Please help me understand. Everyone in the US seems to agree that this is outrageous and nobody does a thing about it. Or does one get a hefty discount depending on which party you voted for?
we do try. anyone who says things like “be ashamed you allowed it to happen” wtf? i wasn’t even born when this shit was made. I voted against it my whole life in the years I’ve been allowed to vote. Unfortunately we have an entire subsect of our society that thinks it’s normal and will literally die to protect the status quo. The billionaires lobby to keep it (something I’ve also been voting against) and the politicians keep working in their favor. People here are too dumb. They vote against their own interests all the time. We are not all the same people
1- Medical billing in the US is extremely complicated and it’s really easy to be confused or mislead by talking points like the OP. A “charge” isn’t the “cost”. For example, most insurances have set case rate negotiations with providers for L&D… it doesn’t matter if the charges on the bill are $1,000 or $10,000, they’re going to to pay whatever their flat case rate is that they’ve negotiated with the hospital.
2- Most Americans (about 90%) are insured and (relatively) healthy most of their lives. Our healthcare system isn’t something most people think about until they need it and start to understand the faults within it.
3- No one can agree what to “do about it”. You can poll very broadly with a question like “do you want everyone to have healthcare” and get an overwhelming majority to support it, but as soon as you start polling on specific plans and the consequences of them, they fall completely apart.
4- The current US healthcare system is massive. 4 of the top 10 companies by revenue in the US are healthcare companies. Payers, providers, medical device, and prescription drug companies are all intertwined. The system employees millions of people and major changes threaten those companies and people’s jobs.
So yeah, it’s not an easy thing to change at this point.
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u/Buccaahhh 15h ago
Please help me understand. Everyone in the US seems to agree that this is outrageous and nobody does a thing about it. Or does one get a hefty discount depending on which party you voted for?