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Quality of care would go down under a single payer system?Unlikely.Instead of talking with our delicate emotions, feelings, fear, uncertianties and doubt, lets just look at some numbers, shall we?The U.S. health care system has been rated the worst (by far) among high-income nationsOne might take a cheap shot and say "well, we are already at the bottom on those charts, so is there any room to go down?"You see, the challenge is when people hear that taxes would have to be raised to support a proven system that’s better, they often panic and sometimes go batshit crazy.I call it “I will pay way more for private healthcare than a bargain for all payer rate setting care” syndromeThis syndrome could possibly treated by approaching the solution from a different way:Pay more in taxes? Hell no!Pay less in overall costs to care? You bet!So I would be ecstatic to stop paying for my employer sponsored health insurance and direct those dollars towards taxes to fund care instead. Of course, my employer gets to direct the premiums they pay for me already anyways to the same taxes.So on paper, I would theoretically be paying more “taxes” but from a financial point of view I would be paying a fraction of my current healthcare costs!Now that’s a great deal!As well argued in this answer, we see that most families health care costs would be lower under a NHS like system User-12735120681293897490's answer to Would SB 562 reduce or increase the overall expenses of a typical family in California?Household income in the United States - WikipediaThe U.S. Census Bureau reported in September 2016 that real median household income was $55,775 in 2015Compared to this, the Average Cost Of Health Insurance (2016) for healthy 21 year olds with the cheapest Catastrophic insurance was $$1,999/yrThat cheap Catastrophic insurance comes with a $12000 deductible and high copays.Now not everyone is a healthy 21 year old who can go by with the cheapest Catastrophic insuranceTo level things a bit, a good number to go by is $10,345 per person: U.S. health care spending reaches new peakHere’s the report: http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/35/8/1522It’s important to note:About 5 percent of the population — those most frail or ill — accounts for nearly half the spending in a given year, according to a separate government study. Meanwhile, half the population has little or no health care costs, accounting for 3 percent of spending.As Dan Munro writes in Annual Healthcare Cost For Family Of Four Now At $25,826$10,345 is 19% of that $55,775.So Americans are spending 19% or more of their income behind their healthcare already under the current system.I have spoken with people who went through bankruptcy due to a $20k surprise medical bill for a broken foot.It was not an ER visit - it was an Urgent care visit where they paid $100 as an office visit fee. Had they known the final bill would have been $20k, they would have flown across the border and not only got the surgery done but had a month long vacation at a 5* Hilton at 1/3rd the price.U.S. healthcare is the only business in the U.S. where the patient has no clue what the cost of even an office visit is until 2 months later when they get hit with a thousand dollar surpriseQ&A: Yale’s Zack Cooper on rampant surprise billing and how it might be stoppedSo you walk into the provider’s office, empowered by your excellent employer provided insurance and pay $40 to see the doctor.As you can see everyone is happy up to this point.You are happy that you got all this for $40! Man is that a deal!Until you get a bill from the provider’s office in the mailAfter Surgery, Surprise $117,000 Medical Bill From Doctor He Didn’t KnowBut you are excited because you live in the state the does not support surprise bills!Not so fast!You see, your excellent employer provided insurance does not have to follow what your state says!Stopping Surprise Medical Bills: Federal Action Is NeededSo yup, you have to pay those bills even if you never were told about them!Oh big deal - you just ask your provider what they want to bill in advance!Sounds like a reasonable ask right?Nope!How do I find a general physician in San Diego who is known for helping people?Did I tell you I hate employer provided insurance and would hope these would die in a fireball?Subhobroto Sinha's answer to Why should companies provide health insurance to their employees?Other reasons are:You employer can change networks anytime. So that doctor who you love seeing and knows you well? Out of network the next time your company decides to renew their coverage plansYou are getting paid way less than what you are worth because that “healthcare benefits” makes salary comparison so confusingYou are paying more for your “healthcare benefits” than you would have on an open general market with better coverageThe Culprit Behind High U.S. Health Care PricesIan McCullough's answer to What should be the next step in American healthcare?Now let’s look at some numbers for countries where rates are set by the governmentLet’s look at a comparison:See the “all payer rate setting” in the title of the chart? It means:all payer : everyone in the system, regardless of insured or not …rate setting: … pays the same rateSounds very simple, right?It is!Let the government ensure everyone pays the same reasonable rateTrying to make it work any differently gives rise to the disasters like U.S. Healthcare.The real issue is, at every turn, providers are trying