Is it more than nothing, where nothing == taxes? I'm guessing that the amount of your annual taxes that goes toward health care is > ($300 * chance of you incurring $300 in health care costs).
In the UK, the per-capita spend on healthcare is $3480, of which $2919 is paid by the government (and so raised via taxes) and $561 is private (via health insurance or direct payment).
In the US, the per-capita spend is $8362, of which $4437 is paid by the government (via taxes) and $3925 is private (via health insurance).
This is only a cursory glance, but it does look a bit like nationalized healthcare results in lower private spending and lower government spending (the extra spend in the US presumably goes into the pockets of doctors, pharmaceutical companies and insurance companies).
Data sourced from the World Health Organization, via The Guardian[0]
At that point it seems like what America needs is to hit the reset button and throw everything away. Because it's insane that the US spends more tax money on healthcare than the UK.
I wasn't really defending the US system in general, but I don't think nationalizing healthcare in the USA will lower taxes. The inefficiencies aren't inherent in privatized health care, they are a result of a corrupt system. The corruption isn't going to change if we give the government more control over the system.
> The inefficiencies aren't inherent in privatized health care
No, but lots of them are inherent in having a nest of overlapping private and public health insurers (regular, workers compensation, and others) each of whom spend considerable resources making sure that they don't pay for something a different insurer (public or private) could instead be compelled to pay for.
> they are a result of a corrupt system.
Believing that the excess costs in the US system are a result of "corruption" rather than the structural inefficiencies of the architecture of the system requires believing that Americans are unusually, among citizens of developed countries, corrupt. This is not utterly implausible, but it is a claim that requires some support.
The Medicare levy in Australia is about 2%. For me this translates to about $1500pa. Contrast this to my private health insurance which costs about $2000pa. The Medicare levy scales with income and the rate is lower than 2% for people on low incomes, and higher for people who don't have private health insurance. Private health insurance does not scale to income, only to services required.
Medicare provides certainty: if you need treatment, some of it is going to be covered by Medicare. There is a schedule of how much Medicare will pay for certain procedures and medications[1].
With private health insurance you can sometimes choose to have private rooms or select a specific doctor/surgeon.
We have a national health insurance scheme because Australia has a culture of looking out for your mates.
Lots of insurance has a deductible. Doesn't stop it from being galling... I've made two trips to urgent care this year and just hit my deductible, but those will probably be the only healthcare costs I incur this year meaning United collects yet another year of my premiums in return for nothing.
