Why the American Healthcare System Has
Been Broken for Years

I remember when Nasty Pelosi said they would have to pass the bill before we could know what was in it. They didn't want us to know what was really in the bill. Now we know and it is not good.. Wonder who paid for her hip surgery in Germany?

Government involvement generally is not the solution and leads to higher costs. I've had to contact Medicare twice about bills they paid that were errors. These errors also cost me. The government employees gave me the impression that I shouldn't be bothering them. It is no wonder that medical services can be obtained at a lower price by negotiated cash payments. Insurance and government involvement drive up costs. People obtaining government mandated services without paying, also drive up costs.

Beg pardon, my esteemed medical colleague, but when you used the words “health insurance,” you revealed the fact that you don’t truly understand what’s going on in medicine in America because there has been no health “insurance” for about three decades now and what the health hucksters are selling is PRE-PAID HEALTHCARE which is an impossible dream shell game that came into being only because we physicians allowed it to or as Ayn Rand said “with the sanction of the victim,” or in the case of healthcare, victimS those being doctors AND patients. Luigi Mangione may have murdered Brian Thompson but we physicians provided him with the motivation.

Just like it was in 2020, if you were black or Antifa, you could hurt people, burn cities and in general, display your temper anywhere like insolent children. In 2024 if you wore a palestinian head rag you could take over a campus and beat up Jews. Lizzy is a lying, brain-damaged malcontent like most of the people who voted for her. She should spend her remaining time begging for one of Joe's pardons. As for the healthcare system, somewhere along the line, profits became more important than the health of people, and it permeates throughout insurance companies to Big Pharma to providers to med schools. It's broke, Jim.

Easy. The healthcare industry has owned our politicians for decades and bets whatever deal they want.

Remember when your Doctor worked for himself? He had an office , a nurse ,and paid his own malpractice insurance. Now he is just a highly paid flunky of some consortium that supplies him with the office the nurse, the secretary the whole schmere. He/she comes to work at 8 and goes home at 5 except on his/her days at the golf course. Call your Doctor. Do you get his/her office? Nope you are speaking to an answering service hat tells you if you have an Emergency go to the ER if not see me in 2 weeks or go to urgent care. All your primary does is and give you a physical once a year unless you wait the 2 weeks and they can send you to a "specialist".

OK, not a terrible article, but he misses a key point. The Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) was passed in order to break the U.S. Healthcare system so badly that the American people would clamor for the government to take it over completely. (Understand, the system was already functioning poorly, but some people saw ways to fix it. Obamacare was intended to make that impossible)

There are about TEN healthcare administrators for every ONE healthcare provider today. Why has the cost of all COVERED procedures skyrocketed while the cost of NON-covered procedures has NOT? In the broadest of terms, health insurance has completely removed market forces from healthcare. Nobody shops based on price because "Insurance is paying for it". I had a friend who would pay his 5 dollar copay to go ask the doctor why picking his nose was causing nosebleeds... this is not a joke. Look at lasik costs over the last 30 years. This is what a market-driven economy looks like.

When politicians say healthcare is a human “right” people think it’s free. Everyone wants the best healthcare but wants someone else to pay for it. Not sure how healthcare is a “right” without stealing other people’s labor and money.

Health care is not a "right" - it's a commodity. And the government should have NO involvement with it whatsoever.

Most people think health insurance is a medical payment plan. Insurance is insurance. Same as auto insurance pays for major damage but not oil changes and new tires. I can pay for flu shots and the small stuff. I want insurance to pay for major surgery, cancer treatment, gall bladder surgery and open-heart surgery. It would lower the cost of insurance if it was used correctly, and the government was not involved. It would also contribute to lower costs if health insurance could be used by individuals across state lines.

Yes, #6, and the “check up” or what they define as a check up is a joke and a PHYSICIAN doesn’t even do it. I feel so awful for the elderly who think Medicare’s “yearly physical” is a big deal.

It's also why you see hearing aids, speech to text phones, BP monitors etc. all advertised "at no cost to you." The cost is either covered by the government, i.e. the American taxpayer or insurance payments from those who do not get sick but are effectively scared of getting sick.

As a former insurance agent (property and casualty, not life or health) but am familiar with the good and the bad of modern health care. I could write a ten-page thesis on this if I were inclined, but will spare you that boring epistle. In a sense, we have universal health care now in the US. Medicaid for people with low incomes, Medicare for the over 65s, health insurance through an employer plan and then there are those wealthy enough to pay their healthcare bills themselves. The Hill-Burton Act requires all public hospitals to admit and treat everyone, whether rich or penniless. This is one reasons health care is so exorbitant, but the other is that unpaid bills are put on the back of the taxpayers and insurance companies. I served for several years on the board of our local hospital foundation, and the CEO told me that the uncompensated care cost the hospital some fifty million per year. They have to make up for it somehow or close up. This is a hospital in a city of some 30,000 and 100,000 county. There are also many who come from other nearby counties to take advantage of superior care. A growing problem not confined to our area is the massive number of immigrants, legal or otherwise, who pay nothing. Sorry about the long rant. We have a lot of problems with our healthcare in this country, but all in all it works better than most.