Also, you still have the blatant consolidation of the medical industry into a gigantic monolithic hybrid of pharma, hospital, insurer, and artificially scarce doctor.
The solution is not to pump more doctors into a system geared to extract multiple industries worth of profit. Instead, it should be investing in increasing the capability of individuals to provide and manage their own medical care.
This means more accessible diagnostics tools, fewer barriers to entry in getting access to good medical literature. Investing in teaching people how to do research, and make medically relevant observations, or to at least be able to tell when "First Aid" stops, and more advanced facilities are needed. When "First Aid" can encompass using a small, affordable X-ray device cheap and easy enough to safely use in a residential home, THEN you start seeing healthcare costs plummet.
Same goes with Pharma. We have an exceedingly low capability to create environments conducive to productive research per capita. The brain power that can crank on these types of things are artificially limited by the inability of many who may have the interest and time to get access to facilities to make meaningful observations and potential discoveries.
Come up with acceptable test analogs. Document, enumerate, and simulate as much as possible so someone can pick up a protein, shove it into a tissue and see what interactions may happen.
Make the information accessible, and start working on boiling it down into learnable paths where a person can get the 80%, but still drill down into the more specialized.
Cheaper, more prolific research and education is the key. NOT letting the market sit on top the misery of the hurt and dying and demanding the toll be paid. Empower first. Optimize last.
