My dad had the misfortune to suffer from a serious stroke. He needs a lot of medical care, and frankly doesn’t have the ability to broker deals between various medical providers.
There are many many people in similar situations. Even in a world where scum companies didn’t charge usurious prices for drugs like epipens, denying someone care is a moral travesty that should be handled in a fair way.
At least there should be a clear, well documented way for people to avoid these problems. Right now you can get insurance and do everything right but you still may get screwed.
And I don't think my monthly (individual) premium of around $400 is particularly unreasonable; I think that's what healthcare costs. Subsidies are a separate issue.
The problem with healthcare is it's not a good like others which are insured. Even with price transparency the patient isn't qualified to decide what treatment to get at what price (your doctor is), and often the patient isn't at their best physically or mentally when treatment decisions need to be made.
Comparing the US healthcare cost to other countries is slightly misleading as much of the world free-rides off US pharma research.
If we want affordable insurance we should let people with chronic or debilitating diseases die rather than treat them with expensive medications/procedures that increase cost on us all. But when it's your loved one that's sick it's extremely hard to be this cavalier about the decision to not treat at any cost. I know I couldn't make that call.
I want to see hard numbers on this. I strongly believe that this is just self-serving propaganda to justify ripping off people in the US.
I was going off comments from some post-doc friends who immigrated to the US because they said medical research funding here is much better than elsewhere.
(As an aside I think some replies to my comment misunderstood my point. I believe government insurance is highly appropriate for a good like healthcare. Just that it's not without it's downsides and being Canadian I've seen those first-hand).
Hospitals do research now? The rest of the world gets free rides off US-made plaster casts for broken arms?
Pharma companies are ripping off Americans and we’re letting them.