Big one

look, your argument is fair but inaccurate. When the Insurance company’s negotiated rate on a heart attack is 14k, but the hospital bills you 300k, then the problem is we’ve allowed for private healthcare to make more sense and forced government funded healthcare to be overly complex.

Let me repeat this but in capitalism, we have DONE THIS PURPOSELY so that private healthcare companies can make money.

That's what happens if you don't have public health care.

A small insurer or even an uninsured person cannot bargain with large pharma companies. If they try to, the pharma company will just not sell the product, because it's more expensive for them to lower the prices for everyone compared to losing one small customer.

But if your whole country's health system bargains at once, it can get much better deals, because not taking a deal means for the pharma company that they'll lose access to millions of potential customers.

That's why for example in Europe Insulin costs about 10% per dose compared to what people in the USA have to pay.

Our tax dollars fund more corporations than other countries. The military spends so much because they pay private companies for their equipment, which is sold at inflated costs because they can. The US spends a shit ton on health care because private companies inflate their prices because, again, they can. The government/insurance companies don't even pay the full price that's listed on the bill, but they still use the original numbers.

You can't compare our spending to other countries. The US spends more because they pay inflated prices. Citizens spend less because we can't afford to get health care.

Indeed, what good is all that public health spending when health corporations and orgs are determined to maximize profit, and no authority is willing to curtail their efforts

It's not regulatory capture, it's a complete lack of federal regulatory guidelines in regard to the insurance industry.

for a medical service provider to be insured (and thus not be destroyed by the first malpractice suit they lose) they need insurance, the insurance companies have their own stipulations onto the healthcare provider, like all their stuff being certified, now guess who owns the respective certification companies? letting them charge whatever they damned well please...

it's straight up duopolistic markets

The black community frowns on this flagrant attack against our neighborhood.

Lemme see them hands.

We also have a constant drumbeat about how taxes are evil coming from politicians and pundits that represent half the political spectrum, all because they've discovered it's a good way to turn people against the other half.

In the 2000s, military applications were through the roof. I went to a poor urban school. And the promises of joining the military was discipline and support. We were already on WIC and couldn't find a job, what makes this any different?

A decade later, all my friends who joined the military are struggling in dead end jobs and constantly complain about the lack of support. And they're worse off than before... Just now with trauma.

I always find it amusing when Americans can only come up with paying less taxes as the answer, then they don’t understand why they get less services.

The ones for whom "less taxes" are always the answer know that they'll get less services. They are fine with that as long as it means the minorities they hate will also get less services. Particularly if they suspect that those minorities can't weather the lack of services as well as they can.

These are the people who filled in municipal swimming pools with concrete instead of letting black people use them too.

As an American I’ve been taking a truly radical position of openly demanding higher taxes. Like fuck you none of us pay enough. It’s easy to say tax the rich, but they’ll get tax cuts real fast if we don’t break the taboo on raising taxes.

Fun fact, they were kinda paying us up until about 15 years ago. Last payment for the lend-lease program from WW2 was December 2006.

Social security is not a tax though. It's a forced pension system.

We really need to separate that out in people's minds from a tax so that they get more angry when politicians try to make changes to make it pay out less. It's not that they aren't being nice anymore with our taxes, it's theft from our pension we contributed to.

Social security is self-funded. If it wasn't raided regularly to offset other budget shortfalls there would be plenty of money in social security.

At least, that's what I hear.

Yes, but Social securities and Medicare don’t immolate wads of cash over impoverished third world countries.

Huge swaths of Southeast Asia, South America, the Middle East, Hawai'i, and even North America's own Indigenous peoples can all affirm that the US military is indeed very nice and only ever acts in self defense.

And yet you'll still go into debt forever to pay for your own healthcare.

But at least basically anyone can own a gun, so yay freedom, I guess.

Looks like they're lower than The US, for the lower income me brackets, and comparable to the higher brackets

https://www.mygov.scot/income-tax-rates-and-personal-allowances

I'm not getting the symbolism in relation to the post but this gif is great regardless.

