result, many Americans are functionally uninsured, meaning they have health insurance but can’t get the insurance company to make any payments for needed health care.

In a more recent KFF poll, dating to April 2026, just under 1/2 of US adults say it is difficult to afford health care costs and about three in ten say they or a family member had problems paying for health care in the past year.  About one in three American adults have skipped or postponed getting needed health care because of cost.  For those under 65 (i.e., not Medicare eligible) 75% of uninsured adults went without needed care because of cost. American patients are not taking medication as prescribed because they can not afford to fill the prescription.  Four in ten insured adults in the US worry about affording their health insurance costs.

No wonder that THIS YEAR American voters’ top economic worry is the cost of health care.  Six in ten US adults say they are very or somewhat worried about affording health care costs for themselves and their families.  

For more information about KFF and its polling about health policy please see:

KFF Health Tracking Poll: Public Views on Fraud in Government Health Programs | KFF

These data do not surprise me.  I have been advocating for real and sustainable change in how we Americans do health care business for more than 30 years.  I have published two books about health system reform:

The Purple World: Healing the Harm in American Health Care

Find it here:  The Purple World: Healing the Harm in American Health Care

For the Hurt of My People: Original Conservatism and Better Simpler Health Care

Find it here:  For the Hurt of My People: Original Conservatism and Better, Simpler Healthcare

I have also produced a documentary film about the fiasco of American health care which is entitled

Healing US

Watch it here:  YouTube video

More recently, along with others, I have drafted a health care reform statute which, if implemented, would guarantee better, simpler health care financed fairly for all.  It is written for the state of Utah, and is called the Utah Cares Act, but could be implemented in any state.  There are dozens of other states where people like me have drafted similar bills.  If you would like to read the Utah Cares Act, you can find it and the economic studies which support it at View source at utahcares.health

Please be aware that the Utah Cares website has been falsely labeled by some cybersecurity services as risky.  There is not now nor ever has been malware or any similar problem on the Utah Cares website.  Technical staff are currently working hard to get the various cybersecurity services to properly label our website.  

If you would like to contribute to the campaign to improve American health care you can donate on the Utah Cares website, or send a check made out to:  Utah Cares PIC. 1373 Perrys Hollow Drive, SLC UT 84103

As of today, only in the USA among developed nations do patients go without needed health care because they can not afford it.  And only in the USA are hundreds of thousands of citizens bankrupted by the cost of health care every year.  During the mid-term election season, you can do something about these tragedies.  You can grow the campaign to change how we Americans do health care business.  Donate to this cause.  Help Utah Cares put this on the ballot in Utah and in every other state.

Dr. Joseph Q. Jarvis is a public health physician, chair of the Utah Cares Political Issue Committee and author of several books, including The Purple World: Healing the Harm in American Health Care and What the Single Eye Sees: Faith, Hope, Charity, and the Pursuit of Discipleship.

Eight years ago this month I published my first book-“The Purple World: Healing the Harm in American Health Care”. As an independently publishing author I qualified for a book review from Blue Ink, and received a Star, or special endorsement of the book. Below please find the entire text of the review. If you are interested in reading the book you can find a link to it on the Utah Cares website (View source at utahcares.health) where you can also find information about state based universal healthcare reform.

Joseph Q. Jarvis has been examining America’s broken health-care system as a doctor and public health official for 40 years, and he has a sensible, reasoned prescription to fix what ails it, all detailed in his valuable and persuasive book, The Purple World.

Non-ideological and straight-talking, Jarvis has provided patient care and negotiated with HMO executives, qualifying him to assess all sides of our behemoth system. His diagnosis is not surprising: Americans don’t have the best health care, only the most profitable. The “medical industry complex,” he writes, exerts a “public-policy vise” on Congress, which allows insurance companies to transfer the growing price of care to patients. Medicine has been reduced to a business opportunity, but one cannot maximize profits and optimize care, he argues.

His prescription? States should start seizing power from Washington and offer comprehensive, publicly financed health benefits to every citizen. Among his recommendations: enrollment should be easy, even automatic; patients should have a choice of doctors and no out-of-pocket expenses; and those with mental illness and addiction should no longer be criminalized. He convincingly explains exactly how this will save money and improve care, partly by introducing social accountability – putting patients above profit– into health care delivery.

