You might take a look at some things from e.g. this result[1] around what parts of USA healthcare are negotiatiable and which are fixed. The "$1500 for a gauze

You might take a look at some things from e.g. this result[1] around what parts of USA healthcare are negotiatiable and which are fixed. The "$1500 for a gauze bandage" meme makes a little more sense if you view it from the perspective of "we can't charge market price for expensive things like an MRI since Medi___ pays a flat $1.5k/ea, so lets gouge everywhere we can to make up for it". In addition, the business setup of hospitals/providers and lack of a single customer-facing entity/provider that charges you for services makes these even more Kafkaesque. On top of this, my friends who work at (private, non-general) hospitals work a lot and are not paid what someone on HN might expect for what they put in. This isn't even necessarily ownership vs labor, since afaik the hospitals themselves are not usually in the best of places financially. To me, the short version is: can't easily negotiate, information asymmetry, and captured regulators. Imo, this isn't helped that in USA we say "healthcare insurance" but what we mean/want seems to actually be "healthcare subsidy/guarantee". [1] https://www.kff.org/medicare/issue-brief/whats-the-latest-on-medicare-drug-price-negotiations/ https://www.kff.org/medicare/issue-brief/whats-the-latest-on...