As I understand it - ~30% of US federal spending is on health care.
In the UK it's about 20%.
Yet apparently the UK is mostly nationalised under the NHS, while in the US there is huge additional spending on private insurance.
Can somebody from the US explain to me how that's the case and why American's still put up with it?
Because the US buys medicine at absurd pricing. Something that should cost dollars, costs hundreds. [0]
[0] https://aspe.hhs.gov/reports/comparing-prescription-drugs
Don't believe that - not that the US doesn't pay well over the odds - that's clear - but it's the major cause to overall higher healthcare costs.
Typically health care is massively human capital intensive with like 50% on wages, and only 10% on drugs.
I suspect the blame lies with a broken market and inflated prices costs across the board ( ie the higher drug prices are a symptom of a wider systemic problem ).
US federal budget is 23% of GDP, while UK is 44% of GDP. You can't compare fractions of the fractions directly. (Total spend is something like 11% vs 18% GDP.)
Sure it's difficult to compare - but from your figures - the 11% is UK and the 18% is US ( total spend )?
With the UK spend roughly 80:20 government:private and the US spend about 50:50.
So as percentage of GDP government spend is about the same percentage of GDP but the much bigger private spend in the US what makes the difference.
We hate it and are more and more powerless to change it every day. The parties are entrenched and swing districts are becoming increasingly rare. Those competitive districts that remain are flooded with unlimited campaign funds from big business and plutocrats, thanks to Citizens United.