To your point, rich people in the west have prime access to world class care, and if it's not an emergency they'll fly to wherever they need to get the best clinics they can afford. People flying to Korea for plastic surgery is a thing.
Even at upper middle class you can go through non subsidized clinics if you want prioritized and/or special care.
Being even mildly rich will always help.
About a third of American households make 100k a year. Median household is about 70k a year:
But I suspect the person making the claim was just picking an arbitrary number where most people in that salary band will have decent benefits, and can usually afford the out of pocket portion also
I think you're reading too much into the OP's off-hand guesstimate. At every company I've worked for, the engineers earning $200K are on the same health insurance as the high school graduate in the warehouse earning $40K/year. The higher compensation makes it easier to clear the deductible/out of pocket maximum hurdles, obviously, but there wasn't a secret insurance plan that got unlocked at higher compensation.
I feel like a lot of such medical tourism has more to do with cost than quality of care.
Mental healthcare is a different story, but it's not any better with private insurance. Every therapist or psychiatrist in the insurance racketeer's provider directory is either dead, moved out of state, or not taking patients. "Ghost networks," they're called...
The worst insurance I've ever had was at a FANG, via United Healthcare. It covered nothing. Hardly anyone accepted it, apart from the on-site health clinic. It was worse than a university health plan, for god's sake. As to quality, you say it's the best in the world, but the fact that the US now has a life expectancy lower than China, Cuba, and Albania determines that this is a lie.
Unpopular truth on this forum: the healthcare system in this country is owned and operated by organized crime entities. It is completely illegitimate. It consumes 19% of GDP of the richest country on the planet, and Americans are some of the least healthy people outside of active war zones. Unless you're using your doctor as your Xanax dealer (John Mulaney explains how that hustle works: https://www.tiktok.com/@funkytownmc/video/722624028419819447...), this system sucks for you too.
I would be shocked if the Mexican cartels weren't deeply involved with United Healthcare and all these other corporate gangsters. This industry is the greatest crime of all time.
The sad truth about those stats is that if you split them by social class, you get two distinct groups: disenfranchised people with some of the worst health outcomes in the world, and privileged people with some of the best.
The childibrth related mortality rate for black american women is 3x higher than for white women, for example.
Geography is a greater determinant of health than race. People die a full 7 years earlier on average in Mississippi than California or Massachusetts, and 6 years earlier in West Virginia.
There's a clear correlation with income here, but one can easily argue that both income and life expectancy are downstream of policy. Red state policies are simply bad for your health and your wallet.
It's really just mental healthcare and dentistry that are basically impossible, but again, not much better with a private health plan.
Take the blinders off, stop pretending you're not getting robbed, and maybe we can fix it. There is no silver lining to private healthcare. You're not getting better care. Social determinants of health are very real, but they're driven by those 9 states without Medicaid expansion dragging the averages way down, a lifetime of bad care before the ACA, and also that medicine can't solve the many problems caused by poverty.
We would all be better off in literally any other system. Everyone thinks they're an above average driver. Everyone thinks they'll live longer than average. The truth is, you're just not that special. Unless you're a politician that gets to go to Walter Reed, or you have a wing in the hospital named after you, you're getting the abysmal standard of care that everyone gets.
At the same time, I was looking for a new dentist for myself and for this kid. There are a half dozen dentists who would see me within ten minutes walk. I finally found her a dentist some 20 minutes drive away (bonus: she can't drive).
And the mental health provider we found who would take Medicaid did intake for new patients on Friday mornings between 9am and 12 noon, no appointments, recommend you arrive early in order to be seen.
This is in WA.
For whatever bloody reason they just don't exist in anything near enough quantity.
Conversely, I'm surprised you found a dentist and a mental health provider that takes any insurance at all, and didn't have a months-long wait list. I've almost always had to self pay for both...
Do you for example have data showing that life expectancy in this group is higher than, e.g., the life expectancy of an average citizen of France?
Add up what a person making $100k pays in insurance premiums, plus what the employer kicks in on those same premiums, plus the deductibles and co-pays for every procedure, plus drug costs even with insurance and it's not even in the same ballpark. Even if you are healthy and don't go to the hospital the premiums are huge for even basic health plans.
This is a hard lesson for many later in life and why social safety nets are so important for everyone.
Minor mistakes and games can also create odd billing situations that are opaque and difficult to fight.