Stand-Up for Simple Health Insurance
In just 90 seconds, this highly entertaining comic conveys the absurd complexity of health insurance out-of-pocket costs. It’s a potent tragi-comic case for affordable, simple health insurance. Finally, the difference between HSAs and FSAs is clear!
April 20, 2025
“Oh my God, like what is going on with the healthcare system?”
Or on YouTube
Video, 1.5 minutes
April 15, 2025
By Darlene Bereznicki
Comment by: Jim Kahn
Ms. Bereznicki starts her riff with “When the Luigi Mangione thing went down, my Canadian friends asked … OMG what is going on with the healthcare system?” That’s the question we’re all asking ourselves, all the time. Leave it to a professional comedian to answer to that question so well and amusingly, in just a minute and a half. Maybe she should delivery my health policy talks!
Deductibles, copays, out of pocket maximums, etc – she quickly covers the gamut. This routine even alerted me to the fundamental difference between HSAs (health savings accounts, which roll over tax-free to retirement*) and FSAs (flexible spending accounts, use them or lose them).
Note the massive attention to the Instagram video in just five days, and all the supportive comments. (The YouTube video was just uploaded by Ms. Bereznicki, as a favor to HJM readers.)
Why did this resonate so widely? Because we’re all fed up with a laughably convoluted and inefficient – plus unfair and harmful – set of clunky mechanisms to pay for health care. Ms. Bereznicki and her Canadian friends would agree I’m sure: the US needs a single public payer, with minimal or no cost sharing.
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* HSAs are a major gift to the healthy and wealthy, and undercut insurance markets …
About the Commentator, Jim Kahn
Jim (James G.) Kahn, MD, MPH (editor) is an Emeritus Professor of Health Policy, Epidemiology, and Global Health at the University of California, San Francisco. His work focuses on the cost and effectiveness of prevention and treatment interventions in low and middle income countries, and on single payer economics in the U.S. He has studied, advocated, and educated on single payer since the 1994 campaign for Prop 186 in California, including two years as chair of Physicians for a National Health Program California.
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