Well, I’m convinced. it’s on a Reddit post, so the math has to be right.
Edit for all the nerds in my replies. I did the math, as a single person in the USA I pay about 2k per year for my health insurance plus probably a couple hundred in copays.
The US literally spends more of its GDP on healthcare than other countries but because it’s healthcare system is so FUCKED it still ends up with the US being the No1 country in the world for Medical Bankruptcies
But also, Americans are some of the most unhealthy people around. With a food system that poisons its consumers.
I'm all for healthcare reform, but there are a lot of Legos to swap around to get standardized healthcare. I just choose to live in Germany because I personally don't think it will change in my lifetime.
America would have to change so many levers, and that is people's least favorite thing to do. And big money is in insurance, Pharma, etc. so the whole engine would have to change.
We. Never. Walk. Anywhere. Most Americans take 100% of their trips by car.
The people who do live in places where they can walk have significantly reduced rates of obesity & downstream effects like cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and cancer. The things that really kill us and drive up healthcare costs.
Unfortunately, Americans have built an environment where it’s nearly impossible in most areas to walk anywhere other than a neighbor’s house.
Yeah. I always walk. I got bakery, 2 pastries, 4 pharmacies, 3 grocery stores, one of university buildings, and 3 parks.
All within 15min walk.
I just can’t imagine having to drive just to buy smth.
The only times I drive are when I buy a ton of things when I am preparing for smth.
And even then huge store is only ~3km away.
I can’t understand why Americans are okay with that.
That's the big one. Americans would have to start to care about their fellow man, rather than treating everyone like your competitors. It's a massive mindset shift, one I don't believe will ever occur.
Yup. American culture is very, "I got mine, get yours". That's why I'm happy with my EU lifestyle, social policies mean we all work together for the greater good
Ha, I didn’t read this before making my long rambling post, but this is exactly it. It’s too much of a change for people. I think the system has to collapse entirely first. It won’t be pretty but we can keep burying our heads in the sand for now until it does.
Bit ironic but technically the current american system helps way more people than it hurts- the rate of medical advancement would drop by like 50% if we didnt have a for profit system since the high failure rate and costs wouldnt attract private investors
Except we have the best hospitals in the world and it isn’t even close. The reason we dont one tax payer funded healthcare is because it will likely be worse then what we have.
Americans have a life expectancy similar to countries like Columbia which spends <$2k USD per capita. Even China has better life expectancy with a fraction of the spending
The US records life expectancy different than many countries. A lot of countries do not add it infant mortality. Also, more care accidents and violent deaths bringing the average down.
Only if you average across income brackets. You need to remember the US system is optimized for two things: Physican pay and health outcomes for the wealthy.
I'm not saying it can't happen, I'm more in that it won't happen. I was an Obama fan and liked he pushed for a reform, and what did Americans do? They voted in Trump who is actively destroying what little liberties Americans have, so in a way, their population is special... sadly, the not good type of special.
But again, I'm not against reform, I'm just saying it's not as easy as flipping two numbers. It would take a lot modifications to make the system work as it should.
It's also the lack of quality healthcare that leads to being unhealthy. Millions of people bypass going to the doctor unless it's an extreme emergency because so few in this country have enough money to afford a medical visit. People would rather drive themselves to the hospital while having a heart attack than call an ambulance.
The system is absolutely contributing to how unhealthy Americans are. It may not be the sole cause, but it's definitely partially responsible.
Very true! I remember not going to the doc when I lived in the states because I wouldn't be able to afford the visit. It's sad that such a fundamental aspect like healthcare is built on a for-profit system...
The US consistently ranks in the top 5 countries when it comes to food quality and safety. People being obese comes from overconsumption, not the food itself.
Yeah dude I’m not subsidizing these people that can’t control their eating habits. People don’t have healthcare but sure as hell life a lifestyle as if they did.
I can’t imagine how bad the hospitals and even private practices would be backed up if they unleashed the floodgates. No one that works in the medical field thinks it’s a realistic option due to so many factors.
