Health insurance companies driving up healthcare spending in America

By arseniotoledo // 2024-12-29

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Health insurance companies have been growing in influence since the professionalization and centralization of American healthcare in the early 20th century.
By the 1970s, health insurance companies had begun challenging other corporate interests for more economic and political power over the medical industry.
The unrestrained influence health insurance companies have over medicine has driven healthcare spending up to catastrophic levels – and employers expect costs to keep increasing in 2025.
Health insurance companies continue to prioritize profits by shifting the burden of costs onto hospitals and patients through a variety of strategies, including denying claims and leaving hospitals with billions in unpaid medical bills.

The dominance of health insurance companies in the American healthcare industry is one of the major reasons for massive health spending – and its roots can be traced to the late 19th century and the early 20th century. Without significant reforms, healthcare costs are expected to continue surging into 2025. This is according to the book "Rockefeller Medicine Men: Medicine and Capitalism in America" by E. Richard Brown. First published in the late 1970s, the book chronicles the history of American healthcare and the massive growth in spending that Americans at the time were already experiencing – an average of around $4,300 per person in 1979, adjusted for inflation. Brown argues that, in the late 19th century, American medicine remained decentralized: Medical professionals lacked power, wealth and status, and the state of healthcare was determined by its distance to sources of power and wealth, making it heavily fragmented and at times ineffective and poorly regulated, with low earnings for healthcare practitioners. (Related: Mike Adams calls for DECENTRALIZATION of America's collapsing health care system.) From the 1900s to the 1930s, medicine entered an era of massive change, becoming a tightly controlled profession through licensure, accreditation and the growing influence of the American Medical Association and the groundbreaking changes brought about by the 1910 Flexner Report which reported on the poor state of medical education in the United States. Physicians started gaining higher incomes and started gaining a higher social standing due to the sudden exclusive nature of medicine and the fact that this new generation of medical professionals were solidly in the middle and upper classes. By the 1970s, physicians reached the top of America’s class structure, with median incomes placing them in the top percentiles. They became highly trusted and, Brown argues, ranked alongside Supreme Court justices in occupational status. However, soon the authority of medical professionals started getting challenged by corporate interest groups, namely hospitals, medical schools, government agencies seeking to rationalize and bureaucratize healthcare and, most importantly, health insurance companies.

Lack of control over health insurance companies leading to massive growth in healthcare costs

Hospitals, now under the purview of special interests, especially health insurance companies, became central to healthcare, consuming 40 percent of health expenditures. At the same time, health insurance companies started gaining significantly more economic and political influence. The unrestrained influence of health insurance companies in American healthcare has led to the massive explosion in healthcare costs – and U.S. employers only expect costs to increase. In 2025, employers reportedly are bracing for an eight percent increase in costs, according to a survey by the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans. This projection surpasses the seven percent increases seen in 2022 and 2023, signaling a continued upward trend in healthcare expenses. Furthermore, health insurance corporations are figuring out new strategies to further shift the burden of spending to hospitals and patients. Excessive prior authorization, fail-first policies and nearly insurmountable bureaucratic hurdles not only prevent patients from receiving care, but it also shifts the burden of spending away from insurers all the while driving up healthcare costs. One report indicated that more than half of all hospitals in the U.S. have more than $100 million each in accounts receivable for claims older than six months, and over a third of American hospitals have reported over $50 million in foregone payments because of denied claims. Watch this episode of the "Health Ranger Report" as Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, argues that the solution to reforming American healthcare lies in decentralization. This video is from the Health Ranger Report channel on Brighteon.com.

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Lack of control over health insurance companies leading to massive growth in healthcare costs

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