Our healthcare system is crashing. Congress must stabilize it.

When a patient is unstable and hemorrhaging, before we do anything else, we have to find a way to stop the bleeding and stabilize the patient. That is always the first step.

I spent more than two decades doing this as a pulmonary and critical care physician. Now, as a member of Congress, I am watching our healthcare system in freefall. Washington keeps responding as though there is time to spare. There is not.

Two forces are combining to push of our already-precarious healthcare system off a cliff. First, the Republican-controlled Congress and White House. Their multibillion-dollar cuts to Medicaid and their refusal to extend the enhanced Affordable Care Act tax credits have pushed more than 8 million people off their healthcare insurance. In Oregon’s 3rd District alone, an estimated 29,466 people could lose coverage. Second, the rapid consolidation of healthcare is placing more hospitals, physician practices, nursing homes, and community clinics under the control of large, profit-driven corporations.

These trends directly aggravate one another.

When Congress cuts Medicaid and chronically underinvests in affordable health coverage, clinicians lose essential revenue sources and are forced to care for more people with fewer resources. Some healthcare providers will close practices permanently, leaving communities without care. Others will be forced to sell to keep their doors open. Increasingly, those buyers are large, profit-driven healthcare corporations that view healthcare delivery as another stream of revenue. As independent providers disappear, local communities lose control over their healthcare, and patients are left navigating systems designed to........

© The Hill