Regardless of political position or background, most people can agree that our current American system of healthcare is in a disastrous place. Care is expensive, hard to access, and convoluted, and there aren't many streamlined, accessible resources to help people navigate this space.

There have been many proposed changes to our healthcare system, and proposed new systems that would hypothetically take the place of our existing one. But what would it really take to see a meaningful improvement?

The Tangled Knot of American Healthcare

Arguably the biggest issue here is that American healthcare is a tangled knot of different systems, resources, and institutions jockeying for power. The end result is that the average patient or consumer has little control over the healthcare they receive or what they pay for it.

Doctors, nurses, hospitals, and other individuals and institutions are bound to follow strict regulations. Available treatments and solutions are similarly bound by laws. The insurance industry is complex and multifaceted, intended to make health care more affordable but perhaps falling short of that goal in many ways.

As a result, there aren't many straightforward, inexpensive solutions for health and medical issues. For example, imagine a person starts showing symptoms associated with mesothelioma. Mesothelioma is a rare and deadly form of cancer that even advanced oncologists sometimes don't understand. If you want to get the best possible treatment for mesothelioma, you'll need to find your way into a dedicated specialist’s office, and you'll also need to work around potential insurance and financial issues. This turns caring for your health into a major uphill battle.

The Futility of Universal Healthcare

Many people in the present have recommended universal health care as the be-all, end-all solution to healthcare woes, but there are several problems with this:

• Legislative opposition. Even if the majority of voters could agree that universal healthcare was the ideal solution, there would still be legislative opposition to halt this solution in its tracks. What might end up getting passed is a mere half-measure or a veritable Frankenstein's monster of different legislative elements, ultimately resulting in an even more complicated, less effective system.
• Excessive regulations and controls. Regulations and legal controls have arguably done more harm than good for the quality of American healthcare. While these measures are intended to protect consumers, they introduce extra costs and barriers that complicate our system.
• Lack of accessibility. Many developed nations with universal healthcare (or something similar) have increased wait times and doctor shortages. Even if we iron out all the logistical issues associated with universal healthcare, we may find it more difficult than ever to schedule appointments and get the care we need.

What a Better Healthcare System Might Look Like

So what might a better healthcare system in the United States look like?

• Pricing transparency. One of the most critical developments we should fight for is pricing transparency. One of the reasons why doctors and hospitals can get away with charging whatever they want is because consumers, and sometimes insurance companies, aren't working with all the pricing information. Pricing visibility is essential for maintaining competition, and competition is essential for an efficient market dynamic.
• Open competition. We also need to stimulate more competition. As it stands, most areas of the country are consolidating all their doctors and medical professionals into gigantic institutions that cannot be challenged. More decentralized markets with more individual players would incentivize those players to bring down prices and appeal to consumers. When consumers have meaningful choices and transparently available prices, they're able to exercise more control over economic dynamics, applying pressure to develop better systems.
• Easier roads to credentials. If you want to become a doctor, it’s going to take you 11 to 12 years on average. When you're done, you'll have a mountain of debt and a stressful job. This is one reason why we currently have a doctor shortage. If we created easier roads to attaining certain credentials, including the creation of new healthcare and medical positions, we could see more people and see them more cheaply.
• Rewards for innovation. Similarly, we should have more rewards for innovation. Currently, research and development is excruciatingly costly, forcing pharmaceutical companies to charge higher prices to recoup those costs. Better incentive structures would allow these institutions to research and develop much less expensively.
• Fewer treatment restrictions. We also need to open the doors to more treatment possibilities. Novel and experimental methods, despite introducing new risks, could be very promising as potential lines of development.

Our current healthcare system is complicated, but it's a mistake to assume that a solution needs to be equally complicated. Even a handful of simple tweaks to our existing system, or a streamlined replacement to our existing system, can make a major difference in accessibility, affordability, and quality of care.

Image: Pix4Free/Nick Youngson