Ben Handel

And so then all healthcare systems around the world and in different settings in the U.S., they're set up with some basket of rationing policies, some basket of policies that say, we're not going to give you everything you want, and we're going to have to have some mechanism to figure out what you get and what you don't get.

Almost every other market, that's prices.

Amazon is going to charge you $65 for something.

You either buy it or you don't.

Healthcare, that doesn't work because we say we're going to charge you $80,000 and the person says, well, I'm insured.

I'm not paying this.

I think it's closely related.

Take a system like the UK where there's nationalized health care.

What are the rationing policies there?

How are they limiting care so that people aren't just consuming everything they want?

Time.

They have time.

They make you wait in line.

And then they also have an institute called NICE, the National Institute for Clinical Excellence.

And there they just crunch numbers, cost-benefit, and they say, as a national health system, we're going to cover this thing and not this thing.

The U.S.

has a privatized system, as you mentioned, much more privatized.

What that means is that while there's some regulation in the U.S., the onus is really on insurers, UnitedHealthcare, Aetna, Humana, Blue Cross.

The onus is on the insurers to form that basket of rationing policies.

What that means is that instead of having some kind of centralized national way, you're rationing health care.