Insurance Makes Healthcare Expensive

Health insurance is often seen as essential, but in reality, it creates massive market failures in healthcare. In markets where health insurance has collapsed or failed, you will find the most functional and efficient healthcare systems. Rather than promoting affordability, insurance distorts prices and makes healthcare services—many of which should be transparently priced—unnecessarily expensive.

Personally, I choose to maintain only the minimal health insurance coverage legally required. I pay in cash and I actively negotiate the prices down. They matters when you have a partner like Subrina who thanks to a history of sexual abuse has a lot of paranoia I learned quickly that she could ramp up a lot of imaginary health care costs quite quickly.

I see little benefit in participating further in a system that drives up prices and complicates care. If you want access to high-quality, affordable healthcare, you might want to look beyond the overregulated, insurance-driven system in the U.S. For instance, Mexico is frequently cited as one of the best places for healthcare, precisely because its health insurance market is weak or virtually absent.

That might sound shocking at first. You might worry: "Oh my god, it's not regulated!" But in all cases, an unregulated market leads to better outcomes for patients. Here’s the reality: regulations always drive costs up and quality down. They add layers of bureaucracy and complexity, removing incentives for innovation and efficiency.

Worse still, these centralized regulatory systems are ripe for corruption. The more control any centralized authority has, the more susceptible the system is to manipulation by special interests. In the end, both regulation and insurance destroy the very healthcare quality and affordability they are supposed to ensure.

Health insurance needs to go.