FDA recommends a full clinical trial for uniQure Huntington’s disease drug, further delaying potential approval

  

Delaying but not blocking AMT-130, uniQure’s emerging gene therapy to slow Huntington’s disease progression, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) “strongly recommended” that the company conduct a full-blown, Phase III clinical trial, rather than assess an application for drug approval based on an earlier trial that showed historic efficacy.

 

The news came in a March 2 uniQure press release, relying on official minutes from the company’s January 30 high-priority meeting with the FDA about the AMT-130 program. The drug has been shown to slow the progression of by HD symptoms by as much as 75 percent.

 

As discussed below, this action reflects the more conservative trend of at least parts of the FDA under the Trump administration.

 

Based on the meeting minutes, the FDA has maintained its new decision that data from the earlier AMT-130 Phase I/II trial, using the global Enroll-HD patient database as a comparison, cannot be used as primary evidence for a drug application, the release stated.

 

The company added: “The FDA strongly recommended uniQure conduct a prospective, randomized, double-blind, sham surgery-controlled study. uniQure intends to continue engaging with the FDA regarding Phase III development considerations and plans to request a […] meeting in the second quarter of 2026 to further discuss potential study design approaches.”

 

A prospective, randomized, double-blind study is a standard clinical trial in which neither patients nor researchers know who receives the drug. A sham (pretend) surgery, which uniQure did on a few clinical trial participants early in the Phase I/II study, will now be required as a placebo, which is standard in most clinical trials. Relying on Enroll-HD data had taken the place of the sham surgery, which uniQure had stopped doing for ethical reasons. Injecting AMT-130 into the brain involves a twelve-plus-hour brain operation.

 

uniQure’s plans

 

“While we did not reach alignment on a submission pathway based on the Phase I/II data, we believe the totality and durability of our data warrant continued substantive dialogue” with the FDA regarding “regulatory flexibility,” uniQure CEO Matt Kapusta stated. “We remain committed to engaging with the FDA to determine a clear, scientifically grounded, and efficient path forward for AMT-130. We are deeply grateful for the resilience and support of the Huntington’s disease community and remain committed to standing with patients and their families.”

 

“Regulatory flexibility” refers to FDA programs that, for example, allow potential accelerated drug approval. uniQure had previously pursued that.

 

Based on its studies so far, which include three years of analysis, uniQure plans to share a four-year analysis, “which we expect to complete in the third quarter of 2026,” Daniel Leonard, the company’s director of global patient advocacy, wrote in a letter e-mailed to the HD community. “We believe the extended follow-up will provide additional insight into both the durability and the magnitude of the effects of AMT-130.”

 

Removing bias from the study

 

Last September, uniQure had reported that AMT-130 demonstrated a 75 percent slowing in the progression of HD over a three-year period. However, in crisis under the Trump administration, the FDA backtracked on its word regarding the firm’s plans to submit its application in early 2026, prompting 48,000-plus people to sign two petitions to the agency asking to keep its promise.

 

On February 24, a top uniQure scientist presented an updated analysis of AMT-130 at the 21st Annual HD Therapeutics Conference.

 

David Margolin, M.D., Ph.D., uniQure’s vice president for clinical development, gave the first scientific presentation at the Therapeutics Conference. He addressed the question, raised by the FDA, regarding the use of data from Enroll-HD, instead of a placebo, in the AMT-130 clinical trial.

 

“We relied on an external comparator cohort, which is selected from participants in the Enroll- HD Natural History Study, which has advantageous characteristics as a comparator,” Dr. Margolin explained. However, whereas the AMT-130 clinical trial takes MRI measurements of the brain, including the crucial striatum, Enroll-HD participants do not.

 

To mitigate the “potential bias” from this difference, uniQure used a statistical technique known as “propensity score matching,” Dr. Margolin stated. As he explained, this involves finding in Enroll-HD individuals similar to those in the uniQure trial and including them as controls.

 

The volume of the striatum (which demonstrates the loss of brain tissue in HD) as a factor in the AMT-130 trial “becomes moot,” Dr. Margolin continued. Other patient characteristics from Enroll-HD “can fully substitute” for that measure, such as neuropsychological testing and measurements of a person’s involuntary movements, he said.

 

“This analysis supports the validity of the three-year efficacy results,” Dr. Margolin concluded. uniQure will publish results of the AMT-130 trial in a scientific journal.

