Well, I mentioned palliative care, but in general, I agree with you.

I would much rather doctors just get paid less. I took my son to the ER. He had a very high fever. They gave him a child's aspirin and me a $700 bill.

I just don't know what the answer is. And really, if you go into a hospital, you get the sense that there's people basically taking advantage of subsidized health insurance providers and patients both. Health insurance in America is absolutely atrocious. Next to gun fanatics, it's the worst thing about this country.

Yes, because the doctor get the majority of that 700$ Bill. NOT

Also the ER is always going to be the most expensive setting to get care.

Why not take him to a pediatrician, if there are no warning signs that he needs immediate attention?

Because the instruction from most pediatricians is to send kids with persistent (not responsive to acetaminophen and/or ice bath) fever above 104F to the ER, especially after hours. Very, very rarely will you find a pediatrician available outside an ER setting after hours.

Yes this is right

Most doctors are scheduled out for weeks. Best bet is an urgent care/walk in clinic. (Good luck if they have a pediatrician.)

Doctors make up 11% of heathcare costs in the US. Their bloated salaries probably contribute about 5% to total costs. Its not insignificant.

The rest of the world mostly also uses subsidized private healthcare (except for the UK, where healthcare is far worse than in the US).

The US system works well if you can pay the bills. It doesn't have the undercapacity issues the UK has, for example. The unique problem is costs. Controlling costs would mean consumers strongly supporting aggressive action by insurers if they take actions to push costs down. What Americans do is the opposite: they stage protests and demand immediate political retaliation on insurers who try to control costs. Then left wing politicians condemn the insurers, and they fold in the face of public pressure. Medical staff know the public acts this way and so bends insurers over the barrel, knowing people will blame the "capitalists" (who have tiny margins) over the frontline doctors and nurses who are actually taking the money.

https://www.vox.com/policy/390031/anthem-blue-cross-blue-shi...

In other countries the public doesn't act this way and costs are more reasonable. Sometimes insurance premiums even fall. Switzerland has a two tier system with basic mandatory health insurance that's basically controlled by the government (private firms provide it but there are price controls and they can't refuse customers). And it has supplementary insurance for higher quality care that's almost free market. This year basic premiums went up 5% and supplemental premiums fell 0.9%

https://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfs/de/home/aktuell/neue-veroeffent...

Cost control requires private sector discipline without people like Kathy Hochul getting involved, but healthcare even in the USA does not have that.

Something changed in the US in the last 15 or so years that caused our whole country to become a death cult. All I see in the economics is a bunch of looting and pillaging before the music stops

The better system that the rest of the world uses is letting grandpa have a bad hip. Absolutely insane that you take a huge part of what makes other systems cheaper and claim other systems would never do that and capitalism is to blame for everything bad.