Picking Your Pocket With a Permission
The Paul Truesdell Podcast
How medical inflation, healthcare consolidation, and congressional laziness are draining your wallet dry.

Medical inflation is picking your pocket while Congress holds the door open. Every year, the bills get bigger, the explanations get longer, and the solutions get further away. Employers are drowning. Employees are stretched thin. Retirees are watching their fixed incomes shrink against healthcare costs that never stop climbing. And the people we elected to fix this mess? They're too busy pointing fingers to pick up a wrench. Let's talk about it.
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Let me tell you something that ought to keep every employer, employee, and retiree awake at night, and probably does. Medical inflation is eating us alive. Not slowly, mind you, but with the kind of appetite that makes you wonder if anyone in Washington has bothered to look at the actual numbers.
Here's what the data tells us. According to the Workers Compensation Research Institute, medical payments per claim jumped roughly five percent annually from 2021 through 2024. The average claim size has ballooned by thirty-two percent since 2017. Thirty-two percent. That's not a rounding error. That's a fundamental shift in how much it costs to fix a broken arm, treat a back injury, or help someone recover from a workplace accident.
And what's driving this freight train? Three things, mostly. First, technological advancements. Now don't get me wrong, robotic surgeries and advanced imaging are wonderful when you need them. But wonderful comes with a price tag, and that price tag keeps climbing. Second, healthcare consolidation. As hospitals merge and systems swallow each other up, competition disappears. When competition disappears, leverage shifts. Suddenly the folks providing care can negotiate higher payment rates because, well, where else are you going to go? Studies show this consolidation has added anywhere from one to four and a half percent to medical payments per claim, depending on the state. Third, we have an aging workforce. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that workers seventy-five and older will grow by nearly ninety-seven percent by 2030. Older workers mean longer recovery times, more complex medical needs, and higher costs across the board.
So what do we have? A perfect storm of expensive technology, shrinking competition, and demographic reality all pushing costs in one direction. Up.
Now here's where I get a little hot under the collar. The government is absolutely crawling with bureaucrats. And look, I don't blame them for doing their jobs. That's what they get paid to do. They process paperwork, enforce regulations, and follow the rules somebody else wrote. You can't fault a person for showing up and doing what's asked of them.
But you can absolutely fault the people who wrote those rules in the first place. And that means Congress. These are the folks we elect to solve problems, to look at systems that aren't working and fix them. Instead, what do we get? Posturing. Finger-pointing. Endless hearings that produce nothing but soundbites for the evening news. The tax code is a disaster. Criminal laws are a patchwork quilt stitched together by people who apparently never talked to each other. Civil rules and regulations have become so byzantine that you need a team of lawyers just to understand what you're allowed to do in your own business.
I'm not talking about tearing up the Constitution. That document has served us well for nearly two hundred and fifty years and it'll serve us well for another two hundred and fifty if we let it. What I'm talking about is everything underneath it. The operational machinery of government that's supposed to make life work for ordinary people. That machinery is broken, and medical costs are just one symptom of a much larger disease.
At our firm, we operate by a simple principle. We call it MY TEAM, which stands for Minimize and Maximize Your Time, Effort, Aggravation, and Money. Notice the order. Time comes first because you can't make more of it. Every hour you spend fighting with an insurance company, untangling bureaucratic nonsense, or trying to figure out which regulation applies to your situation is an hour you'll never get back.
When medical inflation runs wild and nobody in charge seems interested in addressing the root causes, it costs you on all four fronts. It costs you time dealing with higher premiums and coverage disputes. It costs you effort navigating a system designed more for administrators than patients. It costs you aggravation by the truckload. And yes, it costs you money, real money, the kind that used to go toward retirement savings or your grandchildren's education.
The insurance carriers are doing what they can. Some are using artificial intelligence to manage costs. Others are investing in clinical expertise and holistic care management. Good for them. But they're bailing water while Congress sits in the wheelhouse arguing about who gets to hold the compass.
It's time for a reset. Not revolution. Reset. The kind of serious, adult conversation about how we actually want this country to operate. Because right now, we're paying the price for decades of neglect, and the bill just keeps getting bigger.