People (in the US) purchase insurance mostly because the insurance premium is 90%+ paid by either their employer or the government. Everyone understands that the total price is a scam, but the <=10% that you pay out of pocket has an excellent ROI.
Interestingly this wasn’t the case in living memory in the USA. The insurance cartels have effectively greatly increased prices while commensurately lowering the standard of care.
Medical institutions have been kept onboard with massive increases in revenue that subsequently led to expansions of the institutions that are now dependent on that higher revenue to exist.
My dad told me in the 90s to avoid injury because the family could not afford healthcare. I distinctly recall hospital bills being in the tens of thousands even back then.
I doubt newer cancer care, medicines, imaging, or other care would be cheap in any world, with or without insurance.
Of course, because the root problem in the US is most people cannot afford the healthcare that they expect to receive. Hence all the political maneuvering to redistribute wealth, and the corresponding efforts to avoid having one’s (present or future) wealth redistributed.
That's half true - we've also made it difficult, if not illegal, for people to receive a lower standard of care.
Anybody with a chronic condition needs to go see a doctor at least once a year in order to get the same prescriptions they've been on for decades. There are dozens, if not hundreds of conditions that could be handled by a pharmacy.
I need an asthma inhaler every so often. I have to call a medical doctor in order to receive a prescription for an asthma inhaler. They're non-narcotic, I will always have asthma. But I need to bother a doctor for a medication that should be over the counter. It's silly.
And those pricing distortions are due to significant government-imposed regulations and restrictions that tightly limit the supply of doctors and medical services, even in the face of increasing demand.
Government regulations have been dragging back price of care for ages. Multi-month waiting lines to see a doctor are largely about price ceilings. If docs could price up, their waiting lists would go down commensurately.
Constrained physician supply doesn't do much when physicians can't raise prices in the face of greater demand.
People in these discussions always make things about physician costs. The majority of expenditures in the healthcare system are on drugs and equipment, followed by procedures - physician visits make up a tiny fraction of that.
That's false, but why let the truth get in the way?
The limitation on doctors in the U.S. is based on the available funding for residents. The government supplies the money because private institutions largely are unwilling to do so.