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.
I post this whenever I get the chance:
It even continues today.
The Brits and Canadians have some legitimate, sincere grievances with their systems. Systems that are increasingly dysfunctional in no small part because conservative and neoliberal governments continue to cut deeply from them, removing the necessary personnel and funding needed to let them do their jobs.
Increasingly, these internal politics around Canada’s federal national health insurance or the British NHS are used as arguments for why we shouldn’t make a change in the US, though. Which is like saying you should keep living in a tent by the river because the affordable housing in the next town over has some leaky plumbing.