to extract the maximum they can and profit from pain and suffering of their customers for very little measurable benefit: Avarice has overtaken them.For-profit hospitals mark up prices by more than 1,000 percent because there's nothing to stop themU.S. Healthcare providers should be held to the same standards as every other business in America: tell me how much its going to cost and let me, the customer decide if I want to do business with you.The customer in U.S. Healthcare can’t do this and has thus been stripped of all leverage.They don’t know what a procedure will cost.They don’t know if that procedure will cause further damage.They are in pain and suffering and only know they have a healthcare need and need a doctor.This puts the customer in a very fragile situation: leading to astronomical costs for little value.The customer in U.S. Healthcare right now is like a car driver with a blown tire by the freeway in the middle of a desert. They have no options.A tire is not that expensive, and the customer could have put one on themselves, but they are lacking all the right pieces.Then comes a tow truck, asks you how much you have got, takes most of it, makes you sign a contract saying they will bill you more later, puts an ill-fitting tire that not only bursts again sometime later but damages the rest of the car with it.Only, this is not your car: it’s your body.As industry disruptor Michael Critelli points out Michael Critelli's answer to Is it possible for nationalized healthcare to bankrupt a nation?:We do not adequately punish and discourage bad and expensive healthcare, such as the care that follows from a hospital-acquired infection.Avarice has gripped U.S. Healthcare so strongly that the industry has lost all shame and is the only business in America that treats its customers like blank checkbooks, refusing to even tell patients how much an office visit will cost: How do I find a general physician in San Diego who is known for helping people?Buy Here, Pay Here used car dealerships, which are one of the most infamous businesses in America: even they give you atleast an initial written quote before blindsiding you with hidden fees and charges, figuring out ways to take the car back from you.Most U.S. Healthcare providers lack even that decency.Greed starts at the very beginning: the education system for hopeful doctors.These institutions restrict the number of doctors flowing into the system, reducing supply. This allows them to charge sky high tuition fees in the U.S. which the students pay, taking on massive debt because they have a chance to earn much more in the future.The American Medical Association does a good job of artificially constraining the supply of doctors to keep doctor’s salaries highThe intense pressure we see in doctors to profit from their craft comes from 3 fundamental issues:There are very limited institutions for teaching medicine. This reduces the supply of doctors and lets these institutions charge hundreds of thousands of dollars in tuition fees. This adds a lot of cost to the medical industry. Right off the bat all doctors are at a financial disadvantage and in debtBilling for services are so complicated that doctors have long given up on handling billing for their patients. Instead, third party billing companies take a doctor's transcript and transcribe them to bills and claims to insurance companies. This adds a lot of overhead and hence cost. Not to mention, outright fraud: Subhobroto Sinha's answer to Is medical billing compliance a good career?Doctors are under constant fear that a patient will sue them (although this fear is unfounded: Why does one believe that malpractice insurance is the primary reason for US health-care being so expensive?). As a result they over-prescribe tests and medications. This adds a lot of cost to the medical industryI can't even imagine what frame of mind I will be in if I graduated from college with hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt: I would be looking for ways to pay off that debt ASAP!Any reasonable person would be biased in prioritizing paying off their debt: for doctors it's charging patients and seeing as many patients as they can.Seeing as many patients as they can reduces the time a doctor can spend with a patient and this leads to exactly the situation you describe: the doctor does not have the time to take a holistic view of the patient and the patient continues to make the same mistakes that made them fall sick in the first place.So they keep falling sick.In the end, the final client of any industry ends up paying for it.The final client for the medical industry being patients end up paying for all these inefficiencies.

Why Americans are willing to pay taxes for roads, drinking water and other public utilities but completely unwilling to pay taxes for healthcare.Europeans have come together and decided that healthcare is just like roads, drinking water and other public utilities, making any subsequent conversation more logical, less emotion bound and hence tractable.We all need it, having more of it is great, increasing access is actually better for everyone and the country would not likely burn in flames if we all paid for it.Citizens of the U.S. however have a very different philosophy that is misguided by propaganda and fear and that’s breaking the county apartAmericans are affected by massive propaganda that instills a terrible fear of freeloaders who apparently will keep on visiting doctors until they grow tired of visiting doctors if they