 

Dr. David Margolin (above) displaying a slide demonsrating AMT-130's efficacy in slowing HD progression and (below) enjoying down time at the Therapeutics Conference (photos by Gene Veritas, aka Kenneth P. Serbin)

 

 

‘At the precipice’ of effective treatments

 

Held at the Parker hotel in Palm Springs, CA, the HD Therapeutics Conference concluded on February 26. It is sponsored by CHDI Foundation, Inc., the largest private backer of the quest for HD therapies.

 

Like potential remedies in other HD programs, such as Roche’s tominersen, AMT-130 lowers (reduces) the amount of defective huntingtin protein.

 

“We have multiple shots on goal in the huntington-lowering arena, things like uniQure,” CHDI Chief Scientific Officer Robert Pacifici, Ph.D., told me in an interview on February 27. “While it's true that none of them have made it out the other end with a positive ruling in a pivotal Phase III trial, we're at the precipice of the types of signals that will indicate that there is a clinically meaningful benefit by lowering huntingtin.”

 

Such benefit must be confirmed through a Phase III trial or conditional approval by the FDA.

 

This “exciting” development encourages other companies to invest in late-state trials, Dr. Pacifici added, noting that lowering huntingtin hits at the root causes of HD.

 

 

Dr. Pacifici at the conclusion of the Therapeutics Conference (photo by Gene Veritas)

 

A ‘more conservative’ FDA

 

Cristina Sampaio, M.D., Ph.D., CHDI’s chief medical officer, joined the foundation in 2011 after serving on two entities in the European Medicines Agency (EMA), the FDA’s counterpart in Europe.

 

In a February 25 interview, Dr. Sampaio, who advises companies on their clinical trial programs, observed that companies other than uniQure have faced changes in course with the FDA.

 

Under the Trump administration, she said, the FDA become “more conservative,” especially in the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, the unit in charge of evaluating drugs such as AMT-130. News reports have also noted the conservative trend.

 

FDA ‘ping pong’ not healthy

 

At the same time, Dr. Sampaio stated that changes in the FDA’s approval process are “problematic” for uniQure and other firms.

 

“Companies rely on what they discuss with FDA,” Dr. Sampaio said. “This for them is vital. It's how they define their projects, it's how they define how long it will take to the market, it's how they define their budget, how much it will cost.”

 

Changing positions from one day to the next “creates a lot of uncertainty to the market,” she observed. “This ping pong of FDA is not healthy.”

 

As news organizations have reported, changes in leadership at the FDA, firings, and the exit of mid- and high-level managers have created “uncertainty” and “turmoil” at the agency, Dr. Sampaio said.

 

More susceptible to politics

 

Whereas decisions about drugs in Europe tend to be more “democratic,” the FDA is “hierarchical,” making it more susceptible to politics, Dr. Sampaio observed.

 

Even so, she added, outside of normal lobbying, “there was no evidence” until now that political influence was affecting the FDA.

 

“But until these big changes with the Trump administration, the FDA was very respected as an independent body,” Dr. Sampaio asserted.

 

External comparisons are good science

 

Dr. Sampaio noted that the uniQure AMT-130 clinical trial program began in 2019 as an exploratory venture, mainly to test for safety. As time passed and the personnel at the firm changed, the goals for AMT-130 became “more ambitious.”

 

“But this was not pre-planned,” she said. “And this is a weakness. That said, I believe they have been as careful as they can be, given the circumstances, and given the data they have.” The 17 patients about which data have been revealed is also a “small” number, she acknowledged.

 

The decision to use Enroll-HD as a comparison was also first “pushed by the FDA,” Dr. Sampaio noted, albeit under the previous administration.

 

Use of Enroll-HD as an “external comparator” is good science, Dr. Sampaio emphasized, noting that in oncology a similar technique has been used for more than a decade.

 

AMT-130 data moving in the right direction

 

Significantly, all of the AMT-130 data go “in the same direction,” showing improvement in the symptoms, she said. “This is very powerful.”

 

If AMT-130 were granted accelerated approval, it would be conditional, with the drug having to be removed from the market if problems emerged, Dr. Sampaio explained. Accelerated approval would also require ongoing study of the drug for safety and efficacy.

 

Dr. Margolin’s presentation at the therapeutics conference resolved scientific doubt regarding the volume of the striatum, Dr. Sampaio said. “This alleviated the concern that the population in this trial was not representative.”

