[smcl]

According to this same user you should be individually negotiating with your healthcare provider (or going to like one center in Oklahoma). You're talking to someone who is probably insulated from the worst of this (i.e. is young and/or well paid and insured and/or hasn't had a major healh scare) and therefore does not see what all the fuss is about.

[lotsofpulp]

I see perfectly well what the fuss is about. I am simply trying to elucidate that eliminating health insurance companies from the chain is not the panacea that many people think it is, which is due to people not being able to afford the services they want/need, and hence being subject to a mechanism of cost sharing not unlike taxes.

In order of descending profit margins in the healthcare chain, you have:

Pharmaceutical companies, medical software companies, medical hardware companies, hospital companies, nursing home companies, doctor companies, individual doctors, nurses/other staff, pharmacists, health insurance companies, and pharmacies.

Somewhere in there is also costs due to liability due to tort laws, probably reflected in liability insurance companies. But let us say you got rid of the health insurance companies, who have medical loss ratios of 80% to 90%. Which means you are still left with quite a bit of the current system's costs.