I hope your holidays have been especially joyful this year.

As usual, your rational take on insurance companies being in control of health care in America is spot on. One of the worst effects of this poorly conceived health care system is that centralization increases efficiency, so decentralized clinics and pharmacies are being eliminated in rural areas. Local government is trying to prevent this by sucking more money out of us rather than limiting corporate profits, and my response to this is that making insurance companies compete in a free market eliminates the monopoly that insurance companies have that enables them to profit more from increasing centralization.

This is not enamoring me to local government, because before 1970 the US had the greatest medical care system in the world. Doctors were free to accept any and all insurances, or any patients they wanted to, and could accept a couple laying hens for payment if they wanted to serve patients without money. After Congress mandated employer provided health insurance care levels, life expectancy, infant survival, and decentralization of pharmacies and clinics have all declined, with the US now ~#50 in infant survival rates globally. At the same time insurance company profits have skyrocketed and costs of goods and services has too. Worst, proprietary provision of prosthetics and equipment has locked patients and providers into monopoly sourcing of their devices. Open source hardware, repair, and etc. is all but extinct. Folks that need wheelchairs are increasingly trapped in their homes, unable to move about in the world, because repair services and replacement parts can take years to get through the bureaucratic maze of vendors with their hands out, and costs of repair service and parts can be orders of magnitude above competing parts and service.

Louis Rossmann has been highlighting this issue and valiantly funds a non-profit seeking to enable the physically challenged to access FOSS parts and independent repair services. His work has enabled some people to leave their homes for the first time in literally years.

Edit: https://odysee.com/@rossmanngroup:a/wheelchairs-have-paywalls-and-digital:9

May you live in good health forever.

Thanks!