 

Dr. Sampaio (right) with Dr. Hoa Huu Phuc Nguyen of Ruhr University Bochum, Germany (photo by Gene Veritas)

 

Some think AMT-130 needs more work

 

Blair Leavitt, M.D., a veteran HD researcher and professor of medicine at the University of British Columbia, also weighed in on AMT-130 and the FDA. Dr. Leavitt is the co-founder and co-editor-in-chief of the Journal of Huntington’s Disease.

 

Dr. Leavitt’s lab received funding from uniQure to conduct research.

 

“We tested in our mouse model of Huntington's disease and showed benefits of the uniQure approach in that mouse model,” he explained in a February 26 interview at the Therapeutics Conference. He thinks that the uniQure clinical trial was “designed primarily to show the safety and tolerability of the approach and the agent in individuals with Huntington's disease, and it absolutely did that.”

 

The AMT-130 program has opened “a whole field of gene therapy and gene editing approaches, which is incredibly exciting for our field,” Dr. Leavitt added.

 

However, Dr. Leavitt thinks more work needs to be done on AMT-130. “I would disagree with some people who have suggested [that the work done so far] is sufficient to prove efficacy,” he said, adding that “a proper controlled trial” is ultimately needed. In effect, this was what the FDA has now recommended to uniQure.

 

Regarding the 75 percent slowing of symptoms with AMT-130, Dr. Leavitt observed that “we're talking about a decline in all of the patients, on average, but a less decline. That certainly is positive. That might be the best we can hope for with many of our therapies, but ultimately, it's not a complete reversal of symptoms.”

 

Uncertainty at FDA ‘bad for all’

 

Dr. Leavitt, as a Canadian citizen, declined to comment on the political impact of the Trump administration on the FDA.

 

“But I do believe it is a difficult time for drug development,” he said. “The FDA is really the premier regulator for most of the world, and uncertainty at the FDA leads to uncertainty in drug development, and that's bad for all of us.”

 

Such uncertainty “is the last thing we need at this point, because we are on the precipice of a number of therapies, and I'm sure we're going to have efficacy.”

 

Others firms’ interactions with the FDA

 

Veteran HD researcher Jang-Ho Cha, M.D., Ph.D., the chief science and medical officer of Latus Bio, addressed a question from the audience after his February 24 presentation about the company’s HD program.

 

Ed Wild, M.D., Ph.D.,wanted to know whether Latus had a strategy for engaging with the FDA and its Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research to obtain drug approval. Dr. Wild also asked whether an industry consortium could help “to at least extract some firm guidance?”

 

“Yes, we have a strategy to engage with them,” Dr. Cha responded. Latus hopes to soon submit an Investigational New Drug (IND) application.

 

“At this point, we will wait until we have our IND package to show them everything we’ve got,” Dr. Cha continued. “I’m not sure exactly, if we asked a question from the FDA, we would get an answer that we could rely on exactly at this point. We are watching with a lot of interest other companies who are having interactions with the FDA, because it’s relevant to all of us.”

 

Will the truth conquer all?

 

Dr. Pacifici offered a concluding reflection regarding the FDA.

 

“In terms of the interaction between the companies and the regulators, I guess I'm a bit of an optimist in this regard,” Dr. Pacifici told me. “I truly believe that politics and money and all of the other perverse things that surround us, notwithstanding, that at the end of the day, the truth conquers all.”

 

“I think that these are scientific people,” he said. “I think that they're going to look at the body of data and evidence, and eventually I think they're going to make the very best decision to get things out as quickly and as safely as possible to the patients who so desperately need these treatments.”

 

For additional coverage, visit HDBuzz.

 

Next time: Dr. Pacifici’s overview of the conference and his video interview with me.

uniQure’s AMT-130 at the forefront of 21st Huntington’s Disease Therapeutics Conference

  

AMT-130, the uniQure gene therapy that successfully slowed the progression of Huntington’s disease before being obstructed from approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), stands at the forefront of the leading HD research conference that starts today, February 23, in Palm Springs, CA.

 

The 21st Annual Huntington’s Disease Therapeutics Conference, which I have described as the Super Bowl of HD research, takes place at the Parker hotel. It is sponsored by CHDI Foundation, Inc., the largest private funder of HD research.

