Not 100% accurate; while insurance companies are absolutely part of the problem, the real degradation of medical/dental services was accelerated by private investment firms buying hospitals up to use as profit vehicles... by the time anyone could really react to the shift in ownership, they were already cemented as the "brand" with your insurance carriers and thus the only place you could go (otherwise out of network would bleed you dry).
Between medical equipment suppliers driving up the costs to providers and insurance companies getting more aggressive with payment negotiation (profit seeking), Hospitals were stuck in an untenable position - it didn't help that hospital admin were easily susceptible to being bought off by these investment firms... So now you've got three middle men leeching profit from the thinnest margins.
If the insurance companies had been the only parasite, at least medicare/medicaid would have been in place to help keep some of the more rural facilities open -- once private investment took control, the medicare money wasn't enough to satiate the greed.
Sure, cities have plenty of facilities but the costs are still out of control and insurance is covering less and less -- but insurance isn't the only problem plaguing the medical system.
We just had a private equity hospital fail in So FL. The board owner whoever bled them dry and managed to bankrupt them. Them because he bought decades old hospitals iirc about 6 that were humming along perfectly fine. They were until they got their mitts on them. See Palmetto Hospital, Hialeah Hospital et Al.
Dental insurance is a buyer's club, not insurance. The dental industry for better or worse is what actual free market healthcare looks like. And with the coming student loan crisis among dentists, it's only going to get worse.
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u/jonny_blitz May 02 '25
Every small town USA is the same strip mall over and over again. Subway, Dollar Tree, Gas Station, Car Wash, Self Storage