Comment by billy99k

"Healthcare should be a right at this point in our society's development"

A 'right' shouldn't depend on someone else's labor.

"it's a stain on our country that we still carry on with a system that works for nobody except health insurance CEOs"

I do agree that we need to get rid of the middleman. Replacing it with another one (the government) is a mistake and leads to the same inefficiencies.

Common procedures should be charge directly to the patient. These prices will be forced to go down as there will be actual competition. This won't work in cases where the surgery is rare, and insurance will work here. This will cut most of the bloat out of of health care and reduce the costs for everyone.

Lasik eye surgery is a good example of this. It's not covered by insurance. A decade ago, it was $10,000. My parents just got it a year ago and paid less than $1,000 out of pocket.