Jarvis isn’t all policy wonk, though. He explains why he left family practice to find purpose as a public health officer in Nevada. He relates many entertaining and educational stories, such as how his agency tried to address indoor air pollution in the Nevada state legislative building, but one three-pack-a-day smoker in the senate (Marvin Sedway) resisted all efforts to restrict smoking on his side.

Jarvis brings quiet authority to his unabashed crusade for change, most recently as a Republican candidate (unsuccessful) for the Utah state senate and creator of a non-profit organization providing credible information to the public. Voters must shun party labels and become “purple,” he argues. Amazingly, he makes change seem not only smart, but feasible.

Dr. Joseph Q. Jarvis is a public health physician, chair of the Utah Cares Political Issue Committee and author of several books, including The Purple World: Healing the Harm in American Health Care and What the Single Eye Sees: Faith, Hope, Charity, and the Pursuit of Discipleship.

Cristina Alphonso Mateo is a 21 year old native of Spain who is living currently in the United States while she attends college.  She spoke with me recently about health care in her home country.

Spain has both privately and publicly delivered health care.  The public health care system is designed to provide every Spanish citizen with medically necessary care without cost at the point of service.  Those who wish to may pay for private care.  The per person cost of health care in Spain is less than one-half of the comparable cost in the United States.  Highly advanced care is delivered through the Spanish health care system, which is ranked internationally #1 in organ transplant care, as an example.

Cristina has never heard of anyone in Spain ever failing to get needed care for any reason, including if they simply don’t have much money.  She has never heard of anyone being bankrupted by the cost of health care in Spain.  

Recently, before she left for the US, she was on an outing with her friends and fell, injuring her hand.  She went to a local emergency room and waited 3 hours to be seen by a physician.  An X-ray was ordered, no fractures were noted, and she was discharged with her hand wrapped and given instructions about further care.  She felt that a three hour wait was too long and said that the Spanish health care system has room for improvement.  When asked, she said that she could depend upon getting an appointment with her primary care physician in Spain within 3 days of making a request.  Again, she felt that that wait was too long and indicated a need for Spanish health care to improve.

In contrast, when I was recently taken to an emergency room (by ambulance) in Chicago, I waited more than three hours before I received definitive care.  To be fair, I was triaged by a nurse within the hour of my arrival at the emergency room.  So the ER staff knew that I would be able to wait a while for definitive care.  I can not get an appointment with my primary care physician within 6 months of making a request to see her.  Again, to be fair, if I am acutely ill, I will be seen by someone at clinic that same day.  

So, which health care system is functioning well?  Spain, where everyone has access and financing for needed care and where the highest level care is top notch on international standards?  Where no one is ever bankrupted by health care costs?  Where no one ever dies because they can not get the care they need?  Or the United States, where care costs more than twice as much as it does in Spain while 200,000 people die prematurely each year because of health system dysfunction and 600,000 personal bankruptcies occur annually because of health care costs? (Most of those bankrupted by health care costs in the US are insured at the time that their injury or illness occurred.) Wait times for emergent and primary care are apprently shorter in Spain than in the US.  

It is time for US citizens to acknowledge that our health care system is failing us.  No matter where you look elsewhere in the developed world, those health care systems have measurably better function at a lower cost.  There is no developed country in the world, except the US, where people can’t get needed care because they can’t afford it and are therefore more likely to die prematurely.  There is no first world country, other than the US, where people go bankrupt because of health care costs.  Stop making a fuss about wait times being so bad, or death panels killing grandma, or innovation lagging, or whatever other nightmare the medical industrial complex propaganda has told you to anticipate and worry about with universal care. And especially stop making silly statements about how the government in health care will make everything so bad.  It is the MARKETIZED US health care system that is failing American patients, not the government.

Without government involvement in health care in the US these past 80 years, there would be no recognizable health care system in our country.  No innovative care, no hospitals in many counties, no trained physicians and nurses, nothing resembling modern clinical care.  What is the problem in US health care (as opposed to the care Cristina is used to getting at home in Spain), and the major reason why Americans can’t get the care they need at a reasonable price (again, unlike what Cristina is accustomed to in Spain), is the interjection of the private for-profit business model into American health care, stealing the funds necessary to pay for care for all, driving up the prices, and skewing research and development away from what is really needed to improve patient care.  

