American taxpayers footed the bill for at least $1.8 trillion in federal and state health care expenditures in 2022 — about 41% of the nearly $4.5 trillion in both public and private health care spending the U.S. recorded last year, according to the annual report released last week by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
On top of that $1.8 trillion, third-party programs, which are often government-funded, and public health programs accounted for another $600 billion in spending.
This means the U.S. government spent more on health care last year than the governments of Germany, the U.K., Italy, Spain, Austria, and France combined spent to provide universal health care coverage to the whole of their population (335 million in total), which is comparable in size to the U.S. population of 331 million.
Between direct public spending and compulsory, tax-driven insurance programs, Germany spent about $380 billion in health care in 2022; France spent around $300 billion, and so did the U.K.; Italy, $147 billion; Spain, $105 billion; and Austria, $43 billion. The total, $1.2 trillion, is about two-thirds of what the U.S. government spent without offering all of its citizens the option of forgoing private insurance.
How timely! American here who just received a bill for scoping my sinuses by an ENT specialist: insurance covered $28 out of the $415 procedure. This is on top of the $70 copay I owe for the $195 office visit. So all accounting factored in, I owe $450 for what I thought was going to be $70.
Because it was billed through insurance, the provider’s hands are tied in terms of further negotiation. I would bet if I had gone in as a cash patient, I’d be much better off.
The icing on the cake is that the scoping procedure was non-conclusive.
The US healthcare insurance system is the ultimate way to make money fast, for little effort. As long as you’re on the right side of it, that is.
copay is such a bullshit word, like i’m somehow equal partners with this trillion dollar corporation of ghouls
The worst is that insurance companies “cover” things and that’s all they can say before anything is done. After, when billed, they can say “we cover 5% of the final bill. See? We covered it.” And we have no idea how much we will need to pay for standard necessary procedures.
Fuck. Canadian here who is just aghast at the charge. Had a friend go through the same procedure but essentially never paid a dime. We don’t even pay MSP any more but back when we did it was locked to your income bracket and while I had some bumpercrop years (my base rate is 33 bucks an hour and I work 12 hour days standard with time and a half applied for everything past 8 hours for 2019 I worked 11 months with routine 60 hour weeks) my payments never crested $250 for a quarterly payment. Heck I didn’t even realize that they stopped charging for two years because I had the thing rigged to autopay.
Heck a friend of mine’s Dad needed emergency hospital transfer from a small town and they used a helicopter ambulance and the family was never charged.
People want to complain that we’re slower and that people have to actually wait in waiting rooms and sure, non life-threatening stuff needs to be put in a queue but from what I have heard from my US buddies wait times at least are pretty comparable.
Get your jaw checked bro. TMJ can cause a lot of similar issues