Summary
The killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson has reignited debates over the U.S. healthcare system, with Americans sharing stories of denial, delays, and exorbitant costs despite having insurance.
Many report fighting insurers for coverage of essential treatments, facing hidden costs, and taking drastic steps like career changes to secure health insurance.
Critics blame corporate greed for worsening access and affordability, while others note the system’s complexity discourages seeking care.
Though some find employer-provided plans satisfactory, the overall system is described as profit-driven and increasingly inaccessible, leaving many financially strained or avoiding medical help altogether.
It really wasn’t. I am 51 years old and I noticed a big shift when HMOs became a thing. Also, ask any doctor in or near retirement age and they will also tell you that it is very different now. Hell, twenty years ago it’s when I started hearing about doctors closing private practices because of medical malpractice insurance costs exploding.
I think this is the end result of a deregulation perfect storm across multiple aspects of American healthcare.
Sure, it goes back to the Health Maintenance Organization Act of 1973. Technically it wasn’t always like this.
But this has always been a nightmare shithole country where healthcare is for profit. It should be fucking free.
One of the things that FDR did that wasn’t great was allowing health care to be organized into HMO’s. Nixon then switched those HMOs from not for profit, to for profit in 1973 with the HMO act.
Prior to FDR, you paid the doctor with what you could. Not necessarily cash, but many towns provided a free house for their doctors and they were frequently paid in fresh produce.
1973? Shit. Seems to line up with the time period of 1969-1977 when a whole bunch of shit got fucked for the common man.
The worsening of this and a lot of other things which are now reaching unbearable abuse levels all align neatly with Neoliberalism, starting with Reagan.
Take the State from the job of Regulation and you naturally end up with lots of feedback cycles were all the natural uneveness in real markets (effects totally unaknowledged in Free Market Theory and which make most Markets there very opposite of competitive) snowballs into monopolies, cartels, networking effects and other means of market locking, feeding into becoming ever more so, and when entrenched enough being abused to the max, from enshittification to health insurers knowingly fraudulently refusing to pay the bills for life saving treatment because they know those people are too poor to sue them or will die before any lawsuit ends up in a judgment.
When it’s all self-“regulation” and there’s no “big government” smacking down on abuses, the objectives of the actors still left in the market with the most power are the ones which the system de facto is optimized to achieve, and without “big government” the most powerful actors in the market by far are Big Money, who will optimizing things so that they become even bigger money.
20+ years ago I was told I’d have a $20 co pay by the Dr, and was billed almost $300. Because I didn’t get pre approved to see an ear Dr. Insurance has been shit my entire life.
53 here. Healthcare in America has never been worse in my lifetime.