The Real Reason Healthcare Is So Expensive

Why is it that citizens in the richest country on Earth are charged so much money for not dying that many go broke and even end up living on the streets? Let's take a look at the history and the travesty of American healthcare, and the reasons it costs so much.

In a 2017 article for Stanford Medicine, the editor-in-chief of Kaiser Health News, Elisabeth Rosenthal, MD, writes:

"The very idea of health insurance is in some ways the original sin that catalyzed the evolution of today's medical-industrial complex."

Perhaps the earliest version of that system dates back to the 1890s, when lumber companies in Tacoma, Washington paid a pair of doctors 50 cents monthly to treat employees.

In the early 1900s, the Baptist Church at Baylor University Medical Center in Texas inadvertently invented modern health insurance. It began with a 14-room mansion dubbed the Texas Baptist Memorial Sanitarium.

When attorney and Baylor vice president Justin Ford Kimball discovered the sanitarium had racked up unpaid bills, he struck a deal with teachers who would pay 50 cents a month, plus a deductible, for the right to a 21-day stay.

Baylor's system caught on like a cold, and World War II helped cement the ill-fated system. Employee numbers dwindled during the war, so companies offered health insurance to lure new hires. The federal government further incentivized the practice by making employer expenditures for health employee healthcare tax-exempt.

This arrangement wasn't meant to lower overall medical costs but to blunt the impact of catastrophic events. In the 1950s and '60s the popularity of health insurance skyrocketed, and profit-hungry companies sprang up to capitalize on demand.

Watch the video for more about The Real Reason Healthcare Is So Expensive.

#Healthcare #Medicine

A vile history | 0:14
Pre-existing conditions | 1:34
Cynical calculus | 2:58
Massive bills | 4:08
The drug trade | 4:54
Drive-by doctors | 6:18

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