Another poster mentioned this, bur I think it's worth talking about in more detail, because it's at the heart if exactly what's broken about US health care. Ev

Another poster mentioned this, bur I think it's worth talking about in more detail, because it's at the heart if exactly what's broken about US health care. Every US state has laws that prohibit insurance companies from collecting "too much" profit from the premiums they charge their customers. In most states, the limit is given as a percentage of pure profit. So insurers set their premiums based on their expected payout costs plus operating expenses, and usually make premium adjustments on an annual basis. (That's why most US drivers received a bunch of rebates from our auto insurers, early in the COVID pandemic. The sudden unexpected drop in accident rates drastically reduced the insurers payout costs. They were required by law to return the excess.) The intended purpose of these laws was to protect consumers from predatory insurance companies. But in modern practice, with basically zero effective cost controls on medicine, it's created a perverse incentive: Rising healthcare costs are the easiest opportunity for health insurers to increase their absolute profits... All they have to do is sit back and let health care providers keep raising their prices. But: • the costs are passed only indirectly to the consumers who ultimately pay • the market for health care is so terribly distorted • health care demand is highly inelastic So normal market mechanisms (like price signaling) aren't very effective at containing the rise in costs.