If you are at all persuadable by facts then become acquainted with the real facts about health care and how bad it is in the US.  But also how much better it could be if we could learn from other developed nations and finally implement meaningful change in the way we do health care business.  For the fact seekers, please go to View source at utahcares.health and learn how we at Utah Cares propose to make a difference in the lives of Utah patients and their families.  While you are perusing our website, make a donation to the campaign to put the Utah Cares Act on the ballot.

Many thanks.

Dr. Joseph Q. Jarvis is a public health physician, chair of the Utah Cares Political Issue Committee and author of several books, including The Purple World: Healing the Harm in American Health Care and What the Single Eye Sees: Faith, Hope, Charity, and the Pursuit of Discipleship.

The care of the sick and injured is valued by every religion, belief system, or ethical standard that I know of.  This appears to be a universally human trait, perhaps inborn, that we accept as a standard for our individual and group behavior that our fellow human beings, when unwell, deserve our time and attention; we should care about members of our species.  In this essay, I am going to point out the call to care as I see it articulated in the writings which are sacred to members of my religious group, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  I do that for several reasons.  First, these are the scriptures and teachings that I know best and can therefore more authoritatively represent to my readers.  Second, I am leading the effort to organize a campaign to universalize the care of the sick and injured in Utah, where my church remains an important part of the social fabric and wish to motivate my fellow Latter-day Saints to join in this effort.  Third, I would like to grow the movement for universalizing healthcare beyond Utah into the entire Intermountain West, including into Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Nevada, and Arizona, where substantial populations of Latter-day Saints live. These states are the home of many patients who find their way to Salt Lake City for tertiary or higher level care so reforming health systems throughout this region will have a major positive impact on healthcare in Utah.  And finally, Latter-day Saints embrace the Bible as scripture and of course share that with all people in the broader Judeo-Christian tradition.  Thus, many of the LDS teachings about the need to care for all of our brothers and sisters in the family of God will be recognizable to other Bible reading people.

 By focusing my essay on LDS teachings specifically and Judeo-Christian principles generally I do not at all cast aspersions on the teachings of other religions and belief systems, nor wish to denigrate adherents of all other ethical patterns.  My message is that we all should be working towards systems of health care that make better, simpler care financed fairly for all the norm wherever we live and whatever we believe, because that is a best practice for individual and group living. 

As its name clearly states, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints identifies Jesus of Nazareth as the central figure of its teachings and the source of its authority.  He is, for me and my fellow LDS believers, the pre-eminent Person (or Son of Man) of human history, the Example for how to live a blessed life, the master Teacher, the Creator of the earth where we find ourselves in this life, and the Hope for meaningful life beyond our present existence.  Two thousand years ago He announced the establishment of His Kingdom on earth and produced evidence that He was the Messiah that the House of Israel had been taught to anticipate by performing remarkable acts of healing, including raising the dead, and ultimately rising Himself from death.  Written into the record of His life and ministry (now known as the Gospels in the New Testament) is evidence that in fact He did heal the sick and injured.  Apparently His opponents essentially acknowledged that He performed these miracles by making the claim that He did so not with God’s power, but with the power of the Devil.  These perverse claims were supposed to be embarrassing to Him, and cause Him to shun the limelight, but He and HIs friends simply reiterated the opposing criticism of His miracles and asked the people at large to judge for themselves whether His miracles were good (came from God) or evil (came from satanic sources).  He became widely known for His healing power.  People came from all over Galilee, Judea, and neighboring areas to ask Him for healing and He gave freely of this power.  Right up to the last hours of His life He healed, including restoring the ear of a soldier who came to arrest Him before His crucifixion.  Jesus, as a resurrected Being, appears in the Book of Mormon where He likewise invites all with physical ailments to come to Him and be healed. Latter-day Saints (and other Christians) must, I think, acknowledge that Jesus cares about health care.  That being the case, we should care about it, too, and be sure to organize society so that healing is offered to all.

