It makes me unhappy to see this. One of the reasons why I kept a government job when I lived in USA was because of the medical benefits... the salary was shit but at certain hospitals and clinics everything was covered, zero deductible.

The longer I live in Asia I realize that the US health care system might be the best for certain procedures, but the costs for regular stuff like an MRI or Xray, there is no justification for that being $1000. I had an MRI just one time in the states and it was $900 - my insurance paid for it but how the frick do we justify that?

I've since had several MRI's here in Vietnam with the SAME EQUIPMENT... it't not like there are temu version of a magnetic imaging system, and it is around $20 per time.

I get that the west is more expensive for almost anything, but 45x as much? That's lunacy.