How expensive is health care in the US? IE, in my country dentistry is fully private, and it costs about 100 USD for a teeth cleaning. How much is that in America?
Dental isn't really indicative of "how expensive health care is" though. Lots of U.S. dental and vision "insurance" plans are really just mandatory subscription plans since their bills are pretty consistent, and anything that might cost more gets you a referral to a hospital.
It's when you visit a hospital (voluntarily or via emergency ambulance) that you'll start getting the $1,000 - $100,000 bills that'll kill ya.
> It's when you visit a hospital (voluntarily or via emergency ambulance) that you'll start getting the $1,000 - $100,000 bills that'll kill ya.
As a kid I had a 2 day hospital stay for an appendectomy that cost about $1000.
An appendectomy now runs around $100,000. An airlift to the emergency room will also cost around $75,000.
This is a common childhood ailment and is not related to living the so-called sinful lifestyle that people like to bring up as justification for high medical costs.
My typical doctors visit costs me $40 out of pocket. My wife, who sees more specialists and physical therapists because of her scoliosis ends up paying about $250/mo in premiums. I have the 'premium' insurance that my employer offers, which means that I'd pay no premiums for inpatient hospital care. My family health plan costs about $240 per bi-weekly paycheck or $6,240 per year. My employer pays a little over $600 per bi-weekly paycheck for my health insurance or $15,600 per year. Even with that and my employer-sponsored long-term disability insurance, I'm sure I'd still probably be permanently bankrupted if I got a disease like cancer.
My wife and I needed prophylactic rabies vaccinations after a bit of an adventure involving a bat in a guest house. Had that happened when we didn't have health insurance it would have cost $38,000 out-of-pocket. Blood-based medicines are expensive everywhere in the world, but I personally think it's completely immoral that we would even entertain a system which would completely sink someone financially over something like that.
OK so you're paying $15600+$6240=$21,840 a year for health insurance. That is a common rate in the US for family coverage.
You also pay $40 for a $100 teeth cleaning, so you're on the Bronze plan that has a 60% coverage and 40% copay. That's the most common plan.
You mention bankruptcy due to cancer. That is true. If you undergo cancer treatment the billed costs can run over $1 million. And you'll have that 40% bronze plan copay. This bankrupts everyone. Those not bankrupted had plans with 10 or 20% copays because they were of the elite class.
Some consider this affordable and reasonable. I don't, and I think you agree.
You mention your rabies vaccine costing $38,000 in the US and this is true. Did you know the rabies vaccine, without insurance, runs around $400 a dose in most of the world? With a 5 shot sequence that comes to about $2,000.
Dentistry is private with some insurance options in the US, and I (in the suburbs of a large city in the Midwest) would have paid about $100 for a teeth cleaning had my dental insurance not paid for it. (My dental insurance is about $25 a month and covers most of major oral surgery if needed. My root canal cost about $350 with insurance recently)
Once in the US, I was quoted $200 for busting a cyst that had developed on my finger due to small cut/infection (this service in my European country is offered for nearly free in any pharmacy).
Instead I went to a Walgreens, bought a pin, a lighter, some ethanol, and a band-aid for like $5, and did it myself...
For each chemo session, our hospital is currently charging around $25k. A complete breast cancer treatment, including surgery and reconstruction, is $500k or so.
This is through insurance. Cash payment is negotiable and possibly much less, but that’s negotiated case per case.
My relative had $1.2 million in "treatment" for lung cancer that made her horrifically ill and miserable in her last months. The 20% copay with great insurance was $240,000, annihilating her modest estate. The "treatment" didn't extend her life, but did make her last moments filled with misery and horror, as the overwhelming majority of so-called "cancer" treatments do. Interestingly she was averse to treatment because she had seen how useless and painful treatment had been to certain previous friends and family. Thus she got the oncologist's solemn assurance that treatments had massively improved and hers would almost certainly be effective and extend her life. Neither of these claims were true and the oncologist knew it.
It's far worse than treatment with leeches. Far far far worse. It's inhumane, oncologist merchants of death are aware they are causing suffering for their own financial gain, and most oncologists have committed severe crimes against humanity by simply practicing their vocation. Oncology for the most part is on par with being a Nazi SS soldier torturing and killing people, only much worse. It's a sadistic enterprise of pseudoscience which harms innocent people for profit. Those that promote it are vile evil people who should be permanently locked away from decent human beings.
Dental isn't really indicative of "how expensive health care is" though. Lots of U.S. dental and vision "insurance" plans are really just mandatory subscription plans since their bills are pretty consistent, and anything that might cost more gets you a referral to a hospital.
It's when you visit a hospital (voluntarily or via emergency ambulance) that you'll start getting the $1,000 - $100,000 bills that'll kill ya.