I decided, circa 2012, that healthcare was a make-work program for us taxi drivers. Sometimes transportation providers would make vastly more taking people to their appointments than the provider would receive for the checkup or the group counseling session. A good voucher fare for us was $50+ ($100+ round trip). I couldn't imagine AHCCCS (Arizona Medicaid) paying more than $40 for a group counseling session. Medicaid probably paid $40-50 for a medical followup appointment.

My theory behind this observation was that as the U.S. gradually de-industrialized post-NAFTA and post-WTO, our politicians leaders used healthcare as a source of jobs that couldn't be outsourced to Mexico or Asia.

From my on-the-ground perspective, an important consideration in the US' poor health outcomes is addiction. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39071316