Deeper Dissection #3

Insurance or Maintenance

We open with an idealized version of the early 20th-century healthcare market: no middlemen, no billing codes, no insurance cards. Just a doctor, a patient, and a simple transaction.

This could happen because care wasn’t terrible expensive. There were no monoclonal antibodies, no gene therapy, no MRI scanners… even general surgery was rare.

Care was personal. Doctors often accepted whatever a family could afford. When people couldn’t afford care, charity care was supported by local churches, fraternal organizations, or wealthier patrons. It was a system that worked best in small communities, when medicine was inexpensive and limited in scope.