All of this is due to a) ACA, b) the whole HMO craze in the 90s, and c) long before that, ERISA, oh and also: lack of pricing transparency, and lack of incentiv

All of this is due to a) ACA, b) the whole HMO craze in the 90s, and c) long before that, ERISA, oh and also: lack of pricing transparency, and lack of incentives to users to check pricing, and so on and on. We don't have a free market in health care unless you have no coverage, then you can actually negotiate prices. What we have is a monster, and the monster we have today is way way worse than the monster we had in the early 90s. Not that it helps to say these things. Most of you are either a) bigtech employees with nice healthcare plans and maybe don't care that much (until you're no longer bigtech), or b) fintech employees (same), or c) too young to remember what 80%/20% plans were like back in the day (or never had a non-$WORK plan) and therefore all too willing to demand and/or accept any purported solution that isn't. I hope it helps to say these things here. Meanwhile we've had a lot of factors pushing up inflation in medical services, so when you add it all up it sucks, but it sucks for all sorts of artificial reasons.