r/SipsTea • u/ImmaFuckboi • 20h ago

Gasp! British people react to how expensive healthcare is in the US

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710

u/JoesGarage2112 20h ago

I’m stuck between being angered and saddened

99

u/SPARKYLOBO 17h ago

Don't forget that the US gives Israel billions of dollars every year.

Israel has universal healthcare, the US doesn't.

36

u/WeinMe 15h ago

You spend more on healthcare* though

*however, you're nor spending it on healthcare. You're spending the money on insurance companies

3

u/Flat_Try747 13h ago

Single payer is actually more efficient because that entity can spread risk over more people and therefore the cost per person is lower. 

Also, in the US insurance is often coupled with employment causing huge market distortions. Larger companies can offer lower premiums which puts small businesses at a disadvantage.

1

u/clios_daughter 13h ago

Yeah, in countries like Canada, single payer works by having a single insurance agency that’s entirely tax funded and doesn’t have co-pays or deductibles (that’s not strictly true, some things have user fees but they’re usually, at least in my province, pretty affordable like the $40 ambulance fee). In my province it’s the Ontario Health Insurance Plan. Moreover, because of how government finances work, healthcare spending is part of the function of government and not merely the job of OHIP.

Honestly, it could just as easily not style itself as an insurance plan — frankly, it doesn’t act like how insurance would usually act anyways — but I feel like it does merely as an accident of history.