That's very true, but I can't help wondering if they don't wind up paying even more under privatized healthcare than they do under a socialized system. What I can tell you is that for lower-income people, it's easier to have the money come out of our taxes than to pay out of pocket. I had a baby via emergency c-section back in 2005. She was 7 weeks premature so I was in the hospital for two weeks before she was born, required an i.v. and some meds during that time; then the surgery happened; then she spend a week in the NICU and I spent a week recovering in hospital fighting off an infection. Now, I have a friend who lived in Idaho, had a c-section and was sent home two days later, and paid $13,000 for that after her insurance paid their chunk. I don't know the exact cost my baby and I incurred but I think it would have been a substantial amount if my friend's c-section is anything to go by. But I'm in Ontario, and so when we left the hospital in one of their patient transfer vans for a three-hour ride north to a hospital with a step-down NICU, our bill was around $200 for use of their phone and for renting a breast pump/buying the needed bottles and accessories. I know we pay for our healthcare here too and it isn't as cheap as it seems but I'd much rather do it this way then be blindsided by tens of thousands of dollars of medical debt. We would've been fucked big time if we had to pay for everything out of pocket. We'd probably still be paying it down. It's easier paying for it the way we do under Canadian UHC because it's not all at once in one big lump.