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I reside in India and I have also lived in the US, so I can comment on 3. India is going through an interesting phase of aping the "insurance system" of the US

I reside in India and I have also lived in the US, so I can comment on 3. India is going through an interesting phase of aping the "insurance system" of the US over the last 10 years or so (maybe longer, but that's not the main point), but a lot of people are too poor to afford health insurance. Only people who go to the more expensive hospitals use insurance, as a rule of thumb. And guess what? The costs for many procedures have increased 4-5x over this period at those hospitals which do ask for insurance, which still beats inflation handily. On the other hand, the vast majority of people don't have insurance, which means people get to pay actual medical costs for the trivial stuff like cold and fever, and common ailments. These costs generally track inflation. On seeing this, and realizing that except for some really complicated stuff, India's healthcare system is generally quite OK, I have come to the conclusion that the insurance industry in the US is just a complete scam. Insurance is supposed to be something you use in case of a catastrophe, and I don't know how it ended up as such a mandatory thing in the US.

theonemind 6y ago
I think that inelastic demand and relative difficulty of ability to price compare lead to it pretty naturally Once you have an insurance layer in the system. I mean, if you get shot, and the ambulance rushes you off to a hospital, you (literally) can’t haggle and shop around. As for it staying like it is, laws in the US radically favor entrenched monied interests because of lobbying, and we have a huge amount of political propaganda convincing uneducated voters to vote against their own interest to the extent that votes even could do anything.
disabled 6y ago
> The insurance industry in the US is just a complete scam Correct. I came to that conclusion as a chronically ill university student back in the early 2010s. I also had never experienced other health systems before, at that point, but I had graduate student TAs ask me what I thought of the US healthcare system, and I said "it's a scam and a rip-off". The dude who asked me had an appendicitis surgery on student insurance, and he agreed as he paid a lot of money for the procedure.

theonemind 6y ago

I think that inelastic demand and relative difficulty of ability to price compare lead to it pretty naturally Once you have an insurance layer in the system. I mean, if you get shot, and the ambulance rushes you off to a hospital, you (literally) can’t haggle and shop around. As for it staying like it is, laws in the US radically favor entrenched monied interests because of lobbying, and we have a huge amount of political propaganda convincing uneducated voters to vote against their own interest to the extent that votes even could do anything.

disabled 6y ago

> The insurance industry in the US is just a complete scam Correct. I came to that conclusion as a chronically ill university student back in the early 2010s. I also had never experienced other health systems before, at that point, but I had graduate student TAs ask me what I thought of the US healthcare system, and I said "it's a scam and a rip-off". The dude who asked me had an appendicitis surgery on student insurance, and he agreed as he paid a lot of money for the procedure.