alt Hacker NewsWhatever ideological team jersey we want it to wear, the root cause is that medical insurance has gone from being insurance used in case of emergency, and gone to being a middleman skimming as much as humanly possible while ghoulishly denying healthcare if it is more profitable to let a human die before they can appeal the payout decision.
The only way out of this is to remove the profit motive sparking this avarice: either nationalize the healthcare, or ban healthcare insurance and regulate hospitals so tightly that they aren't allowed to profit as a business, the executives have capped pay, and the business can't be publicly or privately traded.
The laissez-faire approach to healthcare has completely failed in the US. Given it is the wealthiest country in the world, I cannot think of a more damning result for the health insurance model.
> The laissez-faire approach to healthcare has completely failed in the US.
Why do you think we have a free market approach to healthcare? Why can I only sign-up once per year unless I have a QLE? Why can I contribute a certain amount to an HSA which is triple tax advantaged with an HDHP but I can't with a PPO? If I have an HDHP+HSA why can I also contribute pre-tax dollars to an FSA that is use-it-or-lose-it for dental or vision only but if I have a PPO I can have a limited purpose FSA that can be used for medical, dental, and vision? Why are there contribution limits? Or even more basic, why is healthcare tied to employment?
The reality is we don't have a free market when it comes to healthcare at all, we have a hampered market where over the years we have politically regulated it into the abomination it is today with some of the worst incentives possible. We can certainly have the debate of whether a free market or nationalized healthcare is best, they both have trade-offs, but it's fallacious to assume we have the former and discount it entirely thus leaving either more regulation or nationalization as the only alternatives. More regulation is almost certainly the worst possible option, we've been on that path since WW2.