I think if you went up to workers and said, you can have $10,000 more dollar or $5,000 more

next year if you choose a plan with a narrow network.

Some folks would make that choice.

And this sort of sets the stage for, I think, where we could go as a country from a policymaking

perspective going forward.

I'm Bethany McLean.

Did you ever have a moment of doubt about capitalism and whether greed's a good idea?

And I'm Luigi Zengalis.

We have socialism for the very rich, rugged individualism for the poor.

And this is Capital Isn't, a podcast about what is working in capitalism.

First of all, tell me, is there some society you know that doesn't run on greed?

And most importantly, what isn't? We ought to do better by the people that get left behind.

I don't think we shouldn't kill the capital system in the process.

A couple of weeks ago, the Stigler Center, which sponsors this podcast, had a conference on

whether capitalists can be popular. There was one answer

everybody agree on. The U.S. healthcare system is not working. It was really interesting.

Health care came up on pretty much every panel. Labor economists agreed that it's a huge friction

that prevents people from changing jobs. Others said that the lack of antitrust enforcement

has enabled hospitals to raise prices

without improving quality. And it contributes to income inequality. In fact, Zach Cooper, who is an

associate professor of public health and economics at Yale, has argued that rising health spending

in the United States since 1975 can explain roughly the same share of the growth in income inequality

...