ever have the ability to do so.We are all fearful of imagining all of the country just walking nonstop on roads and not doing anything else, or drinking water non stop and not doing anything else etc etc - that’s what people are afraid is going to happen to healthcare!This fear reminds me of my childhood fear of bigfoot instilled by my mom so I would not stay out too long in the dark playing.After a few decades of not seeing bigfoot even after actively seeking him out, I have hesitantly concluded that bigfoot hates me and does not want to do anything with me.Just like I found out about BigFoot, it’s likely that people, except possibly, hypochondriacs, just don't think a doctor's office is a cool place to hang out at when you take other places into consideration:They would rather be out doing something more enjoyable like going to the beach, reading a book, watching a movie or drinking themselves crazy at a barThe fear, besides of these freeloaders can also multiple basis.A few:Those who are pro privatization of healthcare know that Private insurance will never be able to manage administrative overhead but turn a blind eye nonetheless.The overhead in tracking co-payments, deductibles, collecting premiums etc are non negligible.Administrative costsAs much as we like to slam Medicare, their administrative costs are in the 2% range which is 6 times less than the typical private insurerOthers are afraid that all the freeloaders, gangbangers, drug addicts and sex addicts will now get a path be cured instead of turning up at the E.R. when things go really bad and then going back to their ways: Subhobroto Sinha's answer to Should Americans be free to skip health insurance or be obliged to shoulder their fair share of the load? Should we have the right to be freeloaders?The unfortunate thing is that you and I already pay for those E.R. visits. If they had got the care they really need, our total costs would have been lower.Others are afraid that this will be the socialization of America. I will not pay for your healthcare!The unfortunate thing is that you and I already pay for everyone else's care.Listen, you don't have to hear me out, a nobody. Instead, I will let two Presidents of the United States tell you why Universal Health Care is a great ideaBefore we get into details, let’s look at this chart from Dan Munro's answer to Are any conservatives in the US for a single payer and a universal health care system, or can they not coexist?Every other industrialized country has already adopted universal health coverage years ago (most decades ago). Here’s the list of countries — and when they implemented universal health coverage.Let’s look at a comparison that Matt provides us in his excellent answer: User-12735120681293897490's answer to Why can European nations afford universal health care and the USA can't?(image source)It’s as simple as that. Every other industrialized nation regulates the price of medical care and prescription drugs in their country. The U.S. does not. And the above image is a direct result of this lack of regulation. I have more comparisons available: Subhobroto Sinha's answer to Why can’t the U.S. adopt a healthcare system similar to Canada’s?The United States is one of the richest countries in the world and the President of The United States has significant authority to change the direction of the country’s healthcare woes.Unfortunately, the current direction that the Republican party is headed towards regarding healthcare is the opposite of progress.The current direction seems to be a design in the massive transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich, at the expense of the all citizens of The United States.However, it does not have to be this way.Any other system than what the U.S. currently has absolutely would reduce costs.The challenge is when people hear that taxes would have to be raised to support this, they often panic and sometimes go batshit crazy.I call it “I will pay way more for private healthcare than a bargain for all payer rate setting care” syndromeThis syndrome could possibly treated by approaching the solution from a different way:Pay more in taxes? Hell no!Pay less in overall costs to care? You bet!So I would be ecstatic to stop paying for my employer sponsored health insurance and direct those dollars towards taxes to fund care instead. Of course, my employer gets to direct the premiums they pay for me already anyways to the same taxes.So on paper, I would theoretically be paying more “taxes” but from a financial point of view I would be paying a fraction of my current healthcare costs!Now that’s a great deal!As well argued in this answer, we see that most families health care costs would be lower under a NHS like system User-12735120681293897490's answer to Would SB 562 reduce or increase the overall expenses of a typical family in California?Household income in the United States - WikipediaThe U.S. Census Bureau reported in September 2016 that real median household income was $55,775 in 2015Compared to this, the Average Cost Of Health Insurance (2016) for healthy 21 year olds with the cheapest Catastrophic insurance was $$1,999/yrThat cheap Catastrophic insurance comes with a $12000 deductible and high copays.Now not everyone is a healthy 21 year old who can go by with the cheapest Catastrophic insuranceTo level things a bit, a good number to go by is $10,345 per person: U.S. health care spending reaches new peakHere’s the report: http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/35/8/1522It’s