Initially insurance allowed people to subsidize themselves privately. Then the world changed and the medical industry adapted to that subsidization.
Then because of insurance, insurance was getting build 1000 dollars for a 100 dollar procedure. Washing a cut, and putting in a few stitches. Or taking an Xray was costing 500 dolars instead of the 18 dollars it costs in the Caribbean for example in a small and economically isolated western economy.
This gets dramatically worse the more upwards you go in cost/procedure/stay. So you end up hospitals billing millions for 40,000s worth of work or 80,000 for 15,000 work.
Most of this is due to insurance. A lot of procedures can get done cheaply, out of pocket, without insurance. I use to grab a 5 pak of zythromax and move on with life for a 40$ doctors visit and a 20$ proscription. But the bigger the procedure... start looking at knee replacements or something else absolutely neccissary... and you start to get problems.
Also in our economy insurance companies were cutting costs by abusing legislative practices and discriminating against people for what procedures they would allow etc...
This just barely scratches the surface, doesn't go into liability, and what your fucking republican pals did about that to make it 100x worse (my mom works in this field in know this shit in depth).
Or talk about how fucked poor people are and how jaded they are that they may have to spend their welfare on antibiotics. It's pretty tough for some people in this country. Though America is fucking awesome for opportunity. But people are fucked up.
Anyway. That's why Obama care happened, and in theory it could have fucking worked, but then you have fucking retarded states being dumb about medicaid/medicare and dumb about the markets and, and dumb about opening up insurance to cover the same shit nationally because some asshole QQ's about what some other asshole can or can't do with their body (let me tell you this affects way more than just "trans people"). Like fuck a girl who needs a hystorectomy for cancer needed permision from their husband not so long ago by state law here... and insurance could deny it.
Crap like that.
Anyway.
The free market economy is out of wack medicine wise and partly because of insurance, not insurance alone though, like insurance + liability + legal law loopholes + pharma + the demographics of where money is... not in rural america, unless some parts, and etc.... But this could be fixed one of two ways. But it won't fix itself because the doctors won't take patients even if it would be economically viable, because they have plenty of big fish who don't have problems with healthcare.
Take it or leave it, it's so much more complex than my laypersons explanation. But we have to do something about the situation and complete deregulation is not a good short term answer unless we can change how the economy works.
Long term, we do need to deregulate enough to remove as much of the legal and financial middleman out of the equation. Doctors and nurses etc can have their wages slowly equalize as the economy adjusts. But it's way to far off for the free market to make any corrections because of the way things have been working.
Anyway, I hope that doesn't come off as sounding like I'm talking down... I just don't know how to explain it better than that. It's fine if you think I'm 100% wrong.
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