Changing the Public’s Health Story: Reducing Wasteful Medical Care Spending—Introduction to the Special AJPH Section

This much is well known: the United States pays too much for medical care compared with other wealthy nations, lacks universal coverage, and has poorer, inequitable health outcomes than other wealthy nations. The recent events of COVID-19 and the tragic, urgent calls for racial justice have vividly demonstrated the deficiencies resulting from health care inequities and the public health system’s years of neglect. Now, when these problems are apparent to all, there is a unique opportunity to make equitable investments in affordable medical care and in the factors that make a population healthy. Key to doing this is informing stakeholders— including ourselves—of the consequences of our society’s false narrative that medical care is the predominant driver of health.