Expat, I am sorry about your employment situation.

I did describe the system as broken. I would also say that it does wonderful, amazing things. I have a daughter-in-law who is alive either because of miracles or great health care or a combination of the two. She's been sick all of her life. Until she married my son, she was on Medicaid. Now they live with a mountain of unpayable debt. But she is alive. I doubt she would be alive in any other country on earth. Last fall when she was in the hospital, I was asked by her doctor why I looked so worried, and I mentioned my concern about how we were going to ever pay the bills that were accruing. The doctor looked down at me as if I had said something terribly rude. "We don't worry about that." He was perfectly sincere.

Which is to say, the health care system itself is not really broken, just our methods of paying for it are a problem. I do not see how your father's selling off the unprofitable Medicare division disproves my point, but rather the opposite. Of course, I don't know what your father's business is. But truly, the hospitals and doctors charge as much as they do because they have to cover the shortfall of treating Medicare and Medicaid patients and they CAN pass on the cost to the private sector. There will probably be some tipping point, where doctors and hospitals will not treat those patients, just as there is a shortage of doctors in states where liability insurance is so expensive that doctors are driven out. However, as long as we have even a fairly healthy private sector insurance market, those expenses CAN be passed along. It clobbers folks like you and my son and I try not to resent having to pay higher insurance premiums than we would, otherwise. I am not saying that there is any intrinsic value in paying more for a service. But we have a great hospitals and health care, because we are actually willing to pay for it.

Really, if you got sick without having health insurance, a hospital would have to take you in and treat you. They can't turn you away. You might have to pay for your treatment, eventually, but you do not get carried away to debtor's prison or anything like that if you can't pay right away. Some hospitals even have funds for treating the indigent. Where does the money for that come from? Don't ask. We don't worry about that.