America's "Healthcare" System Is Now a Structured Financial Skim/Scam
"Healthcare" grift, graft, fraud and financialized skims / scams will bankrupt the nation.
I've been writing about America's healthcare system for 18 years, emphasizing two enduring themes: 1) our lifestyle is unhealthy, with predictable consequences and 2) healthcare as it is currently configured will bankrupt the nation all by itself.
This recent article on how having a baby without complications now costs over $44,000 adds a third theme: the tragi-comic insanity and absurdity of the "healthcare" system that has been normalized, as if this is the only possible way to organize healthcare:
"And They Wonder Why The Birth Rate Is Declining": A Mother Went Viral For Revealing The Costs Of Being Pregnant In America:
Lastly, Kayla reveals that her baby received a bill, too, which added up to $12,761.30 without insurance. For their family of five now, the cost of insurance per month is $2,500 -- a nearly $400 increase from when they were just a family of four. "We're still waiting for him to process on our insurance," she explains, "so, for now, this is the cost without it."
One user said, "America's healthcare system is a joke... how does the newborn have a $12k bill?"
It's more than a joke--it's travesty of a mockery of a sham of a system that actually improves health. There's an even darker side of the picture--the takeover of the system by financiers and fraudsters--which truth be told is a redundancy.
We can now add a fourth theme: stripped of purposeful opacity, America's "healthcare" system is nothing more than a structured financial skim/scam. Before we dig into that, here are a few of the dozens of posts I've written on "healthcare" since 2008:
U.S. Lifestyle + "Healthcare" = Bankruptcy (June 19, 2008)
The "Impossible" Healthcare Solution: Go Back to Cash (July 29, 2009)
Why "Healthcare Reform" Is Not Reform, Part II (December 29, 2009)
Sickcare Will Bankrupt the Nation--And Soon (March 21, 2011)
How Healthcare Became Sickcare (March 18, 2022)
Let's start with what childbirth cost back when healthcare was paid in cash. Here are the costs of childbirth in 1952 at one of the finest hospitals on the West Coast, The Santa Monica Hospital: $30:
According to the BLS Inflation Calculator, $1 in 1952 is $12.13 today, so adjusted for inflation, the $30 fee to deliver a baby would be $363 today. Here are maternity rates from 1952:
A private room was $19, or $230 in today's currency. OK, so we have fancier equipment now, more staff, etc., but really--does that explain what once cost less than $1,000 in today's money--paid in cash, no insurance--now costs $44,000? No. Here's why: structured financial skims/scams.
Dutch Rojas (@DutchRojas) is a go-to source for explaining the opaque way "healthcare" skims / scams siphon off hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars. Consider these X posts:
Why is healthcare expensive?
You go to your doctor.
Same building, same service.
But now it's 3x the price, because they sold to a health system.
The secret?
A "facility fee" was added.
Medicare and commercial payers just hand it over.
It's not for better care.
It's for ownership.
Every consolidation deal is a bet against the patient and you're footing the bill.
And the politicians love every bit of it...
Provider Taxes: The Most Elegant Grift in American Healthcare
It's not a tax.
It's a laundering operation.
Here's how it works:
North Carolina's 'nonprofit' health systems are running a $40+ billion hedge fund operation disguised as healthcare.
They're extracting hundreds of millions in tax exemptions while paying CEOs tens of millions.
This is the largest wealth transfer scheme in the American healthcare system.
This doesn't even include outright Medicare/Medicaid fraud, overbilling, unnecessary tests, medications and procedures, and a nearly endless menu of other enrichment schemes passed off as "care." These billions go to the "owners," not the frontline healthcare providers / workers.
Lastly, let's consider a few charts. Here is my 2008 diagram of the building blocks of an unhealthy lifestyle:
The cost of insurance continues rising, becoming ever more burdensome and ever more unaffordable:
Yes, the number of retirees is expanding, but this parabolic rise in Medicare costs far exceeds the rise in the number of retirees.
The same can be said of Medicaid.
"Healthcare" grift, graft, fraud and financialized skims / scams will bankrupt the nation. Thanks to the purposeful opacity of the complex funding streams, we can't even figure out what is actually "care" and what's just another skim / scam.
Our starting point should always be: this is not the only way we could organize "healthcare." We could have a rational, transparent, competitive and affordable system. But to get that, we first have to completely dismantle the current system, and everyone skimming billions will fight with all their billions in campaign contributions to stop that from ever happening. As a result, the nation will be bankrupted by greed.
Check out my new book Ultra-Processed Life and my new fiction/novels page.
Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases originated via links to Amazon products in my Substack posts.
Maybe this is why a better term for what happens is a "medical payments" system, rather than a "health care" system.
I remember when my dad was still alive and employed, His "medical payments" system was set up such that when he submitted a claim to his employer's insurance company, the bill would be paid. Within a few weeks, he would receive a statement that showed the payment, with a little notation at the bottom: This bill exceeds the normal rate for this service in your area.
One time, he asked the insurance company how they determined the average cost for the service in his area. Their response: "We surveyed several doctors in your area that perform this service, and got an average." So he asked who those doctors were, so that he could get the services performed at average or below-average cost. Their response: "That's proprietary information."
So when the patient attempts to bring the costs of service downward, the payer won't help by telling who he could have perform the services for less!
That shows me that the insurance companies were in on the scam.
Human's seem to need limits. Things that work well at small scale, with intrinsic accountability associated with known relationships (the buyer of insurance knows the people providing the insurance) at large scale become nightmares due to the corruption & lack of accountability.
The same is true of organizations such as a Community Hospital, vs a large organization. I live in Canada, and Alberta Healthcare is a huge money pit, where some doctors are way over paid, while others such as your local Family Doctor are underpaid, despite being the backbone of the system. Inovations are resisted, because of turf wars, and what is good for the citizens of Alberta is completely lost. Polititians who are elected have no chance at reforming the system, as the people in the system know that they will be gone in a few years so just wait them out.