 

“In recent years HD drug discovery has become increasingly anchored in strong human genetic and clinical evidence, allowing us to focus on mechanisms most likely to yield disease-modifying benefit,” wrote Robert Pacifici, Ph.D., the CHDI chief scientific officer, in his welcome letter to the conference attendees. “Few developments capture this momentum more clearly than the recent topline results announced by uniQure from the pivotal Phase I/II study of AMT-130 suggesting that lowering [decreasing] mutant huntingtin in people confers a real clinical benefit, an important proof of biological principle.”

 

Dr. Pacific did not refer to the FDA roadblock but asserted that the AMT-130 “findings represent an encouraging milestone for the HD community.”

 

For its clinical trial analysis uniQure has relied on the CHDI-backed Enroll-HD, the global registry of HD-affected individuals and their families. uniQure has presented its data at the therapeutics conferences.

 

Dr. Robert Pacifici, wearing a Team Hope shirt from the Huntington's Disease Society of America, overseeing the 2025 Therapeutics Conference (photo by Gene Veritas, aka Kenneth P. Serbin)

 

AMT-130 talk in the lead-off

 

Dr. Pacifici and the conference planners scheduled a report on AMT-130 as the first presentation at the start of the opening science session on February 24.

 

David Margolin, M.D., Ph.D., uniQure’s vice president for clinical development, will give a talk titled “AMT-130 slows Huntington's disease progression at 3 years: Propensity score weighting mitigates potential bias from striatal volume absence in Enroll-HD.”

 

Because AMT-130 has been administered via a spinal injection that involves 12-plus hours of surgery, uniQure had no placebo group – those not getting an operation –but instead chose to use data from Enroll-HD as a comparison group.

 

After extensive consultations with the FDA in 2024, uniQure had gotten permission from the agency to use the Enroll-HD data. In November 2025, the FDA told uniQure that Enroll-HD data might no longer be “adequate.”

 

The HD community mobilized immediately, garnering 48,000-plus signatures on two petitions delivered to FDA headquarters on January 22.

 

The abstract of Dr. Margolin’s presentation does not reference the FDA but states that the Enroll-HD data about loss of striatal volume (shrinkage in the striatum, located deep in the brain and severely affected in HD) was helpful in the analysis of the clinical trial data. He reasserted the importance of MRI measurements of such brain loss.

 

Awaiting news about the FDA

 

uniQure announced on January 9 that it had scheduled a high-priority meeting with the FDA, which according to regulations had to occur within 30 days. The FDA must produce final minutes of the meeting.

 

As of this writing, uniQure has not reported on the results of the meeting.

 

At the conference, the several hundred scientists, biopharma reps, and advocates like me will anxiously await the latest news on AMT-130.

 

Stay tuned for my reports on the event.

Health care as a human right: considering the Medicare for All plan

  

With as many as 15 million people estimated to lose their medical coverage because of Trump administration policies, America has once again entered a health crossroads.

 

As a Huntington’s disease gene carrier who for many years hid that fact from the very system that was supposed to help me – “an absolutely absurd situation” – I rejoiced when President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act (ACA) guaranteed coverage for those of us with pre-existing conditions.

 

Like many Americans, my family and I have struggled with many other aspects of this supposed “system.”

 

As a three-decade observer of the HD cause, I have chronicled the fight to end genetic discrimination, improve care for the affected, and discover badly needed disease-modifying therapies.

 

As an HD advocate, I embrace health care as a human right.

We need more

 

This view echoes the American tradition of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s "Four Freedoms." Roosevelt, however, lost the opportunity to introduce a public health system along with the Social Security Act of 1935, to avoid stirring up opposition among doctors, as recalled by Yale University political scientist Jacob Hacker, Ph.D., in his contribution to the book The Trillion Dollar Revolution: How the Affordable Care act Transformed Politics, Law, and Health Care in America.

 

Other inspiration for health care as a human right has come from the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights (partly inspired by former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt), President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Medicare and Medicaid Act, Senator Edward M. Kennedy’s legislative push for universal health care, and President Bill Clinton’s attempt to establish universal coverage.

 

The federal Medicare (for seniors) and Medicaid (for low-income people) programs represent actual, partial advances, and the ACA (aka Obamacare) is “arguably the most important health care legislation in U.S. history,” according to The Trillion Dollar Revolution editors Ezekiel Emanuel, M.D., Ph.D., and Abbe Gluck.

 

However, as that book and others point out, we need so much more – for the HD community and for all of society. I support Senator Bernie Sanders’ Medicare for All Act of 2025, co-sponsored by Reps. Pramila Jayapal and Debbie Dingell, as a necessary step to solve the country’s ongoing health care crises. Sanders first introduced this bill in 2013.

