The $1300-1800 numbers are the total. The employer pays most of that, and you're left to pay something around $600.

That fully covers preventative care like regular checkups, standard vaccines, and regular screenings.

If you're in your regular checkup and there's an issue, it's no longer free. Any actual issues usually require you to pay around 20% of the inflated cost. However, you get to use a special, untaxed account to pay it. So you end up paying roughly 15%, and the government chips in 5% (through not charging you income taxes on that portion.)

If you spend somewhere around $10k out of pocket (in addition to your $600/month fees, and your employer's $900/month fees and the government's ~$700/month they lose by not taxing any of this), THEN everything is free, as long as it's approved.

So the real benefit of health insurance is that if you get cancer you only have to pay $~20k a year for as long as you keep your job. Try not to get fired for taking to much time for chemotherapy.

And after you go through all this, there are still complications such as which doctors and pharmacies you're allowed to go to, but most importantly, the health insurance company has a large say in what medications you're allowed to take.

If you don't have health insurance and you get sick you probably just go bankrupt.

Another talking point that doesn't get discussed enough. I didn't realize my next job didn't cover until the next calendar month after the start date and that three week gap was long enough that I'm out of therapy and need to try to reinitiate.

It's not just that. They don't want their taxes to go to paying for other people's healthcare, even though that's exactly how private insurance works

we do pay a Medicare levy in our taxes but it's nothing like USA costs

I was thinking about this too - the American monthly health insurance cost is significantly more than my entire monthly tax contribution, including the public healthcare contributions - and I'm not even "low income" by any definition.

Medicare levy is 2% of income, so you'd pay $1600/year on $80k taxable income.

Insurance in the USA is great if you have a good employer. I pay around $100/month to cover my wife and I, and that includes a $200 deductible (amount you need to pay before the insurance starts covering stuff), $15 doctor visits, $100 for ER, max $15 for generic medication, and a $4k out of pocket maximum per year (after which everything is fully covered). I use a CPAP machine for sleep apnea, and both the machine and supplies are fully covered.

The monthly price plus the deductible is less than what I was paying for the Medicare levy in Australia.

On the other hand, if your employer doesn't have a good health plan, or you're unemployed or self-employed, health insurance is way more expensive and the coverage isn't as great.

The divide between well-off (not necessarily rich, just middle to upper middle class) and poor is significantly larger in the USA than it is in Australia. My parents relied a lot on Australian government assistance when I was young (below market rate government housing, rental assistance to help pay the rent, etc) so I'm very grateful about that.

Honestly I'd be happy to pay more in taxes if it went towards universal healthcare.

~~TIL the French are paying a lot more tax than me~~ (no it's about the same just distributed differently) - but also their health system is Definitely better than my country, so that tracks. That said, your income there is a little bit higher the average French income is only about 43,000€. Pressing the "median wage" button on that link you provided rounds out to only 280€ per month that go to public health care. What I've really learnt from this is that I want to move to France now... If only I could get over having to speak French.