In my view, insurance is completely compatible with capitalism. It is simply a business, based on statistics. So why should the US have a special problem with insurance?
Non-US manage costs by some combination of state price control, aggressive triage, reduction of bureaucracy compared to complex insurance systems, and lower labour costs.
Also, in re "other countries are poorer than the US": that may be due to the US having a few extremely rich people, it may be possible that the average or modal American is poorer than the average European. Especially if you account for healthcare.
The one which has "US Tax rate 20.3%" and "UK Tax rate 18.9%"?
Even if we did pay more tax, how are you accounting for healthcare and other benefits? US state taxes? UK council tax, and the situations where you can have "negative income tax" in the UK (WFTC)?
And, as discussed, you're free of worries about whether or not you'll get healthcare in the UK. (You may experience a delay for non-urgent conditions, I'll give you that)
Perhaps the issue isn't that the US as a whole can't afford it, but more that medical treatments are expensive and the rich aren't willing to subsidise for the others.
In countries where it's funded essentially via sliding scale income tax, the rich don't have a choice but to subsidise it.
Are the numbers even known, I mean, how much would proper health insurance cost per person?
There are economic forces in American life that actively misinform the public. Medical care is made to be expensive to protect those interests.
Single payer works better, that's why almost all countries use it for basic healthcare.
"Only one issue per visit" so they can charge for two visits. Making me visit to hear the negative results of a standard STD panel, again, just so they can charge for two visits. They charge for an extra visit just to renew prescriptions with no additional examination. Etc.
Also there are different structures for payment, insurance and pay per visit are simply not necessary with single payer though some systems use an amalgam of public/private.
(A) which countries do you mean here? Be specific
(B) Do you think hospitals aren't trying to fleece insurers and customers all the time? e.g. with opaque billing practices?
In the UK most hospitals are owned and run by the state.
What we are trying to say is that in the US, insurance provides very little benefit while constantly driving up cost. They actually have every incentive to shield consumers and producers from having good levels of information about value and cost. If making money from the actuarial spread were the only thing that they did, they might not be so toxic. Instead, they partition information into silo's to further create arbitrage points. Every point where they serve as gatekeeper for information is a place in the system that extra profit can be made.
I think one of the things that you are assuming is that they have a single function in the market. They don't. As is often the case, simple capitalist models for ideal markets just don't match reality. They are also able to use their gains to game the system in their favor from a regulatory perspective.
Obviously, things are not working out in the US. I am just not yet convinced that the market/capitalism is to blame, or if it is essentially corruption (including lobbyists bribing politicians to set up a system that allows the bad insurers to stay in operation).
Also, EMTALA prevents hospitals from denying treatment for ER visits. People without insurance use these frequently as they have no other alternatives for care. ER visits are incredibly expensive and its a partial reason for price spikes.
Basically the US healthcare system is a patchwork of system tied to employment (which stemmed from wage controls during WW2). No one's been able to rework the system since there are too many entrenched players making too much money
Insurance that is based upon a normal distribution is compatible. Insurance based upon a non-normal distribution is not compatible because you basically can't price it. You therefore usually get a few scenarios:
* The insurer prints money during the good years and goes bankrupt in the bad years.
* The insurer prints money during the good years and somehow caps their liability in the bad years (this is why homeowners' insurance typically doesn't cover flood damage).
Sometimes the government covers the difference (e.g. the government coughing up the money AIG owed to Goldman Sachs, the nuclear liability cap or NFIP), sometimes it doesn't.
You get non-normal distributions in a lot of situations - nuclear insurance, flood, earthquake, healthcare and insuring against default risk.
tl;dr capitalism is compatible only with high school statistics.
Sure, there is no guarantee that the whole network can not go broke. But that goes for governments, too.
Also I think health care will always have to be capped at some point, because with arbitrarily high investments, you could presumably keep people alive indefinitely (heart fails - attach heart machine. Lung fails - attach lung machine...). That is why in the UK afaik they don't pay for dialysis once you reach a certain age.
Where this does happen there's usually a fairly low liability cap, some sort of hybrid private/public partnership or a combination.
"Also I think health care will always have to be capped at some point, because with arbitrarily high investments, you could presumably keep people alive indefinitely (heart fails - attach heart machine. Lung fails - attach lung machine...). That is why in the UK afaik they don't pay for dialysis once you reach a certain age."
The UK is almost entirely communist (this is a description, not a slur) in the way funds are allocated. They base funding decisions on something called QALYs - quality adjusted life years.
The practical upshot is that expensive operations that will add 6 months of painful life for an elderly patient are not prioritized under the NHS whereas operations that could save a newborn child's life have virtually no funding limits.