On July 30, Medicare and Medicaid will be 50 years old.
While we should celebrate this golden anniversary and be glad that over the last 50 years these programs have expanded, we should also realize that affordable access to health care in the U.S. still lags other developed nations in Europe and Asia. Even with the Affordable Care Act in place, 10 percent of us remain without insurance, and 10 percent more have inadequate insurance, or are underinsured.
Worrisome trends may put us yet farther behind other countries as for-profit insurance companies consolidate into huge monopolies and patented drug prices explode.