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Cost control. It's keeping cost from going to infinity even faster than it is, given the limited supply and destruction of price signals by law and custom. The insurance company's reluctance to shell out cash is an essential service.
Untrue, especially in context of the 80:20 rule which means higher premiums directly equal higher profits because margins are effectively capped. Even beyond that, insurance cost control is highly limited to a few high profile cases. And again, much of the most expensive healthcare for chronic or long-standing conditions is funded directly by the state for the old and poor.
There’s no evidence that single payer nationalized systems are more generous. In fact, US private insurers are by far the most generous healthcare insurers when it comes to overspending on drugs and surgery in the entire world. Meanwhile, the most socialized systems like the NHS are often criticized for not paying for million-dollar treatments so that kids with incurable diseases can live in pain for an extra month and play hardball with big pharma even for very valuable drugs.
Yeah, I've seen it said that American lefties dream about Euro-style health care system because they think that such a system will dole out treatments at will and for asking, basically, when that is generally not the case at all.
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