To underscore this point, consider what Matthew records as the final public teaching that Jesus made.  This teaching, like many of his precepts, came in the form of a parable, this time about dividing sheep from goats (Matthew 25:31-46). Unlike most of His parables, which are directed to individual listeners, this teaching addresses the behavior of nations, which the Son of Man shall gather before himself after He comes in His glory, in order to separate them (the nations) into those on his right hand (the sheep) and those on His left (the goats).  To those on His right He offers an inheritance in HIs kingdom, because they cared for the hungry, thirsty, estranged, unclothed, imprisoned, and SICK.  When asked by the right hand nations how they had managed to earn this blessing, the Son of Man said: “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” On the left hand there was no blessing, only a curse with an order to ‘depart into everlasting fire’ because of failure to care for those in need.  The final summary statement avers that the goat nations, on the left hand, shall go away into everlasting punishment but the sheep or right hand nations into life eternal.  So, not just on the individual level, but the group, even national level, if we believe in Jesus of Nazareth we should care about arranging for health care even for the least members of our society.

These teachings about the societal need to care for all were not new to the Jewish nation.  Six hundred years before Jesus walked the streets of Jerusalem, two prophets, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, who were eyewitnesses to the demise of the kingdom of Judah at the hand of the Babylonian nation, asserted that a lack of care for the sick and injured led to the societal weakness which made conquest inevitable.  

The first of these prophets, Jeremiah, lived and prophesied for 40 years in Jerusalem, relentless in his ministry despite imprisonment and persecution.  He said: “The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved. For the hurt of the daughter of my people I am hurt; I am black; astonishment hath taken hold on me.  Is there no balm in Gilead; is there no physician there? Why then is not the health of the daughter of my people recovered?” (Jeremiah 8:20-22).

Jeremiah knew, as did all of his listeners, that there was a plant in the desert regions around and near the Dead Sea including the area known as Gilead, from which a medicinal balm could be extracted.  He is, therefore, asking rhetorically about the whether the balm was available.  He knew it was obtainable and he also knew that the governing elites in Jerusalem were making no effort to find a way to use it and other means to care for the sick in the kingdom of Judah.  

To emphasize this point, he sarcastically asks whether physicians were not available. Everyone knew that physicians were present, they just weren’t being made available to treat all of the sick.  The result was the painful realization that failing to properly care for the sick and injured amongst the population (or, as Jeremiah states it, the daughter of my people) actually caused hurt and anguish to all through the downfall of a weakened society.  In essence he says that the people of Judah have hurt themselves and in the end caused their own demise because they did not look to the needs of the sick and injured.

Ezekiel, a generation younger than Jeremiah, was not in Jerusalem when the final battle ended with the razing of the temple of Solomon and the burning of the city.  He had been taken prisoner to Babylon during an earlier of siege of Jerusalem by the King Nebuchadnezzar.  In Babylon he received his call to prophesy to the captured nation of Judah.  Among the themes he developed as the spokesperson of God was the following:  “Woe be to the shepherds of Israel that do feed themselves! Should not the shepherds feed the flocks? Ye eat the fat, and ye clothe you with the wool, ye kill them that are fed: but ye feed not the flock.  The diseased have ye not strengthened, neither have ye healed that with was sick, neither have ye bound up that with was broken, neither have ye brought again that which was driven away, neither have ye sought that which was lost; but with force and cruelty have ye ruled them.” (Ezekiel 34:2-4). Here again a prophet is teaching that society is only as strong as how it treats its weakest members.  A social structure which does not heal the sick and injured, but instead preys upon those in greatest need in order to enrich the elite in society is ripe for destruction because it is weakened from the inside out.  

Modern day America needs to relearn these prophetic lessons.  The elite in our country are feasting on the illnesses and injuries of our fellow citizens.  The care of the sick has become a business opportunity.  There is a balm of Gilead in America, and there are physicians available, but we are failing to deploy them to help those who need care.  In the blind pursuit of profit, health insurance is sold that provides no benefit.  Medications are manufactured for pennies and sold for hundreds or thousands of dollars and thus priced out of reach of people who die for lack of treatment.  Elaborate, expansive, elegant health facilities are erected in urban centers where wealthy people congregate, while vast areas of rural America have no hospital, clinic, or urgent care facility.  The obvious harshness of the American health care business model has been angering American patients and their families for several decades now.  That anger is playing out in our politics as people are voting for those who best personify vitriol without any reference to actually governing.  As a consequence, we have a hollowed out nation no longer strong enough to do its own business at home, and certainly vulnerable, as was Jerusalem in the day of Jeremiah and Ezekiel, to attack from without.  This is what Jesus meant when He condemned the nations on His left hand to fiery destruction.  