Maybe if you line them all up

Edgy take. Which is a shame, because the rest of the Western world is overreliant on the US military.

This trend starting to buck has provided more military engineering jobs than any bullshit the US military has ordered in decades. Come on Europe, get afraid. Buy some more weapons. Heh.

That's only for elective surgeries, not emergencies. The average wait times in the US are actually worse.

You can simply look at the data for avoidable mortality rates among OECD countries. This tells you the impact of healthcare access to early mortality that could have otherwise been avoided with better access to care. Time to care directly impacts these measures.

For 2022, the United States is only better than Latvia, Lithuania, Peru, and Mexico in avoidable deaths per 100,000 people. Every other nation in the data set with values is lower. Sometimes by more than half.

Every other western nation shits all over US stats in infant mortality as well, showing that when you remove obesity from the equation, you still get far worse quality of care from the start of life.

All this when paying 3X the amount to get the care in the first place.

The worst part is the US average person pays more than 4 times the amount of administrative care than then EU average. 4X for administrative costs.

It’s 9 times as much admin cost as countries like Italy who also have some of the shortest wait times to see a physician, or specialist, in the OECD data set!

Imagine paying 3X more per capita, waiting longer, and getting worse measured outcomes for decades… then still have people asking if they are getting a raw deal?

Let's see...

Prenatal classes, regular checkups, hospital delivery, overnight stay: Around zero dollars and zero cents. Birth of our second kid, also zero dollars.

My father's cancer treatment (bowel resection and colostomy, at least three different courses of chemotherapy and one dose of radiotherapy, complex resection of most of his liver, partial lung lobectomy, regular home visits by a palliative care Dr. And RN, hospice) cost my mom a bit for some dressing changes and incidentals, so maybe a couple hundred dollars worth of homecare supplies.

Four surgeries amongst immediate family requiring general anesthetic, about zero dollars.

At no point in time, during any of the above, did I ever have to consider if any of it was covered. No deductibles.

I have no complaints.

Let me post two anecdotes.

In grad school I was in Canada when I crashed my bike, nearly broke my jaw, broke a tooth in half exposing a root. A cop helped me bandage my face, I got a root canal the same same, X-rays, and pain killers. Didn't pay a cent.

In the UK on vacation I got a nasty eye infection and a corneal ulcer as a result. Went to the ER, was seen, treated, and given meds for the next two weeks within three hours.

I'm an American. If luck had been different, that could have been a lot of debt. In both cases neither country even had a method for me to pay them, they just took care of me.

Because it's the right thing to do, not because they thought they could bill me into poverty.

I just had an appointment with a specialist. In December. I scheduled it in July. December was their first availability.

It's admittedly psychiatric care not emergency medical, but I've been impressed by Norway this year.

After a decade or so of chaos after leaving high school, I had realised earlier this year that I had some issue and sought help.

Start to finish, from GP appointment - psychiatric evaluation - tests - specialist - testing meds - follow up, took 6 months, and I'm $275 out of pocket, and meds for 1 month cost $6.5.

Two things worth noting are that they absolutely nailed identifying my issue first go, and that I responded well to the first thing they prescribed me, neither of which necessarily happen for everyone.

My father was discovered to have a shadow in his lung during an xray taken of his back, this was from a private healthcare provider. They referred him to the NHS because they specialise in treating serious conditions above all else, the private doctor even said that they are the best org for cancer care in the uk.

Within a week he was diagnosed with stage 1 lung cancer. Two weeks later they had completely removed the infected lobe of his lung, and around a week later he was released from hospital cured.

Apart from the initial, privately done xray for his back, this cost him exactly nothing. Within 3 weeks of a cancer scare he was completely cancer free.

I needed a neurologist once, and the earliest they could see me was 6 months later. It snowed the day of the appointment, so they cancelled and rescheduled it ...ANOTHER 6 months out.

Anyone who says the US doesn't have outrageous wait times is talking out their ass.