I never understood this because other countries have free healthcare and we don’t! We get sick and it’s expensive to even pay for anything!
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I cant speak for everywhere but where im from we get heavily taxed on everything to upset the cost of free public healthcare which isnt even that good
Because there’s too many people trying to make a profit off ot it. In most places the cost from somewhere (national insurance, private insurance, individual, etc) has to cover the cost of goods and services provided. That includes the labor of the doctor, nurses, support staff. Plus supplies like gloves, bandages, office space, electricity, etc).
In the US it also needs to cover the massive profits that many others involved expect to see. Private equity, investors, the many people tied into the insurance companies, etc. It’s treated as a “make as much as you can off it” business model instead of a critical need for cost/compensation model. Most costs go to line the pockets of people completely uninvolved in the patient care.
It’s just a scheme to net money from the poor period. Jack up essential services that you need to live literally. If you can’t pay then who cares it’s your turn to die early and replace you with another consumer to feed the top dogs.
It’s honestly a terrible system for the overall happiness and health for a country.
Because Republicans yell “sociamalism!” and block every attempt to improve our insane system.
One thing that doesn’t get talked about much in this conversation is doctor salaries. They make utterly obscene amounts of money in the US. Most MDs worldwide earn $80-150k. Only in America do they rake in $400k for administering anesthetia based on a patient’s weight.
I remember reading that salaries are nearly half of the total expense budget of US hospitals.
Because so many hands are involved between you and the therapy rendered that it has become essential to play a game of how many medical codes can we tack on to each interaction with the system.
That in turn creates another layer of costs with administrative work that needs to ingest said interactions coded and decide many things about it. Is it covered. Can we find a way to deny. Is the provider/facility/drug in our members only club. Decide the rate. Decide the discount. Etc etc etc.
Each of the above is a whole layer of “professionals” on its own.
So with your simple visit to the doctor for your cold. A world of bureaucracy opens up and needs to generate a paycheck for itself and of course that world is employed by a company or companies who need to generate share holder value each year so the system grows on schedule like a Swiss clock.
No socialised health care
As an Australian citizen, I and the rest of the country have access to a socialised healthcare system called Medicare that allows us to have free healthcare, though only when it comes to public healthcare
Private is a whole other kettle of fish, but yeah. I’d also imagine it has something to do with America not being fond of any kind of “communist/socialist” aspects of society. I could be wrong either way, any fellow Aussies/Americans, please feel free to correct me
> other countries have free healthcare and we don’t! We get
As someone who lives in a country with ‘free’ healthcare, believe me…it’s not free.
The government collects a lot in taxes to pay for it, and most of the time they manage the money poorly.
Free/subsidized/social healthcare is great when you’re healthy. Not so great when you actually need it
Because of wage and price controls imposed by the U.S. government during WW2. The Law of Unintended Consequences at its most perverse.
The US Healthcare system never centralized under a single organization like social security, so rather than one efficient single system you have thousands of competing interests mucking up the whole process. Physicians are paid very well in the US, but there’s not enough of them, they are straddled with debts from med school, and they also have to be extremely wary of lawsuits – all things that add to the cost of Healthcare. Consequently, there’s a high demand for expensive treatments which doctors are willing to provide as they would rather over prescribe to avert potential lawsuits. On the other side you have private insurance companies who are driven by profit, which means providing the least amount of care while charging the most that they can.
The list of things goes on and on. The biggest issue IMO is that if you have good insurance or access to Healthcare in the US, we actually do have some of the highest quality in the world. The problem is that this leaves those uninsured completely vulnerable, but they also tend to have less sway politically as well so change is slow.
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