She came in on the bus. An 84-year-old woman, independent antwenty years, wa her health for d diligent abouts sitting in my waiting room for four and a half hours with a blood pressure of 222 over 104. Her insurer had dropped her long-standing doctor. The next available appointmentwith a covered provider was five months away. She was on $60 a day. She couldn't afford to pay out of pocket. So her blood pressure medication lapsed.

This is preventable. It happens every week. And it is a direct consequence of how the US healthcare system is structured.

In this episode, Dr Cois — Emergency Physician and creator of drcois.com — breaks down why the US spends more on healthcare than any other nation and still ranks last on outcomes, and walks through three serious proposals to fix it: Medicare for All, the Trump Great Healthcare Plan, and the EMBRACE plan from Annals of Internal Medicine.

In this episode:

— Why the US pays $13,500 per person annually — twicepeer nations — for worse outcomes

— Five structural drivers of cost: fragmentation,high prices, fee-for-service, the uninsured, and monopolisation

— Medicare for All: the Lancet evidence, thetrade-offs, and the political barrier

— The Great Healthcare Plan: what the KFF analysissays about what it leaves unanswered

— EMBRACE: a tiered universal coverage model with anindependent governance board — and why it may be the most realistic pathforward

— Three healthcare reform myths busted with evidence:physician pay, VA quality, and the free market track record

— What you should do this week — clinically andpolitically

This is a Tier 1 issue. Pillar 5 of our blueprint,s that accessible. For too many Americans, it doesn't.

Fewer bad days. More good decades.

Companion blog post + full references at drcois.com