> The discourse also underestimates how much of our health care costs go to our significantly higher salaries throughout the medical system.

Well, the salaries of medical personnel only account for about 20% of total healthcare spending. So even cutting those by half wouldn't change much.

> One of the reasons hospitals operate in this convoluted way and still barely clear a profit is that we require them to treat everyone and attempt to collect payment later. A lot of what you and I pay for health care goes to cover people who can't or won't pay.

If that was a major reason, then those who don't pay would balance out those who pay and the grand total of all healthcare spending in the US would be pretty average despite individual premiums and out of pocket costs being sky high. But in reality, the total healthcare spending is just as sky high (several times more per capita then median OECD country).

That number might be true across all health spending, which includes hospital plant, home health care, all public health work (including animal control), and medical equipment. But if you zoom in on clinical and specialist practice, the parts of the health care equation where payer-structure actually enters the picture, compensation for practitioner shoots up; it's the dominant cost of running a health provider.