I wonder what you think about the necessity of the health insurance industry? Seeing as how apparently it began as a sort of subscription service to keep hospitals afloat when beds were empty... It is a lot to wrap my mind around, but I have the general feeling that insurance drives the prices of health care way up and we would be better if we could all pay out of pocket for most things, but be covered by a true 'risk mitigation' insurance solution that would kick in when indeed we got cancer, or got in a car accident or the like.
Insurance companies are kind of a costco, they buy stuff in bulk , sell it retail, and manage to get a 5% margin.
My humble opinion: the health care system in the US is totally screwed up and nobody wants to recognize that (except those paying maybe, and I am not even sure of that because they are conned into thinking "that we have the greatest healthcare system in the world").
Everybody is trying to pull the blanket their way. It is obscenely too expensive with little results (worse results than Europe and 4x the price). This is pathetic and a total failure.
Go medicare at scale, and for everybody? But the government does not know how to control the costs on medicare either.
Then religious beliefs get in the way: if 75-85% of the cost of insurance is wasted in the last year of your life, you understand why they keep you artificially alive so everybody can milk the system: never ending MRI's, super expensive drugs, etc...Hospitals, doctors, medical devices providers, everybody feeds on the system, and blame the lame insurance companies/costco of the healthcare world.
This is sad because so many people do not have the means to pay for that, few have access to the type of healthcare engineers have access though work.
AND you have not looked into the arcane world of pharmacy bids company. Stick your nose into their billing, you are guaranteed a 20% discount (Oh, sorry we discovered several mistakes). But this is boring stuff for 2020 startups who "want to disrupt the industry".
Now you wonder why the Democrats are pushing TONIGHT last minute negotiations in DC to add another $250B in stimulus money. We'll sign ONLY if you carve out, say $50-100 Billions or additional money for...HOSPITALS!
