Re:The cost of two weeks in an pediatric/infant ICU
by dwater on Thursday July 29, 2021 @09:51AM
(#27996535)
Just to make this point explicit: Your health care does not cost $300 a month. Your employer is paying for it as well, and as ceejayoz suggested it might be $1-2k a month. Add that in to your calculations.
Re:The cost of two weeks in an pediatric/infant ICU
by simonh on Thursday July 29, 2021 @09:04AM
(#27996017)
The problem is the anti-single payer faction in the US is large, powerful and well funded. They would do their level best to cripple any such system as badly as possible, so they could say "I told you so", as they did with Obamacare. Therefore it is quite possible a single payer system in the US would not work out anywhere near as good a deal as it has almost everywhere else.
It's hard to believe it could possibly still end up worse than the current system, but I worry that it would be a 'hold my beer' moment.
The US spends 2-3x per capita (counting both public and private spending; https://data.oecd.org/healthres/health-spending.htm) than the rest of the OECD, with remarkably similar health outcomes.
> I pay about $300 per month for the entire family, $5K out of pocket max.
You're just paying your healthcare tax to your employer (in the form of lost salary; they're not chipping in the other $1-2k/month out of charity) instead of the government. It's silly to only count your contribution instead of the overall per-capita cost of healthcare.