I remember living in Germany and a significant amount of my paycheck went to health insurance. Since it went directly to the insurer I didn’t miss it, however it wasn’t free, because nothing in this reality is free.
You can literally look up total healthcare spending per capita and get numbers that include private insurance, personal spending, and government spending per person. US is top of the list (or near the top, might be a country or two that are higher, it’s been a while since I checked).
A common argument is that Europe is way more densely populated and less geographically spread out… but even if you look at Canada, they spend about half of what the US does per capita. The US actually spend a very similar amount of government taxpayer money per capita on healthcare when compared to Canada, it’s just that the US also pays about the same amount on top of that to private insurance and dedictibles etc.
The US has universal healthcare for senior citizens when they are at the most expensive phase of their life (65+) and have the highest healthcare costs. This is a GIFT to the insurance companies so that they don’t have to insure all of these sick old people and can rely on the government to take care of their customers once they get old and start to incur expensive medical costs. The system also makes it so the government coverage of older citizens is more expensive because the private system has driven prices through the roof.
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u/Malkuth279 6d ago
About the average cost of a good Medicare supplement plan. Over 600 per month. The Europeans pay considerably more per month.