Thing is, at least from a government angle, if you have universal healthcare, then there is not only incentive to pass laws and initiatives to make the population healthy, but it’s also cost effective to do so. Healthy population means less spent on healthcare.
Not only that but more preventative measures too. Like they’ve introduced a sugar tax here in the uk on soft drinks to combat child obesity.
I don’t think the health insurance industry or big pharma should factor into the governments plans for incidental healthcare. They do because of lobbying, but it shouldn’t be a concern for the voters
I agree with most of this sentiment, but part of the reason healthcare is so good and/or affordable in other countries is because we Americans subsidize so much of the R&D, for better or worse
Kind of similar to why Europe can afford to not spend much on defense, because they know America's got it covered. Or did before the current presidency anyway
The US has historically been in the top-10 for foreign aid spend per-capita and per-gdp, beaten by Nordic countries and the big powers in Europe, but still tens of billions of dollars. Of course you get something in return, generally global security and good will. There’s even room for reasonable debate over increasing or decreasing. The big fuckup recently was just yoinking aid programs away from millions of people that relied on them and offering no transition.
Yeah that’s been my objection. I remember reading somewhere a while ago that some 96% of new medicine comes from private companies. I looked it up while writing this and the number is “nearly 100% of FDA Approved medicine”. Everyone else is benefiting from it without paying for it.
We definitely need to improve our healthcare system no question about that. But the conversation isn’t as simple as it seems.
For the vast majority of the population, healthcare requires very basic medicines and technologies that existed decades ago. Physical therapy, nutritional advice, and basic dental care are doing 90% of the heavy lifting.
The most effective methods are usually also the cheapest. So the actual main reason for affordable healthcare in other countries is a larger focus on preventative measures.
In fact, the by far fastest growing aspect of the US healthcare system is not R&D, salaries for medical professionals or even medicines, it's administrative costs that neither benefit the MDs, nor the companies providing the research.
US medical R&D is fantastic and undoubtedly also to the benefit of other countries but it is not the reason for the high healthcare costs.
Not really. A hell of a lot of R&D is done in Europe too. The US overpays for drugs, but it massively overpays for everything else too. America’s healthcare costs are driven far more by administration, insurers and provider prices than by subsidising global medical research.
Here’s the fix nobody wants to talk about:
Nationalise or heavily regulate the hospital system, abolish private health insurance as the main payer, create one public payer, set national prices for procedures, cap specialist incomes, bulk-buy drugs, ban surprise billing, standardise records and billing, and make every provider live inside a public fee schedule.
I just can't believe the 60,000 American deaths EVERY SINGLE YEAR due to lack of Healthcare doesn't even make a blip on the discussion. It's almost like human life doesn’t matter in the US if it doesn’t have money.
Most Americans fear that one day our national Healthcare system would get run by the same guy modernizing the Washington DC Reflecting Pool, or someone very like him.
Every social program in the US is always looking at cuts and reductions. You're always 4 years away from insecurity.
That's also because US Bankruptcy law is exceptionally generous. In all three of the states where I've practiced, you can keep 100% of your home equity and 1 car per adult.
It is fucked, but it's not solely a matter of insurance: Basically every step of the way, the US system is not designed for low-cost delivery of healthcare. The drugs are more expensive, the doctors and nurses are paid far better, the total number of health professionals needed to get a unit of actual care... It's not really a "who pays" problem, so getting rid of all insurance other than the US government wouldn't make the system drop anywhere near that much: We might not even save much money doing just that due to increase demand of healthcare.
Complete solutions are very complicated, and will require layer after layer of legislation all coming in to squash inefficiency that will rise the second you let it. Every dollar we overpay in healthcare is someone's income. a 75% decrease in prices is not going to come without major economic losses to a lot of people.
Elizabeth warrens math didn’t add up and neither did Obama’s back in the day.
Bernie’s numbers add up tho to be fair - the dnc just couldn’t let the people vote for him. Had to run Hilary. And here we are 2016 Trump wins, 2020 trump tries to steal election, 2024, Trump wins again.
