How Did Healthcare Get So Expensive?

When I hear American healthcare being discussed and the need for affordability, it seems like the debate is centered around who should pay for it. I wonder if we’re focusing on the wrong question. Instead of asking who should pay the astronomical costs of healthcare in America, perhaps we should ask why the costs are astronomical in the first place. How did healthcare get so expensive? How come the US spends so much more in GDP than other countries on healthcare? If advances in technology make things cheaper over time, then why does healthcare keep going up in price when much of it is based in technology? Is it a problem that healthcare stocks make up almost 16% of the SP500? Are corporations valuing profits over the health of American citizens?

How can we make it so that regular people can afford to pay for their own healthcare instead of assuming sky high prices are how it has to be? Who is profiting from the system as it is now? Hospitals? Hospital Administrators? Insurance companies? Stockholders? Is the fact that our system is centered around insurance part of the problem? What can be done? Is there a group of people or companies who are exploiting the system and trying to maintain the status quo because they are profiting off the lives, savings, and well-being of American citizens? Who are these people or corporations? Are the problems with our current system based in greed or incompetence?

The National Aids Treatment Advocacy Project reports that in 1996 a bottle of insulin cost $20, but it costs somewhere between $275-350 per bottle now. Many diabetics needing two bottles per month. How did this happen? How did previously affordable medications become unaffordable? What changed? How did Obamacare make many people’s insurance premiums go up so much? If people's insurance premiums are the equivalent of a house payment and they still have to pay for services to try to reach their deductibles, how does insurance help us at all unless something catastrophic happens? If we only had catastrophic insurance, how might that change the system?

How come hospital bills are so expensive? How come I can buy a bottle of aspirin at the dollar store, but if they give me that same aspirin while I’m in the hospital it’s billed to me at a price that's 10x, 20x, or 100x that? How come the cost of health care isn't transparent? How come I can’t know up front how much something will cost? How come I can’t shop around to compare prices between hospitals or doctors? How come there aren't standard prices for procedures? Is there a monopoly on healthcare? If there is a monopoly on Healthcare, who is holding the lives of American people hostage and profiting from it? How come if I have money and can ask for a cash price, I can pay less than what they bill me otherwise? How come Worker’s Comp, a government entity, pays approximately 1/3 of what I'm billed as a regular citizen? How come people who get the same procedure at the same hospital can pay different amounts depending on who is footing the bill and how they are paying?

I'm not a doctor. I'm not a medical billing expert. I can't solve this problem because I don't know these answers. But someone out there does. It seems like out of control pricing in healthcare is the root problem that we are failing to address. How come Healthcare is so expensive? Debating over whether or not we should have medicare for all seems like the wrong question. What we need to know is how healthcare costs got so out of control in the first place and what can be done to adjust the system so that prices are more transparent before we address who pays for it.