The US spends 5% of it's budget on health and it's national debt is >100% of GDP.

Where did you get that number? The US spends a ridiculous amount of money on health care.

Health Care Budget 2013

Last year health spending surpassed defense spending in the US.

Likewise I just fail to understand the US system. Affordable (or even free) health care is something that the rest of the developed world has had for a long time, it works, it's been proven to work. There's just something badly screwed-up in the thinking there.

I agree, I don't understand it either. It's so cheap here ($35 per visit) that people nearly abuse it for every minor thing they can come up with.

Dental care isn't free though, and is quite expensive.

For those of you in the EU and Australia, how does national healthcare affect your national debt? Granted this may not matter to you, but in the US, it's a source of major concern.

Australia has the lowest per-capita public debt in the G20 IIRC, but yeah, people are still panicked about it.
We pay about the same tax as in the US though, but we don't pay to have a larger military than china and Russia combined ;P

I get the impression that every facet of the health industry in the US is involved in price gouging, so even government health programs end up being 100x more costly than they should due to having to pay these inflated costs...

Well when you have the insurance companies lobbying that's what you end up with. It doesn't help that they have a 2 party system where you can choose between an extremely right wing party and a right wing party.

We have private health options in the UK but if you get chronically ill they either massively hike the price or else drop you like a stone.

Where did you get that number? The US spends a ridiculous amount of money on health care.

I googled "us government spending 2013" and one of the first results was this graph. Which I know realise is not exactly what I was looking for.

Apologies and a lesson to research a bit better next time.

Shippou: You're mistaken about the out-of-pocket maximum and also about required treatment at the emergency room. And about deductibles.

Directly from the site's "small print" ...

Policyholders are generally responsible for 100% of costs until the deductible amount is met. After the deductible has been met the policyholder is responsible for the coinsurance / copay until the out of pocket maximum is reached at which point the insurance company assumes 100% of all costs.

Doing a quick Google search for "max out of pocket expense definition" has yielded results that say that the deductible is not included in that figure when dealing with ACA policies, and doing another search for "deductible ACA" has results showing the deductible has to be 100% payed before the policy kicks in.

As far as turned away from treatment for not being able to pay deductibles / copays - again Google has quite a few hits for that also.

It's not surprising, this is a consequence of greed and the lack of a legal system.

In the USA, you can successfully sue someone for 5-6 million because you break into their house and cut your arm breaking the window. Or, because you buy hot coffee at a coffee shop, drive with it between your legs, and get surprised that hot coffee will actually hurt your testicles when... surprise... you spill it while driving with it between your legs. It doesn't matter how stupid you are, there is apparently no limit.

Now of course, you can sue your physician to ridiculous sums as well, and as usual, disregarding whether there is any sane reasoning behind it or not. You can be a total fuckhead who caused whatever condition you sue the physician about himself, and you can still go to court, successfully.

Of course this means that the cost for treatment is a hundred times higher too, because they need to pay horrid sums for indemnity insurances. Get real on lawsuits, and healthcare will be affordable.

That said, healthcare is not "free" or "cheap" in most other places either. I'm paying around 350 euros ($480) per month for my private insurance, which is roughly 6k per year too. And I'm in most privilegued occupation group, and the lowest risk group. Other people at my age can easily pay twice as much or more.

Sure, we do have the public insurance for the poor (which costs about half as much as what I'm paying, if you're poor -- but is a lot more expensive otherwise), but with the public insurance you only get minimum treatment too, and you need to beg and wait for everything. Plus, for half of the stuff, you need to pay extra. Such as a 5€ co-charge on a drug that costs 5€, which frankly is insulting. Asylum-seekers and welfare parasites are the only ones who truly get healthcare for "cheap", because they get everything for free. But that's what you get from not making socialists illegal.

And yes, it was to be expected that Obama's plan targets the poor. Obama is the American counterpart of a "socialist" (well, not really, but as much socialist as you can be in the USA). And as such, he does what the socialists always do, he makes the lives of everyone more miserable, especially the lives of the poor.

Ironically that's the same people who (re-)elected him. People never learn.

Or, because you buy hot coffee at a coffee shop, drive with it between your legs, and get surprised that hot coffee will actually hurt your testicles when... surprise... you spill it while driving with it between your legs.

