[cryoshon]

If by weird you mean terrible and dehumanizing, you're entirely right.

It's designed to rape the most money away from sick people while providing them just enough care to keep them alive and needing more care, and thus spending more money. It's also designed to be extremely expensive even for those who are healthy by artificially inflating the costs of routine stay-well procedures and testing on top of the ridiculous monthly fees.

And you can forget preventative medicine or any cutting edge treatments unless you're flush with cash.

[Shivetya]

the design is handed down by government mostly, because of the bewildering number of laws, regulations, and such, that have wrecked havoc in health care for years. Then to top off whatever mess the Federal government makes each state just has to be enough different that what you bought in one state might not be exactly the same in other; used to be (and might still be) that you could not shop across state lines because of government.

Then once you pass that insurance hurdle that regulation/regulators/insurance companies put up its off to the races with the doctors and facilities who may both not be covered by policies again because of the weird way regulations and such work. What can and cannot be performed by who and where it can and cannot be performed.

The the kicker, using low payouts of medicare and such because the government knows the insurance companies and hospitals will make it up on people who can pay thereby redirecting the ire