The chronic lack of price transparency in U.S. healthcare is the single biggest cause of runaway healthcare spending. Medicare for All would preempt the lack o

The chronic lack of price transparency in U.S. healthcare is the single biggest cause of runaway healthcare spending. Medicare for All would preempt the lack of price transparency: participating doctors get what the government says they will receive. Period. They can opt out and only serve non-M4A payees, but that will shrink their customer pool. Healthcare spending would plummet across the board. The U.S. healthcare industry operates outside of the capitalist system. We can either try to make it more market-based, or, acknowledging the high value of life and astronomical bargaining power of medical practitioners in wealthy nations, we can socialize the provision of necessary healthcare. Almost every other developed nation has done this successfully. Engineer: I will charge X for this project because that’s what competitive projects of equal value go for. Gas station owner: I charge $1 for a Hershey’s bar because that’s what the convenience store next door charges for a Hershey’s bar, and my customers can just bail or hop over there if I charge too much. Hospital/Surgeon/Doctor/Pharma exec: Well, it’s complicated. You know there are insurance companies and PBMs, they’re the real villains, what can I do? Look, let me ask you, what’s the value of life? We charge a small portion of that. Do you really want to cut back on something so vital? We save lives, respect our profession. Feel free to go to my competition, they will all tell you the same thing. Stop trying to haggle like we’re spice merchants at the Grand Bazaar. (Of course, thousands of medical practitioners support socialized medicine, the above is simply a generalization used to illustrate my points on price transparency, crony non-capitalism, and bargaining power)