Using AI to negotiate a $195k hospital bill down to $33k

This is missing the point about why people don't like the past M4A proposals: It's not about cost savings, it's about losing access to their existing health care with scarce details about what would change.

The surprising reality about American health insurance is that many people's plans cover a lot of things, procedures, and medications that would be harder for them to obtain under Medicare or even in other socialized medicine systems like the NHS.

If politicians would lay out a Medicare buy-in option and let everyone opt-in to it, it would be far more popular. The past proposals that involved shutting down the private insurance industry and handing it all over to the government is resoundingly unpopular.

Can we really say this is true about individuals in the US?

I think it's pretty clear the propaganda machine has successfully privatized health care to the great detriment of the populace and have the clamps on it.

After all, if you told everyone you had a solution where insurance rates would be cheaper, their healthcare system would cost less overall, and the health outcomes would be superior, they would all be like "sounds great". Then, when you reveal this solution is the complete destruction of the insurance "industry", insurance payments are "tax", and the health provider is the government, they would balk, scream about socialized healthcare, and say how they don't trust the government.

That's a trained response, not a real thought.

Although I have to say the rosy picture some paint here about the high incomes is counter to anything I ever heard - and saw, although I left the US in the early 2000s, after having lived there for almost a decade (still mostly paid from Germany, never ready to make a complete move).

"Medical Bankruptcies by Country 2025"

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/medical-b...

"Healthcare Insights: How Medical Debt Is Crushing 100 Million Americans"

https://www.ilr.cornell.edu/scheinman-institute/blog/john-au...

By the way, Europeans don't quite all have a "nationalized healthcare system". Germany, for example, has "Krankenkassen" but also private insurance, and the "Krankenkassen" are private organizations.

We pay health insurance and get to choose the provider, those with higher incomes can switch to complete private insurance. We also have lots of our own problems and increasing costs because of immigration but more so aging population.

However, I personally know several people who had severe illnesses for a long time, and their normal "Krankenkassen" insurance never made any problems. One person with plenty of money, whose wife was dying, even asked US medical experts if he should come to the US with her, and those US experts said he should stay where he is, the German univ3ersity hospital right next door had some of the leading therapies in the field. She lived five more years instead of dying after less than half a year with the standard therapy, every single expense paid for with the standard insurance, additional private insurance unnecessary. Similar with my stepfather, who had soooo many severe conditions, and yet every single item down to the special medical bed brought into our house so that he could finally die at home was paid without question.

The problems are with more mundane expenses, e.g. glasses, or the dentist, where only some of the treatments are covered. The really expensive illnesses seem to be better covered than the more common and much simpler problems.

Both of which are infinitely better than what we have now, which is bastardized worst elements of both.

But because both sides will never agree we'll get neither, only the current hellscape.