A Vanderbilt-educated healthcare veteran who’s worked inside America’s biggest insurers has spoken out, denouncing the entire system as a rigged game that rewards spending over saving.
Writing in The Tennessean, Micah Moughon pulls no punches in his diagnosis of what’s destroying American healthcare—and his prescription might be even more radical than his critique.
“There is a simple reason healthcare is expensive: Millions of executives, investors, providers and nonprofits are financially rewarded for increasing healthcare spending. The only way to make healthcare affordable is to financially reward hundreds of millions of individuals for reducing healthcare spending,” writes Moughon, whose resume spans nonprofits, startups, and major insurance companies.
The numbers back his outrage. Family health insurance now costs employers an average of $25,500 annually—double the 2008 price tag. That’s money, Moughon argues, that should be in workers’ paychecks, not insurance company coffers.
But it’s his characterization of the current system that truly stings.
“American healthcare is mired in corporate socialism where an oligopoly of constipated health insurers dictates what healthcare patients can have, where they can have it and how much they can have it for,” he writes.
The roots of this dysfunction? A World War II-era accident that became permanent policy.
“Health insurance was inadvertently yoked to employment in World War II, when the government froze wages to keep workers from deserting military manufacturers. Employers promoted health insurance to attract workers instead, and the IRS codified that arrangement,” Moughon explains.
Eight decades later, that wartime Band-Aid has metastasized into a system that crushes competition at every turn.
“That arrangement stamps out innovative and nonprofit health insurance startups because it is much more complex to insure entire employer populations than single individuals. It also strangles independent pharmacies and physician practices that do not have the leverage to negotiate viable rates with insurers, so they consolidate with corporations that do.”
Some Americans aren’t waiting for reform. Growing numbers are abandoning traditional insurance altogether, turning instead to healthshare schemes—faith-based or community-oriented cost-sharing arrangements that operate outside the insurance system. While not technically insurance these alternatives appeal to those who share Moughon’s view that the current system is irredeemably broken.
Moughon’s own solution to the system in crisis? Blow it all up.
He wants employers to hand that $25,500 directly to workers. Let families buy catastrophic coverage for true emergencies and use Health Savings Accounts for everything else. Make healthcare providers compete for cash-paying customers the way restaurants compete for diners.
“The best regulators are empowered consumers. They will either discipline functional markets or game dysfunctional markets. They should have a right to the healthcare dollars they work hard for, and health insurance conglomerates should not confiscate those dollars,” he argues.
While Washington debates incremental reforms and insurance executives defend the status quo, Moughon is calling for revolution. His message is simple: The system isn’t broken—it’s working exactly as designed. The problem is it’s designed to enrich everyone except the people paying the bills.