US Healthcare Costs

The insurance companies are not that powerful. Pharmaceutical companies are far more profitable, as are healthcare software, other tech, doctor groups, hospital groups, etc. You may want to look into liability laws and tort reform for other big reasons for why healthcare in the US costs a lot.

The problem in the US is the individuals don’t pay for regular medical care - your insurance does. And that insurance is usually funded by employers. So doctors and hospitals have every incentive to squeeze the insurance companies as much as possible (which pass on those costs to employers).We’d be in a completely different situation if people paid for regular medical care out of pocket and paid for their catastrophic insurance by themselves. There’d be competition between health care provi

US healthcare is expensive because prices aren’t real and complexity is profitable. Hospitals and pharma have monopoly power, insurers add massive administrative drag, and nobody sets hard price limits. ~25–30% is spent on billing and paperwork alone. Hospitals consolidate into regional monopolies. Drug companies charge whatever they want. Insurance act as a middleman for routine care instead of risk protection. Outcomes don’t justify the cost. The system is optimized to extract revenue, not del

The health industry is what's wrong with a captured market and few players. Every party is trying to extract maximum value for minimum input.That leads hospitals to 1000x every treatment price so when insurance companies come to negotiate they can negotiate down to 100x. It causes hospitals to understaff because is cheaper to pay for legal staff to handle malpractice claims than it is to not work your nurses and doctors to death.It causes drug companies consolidate and then charge t

The reason hospitals charge more is (1) they need to recoup the cost of the services they are otherwise providing for free and (2) they have no leverage to negotiate with insurance companies and drug manufacturers. Having a national or privatized healthcare system that covers everyone will greatly help with both of them.

Simple don't let doctors choose patient by insurance plan or negotiate a higher rate. Everyone pays the same. There are first world countries wherein the massive profit potential at every step between patient and care just doesn't exist and they in general have better health outcomes than we do.

If all the money comes from one pocket - the government - the system is incentivized to concentrate on economically optimal treatment. In the US scenario hospitals are financially incentivized to fleece insurance companies for all they can. This is an exaggearation of course, but if a viable treatment can be done with a one doctors visit or two, the US system incentivies for two doctors visits and so on.

Yeah, so I work at a huge health tech company. A lot of the issue is actually private insurance.Currently in the US the largest health insurance provider is actually medicare/medicaid. When a patient with medicare goes to the doctor, the government says "This is what we will pay for that procedure, no exceptions." The hospital has a choice to either accept that rate, or to lose out on the massive medicare market.Private health insurances plans have vastly fewer subscr

The issue in the US is that there is no price regulation for different procedures (other than Medicare), plus the providers (hospital chains) are intertwined* with insurance. The end result is everyone charges as much as they can and the premiums need to be high, even if insurance technically negotiates the rates down from the “sticker” price. Insurance companies are willing to take a small percent of profit because there is so much money being taken from customers.* <a href="https:/

The 5 greedy systems of US healthcare.1. AMA (American Medical Association) artificially controlling the number of medical graduates based on a quota. Every doctor starts of a huge debt, and many don't get to practice. No experienced doctors from other countries can practice here.2. Hospitals (many owned by Private Equity) - Maximize profit / patient. Don't show prices, lots of outrageous billing for basic care like Ibuprofen and bandages. The bills keep on coming for months