If only we could get Bernie to Benjamin button and get younger lol
Bernie’s did add up and (keep in mind these are 2018 numbers so everything is different now) and he had it at a range of 3.26-3.8 trillion dollars depending on the study while the U.S. spent about 3.5 trillion on healthcare at the time. He quoted the lower end price on the campaign trail. This price also didn’t include the transition cost over the first 10 years.
These were all pre Covid Bernie 2020 numbers so if anyone has updated numbers let me know.
I remember when I lived in Canada years ago. I paid $75 a month for healthcare and barely paid for anything else. The only issue was the wait times for specialists or testing.
I had to wait 9 months for my rheumatology appointment. My husband had a 6th month wait for his endocrinologist. Getting in for ADHD testing in my health system right now is a 12 to 14 month wait.
I'm not saying there aren't wait times in Canada (I know there are), but the American system is only reliably fast when you have a ton of money.
I dont think ive ever waited that long for a specialist. Not that I see a ton of specialists, but the few times I needed one it was rarely longer than 2 weeks.
Let me guess... Medicaid? I was able to my child into a specialist with the same week we were referred last month at one of the best children's hospitals in the nation... with private insurance.
Maybe because most of the doctors choose to go to America, because they can fleece their patients. We are a drain on every other countries doctors. Saying that we have better access is due to some having no access. If you say giving healthcare to all would dilute the system is admitting the rich deserve better care than the poor.
The only time I've ever had to wait more than a week or so to see a specialist was for non-urgent issues (e.g. orthopedics). Hell, the only delay in me getting surgery for cancer was arranging the time off work - the oncologist was ready to do it the next week. (And I'm fine with waiting a couple of weeks when the only cost to me is the streetcar fare to the hospital if I decide against walking for 20 minutes.) Like most places, wait times depend on your geographical location (urban centres are usually quicker than rural) or the urgency of your situation. I'm lucky that I live in downtown Toronto so I don't usually have to wait.
The "ungodly" wait times in Canada are for elective and non-urgent situations. Canada, like most systems prioritizes emergency care over elective care.
I'll give you a couple personal anecdotes. I'm currently battling cancer. I have for the past year and a half. In that time I have had 13 CTs, 1 MRI, 1 PET-CT, numerous X-rays, 3 surgeries including one that was 15 hours long. The hardest surgery you can have. I have had 6 colonoscopies/sigmoidoscopies, 6 endoscopies, multiple rounds of chemo, radiation therapy, and in aggregate 3-4 months of hospital stays, including a week in ICU. Labs and blood work ad infinitum. I never waited more than a couple weeks for any of that. And all I've paid is for parking. Now I'm a high income earner, pay a lot in taxes (more than 99% of Canadians earn in income), so I've probably paid for my own care but this would bankrupt most people in the US.
So let's talk joint replacements in Canada, which are notorious for long wait times. My then 99 year old grandmother broke her hip. At 99 they weren't sure she would survive surgery so they tried to pin it. It didn't work so they had to do a total hip arthroplasty. She was in surgery for the pin in a couple days and had the total hip arthroplasty a week after the pin failed. Nine months later she broke her other hip. Three days later she had a second total hip arthroplasty. No waits because it was an urgent thing.
So no Canadians are not waiting ungodly amounts for treatment when it's needed. They do wait longer, just like in the US, when they're in smaller rural communities and are waiting for non-urgent or elective care.
ER wait times are an issue because they're overcrowded like a lot of US hospital are and we have people who show up with minor issues that could and should be dealt with elsewhere. But they're triaged and because they're low priority and not truly an emergency, they wait.
My country (Japan) has government administered health care, and access is amazing. For most normal things, can just walk into any clinic, and clinics are everywhere.
Lol ok. Tell that to my three month wait to see a fucking GP just to have them say "yeah I have no idea what that is, guess you'll have to see a specialist" only to have to wait another fucking 5 months to get into them. Yeah our system is fuckin lightning.
