Earlier quoted context omitted.
The costs are more diffuse than this. First, the U.S. system costs twice as much as other systems because we have more people employed delivering care and they make higher salaries. Doctors, nurses, they all make more in the U.S. than in Europe. So more people, getting paid higher wage, results in double the costs. But wait, the financing in the U.S. is quite predatory, so a lot of people pay nothing, and a few peopl…
Ok, I'll take all of that at face value and as given. It just sounds completely broken over there and I'm not sure I will manage to wrap my head around it. All I know is simpler systems around the world exist and work such that those 10 middle class families would never get stiffed like that, whilst also looking after the needy. I can't fathom it.
Agreed. But that's the way it is, and it's important to understand why it's this way.
When Europe and Australia adopted national healthcare systems, the industry was ~3-5% of GDP. So at that point it wasn't politically strong enough to resist either nationalization or strict controls.
Then healthcare mushroomed in size, being ~10% of GDP in Europe and 20% of GDP in the U.S.
So now, when you try to do the politics that the europeans did, it doesn't work. The industry is too powerful. Merely blaming the US for not doing what Europe did misses this essential point.
There are millions of nurses, lab techs, administrators, and doctors, and they have money and they vote. So the left keeps looking for some villain -- greedy insurance executives, Wall Street, Evil Billionaires, etc. And basically refuses to understand that these are not the ones standing in the way of reform. It's the 13% of our labor force that earns 20% of national income, and these are not the same easy targets that the left can attack, because they are a large portion of the US middle class, and are core Democratic constituencies.
That's why healthcare reform in the U.S. always focuses on having the government pay some of the costs charged to consumers rather then reducing the costs of providing healthcare. E.g. more subsidies for this bloated industry, which only results in costs rising even more, and then calls for even more subsidies when people can't afford to pay the costs. When what we should do is fire 50% of the staff and cut the pay of those that remain by another 50%. That's the only way to get affordable healthcare.
And you have a similar problem with higher ed.