<story><title>After Appalachian hospitals merged, their ERs became much slower</title><url>https://kffhealthnews.org/news/article/ballad-health-er-wait-times-copa-monopoly-appalachia-hospitals/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>nojvek</author><text>The 5 greedy systems of US healthcare.&lt;p&gt;1. AMA (American Medical Association) artificially controlling the number of medical graduates based on a quota. Every doctor starts of a huge debt, and many don&amp;#x27;t get to practice. No experienced doctors from other countries can practice here.&lt;p&gt;2. Hospitals (many owned by Private Equity) - Maximize profit &amp;#x2F; patient. Don&amp;#x27;t show prices, lots of outrageous billing for basic care like Ibuprofen and bandages. The bills keep on coming for months after care.&lt;p&gt;3. Doctors - Gotta pay those debts. No prices advertised, Inflated costs for basic care. Specialists are booked for months.&lt;p&gt;5. Insurance companies - Can only make max 20% on administration costs. Love the high prices and denying claims for whatever reason they can find.&lt;p&gt;3. The politicians - Make $$ from lobbying insurance companies and big providers. Employers sponsored health insurance means individual workers don&amp;#x27;t have same bargaining power.&lt;p&gt;Essentially we are paying a fortune. ~5 trillion for healthcare. If we pooled all that money into a govt funded insurance pool, and removed artificial license quotas, market advertised prices, we&amp;#x27;d have a much more efficient healthcare.&lt;p&gt;The corporations know the individuals can&amp;#x27;t coordinate between themselves to take them out. They have captured the market.&lt;p&gt;Instead we have a huge administrative bloat, gofundme pages, lowest mortality amongst the rich countries and a shit show.</text></comment>
<story><title>After Appalachian hospitals merged, their ERs became much slower</title><url>https://kffhealthnews.org/news/article/ballad-health-er-wait-times-copa-monopoly-appalachia-hospitals/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>wcedmisten</author><text>I was thinking it might be interesting to show a map of regions to the closest hospital, and color code it by the operator, like ballad health = red, banner health = green, etc. I&amp;#x27;ll see if OpenStreetMap has this data available</text></comment>