You should see what we have to pay for routine medical stuff here. It's obscene.
I always wondered about that, don't you guys have insurance that covers all the routine stuff? A relative of mine, paid about 20,000 USD for a surgery that she would've gotten for free here.
Hah, no. Insurance only covers so much and even if it does cover a good chunk of it you still have to pay like 20% and if it's 20% of $200,000 that's still $40,000.
Health in the US is so poor because many people opt to not seek medical treatment or seek it so late that the problem is much worse than it would have been because the costs are so prohibitive. A surgery could easily completely bankrupt someone here.
A heart surgery for instance could cost over $100,000 in the US while elsewhere it would be ~$13k, including round trip airfare.
Some of the new cancer drugs cost $35,000
per month of treatment. Someone could lose their entire savings trying to save a loved one only to have to deal with being bankrupted and heavily in debt while grieving for their inevitable loss, and it only makes it worse if it recurs and they must seek treatment again. I have an uncle that was fairly wealthy at one point but after having to go through cancer treatment 3 times, now he barely scrapes by. He says that he won't seek treatment if it happens again.
The state of the US medical system is ridiculous. If we'd just pass
HR 676 we'd be fine. But nooooooooooo, we can't do that. Why not? Because everyone is stupid corrupt fuckheads.
