The one subject every one of my favorite podcasts avoids is healthcare.
Sure, they talk about vaccines. They talk about peptides, longevity, and the latest medical device. Cool, bro. A new robot.
I do not care.
I care about the $30,000 disappearing every year before an American family receives a dollar of actual care.
I care about Medicare, insurers, and health systems extracting money from patients, employers, taxpayers, and physicians.
And increasingly, those are not separate institutions.
The insurer owns the physicians.
The health system owns the health plan.
The pharmacy benefit manager owns the pharmacy.
Everyone owns everyone, and the patient owns the bill.
Law makers talk about breaking up the insurance companies while protecting Certifiacte of Need laws in their own backyards and protecting their precious "non-profits".
And I would not care how large these organizations became if they won in an open market.
They did not.
They used government to restrict competition, protect reimbursement, block new entrants, and write rules that favor incumbents.
Then they spent nearly a billion dollars hiring lobbyists to keep it that way.
The lobbyists take their cut.
The lawmakers take the money.
The public elects the lawmakers.
And then people wonder why healthcare keeps getting more expensive.
Healthcare is not ignored because it is boring.
It is ignored because nearly everyone with a microphone is more comfortable discussing the symptoms than naming the people getting rich from the disease.
-Rojas out