During my tenure as a bishop of an LDS ward in Salt Lake City a few years ago, I was taught that the welfare funds of the church were to be used carefully and only for housing, clothing, food, health care, and other essentials.  Among those few needed basics for which I used church welfare funds, not surprisingly the price for health care was particularly onerous.  But for LDS bishops in other developed nations, there never are health care costs to be paid.  Only in the United States of America, among wealthy nations, will patients be unable to pay for needed health care and either die for the lack of treatment or go bankrupt in an effort to live. Thus, alone among the wealthy nations of the world, we Americans find ourselves on the left hand of God, among the goats.  Like Jerusalem 600 years before Christ, we are ripe for destruction, because we have weakened ourselves from the inside through the force and harshness of our for profit healthcare business practices.  

If we do not change how we handle health care, the most likely scenario leading to our national destruction will be an economic implosion.  Health care costs consume a growing portion of our gross domestic product, now approaching 20% of all expenditures in America.  When the Soviet economy was skewed by defense spending at 20% of their GDP in the late 1980s, the wheels came off their economy and they plummeted from first world status into second class standing, where they remain today.  Though the American economy is far larger now than the Soviet economy was then, there is no guard rail that will prevent our fall into second class status as a nation if we don’t amend our health care ways and stop the greed which is harshly ignoring our patients.  

Health system reform is in our national interest.  With the prophets of old I ask, is there no balm in Gilead? Can we not provide physician care for everyone who is sick and injured, even the least of these? Why weaken our nation by the force and harshness of for profit healthcare when doing so places us on the left hand of God?

Please visit the website of the Utah Cares Political Issue Committee to discover what needs to be done and how we can do it.  View source at utahcares.health

Dr. Joseph Q. Jarvis is a public health physician, chair of the Utah Cares Political Issue Committee and author of several books, including The Purple World: Healing the Harm in American Health Care and What the Single Eye Sees: Faith, Hope, Charity, and the Pursuit of Discipleship.

Luke Savage of truthdig.com recently published an article saying what I have been saying for years: there is not a dime’s worth of difference between Ds and Rs when it comes to what they DO about healthcare policy. If you find that hard to believe (that I have been saying for years what Mr. Savage is now finally publishing) please check out page 145 of my first book The Purple World: Healing the Harm in American Health Care (you can purchase a copy of my book here: ebook; audible), which I published in 2018.

To be sure, there is a big difference between what Rs are saying about health care and what Ds SAY.  Many of my friends who are dyed-in-the-wool bleed blue democrats are incensed when I insist that their party does nothing different about health care than does the other party, and they point to the rhetoric from elected Ds.  But rhetoric does not get the job done.  

Here is what Luke Savage is saying now (The Democratic Healthcare Hoa):

“Democratic elites have — for going on two decades — relied on a rotating arsenal of talking points designed to preclude all except the most minor changes in healthcare policy. In their bid to muddy the waters as much as possible, liberal opponents of Medicare for All have sought to quietly redefine the phrase “universal healthcare” such that it means universal insurance coverage through a patchwork of different programs rather than a single program, free at the point of use and available to all. Instead of talking about “free healthcare, which is both the right moral horizon and straightforward to explain, liberal opponents of Medicare for All make incessant use of words like “affordability” and “access.” Rhetorically speaking, this evokes a vague spirit of reform while enabling elite Democrats and their auxiliaries to avoid making clear commitments of any kind. And it goes without saying that making something “affordable and accessible” is not the same as making it universal and free. Tying it all together, we have the transparently false insinuation that there is some kind of good-faith policy debate at play here, i.e., every Democrat shares the same ultimate goal but some respectfully disagree about how it can be best achieved. This final point is particularly important because it speaks to what the real nature of America’s healthcare debate has always actually been: a political struggle pitting the basic needs of millions of Americans against the narrow interests of an immensely lucrative industry whose profits depend on the status quo. The former group might be more numerous, but its democratic weight pales in comparison to what the healthcare industry has in its corner.”

