[notaustinpowers]

Health insurance payouts are socialized, but the health insurance company and healthcare providers are privatized. The insurance company and the healthcare providers are now incentivized to increase pricing of policies and services, since the cost is shared anyway.

Couple that in with laws that hamper the effectiveness of health insurance (can't negotiate drug pricing, denial of necessary care, absurdly high deductibles) and many quickly see that health insurance really just feels like a scam.

The regulations are in the favor of the insurance providers and major healthcare corporations. There have been decades of erosions to regulations on both the patient and healthcare provider side.

Couple that in with the recent announcement that many nursing and healthcare degrees are no longer considered "professional degrees" and are therefore now further restricting access to these career fields, US healthcare is about to get a lot worse.

[willio58]

Add in the fact that insurance companies are legally allowed to (and would be stupid to not) heavily lobby the politicians that decide how much money they can make. They are allowed to donate essentially an unlimited amount of money to the campaigns of politicians running for office thanks to the Citizens United ruling.

Turns out unlimited money from bad actors flowing into the pockets of those that write the laws isn’t a great system!

[uticus]

Interesting to me that all of your pain points involve legislation and certification, as well as insurance. Is socialistic health care not subject to legislation and certification? Or is it that legislation and certification don't contribute to the pain?

[lantastic]

It is subject to legislation and certification, but it's harder to lobby when you can't privatize the direct costs. Still, scams are common (e.g. inflated medical equipment costs). I guess hustlers gonna hustle in any system.