As a European I still can’t understand the American health insurance, as why is it like this? Who profits with this system? As far as I know a vast majority of the population has to pay exorbitant bills while not having the funds, so why it is still going and hasn’t changed to a more affordable one?
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1) there are a lot of businesses dependent on the current structure, and they both profit and employ a lot of people, so there is both big money and personal pressures not to change things.
2) some things are legitimately faster for people with resources (good insurance or lots of money) compared to the systems that most Americans compare to (seems to be Canada and britain) which often involve fairly long waits for important but non urgent issues like joint replacements (deemed elective surgery as opposed to emergency surgery).
3) people perceive the level of care as higher. Now this is arguable depending on the system, but appears to certainly not be true on the societal level. But overinvestigation is pretty rampant and a lot of people struggle to tell the difference between this and their system being the best / most thorough.
4) a fair proportion of Americans do not realise how bad their healthcare system is. They dont understand that public private hybrid systems exist elsewhere eith far lower prices, or often even how problematic using their insurance is compared to getting care in other countries.
5) this is the most subjective one, but I think there’s a fair bit of “our system must be the best cos we’re American ” too. Some people can’t philosophically admit that their great country could do something this important this badly.
6) among people who understand all of the above, and know their system sucks and there are better ones, there is legitimate and I think very wise concern that radically overhauling healthcare is a huge and potentially really perilous undertaking, that should involve a lot of planning and care to avoid people’s care being messed up even worse through years of turbulent transitions. Its no good to have the best healthcare system in the world in 10 years time if you’ll be dead of cancer if the hospital you currently attend goes under.
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