important to note:About 5 percent of the population — those most frail or ill — accounts for nearly half the spending in a given year, according to a separate government study. Meanwhile, half the population has little or no health care costs, accounting for 3 percent of spending.As Dan Munro writes in Annual Healthcare Cost For Family Of Four Now At $25,826$10,345 is 19% of that $55,775.So Americans are spending 19% or more of their income behind their healthcare already under the current system.I have spoken with people who went through bankruptcy due to a $20k surprise medical bill for a broken foot.It was not an ER visit - it was an Urgent care visit where they paid $100 as an office visit fee. Had they known the final bill would have been $20k, they would have flown across the border and not only got the surgery done but had a month long vacation at a 5* Hilton at 1/3rd the price.Now let’s look at some numbers for countries where rates are set by the governmentLet’s look at a comparison:See the “all payer rate setting” in the title of the chart? It means:all payer : everyone in the system, regardless of insured or not …rate setting: … pays the same rateSounds very simple, right?It is!Let the government ensure everyone pays the same reasonable rateTrying to make it work any differently gives rise to the disasters like U.S. Healthcare.The real issue is, at every turn, providers are trying to extract the maximum they can and profit from pain and suffering of their customers for very little measurable benefit: Avarice has overtaken them.For-profit hospitals mark up prices by more than 1,000 percent because there's nothing to stop themU.S. Healthcare providers should be held to the same standards as every other business in America: tell me how much its going to cost and let me, the customer decide if I want to do business with you.The customer in U.S. Healthcare can’t do this and has thus been stripped of all leverage.They don’t know what a procedure will cost.They don’t know if that procedure will cause further damage.They are in pain and suffering and only know they have a healthcare need and need a doctor.This puts the customer in a very fragile situation: leading to astronomical costs for little value.The customer in U.S. Healthcare right now is like a car driver with a blown tire by the freeway in the middle of a desert. They have no options.A tire is not that expensive, and the customer could have put one on themselves, but they are lacking all the right pieces.Then comes a tow truck, asks you how much you have got, takes most of it, makes you sign a contract saying they will bill you more later, puts an ill-fitting tire that not only bursts again sometime later but damages the rest of the car with it.Only, this is not your car: it’s your body.As industry disruptor Michael Critelli points out Michael Critelli's answer to Is it possible for nationalized healthcare to bankrupt a nation?:We do not adequately punish and discourage bad and expensive healthcare, such as the care that follows from a hospital-acquired infection.Avarice has gripped U.S. Healthcare so strongly that the industry has lost all shame and is the only business in America that treats its customers like blank checkbooks, refusing to even tell patients how much an office visit will cost: How do I find a general physician in San Diego who is known for helping people?Buy Here, Pay Here used car dealerships, which are one of the most infamous businesses in America: even they give you atleast an initial written quote before blindsiding you with hidden fees and charges, figuring out ways to take the car back from you.Most U.S. Healthcare providers lack even that decency.Greed starts at the very beginning: the education system for hopeful doctors.These institutions restrict the number of doctors flowing into the system, reducing supply. This allows them to charge sky high tuition fees in the U.S. which the students pay, taking on massive debt because they have a chance to earn much more in the future.The American Medical Association does a good job of artificially constraining the supply of doctors to keep doctor’s salaries highThe intense pressure we see in doctors to profit from their craft comes from 3 fundamental issues:There are very limited institutions for teaching medicine. This reduces the supply of doctors and lets these institutions charge hundreds of thousands of dollars in tuition fees. This adds a lot of cost to the medical industry. Right off the bat all doctors are at a financial disadvantage and in debtBilling for services are so complicated that doctors have long given up on handling billing for their patients. Instead, third party billing companies take a doctor's transcript and transcribe them to bills and claims to insurance companies. This adds a lot of overhead and hence cost. Not to mention, outright fraud: Subhobroto Sinha's answer to Is medical billing compliance a good career?Doctors are under constant fear that a patient will sue them (although this fear is unfounded: Why does one believe that malpractice insurance is the primary reason for US health-care being so expensive?). As a result they over-prescribe tests and medications. This adds a lot of cost to the medical industryI can't even imagine what frame of mind I will be in if I graduated from college with hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt: I would be looking for ways to pay off that debt ASAP!Any reasonable person would be biased in prioritizing paying off their debt: for doctors it's charging patients and seeing as many patients as they can.Seeing as many patients as they can reduces the time a doctor can spend with a patient and this leads to exactly the situation you describe: the doctor does not have the time to take a holistic view of the patient and the patient continues to make the same mistakes that made them fall sick in the first place.So they keep falling sick.Unfortunately, U.S. healthcare is the only business in the U.S. where the patient has no clue what the cost of even an office visit is until 2 months later when they get hit with a thousand dollar surprise invoice!Pricing in U.S. Healthcare is deplorable.Conservative propaganda would make you believe that Medicare hides its overhead under other line items, but Medicare is atleast 6x more efficient in containing costs than private careThose who are pro privatization of healthcare know that Private insurance will never be able to manage administrative overhead but turn a blind eye nonetheless.The overhead in tracking co-payments, deductibles, collecting premiums etc are non negligible.Administrative costsAs much as we like to slam Medicare, their administrative costs are in the 2% range which is 6 times less than the typical private insurerPublic Option Is Making Its Way Back Into The Great Health Care DebateHow about an industry veteran’s input on these numbers? It’s as close to actual data as you can get (emphasis mine): Ingrid Halvorsen's answer to When it comes to administering health insurance, which is more efficient, private industry or Medicare/Medicaid?I have never had to challenge a ruling on one of my Medicare claim submissions. During 40+ years of private health insurance, I had to challenge over 50% of submitted claims; they were denied in error. As soon as a superior reviewed the denials they were reversed. This tells me a lot about the quality of the staff and their training and their inefficient way of handling claims.Consider the U.S: hospitals in the U.S. still have to treat really sick patients (via ER) but since those really sick patients have little to no money, they can’t pay for it, so the hospitals makes everyone else pay for those services by cost shifting.In the end, the final client of any industry ends up paying for it.The final client for the medical industry being patients end up paying for all these inefficiencies.

Because Europeans have come together and decided that healthcare is just like roads, drinking water and other public utilities, making any subsequent conversation more logical, less emotion bound and hence tractable.We all need it, having more of it is great, increasing access is actually better for everyone and the country would not likely burn in flames if we all paid for it.You know, like roads, drinking water and other public utilities.Citizens of the U.S. however have a very different philosophy that is misguided by propaganda and fear and that’s breaking the county apartAmericans are affected by massive propaganda that instills a terrible fear of freeloaders who apparently will keep on visiting doctors until they grow tired of visiting doctors if they ever have the ability to do so.We are all fearful of imagining all of the country just walking nonstop on roads and not doing anything else, or drinking water non stop and not doing anything else etc etc - that’s what people are afraid is going to happen to healthcare!This fear reminds me of my childhood fear of bigfoot instilled by my mom so I would not stay out too long in the dark playing.After a few decades of not seeing bigfoot even after actively seeking him out, I have hesitantly concluded that bigfoot hates me and does not want to do anything with me.Just like I found out about BigFoot, it’s likely that people, except possibly, hypochondriacs, just don't think a doctor's office is a cool place to hang out at when you take other places into consideration:They would rather be out doing something more enjoyable like going to the beach, reading a book, watching a movie or drinking themselves crazy at a barThe fear, besides of these freeloaders can also multiple basis.A few:Those who are pro privatization of healthcare know that Private insurance will never be able to manage administrative overhead but turn a blind eye nonetheless.The overhead in tracking co-payments, deductibles, collecting premiums etc are non negligible.Administrative costsAs much as we like to slam Medicare, their administrative costs are in the 2% range which is 6 times less than the typical private insurerOthers are afraid that all the freeloaders, gangbangers, drug addicts and sex addicts will now get a path be cured instead of turning up at the E.R. when things go really bad and then going back to their ways: Subhobroto Sinha's answer to Should Americans be free to skip health insurance or be obliged to shoulder their fair share of the load? Should we have the right to be freeloaders?The unfortunate thing is that you and I already pay for those E.R. visits. If they had got the care they really need, our total costs would have been lower.Others are afraid that this will be the socialization of America. I will not pay for your healthcare!The unfortunate thing is that you and I already pay for everyone else's care.Listen, you don't have to hear me out, a nobody. Instead, I will let two Presidents of the United States tell you why Universal Health Care is a great ideaBefore we get into details, let’s look at this chart from Dan Munro's answer to Are any conservatives in the US for a single payer and a universal health care system, or can they not coexist?Every other industrialized country has already adopted universal health coverage years ago (most decades ago). Here’s the list of countries — and when they implemented universal health coverage.Let’s look at a comparison that Matt provides us in his excellent answer: User-12735120681293897490's answer to Why can European nations afford universal health care and the USA can't?