As I have stated in a previous Substack essay, American politics is essentially a fight about health care, and will continue to be such until we get health care right, or our nation fails economically due to the skewed GDP spending imposed by the greedy medical industrial complex upon all of the rest of us (American politics is a fight over health care)

And that fight is raging within the Democratic Party, sometimes within the soul of individual Ds. For instance, during his tenure as an Illinois State Senator, Barack Obama held a press conference at the national offices of Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP), the premier single payer advocacy group for the past 40 years, extolling the virtues of single payer health system reform and calling upon the nation to step up to the plate and do the right thing for America’s patients—pass single payer health care.  Just a few years later, however, after having won the presidency on a platform of ‘affordable’ health care, but before he was sworn in, Mr. Obama made a deal with the health insurance industry which gave the store away (please look up the Frontline special report about this event entitled Obama’s Deal).  

Why the about face by Obama?  Very simple—he needed the money of the medical industrial complex to run for president.  So he took that cash and, against what he had himself declared to be the best policy in health care, gave up on single payer reform and instead created the mess that is known as the affordable care act, or ObamaCare. Only one thing was accomplished by the ACA-enriching the medical industrial complex and its shareholders.  During the decade from when Mr. Biden stood behind Pres. Obama while he signed the ACA into law and when Mr. Biden himself took the oath of office of POTUS, stock values for health insurers increased 1000%.  

Mr. Savage agrees with me, saying: “As David Sirota has noted, politicians like Hakeem Jeffries can rake in hundreds of thousands (and sometimes more) in campaign contributions from healthcare PACs in a single election cycle. Health insurance companies are also major advertisers, which is among the main reasons you’ll rarely find support for Medicare for All anywhere on cable news”. Apparently the medical industrial complex can buy D votes as readily as it can by R votes, and influence left leaning mainstream media as easily as right leaning mainstream media.  Fake news, indeed.

Here is Mr. Savage’s conclusion:  

“In any case, I’m not sure any single issue better illustrates the moral cynicism and rank hypocrisy of the people leading the Democratic Party. Ahead of every election cycle, they are content to make the rounds on TV and rattle off the same dishonest talking points while fully cognizant of the fact they are actually standing in the way of reform. Jeffries, who inherited the conch from Nancy Pelosi, will eventually hand it off to a successor who will dutifully court all of the same donors and say all of the same things — as will the likes of Kamala Harris and Gavin Newsom come 2028.

The GOP is widely understood to be a party more radical and extreme than its Canadian or European equivalents. Less well understood, by liberal Americans especially, is the fact that its would be center-left opponent has been a functionally center-right formation since the 1980s: “progressive” in an aesthetic sense, perhaps, but small-c conservative when it comes to most things that matter.”

Personally, I don’t believe that we Americans will ever get the health care we deserve from Congress or any legislative body.  Those institutions, though supposed to be doing the people’s business, are bought and paid for by corporate health interests.  Our collective hope must be in the possibility of succeeding with a ballot initiative.  To be sure there has never been a successful single payer ballot measure, though approximately 2 dozen of these measures have been launched.  Generally, the proponents of single payer ballot measures find themselves outspent 10:1 during the campaign with the opposition sowing doubt and confusion about what single payer health care is and will do.  But as slim as that hope is, it is much more likely that a ballot measure will pass than that a legislature in the United States of America will get a single payer bill past the immense lobbying power of the medical industrial complex.  

So, during the current election year, what should we do?  First, do not automatically vote by party.  Party first voting has created the nightmare we now are living in.  Second, consider dumping incumbents, no matter which party they belong to.  Incumbents have already had a chance to help us, to serve the public, to get health policy right, and they have failed. Third, don’t put all your muscle and effort into candidate elections.  Save a significant portion of what you can donate and do for ballot measures.  If your state does not have ballot initiatives, or if it does and there is no single payer ballot initiative proposed, please find an alternative state where single payer legislation is being pursued by ballot initiative AND DONATE TO THAT CAMPAIGN. 

In all humility, allow me to encourage your patronage of the Utah Cares Political Issue Committee.  We have drafted the necessary single payer legislation for the Beehive State (read it at View source at utahcares.health).  We have already studied the economics of single payer health care in Utah (all three studies are also on View source at utahcares.health).  The health policy choices leading to our drafted legislation are discussed at length in two books I have written, which you can also link to on the website (View source at utahcares.health).  And we have produced a feature length documentary which outlines the problems with health care in the US and points to the single payer solution, entitled Healing US.  You can find a link to that film on that same website:  View source at utahcares.health.  Watch it and then organize a community meeting for your neighbors to watch and invite me to come speak to the group.  