 

 

Gene Veritas, aka Kenneth P. Serbin, in a Medicare for All t-shirt (photo by Regina Serbin)

 

All items covered – and no co-pays

 

Health is first. Without it we can do nothing. The COVID-19 pandemic, and now the political dispute over health care subsidies, provide powerful examples of how people can be left without healthcare at critical moments. During the pandemic, millions of people lost their jobs and thus also their insurance coverage.

 

According to the congressional bill, Medicare for All would involve a national health insurance system administered by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). It would cover items and services to diagnose, treat, or rehabilitate a health condition, including hospitalization and prescription drugs, mental health, dental and vision services, long-term care, and reproductive care.

 

Medicare for All would have no co-payments. Private health insurers and employers could only offer supplemental, but not duplicative, benefits. Health insurance exchanges would disappear. The bill provides for implementation of health care provider participation, HHS administration, and payments and costs.

 

All U.S. residents would be included from birth. Those who are 18 or younger or 55 or older, or already enrolled in traditional Medicare, would enroll in the program starting a year after enactment of the bill. Others could also enter the program at that time.

 

The system works for investors, not patients

 

In 2023 Sanders, who lost his bid for the 2016 Democratic Party presidential nomination, published It’s OK to be Angry about Capitalism. In Chapter 5, titled “Ending Greed in the Health Care System,” he analyzes the many drawbacks of U.S. health care and outlines his plan for Medicare for All.

 

Here I feature the highlights of the plan. Sanders’ critique rings true with my and many other families’ frustrations with the health care system and how people think it could improve.

 

Health care in America is a profoundly left-versus-right political question. Ultimately, however, it must transcend politics. We all share the same biology – including the huntingtin gene, which, when it has expanded in people like me, leads to Huntington’s disease. A treatment will work independent of a person’s political outlook.

 

For Sanders, the basic problem is that the U.S. system “works for investors, not patients.” In 2021, during the pandemic, the health care “industry” made over $100 billion in profits, with stock prices soaring and CEOs receiving extremely generous compensation packages. It has been a “true American success story.”

 

However, for ordinary Americans it is a “broken system that must be completely transformed.”

 

America’s great political challenge is to decide whether to continue to focus on profits, or do we create a system where “every man, woman, and child in this country should, in a cost-effective way, be guaranteed quality and equitable health care regardless of their economic status.”

 

A ‘national embarrassment’

 

In the U.S. we suffer from the “national embarrassment of remaining the only major country on earth not to provide health care to all,” Sanders points out.

 

He cites compelling statistics. The U.S. spends $12,530 annually for each individual on health care, a total of $4 trillion, or 20 percent of GDP. The UK spends just $5,268, Canada $5,370, France $5,564, and Germany $6,731. Each guarantees health care to all.

 

Sadly, in terms of health care the U.S. ranks close to the bottom of the major industrialized nations in longevity, accessibility, coverage, equity, and efficiency. “We are getting a terrible return on our huge expenditure on health care,” Sanders observes

 

“The essential problem of our ‘system’ is that it is not really a system,” Sanders asserts. “It is a disjointed, complicated, non-transparent collection of thousands of entities dominated by powerful sources who have made health care a commodity, and who seek to gain huge profits from it.”

 

Sanders underscores that the goal of the “‘system’ is not to cure disease or keep people healthy” but to “make as much money as possible” for the insurance companies. Those companies “have nothing to do with the actual provision of health care.”

 

The six largest insurance companies made over $60 billion in profits in 2021, while the CEOs of just eight prescription drug companies made $350 million in total compensation.

 

 

Senator Bernie Sanders (from the Sanders website)

 

60,000 deaths due to lack of care

 

According to Sanders, more than 60,000 Americans die annually because of lack of health care.

 

The U.S. lacks sufficient number of doctors, nurses, and other health care personnel, and the country has “medical deserts.” Whereas other countries pay for medical and dental studies, in the U.S. students become “overburdened with debt.”

 

“Emergency rooms are providing primary care and non-emergency treatment because people are unable to find a primary care doctor of their own,” Sanders points out.

 

The “enormous amount of time and energy” spent on navigating the “unbelievably complicated insurance system drives many […] into despair” and leaves “health care professionals also demoralized.”

