What's Wrong with American Medicine

Dustbury hits the nail on the head.

The conflation of "health care" and "health insurance."
It should be obvious that these are not the same thing and never can be; if anyone over the age of seven with an IQ above room temperature believes that they are, it has to be due to the ongoing bipartisan effort to suck as much money as possible out of the middle class for the alleged benefit of the poor and the ill-concealed benefit of the wealthy. My own insurance, which costs somewhere on the wrong side of $5,000 a year, makes it possible for my own doctor to collect $30 from me for an office visit and some minor lab work, followed by $47 from the insurance carrier, once he's filled out several tedious forms. You can't tell me he wouldn't be happier doing this for a flat $60; for one thing, he could probably afford to lose one or two staff members who do nothing but tedious forms, and for another, if you're not spending upwards of $417 a month for insurance, you can presumably pop for that extra thirty bucks yourself. And since my knees are giving me no small amount of grief at the moment, let's say I have to have both ACLs repaired. I can give these guys $13,600; or, I can run up a six-figure tab at the local "non-profit" (a legal term, not a financial one) hospital and be responsible for only twenty percent of it, which ultimately will cost me twice as much. Who benefits by this? Hint: not me.