The Utah Cares PIC has done all that work to further the cause of single payer reform.  We hope we have pioneered a pathway that others can use.  But further progress here will require the assistance of many from across the nation.  We plan to have the Utah Cares Act on the ballot in 2028, but we will need your donated funds to make that happen.  We would be very grateful if you could go to the website: View source at utahcares.health and make whatever size donation is possible for you.

Many thanks..

Dr. Joseph Q. Jarvis is a public health physician, chair of the Utah Cares Political Issue Committee and author of several books, including The Purple World: Healing the Harm in American Health Care and What the Single Eye Sees: Faith, Hope, Charity, and the Pursuit of Discipleship.

The house pictured here was where I lived with my family in Reno, NV from 1986 to 1990.  Our fourth child, a daughter, was born in Reno and came home from the birth hospital to this house.  My wife was pregnant with that daughter when we moved to Nevada so that I could begin work as the State Health Officer for the Silver State.  As the newly appointed lead public health official in the state, I was invited to meet with individuals and groups with professional health interests. One such meeting was with the pediatric association in Northern Nevada, who gathered for a social evening prior to the birth of our daughter and invited me and my wife to attend.  During the gathering one of the pediatricians, noticing that my wife was heavy with child, told me that if problems developed in the pregnancy I should return to Utah (where I had lived and trained in public health) for the delivery.  He insisted that neonatal care in Reno was awful and that I would do better for my wife and child by being elsewhere.  That was, of course, a startling statement. 

 I had already discovered that Nevada at that time had the very sour distinction of being the state with the highest per day hospital costs in the US.  This was despite the fact that very few of the very expensive hospital services that I had known in Utah had become well developed in Nevada.  There was no trauma system, for instance. No Burn unit.  Open heart surgery was not common.  Neonatal intensive care was only well organized at one Las Vegas hospital.  Organ transplant services were not available in Nevada.  And yet hospital costs were higher than anywhere else in the US.  It was puzzling to me then.

I did confirm that neonatal care in Reno was substandard.  The Nevada Health Division, where I worked, did pay for the care of sick newborns using federal Title V funds and therefore had data about newborn outcomes throughout the state.  It was simply true that mortality rates in the Reno hospitals for sick newborns were twice as high as similar rates in Las Vegas.  

The fact is that poor quality care costs more. When you don’t provide optimal care for the sick and injured, then ultimately the care that is provided will be more expensive, because the patients will be sicker and die unnecessarily more often.  

This was one of the signal facts about health care that I learned forty years ago while serving as the State Health Officer in Nevada.  I have written about all the lessons that I learned as the Nevada State Health Officer in my book The Purple World: Healing the Harm in American Health Care.  You can find a link to my book on the website View source at utahcares.health

Health care in the US is vastly more expensive than anywhere else on the planet, both because the quality is poor to mediocre and because the financing is incredibly inefficient.  We Americans can do something about this.  We can choose to elect people who promise to radically reform our health care system rather than incrementally dabble at its edges.  And we can write our desires for better, simpler health care financed fairly for all into law with ballot initiatives.  We at Utah Cares have drafted the Utah Cares Act with exactly that in mind.  Read the Act at View source at utahcares.health

It is absolutely the case, however, that nothing will change in American health care without your help.  The campaign to reform health care is going against the single largest lobby in the history of the United States—the medical industrial complex.  They control one-fifth of the gross domestic product with profit margins in excess of 20%.  They can and do spend heavily to prevent change in the health care system.  You must engage and donate what you can to make it possible for us to reform health care.

Please help us with this campaign.  Make your donation at View source at utahcares.health

Dr. Joseph Q. Jarvis is a public health physician, chair of the Utah Cares Political Issue Committee and author of several books, including The Purple World: Healing the Harm in American Health Care and What the Single Eye Sees: Faith, Hope, Charity, and the Pursuit of Discipleship.

I recently returned from a vacation trip to Europe during which I interviewed several people about their health care experiences.  None of them had ever heard of bankruptcy due to health care costs.  No one in Europe has ever heard of anyone going without urgently needed care because they could not afford it.  In some countries there are deductibles, but no deductible is beyond the financial capacity of the average working citizen.  Other American health insurance gimmicks simply do not exist, such as limited provider panels, recission, surprise bills, or prior authorization.  Beyond this, European healthcare is measurably better, with better outcomes and longer lives.  Fashioning health policy around what is best for patients means better care and more simple health care financing—better, simpler care.  And that leads to much less health care cost.  Even the most expensive European health care system (Switzerland) costs 40% less than the cost of American health care.

