

My experience is that a lot of people are completely closed to factual argument. It’s like their brains shut down as soon as you introduce a number. They’re not necessarily stupid people, just intimidated or untrained in information, and I find it very difficult to communicate with someone who puts equal weight in some pundit saying, “US healthcare is the best in the world” and an OECD chart that shows US life expectancy is 5 years shorter than “peer” nations.
In the US, the ACA limits insurance company expenses and profits to a fraction of their actual, delivered care. They get paid more for providing more care, and it doesn’t matter whether that “care” actually reaches or benefits a patient. They’re fine with fraud, as long as it doesn’t grow so fast that they outspend their revenues. Gotta ride the wave of costs rising fast enough to justify next year’s raise, but slow enough to hold on to this year’s bonus.
These guys claim that as much as 20% of private insurance payments are fraudulent.