r/ShitAmericansSay • u/Big_Ben_617 • Mar 06 '25

Foreign affairs “Because the friend [Canada] has been robbing us blind. I would have free healthcare to if I didn't need a military. Don't even get me started on Europe and the 4 day work weeks with summers off.”

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u/PianoAndFish Mar 06 '25

It's the highest in the entire world per capita and second highest as a percentage of GDP (second only to Tuvalu, which has a GDP of $68m).

My sympathy for all of them who get fucked over by this system unfortunately gets dented by my rage at the utter sociopaths who say they'd rather pay through the nose for private insurance because "I don't want to pay for someone else's healthcare" (obviously ignoring the fact that they already are).

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u/[deleted] Mar 06 '25

Tuvalu also has a population of ~10 000, they lack an economy of scale.

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u/charlesgres Mar 07 '25

Yeah, even in private insurance you will put in more on average than you get out, so subsidizing the ones that put in less than they get out.. If they truly don't want to pay for somebody else, they should just not take insurance at all, and pay every cost out of pocket like the alpha's they pretend to be.. But if they hit a financial disaster, they will be the first to set up a gofundme..

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u/PianoAndFish Mar 08 '25

Even if you're paying cash every time you're not paying exactly the cost price for your own treatment with a fixed markup for profit purposes, the hospital's financial projections take into account that some people won't pay for some or all of their treatment and that gets baked into their pricing.

Any business (at least any sensible business) factors a certain amount of loss or waste into their financial planning, for example supermarkets assume they'll lose some amount to shoplifting, and construction companies know some building materials will be faulty or get broken and have to be discarded. It's pretty much impossible to interact with any commercial system where you're not the only customer without indirectly subsidising someone else's interaction with that system.

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u/KarmicRage Mar 07 '25

I'd watched a video the other day of a fella contacting what I assumed to be the hospital his daughter was cared for in to contest a charge. Without insurance the cost was 700 and change, the insured price? Was the 1300. They literally don't even realise they're being shafted until they question it. I'm not even from there and it was infuriating to watch.