Public perception is that the US is not willing to pay for universal healthcare. However, the US spends enough money, it just spends it inefficiently.
The US spends ~$900 Billion a year on Medicaid [1] and ~$1.1 Trillion a year on Medicare [2]. If the US spent this money as efficiently as Japan (or UK [3], ...) it could pay for Universal Healthcare without increasing its budget.
[1] https://www.kff.org/medicaid/medicaid-financing-the-basics/#...
[2] https://usafacts.org/answers/how-much-does-medicare-cost-the...
Incomes are dramatically higher in the US than in Japan. Their economy has imploded so badly due to debt + currency destruction that they're now just barely above Lithuania (which has come a long ways of course) on economic output per capita.
Japan is no longer a primary economic power and their (perpetually falling) purchasing power + incomes represent that.
US GDP per capita is estimated at $92,000 for 2026. Norway is $96,000 for comparison. 340 million people vs one of the world's richest nations at 5 million people. The UK is $60k, and Japan is a mere $36k.
Read that again. US GDP per capita will soon be 3x that of Japan.
Doing a direct comparison of healthcare costs is silly accordingly. At a minimum you need to 2x to account for the drastically higher US incomes vs Japan, and at least 50% higher vs the UK.
I don't agree with your framing but let's accept it for the sake of this conversation.
The UK and Japan are not the only countries with more efficient healthcare systems than the US. We can look at a variety of countries, some of which have a higher GDP per capita than the US.
If we look at a graph of 'healthcare spending per capita' by 'GDP per capita' [1], we can see that the US is a massive outlier spending ~2x countries with comparable GDP per capita.
In fact, the US has a higher healthcare spending per capita than every other OECD country. By a large margin.
[1] https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/health-...
Japan is also way thingger than America, which the article points out: > The US spends ~$14,570 per person on healthcare. Japan spends ~$5,790 and has the highest life expectancy in the OECD. That gap is roughly $3 trillion per year.
Need to have people go in for checkups and get shamed for unhealthy habits, not really a money question.
Japan's economy imploded because it was doing better than the US and Japanese were buying big American names like Rockefeller Center, so the US forced Japan to destroy their currency, which popped the Asian miracle.