(image source)It’s as simple as that. Every other industrialized nation regulates the price of medical care and prescription drugs in their country. The U.S. does not. And the above image is a direct result of this lack of regulation. I have more comparisons available: Subhobroto Sinha's answer to Why can’t the U.S. adopt a healthcare system similar to Canada’s?The United States is one of the richest countries in the world and the President of The United States has significant authority to change the direction of the country’s healthcare woes.Unfortunately, the current direction that the Republican party is headed towards regarding healthcare is the opposite of progress.The current direction seems to be a design in the massive transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich, at the expense of the all citizens of The United States.However, it does not have to be this way.Any other system than what the U.S. currently has absolutely would reduce costs.The challenge is when people hear that taxes would have to be raised to support this, they often panic and sometimes go batshit crazy.I call it “I will pay way more for private healthcare than a bargain for all payer rate setting care” syndromeThis syndrome could possibly treated by approaching the solution from a different way:Pay more in taxes? Hell no!Pay less in overall costs to care? You bet!So I would be ecstatic to stop paying for my employer sponsored health insurance and direct those dollars towards taxes to fund care instead. Of course, my employer gets to direct the premiums they pay for me already anyways to the same taxes.So on paper, I would theoretically be paying more “taxes” but from a financial point of view I would be paying a fraction of my current healthcare costs!Now that’s a great deal!As well argued in this answer, we see that most families health care costs would be lower under a NHS like system User-12735120681293897490's answer to Would SB 562 reduce or increase the overall expenses of a typical family in California?Household income in the United States - WikipediaThe U.S. Census Bureau reported in September 2016 that real median household income was $55,775 in 2015Compared to this, the Average Cost Of Health Insurance (2016) for healthy 21 year olds with the cheapest Catastrophic insurance was $$1,999/yrThat cheap Catastrophic insurance comes with a $12000 deductible and high copays.Now not everyone is a healthy 21 year old who can go by with the cheapest Catastrophic insuranceTo level things a bit, a good number to go by is $10,345 per person: U.S. health care spending reaches new peakHere’s the report: http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/35/8/1522It’s important to note:About 5 percent of the population — those most frail or ill — accounts for nearly half the spending in a given year, according to a separate government study. Meanwhile, half the population has little or no health care costs, accounting for 3 percent of spending.As Dan Munro writes in Annual Healthcare Cost For Family Of Four Now At $25,826$10,345 is 19% of that $55,775.So Americans are spending 19% or more of their income behind their healthcare already under the current system.I have spoken with people who went through bankruptcy due to a $20k surprise medical bill for a broken foot.It was not an ER visit - it was an Urgent care visit where they paid $100 as an office visit fee. Had they known the final bill would have been $20k, they would have flown across the border and not only got the surgery done but had a month long vacation at a 5* Hilton at 1/3rd the price.Now let’s look at some numbers for countries where rates are set by the governmentLet’s look at a comparison:See the “all payer rate setting” in the title of the chart? It means:all payer : everyone in the system, regardless of insured or not …rate setting: … pays the same rateSounds very simple, right?It is!Let the government ensure everyone pays the same reasonable rateTrying to make it work any differently gives rise to the disasters like U.S. Healthcare.The real issue is, at every turn, providers are trying to extract the maximum they can and profit from pain and suffering of their customers for very little measurable benefit: Avarice has overtaken them.For-profit hospitals mark up prices by more than 1,000 percent because there's nothing to stop themU.S. Healthcare providers should be held to the same standards as every other business in America: tell me how much its going to cost and let me, the customer decide if I want to do business with you.The customer in U.S. Healthcare can’t do this and has thus been stripped of all leverage.They don’t know what a procedure will cost.They don’t know if that procedure will cause further damage.They are in pain and suffering and only know they have a healthcare need and need a doctor.This puts the customer in a very fragile situation: leading to astronomical costs for little value.The customer in U.S. Healthcare right now is like a car driver with a blown tire by the freeway in the middle of a desert. They have no