Originally Posted by Dutch
Originally Posted by Backroads
Why exactly is healthcare, as an American, so expensive?

Fundamentally, because there is no way for the consumer to shop providers on price. It's a capitalist system where in a large portion of the transactions, neither the sellers, nor the buyers know what the cost of the transaction is. In many other transactions (expensive ones, particularly), the buyer is incapacitated and can't make an informed decision.

By economic definition, an "imperfect market".

I've actually been diving into researching the US healthcare system and it's a really complex set of problems that have gotten us here. To begin with, we should have never had a system where the majority of people receive their healthcare through their employer, shielding them from the actual costs. It's a throwback to WW2 and the imposed wage freezes of the time. The employers worked around the wage freezes by upping the benefits, including offering free healthcare.

That's just the start of the problem. We now have a system that's almost entirely taken the consumer out of the picture and provides zero incentive for controlling costs by either the consumer or healthcare providers.