Not sure why you’re being downvoted. Although it’s not easy, it can be done.

I see what you’re saying, and it makes a lot of sense. You don’t know what you don’t know. I’ve never traveled to another country and had to use healthcare outside of the US. The state I live in provides health insurance to those who can’t afford it, and I was very grateful to be able to use it for the births of all 4 of my children. Had I not been covered by state healthcare the cost for each birth is ~$10,000 and most insurance plans don’t cover more than $2000 of that. That adds up fast. I would be more inclined to agree with your point of view if healthcare costs in the US were similar to just 30 years ago, but they have dramatically increased and there’s no end in sight.

It works in nearly every 1st world country besides the US. I don’t believe people should have to choose between going bankrupt or saving their loved one by treating cancer. We certainly don’t get what we pay for in the US. We pay the highest cost for pharmaceuticals in the world. They’re no better than what you can buy in Canada or Mexico for pennies on the dollar. My insurance premiums and all of the working people’s keep going up, but my healthcare has gotten worse. I have to make appointments weeks to months ahead of time and once I am seen I’m shuffled along so they can hurry to the next patient. They have stats they have to meet too which don’t have anything to do with making people better. I could go on and on. Most of us in America are not getting any better healthcare and definitely not getting what billionaires get. And it’s not like that business will go away. Billionaires will still pay doctors privately to get their luxury healthcare. Meanwhile the rest of us are paying to increase wealth for shareholders for increasingly less time with our healthcare professionals.

I’m not saying it would be perfect or easy. Many people die in the US because they can’t afford healthcare even if they have insurance. It sounds like changes to the payment model for doctors and nurses need to be made in Ireland and the UK. It shouldn’t take years in a bureaucratic process to make those changes. Just because something isn’t perfect doesn’t mean it should be ruled out. There’s ways to improve it and implement better with the advantage of seeing how it has worked elsewhere for decades.

It’s true that all that money affords us the newest medical technology and nicest accommodations for in patient medical procedures. But I don’t think that should be reserved for only foreign oil barons and other billionaires that can afford it. If we can ever work together to demand proper universal healthcare with the funding it deserves we’d all be much better off.

We really need to stop using the capitalism model with healthcare. There’s no morally defensible reason we should be concerned with shareholder profits when it comes to medicine.