Comment by harmmonica
3 months ago
The US, today, is set up very well for wealthy people. The health care system works great for them. Their doctors are amongst the best in the world. Same with the hospitals they use. The costs are manageable if not reasonable for all of those people. And you can actually go beyond health care and find that almost everything in the US is pretty high quality for wealthy people. Housing, their neighborhoods, their schools, etc. That might help explain why the system is set up the way it is. Everything cascades from there.
A mate of mine (who allegedly has decent health insurance but that seems questionable) was trying to get a simple surgical procedure done, and the quotes he received ranged from anywhere between "We cant tell you" to multiple thousands, ultimately he found a small private hospital that sorted it out for him for 700 USD.
I actually think the 700 USD price is very reasonable. But I dont care how rich you are thats a terrible consumer experience.
> Housing, their neighborhoods, their schools
All of these can be great, but the class of people that make a neighborhood in "the heights" won't have dog barking, basketballs, drugs and gunshots. The people that don't live in "the heights" could decide tomorrow to no longer have those 4 things either - but they don't because - it's a different class of people.