As soon as we found out she was pregnant, my wife and I made a very deliberate decision to have the baby in Cancun, Mexico. We live in Puerto Rico, but we found with our last child that the healthcare experience here in Mexico is really top quality… yet incredibly inexpensive.

By comparison, I recently read a story about a 30-year old man who got into a car accident in Modesto, California. Luckily, he was not critically injured. But since the crash did cause some shoulder and back pain, he went to the hospital to make sure it was nothing serious.

His three-hour hospital visit consisted of a quick chat with an ER doctor who wrote that the patient "looks good". He also received a prescription for pain medication.

And his bill came to $44,914.

Sadly, his story is not unique. It's easy to find cases, for example, of a surprise $8,000 bill for a colonoscopy at an "out-of-network" provider; i.e. a medical center that doesn't accept certain insurance. Or an extra $1,600 tacked onto the bill for a birth, just for the epidural.

Spending on healthcare in the US was about $2,000 per person in 1970, adjusted for inflation in 2022 dollars. Today, it is over $12,000 per capita.

During that time, we have seen plenty of new regulation in the healthcare system, including HIPPA and even a regulatory overhaul with the Affordable Care Act, or "Obamacare".

Somehow that has made care less affordable, and hasn't improved the quality.