American taxpayers footed the bill for about 41% of the nearly $4.5 trillion in both public and private health care spending the U.S. recorded last year.

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.

  • General_Effort@lemmy.world
    1·
    11 months ago

    small businesses would benefit, and entrepreneurs,

    Quite possible. Rates of self-employment are higher in France and Germany (2022 OECD stats). I’m not sure if that figure should be taken at face value, though.

    unless it was a Germany style system

    You mean a system with mandatory insurance? Administrative costs are substantially higher in US health care. Anything to bring quality and costs more in line with peer countries would mean a substantial hit, regardless of the system adopted.

    Why not pay people to do something with a good impact on the land or the people?

    Good question. Just a cursory glance into the statistics will tell anyone that the US system is dysfunctional. It’s been that way for decades or longer. I don’t even know when it became obvious that it wasn’t doing as well as its peers. And yet, there hasn’t been a lot of effort to improve it (Kudos to Obama, though). Maybe Americans just don’t want to do what it takes. Maybe they just want a better outcome, without all the small, necessary steps to get there.

    • RBWells@lemmy.world
      2·
      11 months ago

      On Unless it was a Germany style system (sorry I don’t know how to do the inline quotes yet)

      I mean that Germany uses highly regulated private insurance plans to get to universal coverage. That would probably be an easier sell here, than a one plan to rule them all NHS. Not saying it’s a better idea. I have argued for YEARS that single payer would be a good idea here because we already have Medicare, just expand it to everyone and audit the fuck out of the providers would be cheapest and most efficient.