What’s the metric for that?
The average American has decent health insurance. Our system can be painful and I'm not advocate for it, but the average American is not going bankrupt due to medical issues.
The average American has decent health insurance. Our system can be painful and I'm not advocate for it, but the average American is not going bankrupt due to medical issues.
Even then, there are many surprises in terms of what you have to pay yourself and how expensive certain things are. Basically any chronic disease will be very expensive. And don’t lose your job either because then you can kiss the insurance goodbye as well, kicking you even further down. Potentially deep into debt.
To be totally honest a lot of people in America don't apply for public benefits for whatever reason. Plenty of my colleagues decided to pay for cobra instead of using free Medicaid which has a zero copay in my state.
In another situation, my brother's high school friends dad was preparing to die from prostate cancer because he could afford treatment. My mom made him sign up for public benefits and they covered everything
But nice, blame the uninsured people for not having insurance because of... checks notes.. the unrelated programs they don't qualify for that almost all states have for coverage for children. Not a very honest 'to be totally honest' no-example example.
You friend's dad will most likely be required to give up his home and assets if he survives the treatment. Many US seniors are now divorcing in order to protect their homes and assets from medical expenses.
The thing is, most Americans do have good jobs (or are in families with one), and do have decent health care. Should people with shit jobs have shit health care? No, and it's very unfortunate that this is how things work. But that doesn't mean we all face bankruptcy for major medical issues. The number of people who do face that should be zero and it isn't, but it's also not the norm.
65% of US bankruptcies are due to medical debt. https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/medical-b...
Coming back to my original comment.
In the US medical bills are half of all debts sent to collections.
41% of US adults have health care debt, 14 million had medical debts over $1,000 and 3 million had debts over $10,000. https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/brief/the-burden-of-medi...
65% of US bankruptcies are due to medical debt https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/medical-b...
530,000 American families file for bankruptcy due to medical bills every year https://balancingeverything.com/medical-bankruptcies-statist...
Debt burden is strongly associated with increased likelihood of suicide attempt https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33989465/
I lost my medical insurance due to the big beautiful bill. It's an interesting change in patriotism when your country says 'you know what, just fucking die because you are rebuilding your life. We don't believe in second chances in the USA'. For millions and millions this country is a ghoulish nightmare.
530,000 medical bankruptcies per year, in a country of 350 million. That number is too high, but the average American does not go through this.
Please understand the difference between saying "everything is great" and "it's not great, but it's not as bad as you say it is." I'm saying the latter, in response to comments incorrectly stating that the average American experience is that major medical issues result in bankruptcy.