What really gets me is that the US has socialized health care. Your insurance company isn’t logging all of the excess income they make from you to a large medical expense you incur in the future. The whole point of insurance is that the million (or whatever) ‘customers’ all pay in their their, say, thirteen grand a year. Many people get their annual checkup, and that’s it. Insurance company pays out a couple hundred bucks from that thirteen grand. Someone gets heart surgery – the excess all those only-checkup people paid covers it, and the insurance company pays out fifty grand for that stranger’s medical care.

The American insurance system is just socialized in small, less efficient islands. Those islands are making money off of us all. And you get voted off the island when you lose your job.

Oh, and people still go bankrupt from medical expenses. Or resort to airing their sad story on GoFundMe hoping for donations. I guess we all get to feel benevolent when we donate to their fundraiser, and just paying taxes doesn’t get to make you feel like you’re personally helping someone. But do we really need a profit-driven and inefficient solution just so we can feel good about ourselves? Maybe we could switch to a more efficient system where everyone is the customer pool and the insurance company is looking to more or less break even. And you can donate the money you save on heath care to some other charity — homeless people, bail projects, food kitchens, abused animals, etc.