Just as I returned home this past week, a large extended family I know (2 grandparents, 5 children with in-law spouses, and 22 grandchildren) gathered for a family reunion in the Wasatch mountains for 7 days.  Just at the start of that week, one of the grandchildren suffered a displaced fracture of the radius (an arm bone) and a crack in the neighboring ulna. (See x-ray below). This grandchild and his siblings and parents are 2000 miles away from their home while on this family vacation, and therefore a similar distance away from where they purchase health insurance.  While he was allowed to see an emergency room doctor for his injury with the insurance paying at least something, the family was informed that a visit to an orthopedic doctor away from home would not be covered.  The ER doctor could not reduce the fracture himself and so recommended that he be evaluated by an orthopedic doctor.  There is a possibility that an orthopedic surgeon could non-operatively reduce the fracture, set it well, cast it, and allow this family to continue their vacation without surgery.  But the rules of insurance are such that this family is not allowed that option unless they are willing to risk paying for any surgery that might be required because it would be “out of network”.

This issue is not merely a matter of convenience for the family.  Receiving definitive care for an injury at the time and place the injury occurs is an essential part of patient care.  The health care system should serve the needs of the patient, first and foremost.  The needs of the health insurance company should never be a consideration, much less the driving force of health care decisions.  When anything displaces the needs of patients from first consideration, then the health system fails.  It becomes more complicated, more expensive, and the quality of care suffers.  Patients don’t thrive, their lives are shortened, and costs skyrocket.  This is the essential difference between European and American health care. In Europe the needs of the patients come first.  Not so in the United States, where profits matter more.

Which way of doing health care business do you prefer?  Profiteering or patient care?

Learn more about this at View source at utahcares.health where you can also donate to the cause of reforming American health care.  Don’t wait until your grandchild can’t get the care needed because an insurance company refuses to pay for urgent care.  Act now.  DONATE what you can.  We must all join in this cause in order to succeed.

Many thanks.

Dr. Joseph Q. Jarvis is a public health physician, chair of the Utah Cares Political Issue Committee and author of several books, including The Purple World: Healing the Harm in American Health Care and What the Single Eye Sees: Faith, Hope, Charity, and the Pursuit of Discipleship.

Switzerland has perennially been in the top five wealthiest nations measured by per capita GDP. It’s a country with a long history of religious freedom and the rule of law, not monarchy. Famously and stubbornly independent and neutral, the Swiss believe in themselves and their national will to do everything well. Switzerland is a country also blessed with natural beauty as the accompanying photos attest.

I have good friends who live in Switzerland. They attest to something else that the Swiss do well. In Switzerland the care of the sick and injured is a priority. One of my friends recently fell and broke bones in her elbow and knee. She received urgent world class care including surgery for the elbow injury. She continues on physical therapy to restore joint mobility.

Routine care is also optimal in Switzerland. Primary care appointments are available within reasonable time frames. Prescriptions are readily filled. Referrals to specialists are easily accomplished. And this level of care is universal.

In the United States it is common to disparage health reform efforts striving to include everyone (I.e., make health care universally available) as socialist or communist and inherently poor in quality. Universal care, so these critics say, leads to long wait times, shortages in services, and a failure to innovate. The Swiss experience with universal care proves that is emphatically not true.

Health care in Switzerland is more expensive than anywhere else in the world—except the United States. We spend more on healthcare by far than do the Swiss ($15,000/person in US vs. $9,000/person in Switzerland) but we are the people waiting for care, dying because we can’t get needed care, and suffering family financial disaster because of the cost of care. Universal care is not socialism; it is the sensible policy choice when the societal objective is to support the individual pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness through the promotion of the general welfare.

Learn more about how to organize universal care at View source at utahcares.health and DONATE to the campaign to change how America does health care business.

Dr. Joseph Q. Jarvis is a public health physician, chair of the Utah Cares Political Issue Committee and author of several books, including The Purple World: Healing the Harm in American Health Care and What the Single Eye Sees: Faith, Hope, Charity, and the Pursuit of Discipleship.