Comment by snikeris
Comment by snikeris 2 days ago
Nearly 2 in 5 Americans are covered by Medicare or Medicaid. TANSTAAFL. The other 3 bear the burden. At some point Atlas shrugs and decides welfare is a better deal.
Comment by snikeris 2 days ago
Nearly 2 in 5 Americans are covered by Medicare or Medicaid. TANSTAAFL. The other 3 bear the burden. At some point Atlas shrugs and decides welfare is a better deal.
The quality of health care in the US is significantly higher than anywhere else in the world.
Whether that quality is necessarily (or good) is debatable, but we are getting something for the money.
You also are just completely wrong in your main point. We cannot provide the same efficacy of healthcare as we are now for 60% less. We are the richest country in the world, labor costs more here than other places.
>The quality of health care in the US is significantly higher than anywhere else in the world.
Yeah, I'm gonna need a citation for that. Because it sounds like a health insurance propoganda rather than the actual truth.
I tried an American PPO with $10 co-pay and no deductibles. It was awesome :)
Nobody could tell me what anything would cost, or if the insurance would cover it. But I always ended up paying $10, whether it was a few pills or an expensive MRI I didn't need. Oh, yeah the downside is you can accidentally convince your doctor to get procedures you don't need.
Health care in Denmark is decent. But I've been told, no when I wanted to run some tests. That would never happen on an American PPO :)
I have had go wait, while unpleasant, it's fairly harmless (otherwise they don't let you wait).
So if you're on an great PPO plan in the US, healthcare is great.
Whether the outcome is better for the average Joe, is probably a different question.
> The quality of health care in the US is significantly higher than anywhere else in the world.
Simply not true.
Infant mortality and under-five mortality rate (U5MR) are one of best simple indicators of the quality of healthcare. USA's mortality is x3 (!!!) of the countries on top. This puts USA around place 50 in the world, worse than Russia...
> The quality of health care in the US is significantly higher than anywhere else in the world.
Do you have any evidence of that?
15 out of the top 50 and 4/6 top hospitals in the world are in the US: https://rankings.newsweek.com/worlds-best-hospitals-2025
Again, I’m not saying the health care outcomes are better, or the value is better. I’m saying the hospitals are nicer, the doctors are the best, etc.
Perhaps this is the wrong thing to optimize for! But we are getting something.
"My healthcare outcomes are great, which means American healthcare is good."
It is also significantly more expensive: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-expectancy-vs-health...
Expenses are definitely higher, and doctors and hospital CEOs and med school CEOs do drive nicer cars and have bigger summer dachas, but I can't say the same about quality. Six month waits for a specialist, every PCP and shrink you'd want to visit not taking on new patients, ER wait times comparable with other developed nations, worse overall outcomes...
Maybe the top 0.5% is getting better care, but I really wouldn't shed a lot of crocodile tears for them.
> See what the wait times are for the specialists in other countries, if they even exist!
I assure you, they exist, I have been to them, and the wait times were about as long.
> It’s very hard to solve these things are such a massive scale.
That's goalpost-shifting nonsense that doesn't justify the outrageous cost of healthcare. And most of these problems become easier to solve with a higher population and density and larger economy, because you have way more slack in the system, and you have way more economies of scale that you can put to work.
I'm also not complaining about healthcare in the middle of Alaska, 50 miles from a highway (or deep in the poverty belt). I'm talking about overpriced, underachieving care in wealthy metro areas.
Citation definitely needed.
Ive been to doctors in different countries including the USA. Theres nothing special with general practitioners with the USA.
Or if you end up in China, you can get blood panels for like 10RMB, MRI for 30RMB, and damn near automated to boot.
Go to Mexico for dental work. What costs you here $30k costs you $2k, and they take your insurance.
The US citizens are being gouged, because our government has been bought out by corporate interests who bribe, err, campaign donate to both parties. And thats across every economic activity. Medical is just an egregious one, alongside academics.
> The quality of health care in the US is significantly higher than anywhere else in the world.
Source, backup your claims.
Health outcomes are WORSE than most other developed countries and that's the only statistic that matters here
> The amount of money the US Government pays just for that 40% should be enough to cover all 100%
This is true as long as the following changes are made: 1) wages for healthcare workers are scalled back ~50%, 2) many drugs and medical procedures are not longer covered (a good example is CAR-T for cancer or drugs for rare diseases).
