The problem is typical of many problems in America - the focus in healthcare is on making and increasing profits. Healthcare should be about caring for Americans' health, not increasing profits. Pharmaceutical companies should be paid to conduct research to develop new drugs, doctors should be paid well, and so on, but its gone off the charts in both categories! The average optometrist makes $171,000/year, after only 8 years of higher education and they can't fix serious eye problems. For that, you need to go to an ophthalmologist who makes on average $182,000/year. Their course of study requires 11 years of higher education. The pharmaceutical companies are so focused on profits that they hadn't even bothered to try developing a new antibiotic since the 90s - it wasn't profitable enough. In the meantime, bacteria are becoming more and more resistant to the antibiotics at hand. Health care costs should be regulated by the government so that costs and profits are reasonable.