Health insurance at its core is very simple. You put money in, you go to doctor, insurance pay doctor. But in the USA, the insurance denies everything they possibly can. Money put in doesn’t ever see a doctor or your health costs, it goes right to the stockholders…
So why doesn’t someone just make a non-profit health insurance company where there’s no stock, no executives, just public servants and aggressive price negotiation where your medical bills are actually paid with the money put in?
No one gets rich from public healthcare.
That’s why.
Not exactly. In theory corporations need workers so they should benefit from a healthy public.
In reality, they don’t need everybody healthy - just enough to meet their needs. And their needs for workers are met. They’ve been exporting and automating jobs for decades. So even with the system leaving lots of folks behind, enough are left over to occupy the jobs that are needed. If anything, we have more healthy people than corporations need - what is lacking are skills.
And so in a very American sense of “business first,” the current system is operating just fine. People and their health have no intrinsic value here.