What's the point of being able to get an appointment in a day for a specialist if you'll eventually have to go into debt or file bankruptcy to be able to afford that specialist?
As I said in my original post, I'm talking about the middle class not the poor. A maximum out-of-pocket of 5k or 6k should not bankrupt a middle class person.
Lots of people -- particularly people who have other people depending on their resources for healthcare and other essentials -- which is why in addition to the cost of healthcare bankrupting people, it also discourages them from choosing timely (and more cost effective, though still expensive) interventions in many cases (because they gamble that maybe it will resolve on its own and not require the expensive intervention). Which results in later, more expensive, less effective interventions -- which takes care of both health and finances poorly, resulting in not only some people being bankrupt by high costs, but other people (sometimes the same people) being dead (and even more, alive but worse off than they would have been with earlier, cheaper intervention) because of the discouraging effects of the high costs.
> I never could understand why socialists are so crazy about healthcare being cheap and not about it being effective.
People interested in socialized medicine are generally concerned with it being accessible, "cheap" is seen as desirable as a means to that end.
Win-win.
Not true if measured by outcomes with various forms of cancer (which I would argue are pretty good metrics).