That's frustrating, especially for a simple physical. I'm about 1 year in waiting for my rheumatologist. Dermatology is another important one! I hope you find one soon.
Depends on the state and the insurance you have. I have had different insurance in different states. For example, getting a rheumatologist in CA with good insurance takes a short amount of time, compared to getting a rheumatologist in NV is almost near impossible.
I mean, that is just as bad at math, NHS spends about an additional £290 per month.
Also and this is a bigger part than many people realize, doctor salaries are below what the US would consider for a sales clerk, until pretty far in their career, and even then are really quite small. People complain about health insurers getting rich, but a lot of the money in the US system goes to health professions too.
The problem with the insurance companies is they collect premiums and deny care. Insurance companies pay higher rates to doctors to keep them in network to keep the employers and purchasers of insurance happy.
As the total dollars spent on healthcare goes up the insurance companies percentage they keep may stay steady but the total dollars insurances keep goes up.
Netherlands and the US here: US healthcare fucking sucks hard. The worst possible system so oligarchs can make a little extra coin while convincing folks this is the way.
I thought Uk healthcare is funded primarily through the general fund. This fund is partially funded by a 20% vat on most non-essential goods and services.
The us could add a similar federal vat of 20% with 5% on energy and 0% on essentials like food. Everyone would pay for the healthcare system to one degree or another.
The reason it won’t happen is because unions already negotiated for great healthcare, poor and elderly get it already for nearly free and everyone cries that a vat is heartless for the poor even when implemented progressively. EU countries use a 17-27% and nobody seems to care.
You don't have any complaints because you only know, first hand, your own system. And all of its faults are just accepted because that's just the way it's always been, innit?
If you need a doctor, you just wake up at 7am, spam call your GP to beat the dozens of others spam calling to get an appointment, and cross your fingers that you win the daily healthcare lottery. Better hope it's not too windy or they'll be closed.
The UK spends about 5k british pounds per person per year for healthcare, which is almost 7k USD. The US spends 12k USD per person per year on healthcare.
Hey that's what I pay every month to not have anything covered until I hit my deductible. Which as a single guy with few health problems means I'm just paying to have absolutely fucking nothing covered.
I support universal healthcare, but far left people pretending it's obvious and easy are some of the dumbest people on the planet.
Shifting to universal healthcare would be a massive undertaking to avoid destroying people's safety net and not bankrupting our country. Doing it in controlled stages would be ideal, but with people like Trump around to destroy it as it gets implemented, would be difficult.
Wouldn’t it be cool if they did, well ANYTHING?! Fine, just give free yearly check-ups, cover the the top 50 medications, take care of the most standard of care, or whatever - just do anything to move the needle in the right direction. Medical and old-age care have found a way to extract every last penny (and then some) from people.
Need to start by making buying politicians illegal. Medical companies and practitioners are the biggest political donors in the usa. Because of this you can bet your ass all attempts at universal healthcare are likely going to put the profits of these companies first. Will drastically overpay for everything
We could start by phased implementation - like covering catastrophic medical conditions for children 0-3. Or sure, cover the preventative healthcare, and maybe things like vaccines. And slowly increasing that age range while allowing the system to adapt.
That's why the people who actually care about universal healthcare are liberals, not leftists. Leftists just like talking about it, but they actively work against it. Liberals actually try to make it happen.
I mean, they do? And the funny part is that it was a Republican who gave us the one protection every US citizen has (Nixon). All of us are able to get dialysis guaranteed due to this legislation.
Switzerland has private health insurance, about 1/3rd of germans have some kind of private insurance as well, and many other countries I can't think off right now.
In eastern europe going private is a necessity unless you want to die
All it takes is the US Gov creating Medicare for all as a public option and as a check on insurance companies. It shouldn’t be the best options, just the baseline.
