4 ms·

Things that seem weird to me: - Why are employment and insurance connected? - Why can't you select an insurance company? - Why are there no standardized 3 leve

Things that seem weird to me: - Why are employment and insurance connected? - Why can't you select an insurance company? - Why are there no standardized 3 levels of insurance with a legal mandate for the coverage to be the same across all insurers (so they cant play games with denies). You can't have an efficient and competitive market if nobody understands what they are buying - Costs are inflated due to legal and administrative fees... - Costs are inflated due to high educational fees... - Why are we effectively subsidizing research and medicine for the rest of the world? - Food and health is a major part of what increases the costs Hope someone fixes it one day

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
nradov 2y ago
Yes, the system is weird. Obviously if we were designing a healthcare system from scratch it wouldn't look anything like what we have today. What everyone needs to understand is that the system was never really designed as a cohesive whole but instead evolved over time under what economists call "path dependence". It's not even really a "system" at all in the sense of a unified entity working towards a common goal, but rather a collection of disconnected entities each pursuing their own interests. In particular tying healthcare access to employment seems crazy but it's mainly a result of wage controls that were imposed during WW2. Fixing this is politically difficult because due to economies of scale it actually gives larger corporations a competitive advantage over their smaller rivals. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK235989/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK235989/