Americans express the most widespread confidence in doctors, hospitals, and university professors and researchers. Americans are least likely to have confidence in health insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies

Which, sadly, shows just how worthless the opinions of Americans are, I guess. Doctors and hospitals are at the core of the problems with the health care system, as they’re the ones charging the high prices, and who are driving them higher at far-above-inflation-rate increases year after year, while insurance companies, for all their faults, are the only part of the puzzle that actually acts to drive prices downward, by refusing to pay more than a set price for any given procedure. Insurance companies, among other successes, are responsible for introducing prescription copays, which shifted over half of prescriptions away from expensive proprietary drugs into far less expensive generics in just a few years.