Gift link: https://www.wsj.com/health/healthcare/the-average-cost-of-a-...

This is all driven by the emotional impulse to redefine necessities as luxuries.

i have the most bare-bones plan with an HSA.. for me and my three kids, it was 19K per year.. and that was basically nothing more than catastrophic insurance.. I don't think my provider actually paid for anything in the last 4 years except for my son's hospital stay (which I paid the max per person out-of-pocket for). Everything else has been paid out of my HSA.. which is at least discounted by my tax rate. Interesting tidbit, I was actually almost broke about 8 years ago after my divorce, so I didn't pay for healthcare for myself for one year, just my kids. When I notified by doctors about this, they actually were very helpful getting me prices for each procedure.. and they were very helpful directing me to hospitals in the area that actually cater to those without health insurance. Grand total for healthcare for me in that year : $300. I pay 500 per month each month for myself now (because of my age).. yet i use almost none of it... and if I did, I would have to pay out of my HSA. Now, I know that I'm paying for catastrophic conditions.. yada yada.. but being mostly 'healthy' I literally use none of that.. there is no way that health insurance providers will ever cover for anything other than what my age is.. and why? because they'll say that it is the most accurate indicator of general 'health'.. ignoring anything related to how much of the health care system that I use, or much prevention that I personally enage in (diet, exercise, etc, etc).. in the same way car value is a function of miles.. not necessarily how much maintenance has been put into it. It's a simple metric, and easy to fleece healthy people to cover those not healthy. There's only one thing that matters at all: profit margin.

Meanwhile, the median family income in the United States is roughly $80K. So, let's do some math. The average tax burden (local, state, federal) in the United States is 30%. Employers pay, on average, 70% of health insurance plan premiums. The employee then pays 30%. That's $8,100 dollars for the year. That's paid pre-tax, so our taxable income is now $71,900 which you get to keep 70%, or $50,330. The median monthly family housing cost is $2,035 or $24,420. Taken from my $71,900 of earnings I'm left with $47,480 of income for the year.

Of course that isn't all of your out-of-pocket medical costs (co-pays and prescriptions) that you're going to pay before you've hit your annual deductible. I'm seeing estimates for those costs for a family ranging anywhere from $2,000 per year (which seems low) to $9,000 per year (which seems high) - but "seems" is just what I'm paying. The middle would be $5,500, which seems a little high, but I know people who would be hitting that. Anyway that $5,500 needs to come off that $47,480 to leave us with $41,980 or roughly $3,500 per month to pay everything but the rent: retirement savings, food, utilities, transportation, etc. For a family of 4.

Now you see why Americans are stressed and the division we're seeing is primarily a result of that stress due to people's different perceptions of how to best "fix" it.