options.A tire is not that expensive, and the customer could have put one on themselves, but they are lacking all the right pieces.Then comes a tow truck, asks you how much you have got, takes most of it, makes you sign a contract saying they will bill you more later, puts an ill-fitting tire that not only bursts again sometime later but damages the rest of the car with it.Only, this is not your car: it’s your body.As industry disruptor Michael Critelli points out Michael Critelli's answer to Is it possible for nationalized healthcare to bankrupt a nation?:We do not adequately punish and discourage bad and expensive healthcare, such as the care that follows from a hospital-acquired infection.Avarice has gripped U.S. Healthcare so strongly that the industry has lost all shame and is the only business in America that treats its customers like blank checkbooks, refusing to even tell patients how much an office visit will cost: How do I find a general physician in San Diego who is known for helping people?Buy Here, Pay Here used car dealerships, which are one of the most infamous businesses in America: even they give you atleast an initial written quote before blindsiding you with hidden fees and charges, figuring out ways to take the car back from you.Most U.S. Healthcare providers lack even that decency.Greed starts at the very beginning: the education system for hopeful doctors.These institutions restrict the number of doctors flowing into the system, reducing supply. This allows them to charge sky high tuition fees in the U.S. which the students pay, taking on massive debt because they have a chance to earn much more in the future.The American Medical Association does a good job of artificially constraining the supply of doctors to keep doctor’s salaries highThe intense pressure we see in doctors to profit from their craft comes from 3 fundamental issues:There are very limited institutions for teaching medicine. This reduces the supply of doctors and lets these institutions charge hundreds of thousands of dollars in tuition fees. This adds a lot of cost to the medical industry. Right off the bat all doctors are at a financial disadvantage and in debtBilling for services are so complicated that doctors have long given up on handling billing for their patients. Instead, third party billing companies take a doctor's transcript and transcribe them to bills and claims to insurance companies. This adds a lot of overhead and hence cost. Not to mention, outright fraud: Subhobroto Sinha's answer to Is medical billing compliance a good career?Doctors are under constant fear that a patient will sue them (although this fear is unfounded: Why does one believe that malpractice insurance is the primary reason for US health-care being so expensive?). As a result they over-prescribe tests and medications. This adds a lot of cost to the medical industryI can't even imagine what frame of mind I will be in if I graduated from college with hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt: I would be looking for ways to pay off that debt ASAP!Any reasonable person would be biased in prioritizing paying off their debt: for doctors it's charging patients and seeing as many patients as they can.Seeing as many patients as they can reduces the time a doctor can spend with a patient and this leads to exactly the situation you describe: the doctor does not have the time to take a holistic view of the patient and the patient continues to make the same mistakes that made them fall sick in the first place.So they keep falling sick.Unfortunately, U.S. healthcare is the only business in the U.S. where the patient has no clue what the cost of even an office visit is until 2 months later when they get hit with a thousand dollar surprise invoice!Pricing in U.S. Healthcare is deplorable.Conservative propaganda would make you believe that Medicare hides its overhead under other line items, but Medicare is atleast 6x more efficient in containing costs than private careThose who are pro privatization of healthcare know that Private insurance will never be able to manage administrative overhead but turn a blind eye nonetheless.The overhead in tracking co-payments, deductibles, collecting premiums etc are non negligible.Administrative costsAs much as we like to slam Medicare, their administrative costs are in the 2% range which is 6 times less than the typical private insurerPublic Option Is Making Its Way Back Into The Great Health Care DebateHow about an industry veteran’s input on these numbers? It’s as close to actual data as you can get (emphasis mine): Ingrid Halvorsen's answer to When it comes to administering health insurance, which is more efficient, private industry or Medicare/Medicaid?I have never had to challenge a ruling on one of my Medicare claim submissions. During 40+ years of private health insurance, I had to challenge over 50% of submitted claims; they were denied in error. As soon as a superior reviewed the denials they were reversed. This tells me a lot about the quality of the staff and their training and their inefficient way of handling claims.Consider the U.S: hospitals in the U.S. still have to treat really sick patients (via ER) but since those really sick patients have little to no money, they can’t pay for it, so the hospitals makes everyone else pay for those services by cost shifting.In the end, the final client of any industry ends up paying for it.The final client for the medical industry being patients end up paying for all these inefficiencies.