[sheepmullet]

> Insurance for a family is now > $20K a year.

The real question is why is it so expensive?

When I was growing up in my town with about 1000 kids we had 1 kid who was diabetic, 1 attempted suicide, and 2 serious car accidents.

We had plenty of minor problems like broken bones but you didn’t need insurance to cover these.

So it was maybe 800-1000 working adults covering a handful of serious cases over a 14-16 year time period.

[zanny]

There is tremendous waste in US healthcare. For every doctor there are a dozen accountants, marketers, insurance reps, sales reps, etc. Tons of bureaucracy trying to get a slice of that grotesque money pie.

The model you describe, a town subsidizing a few, is why the optimal state of healthcare affairs is the whole of a nation (through taxes) providing healthcare to everyone. It maximizes your healthy pool to offset the costs of the sick.

[dilap]

Another factor is we're just really unhealthy. Diabetes is exploding, obesity is exploding, Alzheimers is going up, cancer is going up...