Dear Editor,
Our healthcare “system” operates via a Byzantine system of price hikes, price discounts, different pricing for different customers, and an immense web of middlemen who operate it all. The complexity and the middlemen will always keep prices higher than they otherwise would be. Always.
Our irrational system causes immense personal harm, misery and damages our economy in ways that can’t be seen at the surface.
It would be nice if the people in government with the power and the duty to protect the public acknowledged the fact that charging as much as they can get away with is perfectly legal , even rational under the “free market” system. Many businesses do it. That’s why that system has no place in healthcare, where people don’t have the option of just deciding not to buy.
Until we address that fundamental fact, all we are doing is moving the deck chairs around on the proverbial Titanic.
Lee Russ, Bennington
