in Italy it costs to me about 300eur every month for work life to potentially have partial coverage at some point in the future if something happens.
I suspect your 3000 cost is skimping on a lot of taxes that are subsidizing the actual costs.
I suspect your 3000 cost is skimping on a lot of taxes that are subsidizing the actual costs.
Secondly, if you take a look at non-insured prices for health care in countries with universal health care (for the most part, the "universal" part is limited to residents and visitors still have to pay), the prices are still significantly lower than they are in the U.S. Having a single payer for insurance and strong regulations over health care enable things like price controls, which makes perfect sense in a health care context since it's never really going to work as a free market (emergency care needs to be treated immediately without the ability to "shop around", the care required isn't always evident at intake, doctors refuse to talk or consider financial aspects, etc.)
In a system where costs are paid through taxes, the disincentive to see a doctor is eliminated. That maybe has some negative effects (going to urgent care for relatively minor problems), but I think it has real benefits in terms of preventative care.
In terms of a countries overall finances, it balances out (not entirely - see my previous point), but in terms of affect on behaviour it has a huge effect (in addition to balancing out the burden that I mentioned before).
but confronting cost without taxes is trite and tiresome. I'm going to pay north of 150k eur to subsidize healthcare thorough my life, and being in the upper tax brackets (which start at some ridiculously low point) I also have to copay each service on top of already being paying more taxes for it.
and when I see the "but ambulance rides are almost free here in x european country!" and the likes well no, they aren't, it's people that just didn't factor the actual costs in, because it's sunk in other taxes.