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.
You wrote “2-6 weeks” but more accurate would be “never, because the patient can’t afford it” or “and then they have crippling medical debt”
Also it’s wildly dependent on what surgery. 1-2 years for some surgeries. Though the UK is significantly worse on that specific procedure, entirely on purpose.
Is it a gender-affirming surgery, by any chance?
Yeah
My family member had to wait a year and a half for top surgery in Colorado
Yeah I got into bottom surgery in 6 months because someone canceled and I was willing to stay in a hospital for a week in 2021.
And the UK NHS can provide similar speeds to the US. They just refuse to have enough clinics to accommodate the fact that trans people are about a third of a percent of the population and they’re unwilling to follow the modern best practices for transitioning. 2 year wait to begin an outdated and humiliating waiting period to start hormones isn’t something you do unless you’re intentionally underfunding it.
I support single payer knowing that I’m one of the groups that my country will choose to hurt in revenge. Because nobody should ever have to ask how they’re going to pay for chemo, even the people choosing to punish me for taking that problem from them.