Here's an institutional scam. Because it is so expensive, in order to have decent health care one has to buy (remember the word "buy") health insurance. This can, if one has a full-time job, be partly paid for by the employer, though this is essentially money that one would have received in wages anyway. In my case, with a very big plan with a large enrollment, is around $5,000 per year, not including co-pays and the 20% not covered for certain things, or the 90% not covered if I go to a doc not on the list.
But, when questions arise about the escalating cost of health care, the industry says that the cost is going up because everyone has unlimited free health care because of the huge sacrifice by employers and insurance companies. It is the middle-class consumer sucking up all of the hospitals' MRI time because they don't have to pay for it. What is going up is profit.
This shows, beyond a doubt, that the consumer has no choice, and there is no free-market capitalism model in which this will have any check on the supply-side. One can say that the government should be scaled back and let the market take care of it, but it is in the best interest of Americans to find an advocate somewhere, and if laws won't help, then the citizens should make it work. Nothing else can have any hope of controlling the health care industry.
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