Member-only story
Private Health Insurance Is A Giant Scam
Last week, a New York Times report showed that the top healthcare companies in America charge wildly different prices for the same basic services. In many cases, it is cheaper to have no insurance at all.
It should not come as a surprise then that Americans spend more on healthcare than the people of any other developed nation on earth. Nearly 18% of our GDP goes towards healthcare costs, more than double the average for OECD countries.
Medical bills are a top cause of personal bankruptcy. More frighteningly, tens of thousands of Americans die each year because they do not have access to basic healthcare. A quarter of U.S. adults say they or a family member put off treatment for a serious medical condition because of the cost.
Despite spending the most money, America stacks up poorly in health outcomes. In the developed world, we have one of the lowest life expectancies, the most preventable deaths, and the highest infant mortality rate.
Meanwhile, the private insurance industry is a massive for-profit middle man standing in between the patient and their doctor. An insurance company is incentivized to raise rates and deny care as often as possible because it boosts the bottom line.
Premiums, co-pays, and deductibles have skyrocketed for every major insurance company over the last two decades. At the same time, the average healthcare CEO earns $15 million per year. Combined, the top insurance companies collect over $20 billion in annual profit.
We have a healthcare crisis in America, but understanding the roots of the problem is not rocket science.
America’s Outlier System
Most major countries adopt a “single-payer” system in which the government is the sole insurer for essential services. Private insurance may exist in these countries, but it is generally limited to supplemental care like cosmetics.
In single-payer nations, no citizen dies from inadequate care or goes bankrupt for using essential services. You are easily enrolled, you pay through your taxes, and your bill after each emergency visit is zero dollars.
