For those of you who aren’t U.S. residents and have never had the pleasure of interacting with the U.S. health care system, let me offer you an example of what unfettered capitalism does to medicine. Below is a bill I received today for a 45-minute diagnostic exam. Fortunately, I have excellent health care insurance, but imagine if you’re a poor person. F*ck Trump and people like him.

Wtf 😨 How much is the insurance /month?

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I pay $832/year for my health insurance and my employer pays just under $7,000/year (I know what my employer pays because it’s reported to me when I file my taxes each year). I have a $1,400/year deductible. But my health insurance is better than 99% of all Americans. Most Americans pay much more.

Interesting, because in Switzerland everyone has to pay 3'600$/y for the basis insurance (no choice given), and my employer pays 11'000$/y for me. So the insurance are more expensive than in the US. However the health cost are way lower.
So either the US insurers are able to bring the bill down and don't pay for everything, or it's the Swiss insurers that make a stratospheric margin.

I also have what’s called a ‘Health Savings Account’, which allows me to put pre-tax dollars into an account (up to $4,100/year, which carries over, and I can invest the funds). The pre-tax nature means I essentially get a 33% discount on everything I pay for out of pocket. I can also deduct my contributions to this account from my tax bill at the end of the year. All of these things benefit Rick people over the poor, who don’t have $4,100 extra per year to put into fancy accounts.

It depends on the state! There is a national program called Medicaid that provides health care to the VERY poor, with no job. President Obama expanded this program to the working poor, but states controlled by Republicans have generally refused to accept the federal money to do that expansion. Those Republican-controlled states also tend to have a lot of poor brown people… https://www.kff.org/medicaid/issue-brief/how-many-uninsured-are-in-the-coverage-gap-and-how-many-could-be-eligible-if-all-states-adopted-the-medicaid-expansion/

And is there subsidies for poor people than can't pay insurance?
For example the basis insurance at 3'600$/y is mendatory for everyone (has a deductible at 2'500$/y). But when I was a student, the state was paying nearly 90% of it.