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we're a nation of middlemen
(lemmy.ml)
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this post was submitted on 19 Jan 2026
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Insurance is why it got expensive
Let me state up front I agree with you. A less charitable reading of what I'm about to say would try to make it seem like I'm putting the blame on other things to deflect. I'm not. Insurance companies fucking suck and are among the reasons it's expensive.
Like everything it's more complicated than a single factor. Tying healthcare to jobs is part of it. Boosting the number of people signing up for the military is part of it for both VA insurance and college. The cost of college (with its financial middlemen as well) for doctors is part of it.
Insurance is a huge reason. There are a hundred other little reasons as well, many of them also dealing with financial middlemen, that contribute to the issue. It's a Gordian Knot of idiocy and when it gets sliced it's going to be painful and, once the initial pain is done, necessary in hindsight.
An under-appreciated aspect of the insurance industry is the fact that there is typically a multi-year lag between the collection of premiums and the payout of claims. Insurance companies invest the premiums in the meantime and profit off the returns. This allows them (in some cases) to be profitable even when payouts exceed premiums. As a result, not only are health insurers not troubled by rising costs, they actually benefit from rising costs because the premiums rise at the same time.
I suspect that is not the only reason but it definitely contributes. Insurance companies are like the bacteria growing on a festering wound making it worse. Otherwise medicine and biotech research/operation is not cheap, personalized medicine even more expensive. The R&D is many times carried out by private companies who mostly care for profit. So fixing healthcare requires more than just getting rid of insurance companies (though they should definitely be gone). Alot of goverment support and correct use of taxes is required too. If healthcare remains a profitable business leeches will always try to profit out of it even if it means average healthcare for most, ultra specialized cutting edge tech for rich (assuming insurance companies are gone but goverment does not support healthcare as much as it should).
That's not entirely true. I mean, they're one of the biggest parts of the problem.
I mean look at a new MRI machine at around 3 million. There is a point where such tech didn't even exist.
It is the reason why healthcare is up to three times more expensive in the US compared to countries with universal healthcare.
They also have MRI machines in countries with universal healthcare, so that is a completely moot point.
I completely agree but "got more expensive" is a bit of a loaded phrase given what it costs to put together a hospital.
And I bet the MRI in those other countries cost money too, a cost that they will also wouldn't have incurred a number of decades ago.
Special thanks to the people who made MRI exist! It's a good thing they can each scan tens of thousands of people.