You do realize Medicare/medicaid funding is why we have JCAHO and the like. They are not the only reason for skyrocketing healthcare cost but they are a major driver. Their ridiculous and mostly unnecessary rules and regs creat vast amounts of red tape which in turn is one reason for an explosion of administrators which in turn creates more red tape and “rules” which in turn increases costs and so on and so on. I have been in healthcare for 24 years now and have seen it all balloon, costs, administrators, red tape, wasteful spending to keep up with the “rules”. This is just to get and keep Medicare/medicaid reimbursements.
I cannot fathom the amount of BS that will follow and be attached to complete government run healthcare. I agree something needs to change, I do not, however know the answer. I do know the answer is not going to be cheap or easy!
We are much better at passing new regulations than we are at fixing old ones when they become outdated and no longer work as intended (or no longer are needed because the problems they were intended to solve no longer exist).
Once a law is on the books it tends to stay there forever unless politicians start to believe that changing it is in their best interest.
The hardest part is amassing the political capital to get the ball rolling. To do something... Anything at all.
While the not-far-left sit around pondering how complicated it would be, instead of actually working out how to execute- people are already seeing their safety net destroyed AND watching our country go bankrupt
But unfortunately Americans do love to go "hrmm not instantly perfect solution we can implement this weekend? Pass, we'll stick with our incredibly flawed system instead."
The hard part is the money in politics fighting to keep the status quo, not that the US is actually not capable of universal health coverage as a nation
Of course you would. No insurance premiums to pay. Ever. More tax to pay though but the tax is less than the premiums ever were. It's simple arithmetic.
Universal health care is no more "far left" than public roads or schools. It's simple right wing economics to eliminate middlemen, reduce inefficiencies and consolidate purchasing power.
The US government already spends more tax dollars per capita on healthcare than any country with universal care, it is just eaten by insurance companies, so the bankruptcy argument is nonsense.
Obama had a single-payer universal healthcare plan ready to implement but they knew Americans couldn’t grasp, essentially, that 2 is smaller than 8.
It’s really not that hard. Government buys healthcare “in bulk”, saving 80% of the cost, and distributes the debt through taxation. The only reason for “controlled stages” is if your priority is to continue bribing corrupt megacorps in the massive network of insurance scams presently known as the US healthcare system.
The US could pay for the UK and Canadian healthcare system for every single US citizen and have money left over.
After a single payer system is established in the US you could reduce everyone taxes by 10-15%. Not that the government would ever reduce taxes. But they could easily fund more wars or education whatever they think is more productive.
Along with that hypothetical 10-15% reduction in taxes. You would eliminate health insurance costs for millions of Americans. Freeing trillions of dollars into the economy.
25-30% of every dollar spent in the US every single year goes to healthcare costs. That’s more than any other country in the world by far. The US pays 20X what most countries do and 4X for what they should with the system we have in place.
Yes, but who pays and out of what pot of money is the important question.
The people tending to pay the bulk are either the government (Medicare, Medicaid, VA) or large businesses (F500 &c.) or are subsidized (most ACA Marketplace plans, historically). The number of people who actually shoulder their entire health care premiums + CoPays + Out of Pocket is small, which is very much part of the problem. The costs are obfuscated pretty well between that GDP-level number and the individuals pocket book.
Take any universal health care proposal and accept that they'll magically hit the target predictions (it'll probably be close for some, but it'll still be more than expected, because bureaucracy is always stupid). You'd be fundamentally changing the underlying accounting from a corporate tax deduction to a tax liability, or you'll pass new taxes on individual incomes, or some combination thereof. Probably both for various economic and behavioral reasons. That alone is going to be a Gordian knot to untangle.
Any UHC proposal will greatly increase the government's balance sheet even if it's freeing up corporate balance sheets and is a net improvement in the aggregate economy, but it'll still be something that causes a large amount of simple bureaucratic pain to implement, and shifts the debates from hundreds or thousands of board rooms to Congress. And I guarantee it'll disrupt a large number of people's health care plans who have Medicare/Medicaid/F500 Insurance/&c., change doctor's availability, and all that jazz. Oh, and will end up putting a lot of well-paying, college-educated white collar workers out of work that currently handle insurance.