 

Under Medicare for All, “no more arguing with insurance agents” and “complete freedom of choice as to the doctor and hospital you want,” Sanders emphasizes.

 

The current Medicare program needs to expand to include dental care, glasses, and hearing aids, he argues.

 

Half of the country’s 500,000 annual bankruptcies “are connected to unpaid medical bills,” he writes.

 

Other countries’ health successes

 

In the United States, health insurance is typically tied to employment, unlike in other advanced countries that offer universal health coverage. “There are literally hundreds of different plans – each with different degrees of coverage and cost,” he writes.

 

“Americans should not be chained to a job because of health insurance,” he states. “Everyone, regardless of income, should have access to the medical treatment they need, as a human right.”

 

Politicians focus on the cost of health care, but not the biggest cost of all: Americans do not live as long as people in other advanced countries.

 

In Canada, which has a public health system and negotiations with the pharmaceutical industry, drugs cost 90 percent less.

 

Norway’s public health system has made for a greater sense of freedom, happiness, belonging, Sanders explains.

 

In the U.S. the “corporate media blackout with regard to international health care systems” and lies by politicians leave Americans ignorant about their comparative lack of well-being, Sanders notes.

 

A ‘vigorous debate’ on funding needed

 

On his Senate website Sanders has published a six-page document about funding Medicare for All (click here to read more). The plan would generate trillions of dollars.

 

“As the wealthiest country in the world, we have a variety of options available to support a Medicare for All single-payer health care system that guarantees high quality, affordable health care as a right, not a privilege, to every man, woman, and child in this country,” Sanders writes. “In my view, there needs to be vigorous debate as to the best way to finance our Medicare for All legislation.”

 

According to the document, eliminating the administrative costs of private health insurance, which are six time more than the cost of running Medicare, could save $500 billion per year. Negotiating prices with drug companies could save another $113 billion.

 

Employers would pay a 7.5 percent payroll tax instead of paying for employees’ insurance – a savings of $9,000 per year per worker.

 

Instead of paying $5,277 in premiums to private insurance companies, families would pay just $844 a year for Medicare for All.

 

The document proposes ending tax breaks that would become obsolete under Medicare for All. It also advocates for higher taxes on the wealthy, limiting tax deductions, closing loopholes, making the estate tax more progressive, establishing a wealth tax on the top 0.1 percent, and other measures.

 

Wall Street and large, profitable corporations would also pay greater taxes, and a one-time tax on the trillions in offshore profits would be levied. Corporate accounting gimmicks would also be disallowed.

 

Overwhelming support for Sanders’ plan

 

Given the debates over Obamacare and previous initiatives, the political challenge of transitioning to Medicare for All would likely be enormous. The debate would also need to include an informed discussion of the positives and negatives of universal care systems in other countries.

 

Sanders notes “overwhelming support” for Medicare for All in polls.

 

In the words of political scientist Hacker, “the newly intense push for Medicare for All has transformed the character of Washington’s perennial health care debate.”  

 

Dr. Hacker documents the rise in support for Medicare for All both among Democrats and Republicans. Recognizing the political hurdles to this program, he advocates beginning with a “Medicare for More” strategy – expanding the current Medicare program to people younger than 65. This approach could serve as a potential step on the way to a long-term goal of delivering “quality health care to all Americans at a cost our nation can afford.”

 

In Congress, support for the measure has grown significantly. With no co-sponsors in 2013, the bill now has 111 in the House of Representatives and 17 in the Senate.

 

Sanders points out more that than a dozen medical associations support Medicare for All, including National Nurses United, with its 225,000 members the largest nurses’ union in the U.S.

 

The U.S. health care system “is deeply inefficient and unsustainable because it prioritizes short-term financial returns rather than long-term investments in our health,” union president Bonnie Castillo told a hearing of the Senate Budget Committee in 2022. “This leads to a system that is unaffordable for our country and for our patients.”

 

The current system has hundreds of billions in administrative costs, Sanders notes. Medicare for All would eliminate most of these costs, aiding “the business community and our overall economy by ending the costly and uneven system of employer-based health care.” Big companies would also benefit by no longer being at a disadvantage with countries that have universal health coverage.

 

“Scientists will be freed to concentrate on developing breakthrough drugs, rather than tailoring their research so that pharmaceutical firms can maintain record profits,” Sanders adds.

 

In the HD community and beyond, as we ponder the traumas experienced by an inadequate health care system, let us join hands to advocate for Medicare for All.