In Australia 5 out of 5 people are covered by Medicare, and 5 of them bear the burden. (at some point in their life. assuming they become a tax payer, which seems likely for most.)
On top of that, 53% pay for Private Health Care as well.
https://www.health.gov.au/topics/private-health-insurance/re...
On top of that many things that are 'not urgent' you have to pay for yourself.
I have recently paid over 20K for back surgery. Prior to the back surgery I could barely walk. This was deemed 'not urgent' and had I would have had to have waited at least 18 months for surgery via Medicare.
I also have private health cover.
So, it's important for non-Australians to understand, our health system is far from a panacea where taxes pay for everything.
Currently 778 K Australians are waiting for 'elective surgery' .
What percentage of Australian society is net-positive tax payer? That’s your real number, not this pretend 5 out of 5 as you claim.
More info on Australia from a quick search.
- Public hospital birth is about $0-1k USD.
- Private hospital with health insurance: $2-3k USD
- Private without insurance: typically up to $13k USD
There's no way that's true - include the employer side payroll taxes. Whether PPP or nominal my napkin math gives me 40% more tax payable in Australia
Edit: I'm too dumb to know whether to include superannuation as a tax or not so I'm not sure if I'm right or not.
Superannuation is not a tax. It’s a compulsory retirement saving/investment scheme.
However to calculate total income taxes you do need to include the 15% tax on superannuation contributions.
If your pre-tax take home salary is $100k AUD, then your total salary package is 111.5k including the 11.5% compulsory employer superannuation contribution.
You’ll pay regular income taxes + 2% Medicare levy on $100k and your $11.5k super contribution will be taxed at 15%.
So your total income tax including the Medicare levy (but assuming you don’t pay the Medicare surcharge or claim any deductions) will be $24,513. Giving an effective tax rate of 20.2%
There are no state or local income taxes in Australia so that’s it for personal income taxes. However states do charge payroll tax on most companies payroll (e.g. 4.85% on annual payroll over $1M in the state of Victoria for companies in the Melbourne metro area).
From the top:
Health spending in 2023–24
In 2023–24, Australia spent an estimated $270.5 billion on health goods and services– an average of approximately $10,037 per person. In real terms (adjusted for inflation), health spending increased by 1.1%, or $2.8 billion more than spending from 2022–23.
In 2023–24, health spending accounted for 10.1% of the gross domestic product (GDP) in Australia, approximately 0.2 percentage points higher than in 2022–23.
From the bottom:
In Australia, 15% of all expenditure on health care comes directly from individuals in the form of out‐of‐pocket fees — this is almost double the amount contributed by private health insurers.
There is concern that vulnerable groups — socio‐economically disadvantaged people and older Australians in particular, who also have higher health care needs — are spending larger proportions of their incomes on out‐of‐pocket fees for health care.
A 2019 study identified that one in three low income households are spending more than 10% of their income on health care.
There's little to no public advertising of prescription drugs, cheap generics are widely available from federal scale bulk negotiation deals.
Health outcomes are greater life expectancy than the US, national scale cancer survuival rates are better by a few percentage points (IIRC - they are close but higher).
Australia has long had an innate "we're all in this together" society built on individualism. It's not great, it's not perfect, but the first instinct is generally to look after our own - across the board.
When I was in the USA just paying for things like a GP and a single specialist didn't seem outrageous coming from Australia.
If I worked in the US, I would have health insurance and would be paying lower out of pocket costs than I would in Australia. Combined with the higher salary and cheaper housing that's a pretty good deal.
Edit:
We allegedly have universal healthcare but that doesn't cover any actually competent specialist (need private healthcare for this) so paying $400 for 25 minutes of a psychiatrist every 2 months and $95 for 7 minutes of a GP is common.
It was likewise striking how few of America's slave owners thought that slavery was such a sweet deal that they should be enslaved. It's not always true, but it should always give you pause if you find yourself insisting that other people have it too good and yet you've been careful to ensure that you'd never have to trade places...
The amount of money the US Government pays just for that 40% should be enough to cover all 100%. We know this is possible because it happens in other countries, which have shorter waits and more coverage since that talking point keeps being brought up despite collapsing in the face of reality.