I always see the healthcare cost to consumer compared to other countries, but that isn't the true cost to society if the govt is subsidizing the rest. AFAIK the US healthcare is still truly more costly. Monopolies or something, idk.
Now if you're an accountant you'd take 20 patients a day X 250 working days a year X $50 and get $250,000. Which is close or more than a doctors take home.
You also need to mention that the US is not like any other OECD nation. It also happens to he the nation with the largest innovation in Healthcare, and not just by a little. By Far.
Actual R&D is a distant second. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/02/11/big-p...
The pharmaceutical industry might produce innovations concerning some rare diseases or whatever, but there's no discernible reason why that is, or should be paid for by the public healthcare sector.
You have to be careful with statistics like that. I did some research on that a few years ago. Different countries define infant mortality differently. Other countries would classify many failed pregnancies as a miscarriage that the US classifies as infant mortality, for example. This is because the US is very aggressive at trying to save premature babies.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11606-020-06147-9
> The overall mean for charity care as percent of total expenses was 2.62% for for-profit hospitals compared with 2.95% for nonprofit hospitals...
It's about 0.5% of the total budget, which works out to about a dollar a week for the average taxpayer. On top of that R&D spending has a huge multiplier: a lot of that money supports small, high-tech businesses, which in turn hire people...etc
If you are a tech worker in a small city or town then it can be quite lucrative. You have a lot of control over these variables, especially when younger.
You end up paying for those things in other countries where you're provided them but not directly charged for it. The difference is in the USA for most of those if you don't pay you simply don't get the service, while in other countries you get the service but the tax-man may come and put you in jail if you don't pay for them. It's an individual choice but I prefer getting to pick (at least a little bit) how to spend that money personally rather than the government entirely deciding for me, although I can see how someone coming from a place where government does all that would find it uncomfortable.
Finding providers will require you to spend a lot of time finding doctors, dentists, specialists, etc. who you like, accept your insurance, and are accepting patients. Often the intersection of those things requires substantial travel to areas without transit so how that whatever medical needs you develop don’t preclude driving.
If you did have any real medical needs - even common life events like an uncomplicated natural pregnancy – you’ll need to have tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars saved to avoid needing to negotiate a payment plan. That’s even more pricey if you need medication or care for an ongoing basis.
Because the doctors are for-profit, you’re going to be steered towards unnecessary services and you’ll need to review every bill to make sure only things you approved are listed - hospitals are notorious for having some random out-of-network specialist pop in for 30 seconds to add $15k to your bill.
Because your insurance company is for-profit, be prepared to need to escalate or threaten to sue to have necessary treatment authorized. Your doctor’s medical expertise is secondary to Fred in claims processing, hope whatever you have doesn’t get worse in the meantime!
Also because your doctor and insurance company are for-profit, expect either of them to stop doing business with the other any time it’s more profitable. There’s no guarantee that anyone in-network will be available in your area and you’ll likely need to haggle to get permission to go out of network.
None of that is great to deal with while your family is caring for someone with whatever issues need testing and it’s made even more fun by the knowledge that almost nobody in what you’d consider a peer country has to deal with anything like that much hassle.
What I spend on health insurance is far less than the difference in pay I'd get working in a peer country as a SWE, even if ignoring the difference in taxes. I'm not saving up tens of thousands of dollars for common life events; it's covered.
And the opportunities are better here. My family members and friends from Iran and Lebanon tell each other, France or Germany is better if you want to sit on an entry-level job (which some do), US is better if you're ambitious. There's a real brain drain.