by far the biggest reason we spend so much on healthcare, is because the healthcare industry charges too much for services. this is a fact. just google it if you dont know this.
we should strive to be closer to the rest of the developed world, that spends half as much as as do. the problem for us, is that lobbyists are entrenched in the pockets of politicians, such that it would be next to impossible to just start slashing costs by fiat. the public is also weary of change, cause it's hard to say what will happen with change.
so what we could do, is set insurance costs into a uniform price system that is maybe a quarter more expensive than medicare pricing, and then grow healthcare costs at less than inflation, until costs are somewhat more reasonable. this would be beneficial, because it's slowly changing the status quo, instead of just taking an ax to it. it's feasible.
this would reduce the complexity of the current system. such that we wouldn't need so many insurance billers, for instance. as it is now, there's often an insurance biller per hospital bed at some hospitals, even though there's not even that many nurses.
we should also have insurance companies switch to non profit companies, given that's how most of that's how most of the developed world does their supplemental insurance coverage. this would reduce the profit waste and make peopel's health the highest priority.
see, most developed countries are not single payer, so that alone wouldn't solve our problems if we switched to it. they usually have a system like medicare that we have, with co insurance with a non profit company running it. with single payer, we could very easily just end up with healthcare that covers everyone.... while being super expensive.
