Full disclosure, we are nerds about all writing about health care – actually, Matt is. This is a great read from the award-winning ProPublica reporter Marshall Allen. In Never Pay the First Bill and Other Ways to Fight the Health Care System and Win, Marshall Allen has written a primer on how to challenge the predatory health care system and win.
Every year, millions of Americans are overcharged and underserved while the health care industry makes record profits. Marshall begins with the five reasons you should fight back:
- We are the ones paying for health care. The monthly premium costs for a family exceed the average family’s mortgage.
- The customer is always right but the industry does not consider you their most important customer. We fund the whole enterprise, but because of the middlemen, we’ve lost our customer status.
- The business of medicine exploits your sickness for profit.
- The health care industry wastes obscene amounts of your money. This estimated waste is between $760B-$935B per year. That is a B.
- Our health care system is not broken. It was made this way. It is not an accident that we have the most expensive health care system in the world. We need to stick up for ourselves and demand that the system change.
The book includes a chapter on the conflict of interest with brokers and features fee-only consultants that provide a better way.
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