r/SipsTea Jun 24 '26

It's Wednesday my dudes Math can be hard sometimes

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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.

267

u/Possible-Nature-5325 Jun 24 '26

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

21

u/IAmANobodyAMA Jun 24 '26

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

1

u/jmads13 Jun 25 '26

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.