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Sure and appendectomies are very expensive. But why do you dismiss the OPs concern for the outrageous cost of anti-venom?

Perhaps because the cost of something as rare, expensive to produce and perishable as anti-venom is sort of justified, whereas a relatively routine operation like and appendectomy is not?

Ok, that's fine. But it still stands that snake bites cost 150K and that's a lot of money!

" From the link provided, only 5 people die."

Only? Hospitals are increasingly not stocking anti-venom because it expires and it's expensive to replace.

"For a more accurate comparison, you would compare this with the number of injuries and deaths from firearms."

I was explicit in using the term handguns and deaths to avoid ambiguity.

"a hot-button topic like firearm violence."

I did it on purpose. Not many bad events occurring at 6000/320e6 are ever universally present in and shape our American psyche like handgun deaths.

"There's a lot more goes into a nuanced discussion than throwing out stats like this."

Specifically, snake bites aren't rare. Neither are handgun homicides. Or maybe they are both rare. They're both a two in a hundred thousand event.

What does social construct even mean?

I mean it appears everything outside of physics and chemistry is a social construct (in academia they argue those are SC too).

Biological gender? Social construct! How is having ovaries or testicles a social construct?

Hierarchy? Social construct! Hierarchy appears even in non-living things, never mind most biological systems!

Property? Social construct! Why? How? Why is a solitary apex-hunter delimiting territory "natural" but when bald monkey does it, it's a "social construct"

Finally this "decided as a society..." BS! That just revels your identify with the social class that gets to make the rules. But, unless (maybe) you're Swiss, you have no real political power. The vast majority of Americans despise Trump, didn't like Hillary, and don't want Bernie either. There are more independents than either party (almost than either combined).

But somehow this representative democracy makes decisions that respects with my agency? BS!

Get this even society is not a social construct. That's right! Society arises as soon as you have a handful of people (or agents) finding their place in their interrelationships. Hierarchy will naturally arise from this.

I'm not saying the OPs point are (or aren't) abhorrent. But this social construct and contract thing is getting out of hand.

The billing infrastructure is a huge source of cost that is often unmentioned. Getting anything done in the US is so damn hard and time consuming as a patient wrt to anywhere else I've lived (six counties)

I have a game I play when I go to the Dr.: Estimate the ratio of Dr.s to administrative staff. In the US there are offices where I've seen with two admins per Dr.

In Canada (where I'm from) I usually see two Dr.s per admin.

There are other costs. Too few Dr. having too high a salary

Another fun game to play. Find a recent list of Drs per capita for the various countries and go throught the sorted list. English speaking countries fare really bad, but the US does very well among English speaking ones. Why? It's a lot easier for an English speaking Dr. to move to the US than an non English speaking one.

ObamaCare was mostly a failure. I had it in between jobs for a few months, it's gotten worse since. It really doesn't make sense for a young person to buy it unless you have a per-existing condition.

Bush also made it worse by prohibiting drug re-imports (and letting pharmas charge medicaid whatever they want??)

Ultimately too many too powerful people have interests in keeping the US health care in the state its in, so it'll continue like this until it collapses.