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The biggest issue with the US health insurance is very simple: it is underwritten for one year. Want to fix it? Pass a law where the minimum coverage period is 10 years and force the companies price it out in advance. Hell, make it 20-30 years. Suddenly the insurance companies will start buying hospitals and optimizing for health care costs rather than information and funnel arbitrage.

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I agree with your overarching point, but why not just kill insurance?

My family in England go into hospital, checkups, RXs, never a cost to them directly. Everything is paid for by dint of taxation, and the taxes are not as high as Americans are lead to believe. My UK family are not wealthy by any standard, yet the do far better than me in America. They get 6 weeks paid holiday, too, something almost unheard of here. Time off leads to less health issues. Everyone needs a good holiday release a few times a year to get away. No email, no calls, nothing work related. This is actually good for people, but Americans in general don't even use up their allotted time off. Sad.

For the same reason that the insurance exists in the UK - when my family lived there, my sister had an issue. The choices were crappy slow "meh, but it will get better" NHS service in 6 months or deal with it within a week in a private hospital covered ( mostly ) by the insurance. We picked the private hospital and everything was resolved within 3 weeks.

And it was still probably cheaper than the US

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