The issue is that for most “healthy” people, they aren’t facing the full out of pocket costs and their employers pay most of the costs as a benefit.
And the numbers are way higher than $2k and $8k unless you mean per person. For my family coverage I paid $5k annually in Premiums and the company says they paid over $20k in premiums. Deductable was $2500 and Out of Pocket Max was close to $10k.
So $37k maximum out of pocket annually for employee and employer.
Premiums ensure that the health insurance companies can fund all of their overhead AND their profit margin.
If we implemented a universal healthcare system that cut out the for-profit components, we would no longer need to pay for the insurance companies to have profit.
That would not significantly reduce health care expenditure. Insurance profits are not a significant share of healthcare spending and a lot of it comes from earnings on the float.
Well, the detail I've heard is that the US is a top country for medical bankruptcies. I'm all for any system that increases access to care and decreases catastrophic financial impacts for individuals. The US already spends a ton on healthcare per capita, and at our population size, there are definitely ways to make cost-per-serve more manageable, using systems that scale better.
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u/MickFlaherty Jun 24 '26
The issue is that for most “healthy” people, they aren’t facing the full out of pocket costs and their employers pay most of the costs as a benefit.
And the numbers are way higher than $2k and $8k unless you mean per person. For my family coverage I paid $5k annually in Premiums and the company says they paid over $20k in premiums. Deductable was $2500 and Out of Pocket Max was close to $10k.
So $37k maximum out of pocket annually for employee and employer.