Taxes in Norway:

[paleotn]

12. Waaaaaaaaaaay too much. The bigger the risk pool....

the cheaper the insurance, since there's more people to spread the risk over. Universal healthcare is still insurance. It's just the risk pool is everyone vs. the vastly smaller risk pool UnitedHealthcare and Cigna work with. If one person gets a cancer diagnosis and expensive treatment, that's going to be damn expensive for everyone if the risk pool is only 10 people having to pay that cost in their premiums. If it's 1 cancer diagnosis for every 250K people, that's more manageable. And you can't get more manageable than a risk pool that includes everyone in the country.

Then there's the paperwork. Compare the claim processing headcount at a large Canadian hospital to an equally sized one in the US. We have whole departments. Floors of people managing paperwork for Medicare, Medicaid, some VA, and a host of private insurers. All with their particular quirks. In Canada, it's a small fraction. The inefficiencies, read cost, in the US system is staggering. And monumentally stupid...unless you're a UnitedHealthcare C suite parasite. Then it's fabulous just for them. Not anyone else.