Health Insurance Price Hikes Show How Capitalism Is Failing

In what can only be viewed as a complete failure of capitalism, the cost of private health insurance in the United States has risen by more than 50% in the past decade, while costs of government-run healthcare plans have only risen by about 12%. The private market is failing American consumers, and that is because capitalism today is only about greed. Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins discusses this.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

According to a recent report that should really come as a surprise to nobody. Private health care costs here in the United States have risen by 52.6% in just the last 10 years. That is how much we are spending per capita for private health insurance. It has gone up 52.6% in 10 years. Over that same time period, Medicare costs have risen by 21% and Medicaid costs have only risen by 12% so the big question is why the huge difference, right? Why are private health insurance companies charging us so much more than government run programs like Medicare and Medicaid? The reason is simple Medicare and Medicaid base, their prices off the average of what a service should cost and that's all they're going to pay. So that's all doctors are going to get. Meanwhile, health insurance companies, they can charge whatever because we don't have an option. We as a public can't say, we'll all go to Medicaid or Medicare if we don't qualify for those programs. We are stuck with these private insurers and even though over the last 10 years this country has been hyperfocused on healthcare costs, these companies continue to raise our prices for no other reason than the fact that they can. This isn't just a failure of the healthcare system here in the United States. This is a failure of capitalism. There is not enough competition in the healthcare industry to force prices to go down. Most people do not have any choice whatsoever in the actual health insurance company they go with, we're at the mercy of our employers. Whatever they choose for us is all we can get. That is a another failure of capitalism. You have the whole supply and demand issue, right, so it doesn't necessarily work the same with health insurance companies because we're all kind of pooled together in these risk pools they have, but the risk, pure risk pools are skewed. We are not paying less money being in a lower risk pool. We are paying high, high premiums for being in a high risk pool. But you see what I mean? The whole thing is complicated and confusing, but that's because that's how it's set up. That is another failure of this capitalistic healthcare system we can not afford as a country to keep suffering through these price hikes by private insurance. Private insurance has to go. They have had well over a decade to do something about their behavior, about their greed, cause that's what this is about. It's not because we're just using more health insurance and they're having to spend more. They're more profitable than ever. Their profits went up every single one of these years. They're not hurting for money. Their CEOs are getting bigger and bigger bonuses every year because we're paying them more money. Not because we're using more insurance, but because they're finding new ways to screw us over, that that that's the problem and that's why this is so infuriating. If capitalism worked properly, the public outrage would demand these prices drop. If capitalism was working properly, we would have alternatives to go to that would force the entire market to come down because we would have choice. But we don't. Because of this, because of the greed of these companies, because of the fact that we have more than 40,000 people a year dying because they can't afford healthcare coverage. The private insurance industry has to go there. There's no two ways about it. They had their chance. They had been warned. They've seen the

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