[JumpCrisscross]

> Health spending in the us is too tied up with the country’s economy for it to ever be reduced. Same goes for housing

These are massively incomparable. Most householders live in homes they own. Those homes, moreover, are usually a substantial if not dominating fraction of their net worth. And they're leveraged. This produces a broad level of interest in maintaning or raising home prices.

Healthcare is more narrowly owned. It's not as leveraged. And very few housholds have a commanding fraction of their net worth in healthcare assets.

[lovich]

It is however a highly inelastic good and some of the most expensive care happens when the person who ends up paying isn’t in the state of mind to make decisions such as being unconscious for emergency care, or late in life when dealing with dementia and other diseases that rob you of your faculties. It’s primed to be able to extract everything because most people value being alive above everything else.

[JumpCrisscross]

> the person who ends up paying isn’t in the state of mind to make decisions such as being unconscious for emergency care, or late in life when dealing with dementia and other diseases that rob you of your faculties

Most healthcare in America isn't paid for by the patient.

[lovich]

Ultimately, but it’s charged to the patient who then has it paid by whatever mechanism (insurance/medicare/medicaid/family/etc)