“Users want control” is a shoulder shrug
The truth of &quot;users want control&quot; depends on how closely your users&#x27; preferences resemble each other with regards to the particular service you&#x27;re providing.  If you can make one set of choices that works for all users, then no, users don&#x27;t want control.  If you can&#x27;t, then the users will be demanding that control whether you give it to them or not, and if you don&#x27;t they&#x27;ll go elsewhere.<p>If you&#x27;re small, you get to sidestep this distinction by defining your market carefully.  Apple is one company that famously does not give users control.  Is it true that PC users don&#x27;t want control?  No.  That&#x27;s why Windows has 80% market share in PCs and Android has 75% market share in mobile.  But it&#x27;s true <i>of Apple customers</i>, and in return for giving up control, they get a well-integrated user experience that&#x27;s relatively bug-free, just works, and requires no extra thought on their part.  You could look at dealing with hardware incompatibilities, avoiding crapware, integrating systems, and so on as services that Apple provides to its customers, and as a result they can charge a premium on their devices and make handsome profits.<p>This model falls down for public policy, like privacy, because people have <i>different</i> priorities that lead to <i>different</i> tradeoffs.  I will happily give Google my location if it helps me avoid traffic jams, something many HN readers object to.  I will post semi-identifiable comments on Hacker News, because I&#x27;ve derived fairly significant benefit from comments here.  I don&#x27;t generally post pictures of my family on Facebook.  I certainly don&#x27;t document my every waking moment with Instagram.  Many other people make different tradeoffs, and that&#x27;s their right.<p>It&#x27;s debatable which bucket health care falls into - I suspect most people are in the &quot;just make it work&quot; camp until they dig into the details of exactly what experience and cost &quot;just make it work&quot; entails.  I&#x27;ll point out that the Apple experience for health care is completely possible with Kaiser Permanente and other managed HMOs, if you are willing to give up your choice of providers.  Stay within their network and everything &quot;just works&quot;, but then you have to stay within their network.