@wjmaggos @Zeb prior to "insurancization" and the massive growth of pharma in the 80s and 90s, we had a sane, efficient, private system that most people could interact with in cash.
When private personal insurance began rolling out in earnest in the 70s and 80s, initially, it offered private practices, on average, more than their usual fees, but usually required them to charge those fees of all patients... fees began to steadily rise across the board: The insurance essentially necessitated itself by distorting the private market.
Universal healthcare systems are not the solution. Around the world, including our neighbor to the north and our very special friend the UK, we can see universal healthcare systems are either a disaster or a timebomb without exception where the care is anywhere near parity with the US.
Additionally, universal healthcare systems are far more difficult to regulate (as any state bureaucracy is) and all but immune to change and efficient operation, somewhat a mirror of the baroque interface between care providers and multiple obnoxious state and private insurance systems here: often times an office has specialist staff just for billing (this additional labor is another distortion of the market and a guaranteed increase in prices.)
Reigning in insurance and pharma, not socialization, is the solution: return to what has been demonstrated to work very well here.
To do so is to reduce complexity, administrative overhead, and cost automatically.