>>>I am guessing you are consulting U.S. hospitals and/or doctors. If so you are paid by the U.S. health industry; directly or indirectly. And if my assumptions are correct, your opinion on U.S. healthcare and/or ACA is just a self-serving as a supermarket checkout clerk asking customers for donations towards a food pantry; the money that the supermarket spends on their own products.
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>LOL. Opinions here about IT matters mostly are from people who work in IT, so presumably you discount those opinions for being self-serving? ;-)

The IT matters discussed here are not discussed from both sides of the counter, mostly. We very rarely get to discuss anything with those who sell the products we buy (unless we count that wave or renegade foxers who were trying to sell us dot net a dozen years ago).

If you are on the other side of the counter re american health industry, well, you've kept successfully neutral or at least balanced in discussions so far. Much better than, say, Craig criticising Microsoft on some issues just enough to sound neutral when he basically says that Microsoft is right on all other issues.

I don't know whether I can count as neutral. While I was in the US, I had all the benefits of the industry on my side: wasn't ripped off too seriously, only about a couple of thousand dollars altogether (in insurance money, then various fees charged for not knowing the system, giving a wrong answer to a trick question, being not covered when I thought I was, doing an x-ray in a non-profit instead at a little shop around the corner - $120 instead of $40 etc etc). Ever since 2002, when I got Republican insurance ("stay healthy!") it's working perfectly for me and my family. My total consumption for the current year is two ibuprofens (half-dose) or perhaps even four.

OTOH, parts of my family who stayed in the US are happily visiting private pharmacies here when they can, thus saving fat hundreds of dollars. The prices of (imported!) medications here are lower than there by a factor of six, but that's the price alone. If you add an average $80 per visit, plus the lab tests they may ask you to do just to cover their asses, the factor may as well be 15. The elephant-in-the-room question is: how is it possible that the big pharma sells its warez so cheaply here? And mind you, there are at least three instances along the supply chain where some serious skimming is done (the importer, the state, the wholesale, the retail), and it's still profitable? Not talking about generics either, some of it is new stuff marketed since 2012. I guess the reason the price here is this and there is that is the first market principle: everything is priced at the highest the market can take.

Which, in the US case, means that they can take it.