Will millions of Americans lose their health insurance?
The Take
Al Jazeera
4.7 • 748 Ratings
🗓️ 17 November 2025
⏱️ 25 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The United States healthcare system is in crisis. With federal funding cuts and costs set to rise if government subsidies are allowed to expire, millions might not be able to afford health insurance next year. How did healthcare get to be so expensive and complicated in the world’s richest country?
In this episode:
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Dylan Scott (@dylanlscott), Senior Correspondent, Vox
Episode credits:
This episode was produced by Melanie Marich, Noor Wazwaz and Tracie Hunte with Phillip Lanos, Spencer Cline, Diana Ferrero, Farhan Rafid and Fatima Shafiq, Tamara Khandaker, and our host, Malika Billal. It was edited by Kylene Kiang.
The Take production team is Marcos Bartolomé, Sonia Bhagat, Spencer Cline, Sarí el-Khalili, Diana Ferrero, Tracie Hunte, Tamara Khandaker, Kylene Kiang, Phillip Lanos, Chloe K. Li, Melanie Marich, Catherine Nouhan, and Noor Wazwaz. Our editorial interns are Farhan Rafid, and Fatima Shafiq. Our host is Malika Bilal.
Our engagement producers are Adam Abou-Gad and Vienna Maglio. Andrew Greiner is lead of audience engagement.
Our sound designer is Alex Roldan. Our video editors are Hisham Abu Salah and Mohannad al-Melhem. Alexandra Locke is The Take’s executive producer. Ney Alvarez is Al Jazeera’s head of audio.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Al Jazeera Podcasts. |
| 0:09.7 | Today, citizens of the world's richest country are being priced out of health care. |
| 0:18.3 | Millions of Americans who take advantage of the Affordable Care Act could see |
| 0:21.5 | their health insurance costs skyrocket next year. How will cuts to public and private health insurance |
| 0:27.4 | impact Americans? I'm Malika Bilal, and this is The Take. |
| 0:56.0 | Hey, everyone, as you're watching today's show, leave us a comment letting us know what you think about this episode and what stories you want us to tackle next. And if you're listening on a podcast app, leave us a review, telling us where you're listening from and a rating. Five stars would be great. It helps other people discover the show. Thanks. My name is Dylan Scott. I'm a senior correspondent covering |
| 1:02.5 | health care at Vox.com. Oh, Dylan. Welcome to the take. It's good to have you here. So, |
| 1:09.0 | health care costs are in the news with the recent end of the U.S. |
| 1:12.9 | government shutdown, which we will get into. But I want to start with our international audience, |
| 1:18.8 | because the United States is not like other wealthy countries in terms of how people access |
| 1:24.9 | health care. While the norm and many other places is universal health care, |
| 1:30.2 | the U.S. health care system is aggravatingly complicated, to put it lightly. So how do you explain |
| 1:36.4 | it to people outside of the U.S.? Yeah, I do think the most significant difference between |
| 1:41.2 | the U.S. health system and the health system of any other wealthy |
| 1:44.7 | country in the world is that we do not have universal health coverage. |
| 1:51.6 | We have never made a collective decision as a society, as a government to say, we're going to cover |
| 1:58.3 | everybody. And so instead, we've kind of patched together this |
| 2:03.6 | healthcare system that does cover most people, but it doesn't cover everybody. And even the people |
| 2:11.4 | who do have health coverage, you know, it's not always very good coverage. They can still end up |
| 2:15.7 | on the hook for thousands of dollars of medical costs in any given year. |
| 2:19.7 | So the bedrock of the U.S. system is what's called employer-sponsored insurance. |
| 2:24.5 | Basically, people get insurance through their jobs. |
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