If only we could take our money elsewhere, but we are mandated to pay with insurance, which makes them the defacto customer, to decide with the doctors, cutting us out of the process (which is handy under circumstances where the patient can't talk; There's a use case for everything, but coercion and blanket enforcement seems to ruin everything)
We can't even choose our insurance - it comes from your employer with no choice (or no real choice - I have two slightly different choices from United Health Care). All the negotiation on how it works is done by HR not me, and HR likes the current rules as it makes it hard for me to leave.
In theory I can bypass my employer insurance - but if I do I throw away thousands of dollars that my employer is paying directly and so anything I find elsewhere either cannot be as good, or is has to cost a lot more money.
Even then, good luck... I couldn't find a personal plan either the Health gov compliant plans or out of pocket that matched my employer insurance... I'm pretty sure if I try again, I'll wind up creating a company again, using one of the HR based collective payroll options just for better Insurance options.
The system sucks a lot, and for a lot of different reasons. Namely is that there's no room for individual negotiation, and there are dozens of pricing models for the same drugs, procedures, etc.
