I think it would be worthwhile to discuss more than just per capita cost. The way that these costs are distributed is important and, I believe, problematic. The problem here is not just that per capita cost is high, it’s that for reasons that are partly structural, and partly demographic, healthy young payers with lower incomes can be burdened with the full, un-subsidised, costs of insurance, while others consume services without seeing the price. Some people have tax subsidized employer sponsored health care, some people have socialized health care, some people pay for insurance out of pocket with post-tax income, and some people have nothing and have to negotiate costs under duress after they have already consumed services. Doctors will not commit to a price in writing in advance. If you think will, try it sometime ;)

I’m currently paying more then %100 of my annual income into an insurance pool, because I need insurance to protect my assets. (It’s complicated...) Moreover, the cost is not tax exempt because it is not employer sponsored. I’m healthy and don’t really consume much in the way of services. Meanwhile, others in the same insurance pool I’m paying into never see the price of their premiums, and don’t pay taxes on them. I understand that the point of insurance is to pool risk for insurable events, but how can we ever have an efficient market without price information?

As Milton Friedman put it “No one is as careful with other people’s money, as he is with his own.”