Comment by jonhohle
2 hours ago
Worse than vets is hospital system and medical offices. In our area there are about 6 hospitals within reasonable driving distance. 1 is a mayo and the 5 others are split between the two major mega-providers. One of those also partnered with CVS/Aetna to provide marketplace insurance, until they decided that didn’t have high enough margins so they dropped 100k (28%) subscribers.
The healthcare system is just rent-seeking upon rent-seeking. PBMs are another big one where the PBM gets to decide after the fact what your rebate is. No conflict of interest there when United Healthcare owns Optum, which I think is the biggest PBM.
I see the healthcare system's bloat as a symptom, not a cause of the expense.
It's kind of like the university system. It's a (mostly) privately run industry that gets massive injections of cash from the government because of both campaign promises (everyone needs healthcare, everyone goes to college and, bonus, everyone gets a house) and it being an incredibly unpopular position to either remove that funding or make the program entirely public which would, imo, alleviate both problems (but have their own unique drawbacks). The hybrid model we have is the worst of both worlds.
The hybrid system we have now of massive injections of public money into private industry is like blood in the water for do nothing intermediaries. PBMs are just the assistant dean of underwater basketweaving for medicine.