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tell that yo our canadian buddies that drive over the border with cash to get their surgeries completed here
You forgot about the 10's of thousands of Americans who go to Mexico for health care. Thousands of others go to Canada, India, Thailand and elsewhere.
Did you not know this? Or are you purposely being misleading. Medical Tourism is BIG business and hospitals are being built worldwide largely JUST for Americans. Look it up.
BIG BUSINESS. You can even go to Spain and many other places where they are building facilities specifically for American patients.
The cost is typically about 1/4 the cost here - private rooms, some have two nurses assigned to you full time, starbucks in the lobby (among many other things), etc.
The government would be much likelier to want people treated successfully. It costs them money to keep people sick, and it costs a potentially productive person (who would otherwise be able to work at a higher capacity, thus bringing in more tax dollars).
Private healthcare profits directly off of people staying sick.
Cost whom money?
Government doesn’t produce anything. They just raise taxes.
...and we have the most expensive health care system in the world. So, then, what exactly are we paying for? Insurance companies and incompetence? Ineffectiveness? Any thoughts as to why we should not have UHC like every other developed nation in the world...?
I'm waiting for the day when BlueCross/Blue Shield finally figures out that getting my hip replaced in India along with riding on an elephant and seeing the Taj Mahal for 10% of the cost of having it done here, makes absolute sense to them and doctors are looking out the windows of American hospitals as lonely as the Maytag Repair Man! The "outsourcing" of American medicine!
If you have Medicaid, Medicare or Obamacare you will not go under due to massive medical bills from a health crisis.
With Obamacare you might have to pay a high deductible at some point, but that can be negotiated or paid off over time. And then again, some or all might be waived.
From our two experiences the past 15 mo. With my wife's massive trauma bills in 2017, we actually received more payments FROM BCBS and the providers than we paid out in deductibles. Too complicated to figure out why. But I rarely argue when payment is in our favor. Bills were over $1.3M. Obamacare paid the hospital only $200K and change.
In 2018 we have paid in a few thousand for her extremely complicated and expensive lymphoma treatments. In the millions, and still going.
I would wonder if her life would have been saved from the accident in some other country with 'better' HC, under similar traumatic circumstances. And how her lymphoma treatment would have gone.
Maximum out of pocket, including deductible, is $7,350 this year.
I often wonder what the basis is for international comparison of medical costs.
Is it the amount billed or the contractually agreed upon amount paid by insurers? My husband had a rough couple of years and I was stunned by the difference between the billed amount and the PPO amount paid.
There are three things in health care: affordability, availablilty and quality.
You can’t have all three.
Well it seems the rest of the developed world gets about 2.5 out of 3, but in America if the affordability trips you up, the other 2 don't matter! You get 0 out of 3!
Seems to be working just fine in Germany and Switzerland along with most other countries.
Define “just fine.”
Keep in mind US support Germany’s defense and Switzerland has very high taxes on EVERYONE.
And they both take advantage of technologies and medicines developed by US.
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The "outsourcing" of American medicine! 
