I wish more people were asking “why does the hospital charge such absurdly high fees?” instead of “why is Blue Cross trying to not pay those absurdly high fees?”
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I wish more people were asking “why does the hospital charge such absurdly high fees?” instead of “why is Blue Cross trying to not pay those absurdly high fees?”
Why not both?
Everyone angry about Big Tech and the like need to know that healthcare was patient zero for the monopolization and enshittification cycle that seems to have consumed everything in the world economy.
Once one industry consolidates, their vendors and customers need to consolidate too, or they don't have any negotiating leverage. If you don't consolidate, you're the deal taker, and that deal will be incredibly garbage. This cycle continues until it reaches the one place where you can't consolidate: end customers. There's no such thing as a "customer union" that can fight back against this bullshit. This turns business into a conspiracy to screw the customer, purely through normal, logical business actions that were already illegal but unenforced.
The problem with merely pinning the blame on one entity is that it doesn't fix the system. You don't care about whether or not it's the hospital's fault or the insurer's fault, you just want the problem fixed. Law enforcement actually has a solution for this: joint and several liability, which is a way of saying "I don't care who did it, someone either fixes it or I'm punishing both of you". Pin the blame on both entities if you want the shenanigans to stop.