[aeontech]

You don't need it until you need it, and needing it often comes in the form of a lightning strike from blue sky. The counterargument is that having everyone pay a higher amount makes it feasible to actually have this coverage available, when needed, without bankrupting the insurance companies, because the rare astronomically expensive care is covered by the premiums paid by the vast majority of people who are relatively healthy and are unlikely to need it.

Now whether the on-paper prices for medical care in this country actually have any relationship to objective reality is an entirely separate question of course. In general coming from an outside perspective, combining healthcare and for-profit motives in a single system seems particularly likely to lead to all kinds of perverse incentives, but, it's the system that exists, and it seems unlikely to change any time soon.

[almosthere]

What I don't understand however is what IS actually expensive about the care itself?

Doc will get paid his normal rate, $500k per year (maybe more maybe less?) Nurses all get paid something between 100k and 200k (maybe more maybe less?)

Then we hear about these surgeries that cost 100k.

What exactly is costing 100k for 5 hours of knife and time in a bed?

Wildfire, I understand, there is no way to re-materialize a house for less than (what is basically a fortune these days). But time and materials for a surgery seem to me that it should cost 5k at most?

And at those rates, wouldn't everyone just pay like $15 a month? And if the answer to this question is malpractice costs, can we have two plans:

I trust you doc: $15 / month

I might sue the doc after: $1500 / month