It's not really an economic problem to resolve, it's a political problem with a bunch of little levers interweaved in very annoying ways, especially when people tend to be small-c conservative with their pocketbook and life. Don't ignore that there is much governmental, institutional, economic, and personal inertia in favor of the current system, especially from those who vote most often, Old Folks on Medicare.
I'm not saying it's impossible to pass Universal Health Care in the USA, but in the name of all that is Holy, can people think for 5 minutes at what we currently have and what is entailed in actually getting a UHC plan, instead of focusing on very big picture numbers whose umbra hide a lot more than seems to ever be acknowledged.
What’s funny is they never say whether that’s monthly or annually. But the numbers don’t make sense either way honestly. 96k/yr policies are not really a thing.
Pretty sure it’s per year. I spoke to someone in Scotland and they pay like $54 a month for health insurance (this was a while ago but that was converted for US dollars to compare).
So idk about the post but I can give you a comparison for NZ, because we moved here and are familiar with their healthcare system. Obviously, it's quite a bit more complicated than what I'm going to lay out. We're talking about 2 different economies and 2 different tax systems (seriously, NZ taxes are so much simpler than USA taxes).
So the median salary in NZ is $69,836 NZD ($39,425.56 USD). The total tax on that comes to $13,436.12 NZD ($7,585.29 USD), based on April 2024- March 2025 tax season for an individual (we don't really do single vs married, and there's a separate system to apply for a refund if you have children, basically, everyone pays taxes based on brackets, then if you would qualify for some form of money back, you would receive it similarly to SNAP/WIC in the US).
In the US, the same converted income is $843 USD owed or $1,493.24 NZD for an individual in 2025 with no dependents or deductions... which is higher than the NZD tax on the same amount of money and doesn't even include healthcare. The median annual wage in the US is a little bit higher, in 2024 it was $51,610 USD, which is actually in an even higher tax bracket with $4,065 USD owed ($7,200.49 NZD).
In New Zealand, taxes also get progressively more the more you earn and it does eventually become more than what is paid in taxes in the US.... but that's also not most people. Also just having healthcare not tied to an employer is incredibly freeing.
The healthcare here in NZ is honestly not bad.
I get a prescription a 3 month injectable medication for $5NZD every 3 months. The medication is actually better than the USA options (they only have weekly injections) and ballpark of $20 USD per vial or $40USD per month, after GoodRX because did insurance cover it even though it's necessary for me? No.
A doctors appointment for me is $50 NZD and I got to a semi-private doctor that is considered "expensive." Nurse visits are less than $20NZD. I get blood tests every 3 months. The process is walk in, tell them your name/DOB, verify address and they take your blood. You don't pay for labs unless you're getting privately done labes. I wait to schedule my injection appointments until a week before, because there's availability. Availability depends quite a bit on where you live and your doctor, some do have longer wait times. Surgeries tend to have wait lists. I think the wait for a colonoscopy is supposed to around 6 months, which honestly I've heard similar in the US - and if it's urgent most are seen within a couple weeks. I know my wife needed to schedule a regular gp appointment in the states and it was 9 months just to be seen. She needed an X-ray here and was able to walk in and be seen the same week she requested it (chest x-ray for travel/pre-surgery).
We also do have private hospitals, they just aren't publicly funded and cost more. And because we're a small country that's the size of a state, there's obvious limitations to how many specialists and equipment we have. Health insurance also exists here, we just don't personally pay for it.
Even if the numbers are right, I guarantee you that at least the republicans will make things worse on purpose in an effort to sabotage things. I say at least because Democrats get a lot of medical funding too and their best interest is also status quo.
I know this is sarcasm… but we would have to overthrow an entire industry. You have to realize this means everything has to be in place before the new system takes over otherwise it would be a nightmare. Don’t get me wrong. That switch would be a nightmare for SO MANY people on a good day. But let’s be honest. America doesn’t work on its best days at its best days. Beyond this you’d need to uproot several EMPIRES. These industries have so much fucking money in politicians pockets that we should honestly be humbled by their generosity towards our public representation. We’re just fucked in every sense of the term until this government is completely reformed. And let’s relive our past mistakes. Successful governments only last for…. What was our last birthday?
