> Forget cost of living

You can forget it when you are young, healthy and single.

Put a wife and couple of kids into the equation, a sickness here and there plus a small risk to become unemployed and everything changes.

While you are young and healthy sure, but if something happens to you or when you get older, not so much.

Why not? Can't you purchase the same insurance, protections and care with 4x earnings and lower taxes?

Well for one you might but it will be incredibly expensive and probably still cover less than in the Netherlands.

Also, the cost means that it is something you can only afford while you are still working.

So if you do get hurt and can't work or get fired you lose that privilege.

That is also a cost of opportunity that you lose by living in the US and that is not factored into the price of the insurance directly.

You don't have to keep working. Workers compensation, life insurance, long-term care policies all exist.

There's really not much different in what's available, only who's responsible for it. In America, you earn and keep more and it's up to you to allocate properly (or not). In other countries, the government does it all for you to ensure there's a base level of support for everyone.

It's not a question of availability it's a question of price.

If you need to pay for a very expensive medical insurance then you can only afford it while employed which you won't be if you have health issues that prevent you from doing so or get fired.

That is not how it works at all. America has both public funded (federal Medicare, state-level benefits, etc) and private insurance (either personal or group policies through your employer).

There are plenty of choices for continued care and coverage, as long as you plan for it. That's the major difference. It requires you to actively plan for your retirement and old age. Other countries just do that for you in exchange for a heavy tax.

This US healthcare meme is tiring and uninformed. A small minority have financial hardships due to medical emergencies here, and they for the most part aren’t poor, who get healthcare for free.

Cars are also vastly more expensive and so is medical insurance.

Cars are NOT more expensive, especially not after you factor in the obscene cost of fuel in the EU.

Healthcare is free at the vast majority of tech companies in the US.