[dzonga]

I think the article is looking at the wrong abstraction.

private healthcare - e.g if there's a lot of private clinics - people paid cash, then yeah healthcare costs would go down & most of the care was preventive not treatment. competition naturally will force prices down & since individuals payers won't be able to afford massive amounts, the market will adjust it's prices vs having one large payer (gvt) i.e public healthcare or many private large payers(current insurance industry).

right now - the issue isn't private healthcare - but the wrong incentives to bill insurance companies massive amounts of money. then insurance companies countering back - by having large bureaucratic processes to avoid paying those large bills. typical complex systems.

[Grombobulous]

I see a bunch of comments with this same theme but to me it’s splitting hairs.

The term “private healthcare” is mostly referring to the fact that there is no such thing as non-private healthcare for the majority of Americans.

[rootusrootus]

> is no such thing as non-private healthcare for the majority of Americans

We're up to about a third now.

[preg_match]

The current administration is hell-bent on changing that, both by nerfing Medicaid and making it much harder to qualify for. Medicaid is already mega-nerfed, you get de-facto lower quality healthcare on Medicaid.