[jmoak]

Agreed, there's not some organization taking a fat cut, it's a matter of overall demand, namely subsidized demand. We hamstring our healthcare supply in a variety of ways while massively juicing demand, which leads to increased prices.

America spends $4.5t a year on healthcare[0].

~$2t of that comes from the government directing taxed dollars towards healthcare for certain classes, per my previous comment in this thread. If your goal is to reduce our per-capita healthcare spending I see a fairly brutal and swift solution that would halve our spending, and put us below most European countries[1].

This is conjecture on my part, but I would imagine the remaining spending would also fall as the consumers have to bid less money for access to the healthcare resources that are newly freed up.

Further conjecture, I believe we may be able to have our cake and eat it too if we reduce the years of study necessary to start practicing medicine, and reduce our roadblocks to importing foreign-trained doctors. The UK may be trying something similar[2].

[0]: https://www.cms.gov/data-research/statistics-trends-and-repo...

[1]: https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/health-...

[2]: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/nurses-doctors-deg...