I buy Gary Stevenson’s diagnosis that the root cause of the rising cost of everything is increasing inequality and industry capture by the wealthy. There are t

I buy Gary Stevenson’s diagnosis that the root cause of the rising cost of everything is increasing inequality and industry capture by the wealthy. There are two sides to this. The first is, hospitals are owned by investors, and have to increase profits. The typical playbook of trying to acquire at least a local monopoly to price-fix is in play everywhere. The other side is: to achieve high profit margins chase wealthy customers and cater to their preferences. Headhunt star staff with increased salaries. Build shiny new hospitals and prioritize private rooms (HIPAA provided a great excuse here). To woo investors turn administrator into a CEO position with commensurate pay. None of this incentivizes providing quality health care to non-wealthy people at a fair price. It incentivizes trying to get rid of lower income patients as quickly as possible to make room for high income or well insured patients who can be billed more. Same as housing, this issue is everywhere in the western world. We can try to tackle it by itself (transparent pricing would probably help a great deal), but the root issue is bigger: the rich are getting what they want on both sides of the equation. They don’t want affordable healthcare.