Healthcare’s Unlucky Duckies

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Via Stephanie Mencimer, Christopher Conover at the conservative American Enterprise Institute recently highlighted a well-known fact: in any given year, 1% of the population accounts for a fifth of all healthcare spending and 5% accounts for nearly half of all spending:

We have become so accustomed to health coverage that functions as prepaid healthcare rather than as insurance against unknown risks that this distinction escapes many people (including policymakers). In a perfect world, we would have universal coverage against the risk of landing in the health spending 1 percent. Most people would gladly pay $1,161 to avoid facing bills of $116,000. But not everyone can afford to do so. …[This is] why one Republican presidential candidate observed, a half decade ago, that “Health is about 30 times more difficult than national security.” Perhaps it’s worth having a Republican presidential candidate debate on this issue alone.

Yes, perhaps it is.

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In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

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