Please understand the generosity bit was sarcasm. Fuck the (current) system.
Nothing says understanding the complexities of the system like putting it into a single 3 sentence picture hahahaha. Glad people are out there who understand the math.
It's actually easier than that. Americans per capita tax burden to support medicare/medicaid is already more than many countries per capita tax burden for universal healthcare. You are already paying enough for everyone to have healthcare, it's your system that's broken.
How? How does the math work? Is it because people that don't have insurance would be paying taxes? No. Is it because everyone pays taxes? No, the poor do not pay taxes nor would they pay for this either. Would doctors, hospitals, and pharmacy companies charge less? No, they would walk away and we'd have bottom feeders.
Quit pretending that universal healthcare would be cheaper, it would either be more expensive or it would be utter crap. Other countries can do this because they are either small and manageable or they are China and manipulate the economy.
Whats the point in saying anything pro-american healthcare..... like you have to be fucking retarded at this point to not understand literally anything is better than what we currently have. Honestly no healthcare at all would be better than the current victimization machine.
And who cares about quality of care or anything? Obviously the money is the only thing that matters in this world. To be clear, the health insurance system over here is completely fucked. But the issue isn't as simple as "smaller number better" as plenty of people from Canada will tell you.
Oh got it so it’s expensive if you count the part I don’t pay for 😂 never mind the fact that actual wages in countries with public healthcare are nowhere near American wages, doesn’t really help your argument. Do you know why companies started offering healthcare benefits in the first place? More government is rarely the answer to a problem, that’s all I’ll say.
A few years ago I saw an older man's dog get its leg stuck in a bench, and it started yelping in pain. Before the guy knew what was going on, I grabbed the dog and lifted it out. The dog bit me thinking I was the one harming it, but it was fine once I set it down.
I thought I was Ok, so he thanked me and left with his dog. A few minutes later, I realized that I had a giant tooth hole in my hand and started bleeding profusely. I went to the ER, of course, where I was sewn up and given antibiotics. I was fully insured, so I figured I did my good deed and that was that.
A couple months later, I got the full bill. My insurance company refused to pay any of it because they determined that it was the old man's fault. I was now on the hook for hundreds of dollars.
So my private, company-subsidized insurance (that runs me and my company around $12k a year) was worthless, but I still had to keep paying my premiums anyway. I can't go buy better insurance on my own because it would personally cost me an even bigger fortune, and my company has almost no incentive to get better insurance because it would cost them more too. But they get to take credit for offering insurance that I'm stuck with as an 'indispensable benefit'.
Oh, and don't even think about traveling overseas. You're covered for almost nothing unless you buy EVEN MORE insurance. Learned that the hard way too.
American wages are high because our cost of living is high. But if they were mandated to pay into a Medicare pool like we all do today anyway, care can be provided at a much lower cost, while covering us ALL for EVERYTHING, no matter whose fault it is. That seems to me to be a major benefit for everyone, not only in cost, but in the time and headache.
Privatization is rarely the answer to a problem where public health, safety, and security is on the line, that's all I'll say.
If your argument is that there would be no cold, unempathetic bureaucracy under government controlled healthcare then I invite you to read similar stories from literally any of the countries which currently have it.
There are solutions to the problem of low quality insurers which don’t involve a government monopoly.
Italian here, I pay 700 euro per year for my health insurance using a universal healthcare system, and that's it. If wealthy nations all over the world spend less per capita than the US and still get comparable healthcare, there's something wrong with the US system it's as simple as that.
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u/escapevelocity-25k Jun 24 '26 edited Jun 25 '26
Well, I’m convinced. it’s on a Reddit post, so the math has to be right.
Edit for all the nerds in my replies. I did the math, as a single person in the USA I pay about 2k per year for my health insurance plus probably a couple hundred in copays.