Sorry, but this story is bullshit. Everything you have written is wrong.

It wasn't a frivolous, baseless lawsuit. A 79 year old woman (who wasn't driving or even in a moving car) was scalded by coffee that was in no way consumable by any human; it was McDonalds policy to keep the coffee at 185 degrees F (or over 80 degrees C).

Finally, she was just looking for some help to pay her medical bills, but McDonalds insisted on taking it to court, where a jury awarded millions against them as a punitive charge.

And as such, he does what the socialists always do, he makes the lives of everyone more miserable, especially the lives of the poor.

Yeah, that's why places like with strong social safety nets like Scandinavia, NZ and Australia are consistently ranked as having some of the highest quality of life in the world....

Sorry, but this story is bullshit. Everything you have written is wrong.

It wasn't a frivolous, baseless lawsuit. A 79 year old woman (who wasn't driving or even in a moving car) was scalded by coffee that was in no way consumable by any human; it was McDonalds policy to keep the coffee at 185 degrees F (or over 80 degrees C).

Finally, she was just looking for some help to pay her medical bills, but McDonalds insisted on taking it to court, where a jury awarded millions against them as a punitive charge.

What he said. It's far more than just suing for spilling hot coffee on herself. Take a look at the story here, and be warned... there are some photos of the burns that are pretty graphic. Here is the quote from the Liebeck case.

Stella Liebeck was 81 years old when she grabbed her daily cup of McDonald’s coffee and sat in her parked car to add cream and sugar. The cup collapsed under the 190+ degree coffee and gave her massive third degree burns. A square foot area of skin on both thighs between her legs turned black as the flesh was burned right off. She required numerous skin grafts and months in the hospital. What her attorney and the jury involved in the case discovered was that McDonald’s kept their coffee between 180 and 190 degrees, a temperature which produces third degree burns when in contact with the skin for more than a second. They also discovered that McDonald’s had a long record of burn injuries to customers which they repeatedly ignored (more than 700). In Liebeck’s case, the coffee temperature was way over 190 degrees, so high it was compared to the water in a radiator after driving 2,000 miles in the hot sun.

I was planning on bolding the important parts, but it's all pretty damning. Especially the fact that they had over 700 other incidents, many who also suffered third degree burns and that it was their official policy to serve coffee way too hot to actually be consumed despite these injuries.

Directly from the site's "small print" ...

I don't need the small print, I handle health insurance, including billing and cost determination, for a living. It's the "generally" that's getting you here, but regardless it is often the case that policy holders are responsible for 100% of most types of costs until the deductible is met. It is not, however, a necessary component of a deductible and there are many plans that do not operate this way. The exceptions tend to be fairly limited (as in, the deductible doesn't apply to a once-a-year physical exam, but does apply to everything else). The less favorable coinsurance rate until the deductible is met may be a thing of the past (I haven't seen many lately, at least), but that isn't something commanded by the ACA legislation. This kind of information is plan-specific and not constrained to some broad definition listed on valuepenguin.

Doing a quick Google search for "max out of pocket expense definition" has yielded results that say that the deductible is not included in that figure when dealing with ACA policies, and doing another search for "deductible ACA" has results showing the deductible has to be 100% payed before the policy kicks in.

Consider this from United Health Care (a health insurance company):

In addition, all member cost-sharing must apply to the out-of-pocket maximum (e.g., copayments and deductibles).

While I have nothing against Googling definitions, I'll stick to the definitions used by insurance companies responding to claims filed.

As far as turned away from treatment for not being able to pay deductibles / copays - again Google has quite a few hits for that also.

I have found zero results which back up what you claim, with terms "ACA and EMTALA" or "ACA and emergency room". It would be pretty massive news if such a thing were the case, and I would expect that I would have heard about it (I have not) and that the internet would be bursting with this enormous news (it isn't). Anyone can be mistaken, but I'll need a better citation that "Google it" before you convince me, especially when actually doing that doesn't show me any support for what you're saying.

The ACA isn't perfect by any stretch of the imagination, and health care is still expensive, and health insurance is still complex and unwieldy. And the US healthcare system, even if the ACA works in line with the most optimistic projections, will still be a mess. But your initial post is both no different than how health insurance has worked for the last several decades in the US and at least modestly inaccurate on some specifics.