It is true that healthcare utilization in the US is in many ways no different than many countries that have universal healthcare, yet they pay half what we do and have healtheir populations. While the low hanging fruit here is insurance carriers with their constant increases in premiums due to them being poor actors in the healthcare system, the political truth according to the NY Times is that Hospital systems are often the largest or second largest employers in many counties throughout the US. Since insurers contributed to massive consolidation using bad ideas such as tiering, high deductibles and predatory activities, the hospitals have gotten larger and the only insurer that can negotiate with them is Medicare. Since hospitals have purchased so many doctors practices along with so many large groups such as summit health which is now owned by CITYMD which is owned by VillageMD, a primary and coordinated care provider. VillageMD, which also operates Summit Health, is majority-owned by Walgreens Boots Alliance as taken from a Google Search. It seems obvious that Universal Healthcare using Medicare which is scalable can simplify the problem and offer a way forward. Can the politicians look past their own interests to help the public afford health insurance again? The other major problem in our broken system is the over complication of healthcare with a lack of proper primary care keeping us out of the system and urgent care being used as a feeding mechanism. The RVU’s are being used to drive services incentivizing providers to order more of everything and inter refer within hospitals to maximize profits, but not your health. There is no incentive for improving healthcare and rewarding results. We are all paying for our politicians unwillingness to embrace universal healthcare under Medicare and offer true reform. If our economy is so good, we wouldn’t need corporate welfare in hospital systems. The incentives need to change to results and doctors who want to be competitive should be given the opportunity to do so which is good economically to lower costs and improve care. Check out the NY Times article below This Is the Biggest Culprit for High Health Care Spending