[hippira]

Obviously he and his mother has already paid for in taxes, zero cost here is in the sense that the cost is not going to eat into their current savings. While in the US you paid taxes and can still potentially go bankrupt if you have major diseases.

[aantix]

But their current savings is lower because of their higher taxes.

[redler]

Under the US system, everyone's savings is also lower -- because of extremely high insurance premiums, co-pays, coinsurance, deductibles, high out-of-pocket payment maximums, uncovered care, predatory billing complexity designed to minimize "medical loss", lesser job mobility due to linkage of employment with the ability to get medical care, far higher drug prices, and so forth. It's a system full of holes into which almost anyone without wealth can fall -- even people with good insurance.

If you simplify and subtract the need for intermediaries to extract profit from this kind of system, remove all risk of anyone in the country being personally financially destroyed by their health care needs, remove from US businesses the obligation to manage and pay for their share of their employee health benefits, and distribute the resulting costs across the entire population, would you argue that would somehow cost more? That the resulting "higher taxes" would exceed the lowering of all the systemic, business, and personal costs and risk above?

[heavyset_go]

I pay for health insurance on the individual market, without employer or government subsidies. It's a shitty plan that I pay over $9k in premiums for and have a $3k deductible with an $8k out of pocket maximum each year with co-pays, and that's without utilizing the plan at all.

If I wanted to buy the same plan I had from an employer, a family plan, it would cost over $30k in premiums, with an $8k deductible and a $17k out of pocket maximum each year with co-pays.

All of those costs and it is still routine for the insured in the US to find out that the care they received actually isn't covered by their insurance, as well, so they're on the hook for paying for some care completely out of pocket.

I would love to hear your explanation for how my savings is actually higher now while I'm being extorted each year with higher and higher premiums for less and less care.

[toomuchtodo]

50% of bankruptcies in the US are medical cost related, so the whole “you can save more in the US with lower taxes” argument is moot. You’re doing the same as driving without car insurance; it works right up until the crash site.