In England the treatment is free at the point of delivery to almost everyone[1]
Any meds will be about £8 per item per month. Discounts are available if you need to buy lots of meds. And many people are covered by various exemptions and won't have to pay anything. (EG: People taking thyroxine will get a medical exemption certificate and not have to pay for any prescription medication at all).
You don't need to use NHS hospitals. You can go to private health care any time you like. You don't get to opt-out of the national insurance payments. I'm not sure if there are any private emergency rooms. And there's a recent "protective" change where some cancer patients have to pay for all of their care if they buy a few specific (not effective, not efficient, very expensive) meds. Some pharma groups have been unscrupulous in targetting very ill people with bad, and expensive, meds. They funded patient advocacy groups to agitate for changes to prescribing rules to allow for these ineffective meds to be available on the NHS.
I've been careful to say "at the point of delivery" because I recognise that there is a tax burden that needs to be paid.
[1] In theory only emergency stuff is available unless you're entitled or you have equivalent national insurance or you have private insurance, but in practice "health tourism" is said to be a problem here.
I have several Canadian friends and they've all told me that they never understood the price of healthcare until they had to take their dog to the vet. They all pay for it, of course, during the course of their lives, but they don't ever have to worry about not having access to it or being bankrupted for it. The medical industry hates this, of course, because it means that hospitals can't charge $2 for an aspirin that can be bought 100 to a bottle for less.
I genuinely don't get this line of thinking. I understand that the US prides itself on individualism, but I can't understand the utter lack of empathy.
I know you're disputing the 'paid $0' part of the OP's comment, however your response comes across as quite glib and seems to imply that the OP genuinely thinks that nobody paid for his care.
Yes people in countries with 'socialised' health care pay for health care that benefits others. Yes this is a good thing.
Let's use Australia as an example of a more empathic way to approach this issue.
Recently there has been a federal budget shortfall. There isn't enough money to pay for a National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) [1]. Our two major parties both agree that funding should come from a ($350/year) levy.
I'm not disabled. I don't know anyone that is disabled. I'm not rich so $350/year is not pocket change. All considered, I'm still more than happy to pay my share to make disabled people's life easier.
> You might want to reconsider your number when you file your taxes every year.
You might want to consider the fact that the US government healthcare spending per capita is greater than Canada's (and every other OECD country except Norway and the Netherlands), even with the huge private healthcare expenditures that are on top of that in the US (while Canada and other OECD countries have very small private expenditures in addition to the government costs.)
The US hybrid public-private hybrid system is by far the least efficient healthcare system in the developed world.
Even if you count tax costs alone and ignore the vast out-of-pocket private costs, you are still spending more on healthcare in the US than you would be in Canada.
When I lived in the US my taxes were about the same (maybe three or four percent less) than what they are now in Canada.
Further, the amount of money I had to pay out of my own pocket each month for health insurance in the US was about three times what provincial medical premiums are in BC. In the US, health insurance was about $1000/month, out of which my company paid about $600/month. Up here in BC the monthly premiums are $133/month, out of which my company pays $133/month.
Further, even though I was paying $400/month in health insurance costs in the US, every time I had to see a doctor I had to shell out $10. Even though I was paying $400/month in health insurance costs in the US, my daughter's birth cost about $1000. Doctor visits are free in BC. Births are free in BC (you'll probably have to shell out a nominal fee for anesthesia or supplies though, but I've heard that'd be less than $100).
So yeah, my taxes might be higher, but not appreciably, and that's massively outweighed by the amount of money I would have to shell out to the medical industry in the US.
Let me know how that works out the next time you drop a quarter million dollars for a treatment that costs a couple thousand in another OECD country because the hospital you went to is trying to make up for all the money they lost treating uninsured or bankrupted patients.
